Whether the devastation of the aforementioned accident has imbued Baizley with new life, or his dual successes in the arts are just making him a fuller person, somehow Purple is still heavier than Yellow & Green despite being a leaner machine.

The dreamy project leaves the snide social critiques and radicalisms to the wayside for 36 minutes that feel of its own realm, where the dichotomies and bodily desire feel self-contained. The intimacy is never lost within the set’s high concept: For an album centered on lonesomeness, Aromanticism feels warm.

There's a nifty kind of egolessness about the NPs: They're team players in a way that few other bands are right now. [Aug 2005, p.93]

This guy has written 40-plus albums of material, so it's saying something that Benji is one of his more challenging listens.

The strongest [tracks]... get to Smith's best impulse: a willingness to find the innocence in life. [May 2007, p.94]

If you come to this collection strictly as a fan of one particular period, you may have to work to appreciate the others. An Artist’s Legacy is certainly comprehensive, but it fails to highlight any common threads that might help us navigate Cornell’s long and varied career.

More avant-opera than pop. [Jul 2006, p.90]

Just as messy as the Mescaleros' first two stabs at relevance. [Jan 2004, p.102]

With help from frequent collaborators Paul White and Black Milk, UK electronic producer Evian Christ, and crate-digging maestro the Alchemist, Brown brings his persistent terrors to life.

He does have a sharp facility for steely Bakersfield guitar licks and cinematic countrypolitan strings and clever honkytonk wordplay and so many other elements that defined country in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. But he never feels out of time on $10 Cowboy.

Surprisingly hot to the touch, Wild Beasts' third album does more with less, paring down the quartet's groove-inflected chamber pop to expose raw burning desire.

She simply delves deeper and gives what few artists can deliver: a self-contained world of warmth, crystalline detail, and intimacy that lies far beyond a Twitter feed.

Though she's celebrated for her post-1960 Chess recordings and '67 Muscle Shoals scorcher Tell Mama, her '50s singles, collected here, trace the development of soul's first queen.

A wildly inspired blend of tribal rhythms, wah-wah guitar, fatback bass lines, and the heated unnnhs and yeeowws that typify James Brown funk.

Kouyaté’s new Ba Power offers an even more streamlined and forceful take on West African tradition.

Though it's more of a mash-up of two solo EPs than an album, we're just lucky these guys still bump into each other. [May 2005, p.105]

Even as they feature orchestras, women's choirs, and Beach House singer Victoria Legrand on Veckatimest, the album is still an intimate, ascetic affair.

Longstreth's prickly surface belies a bright pop center: tart, sweet, and gushing all at once.

Here, on record, buttressed by her own diaphanous back-up vocals, she's fading deliciously into the background even as she's finally stepping into the spotlight.

Not since Grateful Dead's Europe '72 has there been a live double album in which intimacy and expansiveness, guitar mess and piano reflection commingle this sweetly. [Dec 2005, p.107]

An atavistic orgy of recycled riffs and lifelong obsessions. [Sep 2004, p.120]

Gruff stuff... A few rockers lighten the load, but not by much. [Sep 2004, p.120]

Every note fits. Every key has a keyhole. And King Push proper would be hard-pressed to beat this small wonder of great cameos (the always-undervalued Jill Scott, sampled Biggie), productions (in a first, Timbaland manning the boards on the eerie “Untouchable”), and block quotes (“I’m the L. Ron Hubbard of the cupboard”) here.

Yo La Tengo remain true to their Velvet Underground roots. [Oct 2006, p.105]

This set--six meticulously documented hours recorded before his first proper album--is a progress chart.

Abraham's broken-glass belloiw is often matched with folk-siren backup vocals that disorient more than they soothe. Multi-tracks thicken and slur the guitar riffs, heightening both the tension and complexity. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.

Savage punk rock that shifts and shakes like the bleachers during a homecoming orgy. [Jan 2005, p.98]