Remember that concept album Tori Amos did that was supposed to reclaim all those male-oriented anthems from their blowhard XY carriers? Smith paints over Amos’ tedious version and executes the idea so much better, without even bragging that she’s doing it.

Favourite Worst Nightmare, a demonstrative record of small deviations, may pale before its predecessor but is better.

It’s a little disjointed, more enigmatic, and more confounding than its predecessors: a gentle, mysterious giant of an album that could only have been created by a father.

This record is the first time the Fucking Champs have actually managed to capture the actual emotional colors of their own banality, rather than trying to piss a whole two-minute solo all over the place.

It’s enormous, senseless, superficial, selfish, and cocky past the point of absurdity, but it’s never wrong.

This is one of the most forward-thinking “rock” albums to come down the pike in some time, playing with the genre in both form and function while showing off Reznor’s ridiculous resevoir of ideas in fine fashion.

It’s mostly top-flight crudity, though admittedly the album’s intensity wanes over its second half.

The squeaky-clean production of Misery Is a Butterfly has been smudged, sanded, and weathered.

You might not agree with him the entire way, but the gale force of Ali’s convictions and talent will leave you willing to believe most of his truth.

On the older albums, the Rosebuds’ synthesizers could sound like reinforcements parachuted in to cover for inadequate guitars or weak songs, but no longer. The front-and-center synths of Night of the Furies sound like a band hitting its stride.

The listener who comes away from the two-hour experience of …And Their Refinement of Decline without becoming a bit misty at least once is too hardened for my friendship.

An interesting, good album: more inventive, heavy, meaningful, and memorable than the Veils’ first.

Jarvis is strong enough, smart enough, and at home enough with its ancient rock-star concerns and unembellished songcraft, for "Running the World" to remain a bonus track. This album doesn't need rescuing.

A worthy addition to the catalog.

From Here We Go Sublime may not be an evolution for Willner, but it’s a singular distillation of his talents into one album. Mixing gauzy shoegaze, slippery ambient loops, and two-cheeks-on-the-floor bass drum bounce, the Field offers an idyllic work of startling novelty, and perhaps ‘techno’’s most widely appreciable offering in years.

Betke hasn’t merely licked his wounds and retreated into familiar territory, but fused some lessons learned from his own back catalog to create a shiny new beast, at once identifiable as his work and yet something tangibly different.

It’s hard not to notice that the best songs on Fourteen Autumns were already featured on last year’s EP.

It’s not a classic, nor is it an embarrassment. It’s a disc which says: we’re the Fall, we’re still going and, frankly, you should bloody well be pleased about that. A statement with which I’m inclined to agree.

Like his first record Straight Outta Cashville, Buck the World is a solid-to-great Southern rap genre exercise, graced with immaculate production and boasting an all-star supporting cast.

As always, McGraw’s music primarily falters when the songs themselves lack sufficient emotional content for even his considerable conjuring powers to salvage.... Luckily, there are still moments when songwriting prowess and vocal mastery meet halfway.

The main draw here is in Prodigy rediscovering his way with words.

It’s a classic first album: A band unpretentiously tangling various genres they--or even listeners--thought would never sound so brilliant together.

Yes, of course, it’s a total homage to his favorite music—but it’s an extraordinarily moving one, both emotionally and physically.

It’s still identifiably Low, but richer and more diverse than before.

You almost get the sense Leo must be embarrassed by how good his last record sounds, opting instead to appease some imaginary punk ethic to the detriment of his songs.

The experimental, lo-fi branding of his oeuvre is gone, but the originality of his sound continues to trump the nostalgic demons in his head.

Ultimately, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead displays a type of artistic growth almost alien to the genre.

It’s a shame that Stone and Saadiq fall for the name-dropping approach to making records; inserted like ad-breaks, the guests are easily the worst thing on the album, giving a strong whiff of one of those horrible kitchen-sink-and-rolodex stinkers in the middle of a really very good, if conservative, soul record.