For 2,075 reviews, this publication has graded:
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55% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: | Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1 | |
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Lowest review score: | Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,597 out of 2075
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Mixed: 443 out of 2075
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Negative: 35 out of 2075
2075
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
The remasters find some new glimmers of clarity and sparkle, particularly on guitar sounds, but aren’t startlingly different from past versions. ... After 20 years, it’s clear that “OK Computer” was the album on which Radiohead most strongly embraced and, simultaneously, confronted the legacy of the Beatles.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 22, 2017
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With a few takes of each song, the session tracks hint at how intuitively the Beatles worked. ... The new mixes on the expanded “Revolver,” made with current technology and 21st-century ears, are a pleasure; they have more transparency and a more three-dimensional sense of space than the 1966 mixes. ... The new set insists that the clearer it’s heard, the odder it is. “Revolver” still holds surprises.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 31, 2022
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The music still sounds contemporary and alive. ... Every song exults in the architectural savvy of a musician who, from the drumbeat up, seemed to know exactly how he’d be jamming with himself as he built the song. ... A handful [of the previously unreleased material] — including the absolute standout, “Purple Music” — are gems; none is a dud.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 27, 2019
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Some of the Vault tracks are early or alternate versions of familiar songs, but dozens are newly revealed. Prince’s original choices for the album hold up. But it’s a delight to hear so much more.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 25, 2020
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It captures Davis's finest working band at its apogee, straining at the limits of post-bop refinement.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 24, 2011
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“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is daring in a new way, scrambling and shattering the pop-song structures that once grounded her. ... I am floored by this record. I hear freedom, too. These songs make some breathtaking hairpin turns. ... It’s not just the wild craftsmanship of each song. It’s also that she’s fearless about what she’s doing: with sounds, with structures, with people’s expectations.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 17, 2020
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At its best, it’s a howling work of black protest art on par with Amiri Baraka’s incendiary play “Dutchman,” or David Hammons’s moving decapitated hoodie “In the Hood”.... He hasn’t outrun his tendency toward clutter. He is a dense rapper, and even though he’s more at ease with the music now, he still runs the risk of suffocation.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 17, 2015
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“Ghosteen” is an eerie, somber monolith, a set of 11 songs that stretches over an hour and is grouped on two CDs.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 9, 2019
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Listeners familiar with Mr. Lang’s more obstreperous instrumental works may not recognize his style here (though a few more meditative ensemble pieces hint at it). But these choral settings, composed from 2001 to 2007, show that he has idiosyncratic but effective ideas about how to use voices.- The New York Times
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Tart and punchy.... Sometimes boisterous, sometimes swampy, rarely fanciful album--it’s Mr. Lamar’s version of the creeping paranoia that has become de rigueur for midcareer Drake. And yet this is likely Mr. Lamar’s most jubilant album, the one in which his rhymes are the least tangled.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 17, 2017
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Latter-day Bob Dylan is for die-hards. ... His music is adamantly old-fashioned, and he’s not aiming to ingratiate himself with anyone. But for those who have stuck with him this far, his new album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” is at once a summing-up and a taunt, equal parts death-haunted and cantankerous.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 19, 2020
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It doesn’t leap out of speakers; it oozes and bubbles, waiting for a listener to be drawn in. As it does, the pleasures and rewards keep growing.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 15, 2014
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It is just as electrifying as the group’s first two LPs, but with a wider sonic horizon and more parts in motion. And there’s a triumphant streak running through it that only heightens the pain of Branch’s demise.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 29, 2023
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One of the geeky joys of “Wildflowers and All the Rest” is observing Petty at the absolute peak of his songwriting powers, making small, intelligent tweaks to these songs in progress. Sometimes it’s a single world, a few letters. ... The deep despair is there, too, in the rich soil of these songs. But what makes it bearable, and makes the record so timelessly listenable, is everything else that’s mixed in: humor, wisdom, a little randiness and a palpable sense of hope.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 15, 2020
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There is sad music, which is to say music that deploys lyrical or musical motifs meant to connote misery. And then there is this album, which mostly exists in a space beyond those concerns. It is an album because a musician made it and it is broken up into songs, but it is also a diary, a balled-up tissue, found art.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 22, 2017
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What she wants to say on Room 25 is complex: thoughts on community, sensuality, mortality and self-determination. ... Noname is a full-fledged maverick, but not an abrasive one. Phoelix’s production situates her in leisurely, atmospheric R&B, and there’s almost always the hint of a smile in her voice. But no one should mistake her soft, playful tone for submissiveness.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 17, 2018
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Dylan going electric now seems quaint, these concerts are a big part of the reason: He proved he was right.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 14, 2016
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Nearly every sound in these tracks has amorphous parameters: an indeterminate pitch, a gradual attack and decay, the sensation of being heard from a distance, or perhaps underwater.- The New York Times
- Posted May 10, 2012
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["Sorry,"] is a combative, unglossy track on an album full of them. ... As she did with her 2013 album, “Beyoncé,” she has also paired the music with full-length video that expands and deepens its impact.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 25, 2016
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Throughout “Ants From Up Here,” and through the course of every song, Black Country, New Road tests and reinvents itself, creating music that sounds both intricately plotted and precarious.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 7, 2022
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There’s still something to be gleaned here, perhaps especially from the frisky pianist Ruben González and the debonair vocalists Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer, all of whom are now gone, having enjoyed twilight acclaim.- The New York Times
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Eilish and Finneas further expand their sonic territory, reveling in electronics and plush subtleties, while they alternately honor and warp pop structures. .... In that song ["Blue"], and for a good part of the album, Eilish turns her gaze toward characters outside herself and sets aside easy pop satisfactions. She has earned the prerogatives of a superstar, and on “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she’s using them.- The New York Times
- Posted May 17, 2024
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Writing about parties and untrue love, Lorde risks joining the pop pack instead of upending it the way she did with “Pure Heroine.” But she still has the immediacy of her voice, with its smokiness, melancholy and barely suppressed rage, and she refuses to let her lyrics resolve into standard pop postures.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 16, 2017
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It’s the odder, genre-fluid songs that give the album its depth. .... Beyoncé has been a stalwart of the full-length album, sequencing and juxtaposing songs in synergistic ways. But “Cowboy Carter” is a bumpier ride than “Renaissance,” “Lemonade” or “Beyoncé.” It suggests that Beyoncé wanted to pack all she could into one side trip before moving on elsewhere.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 1, 2024
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The sturdy structures of pop only go so far in Perfume Genius songs. They provide reassurance that others have found ways to capture similar feelings. But they can’t hold back the immediacy of longing, the all-consuming physical need. That’s captured in a pair of songs near the end of the album.- The New York Times
- Posted May 18, 2020
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The problem with "A Grand Don't Come for Free" is that the pieces often work better as stories than as songs.... But it is still a thrill to hear Mr. Skinner toy with the form that he invented.- The New York Times
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Beyoncé’s singing here transcends any price tag. The range of her voice nears the galactic; the imagination powering it qualifies as cinema. ... Its sense of adventure is off the genre’s map, yet very much aware of every coordinate. It’s an achievement of synthesis that never sounds slavish or synthetic. These songs are testing this music, celebrating how capacious it is, how pliable.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 1, 2022
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“Black Rainbows” is one songwriter’s leap into artistic freedom, unconcerned with genre expectations or radio formats. It’s also one more sign that songwriters are strongest when they heed instincts rather than expectations.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 14, 2023
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The 70-minute album sags by the end, and every listener will probably find one must-skip song. But Ms. Monae gets away with most of her metamorphoses, and the sheer ambition is exhilarating even when she stretches too far.- The New York Times
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Poignantly fraught, spiritually and sonically agitated. .... Her self-doubt is a powerful animating force. Throughout this album, she kiln-fires her anxieties into lyrics that cut deep. .... Here [on "Teenage Dream"], and in the most potent moments on “Guts,” Rodrigo’s music pulses with the verve of someone who’s been buttoned tight beginning to come loose. Unraveling is messy business, but it is also freedom.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 8, 2023
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With 23 songs, “SOS” arrives as a long, nuanced argument SZA is having with her companions and with herself. ... The songs leap from personal beefs to universal quandaries, while SZA challenges herself as both musician and persona.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 13, 2022
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Even the most elaborate constructions come across as homemade, touched with an optimism that is by no means naïve. [10 Jul 2005]- The New York Times
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A hushed, intent Sufjan Stevens contemplates death, grief, family and memory on his quietly moving new album.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 30, 2015
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Strange and exquisitely moving. ... Bridgers’s lyrical talent was evident on her 2017 debut, “Stranger in the Alps,” which had a few perfect songs but as a whole sometimes felt muted, languid and downcast. “Punisher,” though, moves along fluidly with its eyes to the vast sky. Bridgers’s arpeggiated guitar work remains quietly deft.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 19, 2020
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JD McPherson is a vivid reinterpreter of the strutting rock ’n’ roll of the 1950s. His holiday album, Socks, is a collection of original songs with startlingly original conceits.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 6, 2018
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Both the boxed set and the film sprawl proudly and unpredictably, just as the Revue itself did. And both projects traffic in revelation and put-on, sometimes simultaneously. ... Dylan completists will likely cherish newly unveiled rehearsal tapes . ... For those willing to dig in, the new box also makes clear how consistently impassioned Dylan’s Rolling Thunder performances were.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 6, 2019
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This is a messy album, sometimes thrillingly so, a mélange of psychedelic rock, punk energy and R&B desperation.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 21, 2011
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- The New York Times
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Ngoni Ba was already remarkable for its plucked, pointillist modal grooves, and on Jama Ko, its passionate defense of Malian culture makes the music even sharper.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 29, 2013
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The years between boygenius recordings have made all three songwriters more confident and more levelheaded.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 30, 2023
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It’s hard to imagine many of its songs being performed onstage, even before the pandemic — even as it encompasses more sonic possibilities, from the orchestral to the surreal. ... Sumney doesn’t have to explain himself in prose. His songs do it even better.- The New York Times
- Posted May 18, 2020
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With the producer John Congleton, Ms. Clark creates an unpretty backdrop for some of her most alluring melodies.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 24, 2014
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There’s not likely to be a more earthy feeling and backward-sounding country album released on a major label this year.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 20, 2013
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- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 27, 2014
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Legacy! Legacy! is a fully realized follow-up, sure-footed in its blend of what was, what is and what might be.- The New York Times
- Posted May 15, 2019
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On the jubilant, nourishing Coloring Book, his third solo release, has blossomed into a crusader and a pop savant, coming as close as anyone has to eradicating the walls between the sacred and the secular.- The New York Times
- Posted May 18, 2016
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Although the album is punctuated by spoken-word interludes--bits of poetry, self-help, comedy and tribute--it is designed to flow as a whole, gradually infusing a room like incense or the smells of home cooking. ... And Solange’s voice is sure-footed and playful, confident that the music will follow her every whim. ... Outside a few prominent guest raps, Solange and her musicians slip the collaborators into the background. This is her space, her sanctuary.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 6, 2019
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- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
- Posted May 16, 2024
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These clattering and clear-eyed tracks add up to something singular. [27 Nov 2006]- The New York Times
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This newfound looseness and fluidity suits them. Best believe that Haim still has chops and a bar band’s encyclopedic knowledge of rock riffs, but on its third album it’s finally learned how to carry those things lightly enough to move with its own particular stride.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 26, 2020
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Ms. Musgraves has a sweet character to her sound, which allows her to deliver a cynic’s wisdom in the voice of an inquisitive child.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 20, 2013
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To Be Kind continues a run of evermore committed, detailed and powerful work since the band formed again with a new lineup four years ago.- The New York Times
- Posted May 12, 2014
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“Valentine,” her remarkable second album as Snail Mail, is alive with such crackling and revelatory emotion.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 5, 2021
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It doesn’t reflect a lack of evolution, or even a regression, but rather the completion of a circle--and probably a landing pad, even as the world continues to whiz by.- The New York Times
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There are minor variations, like key changes and picking patterns, but nothing as radical as the ways he would transform the songs in later years.- The New York Times
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[A] rather brilliant record.... You almost want to hold the whole thing still, flatten it out and study it.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 21, 2015
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Even as she sings about desperation and uncertainty, on “30” Adele’s voice is more supple and purposeful than ever, articulating every consonant and constantly ornamenting her melodies without distracting from them. Details are fastidious.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Grim tidings arrive amid gorgeous backdrops ... The results often hark back to the late 1960s; in a way, "A Moon Shaped Pool" is Radiohead’s psych-folk album.- The New York Times
- Posted May 8, 2016
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Masseduction stays poised between passion and artifice, trusting listeners to decrypt its paradoxes.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 11, 2017
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- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 1, 2020
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It’s more experimental yet catchier, more introspective yet more assertive, by turns gloomier and funnier, and above all richer in both sound and implication. “Return to Cookie Mountain” is simply one of this year’s best albums.- The New York Times
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A tauntingly good hip-hop album, or a rewiring of pop DNA: “Call Me if You Get Lost” has it both ways. ... Intersections of cocksureness and anxiety are this album at its best. (Fittingly, the title “Call Me if You Get Lost” reads either as a statement of generosity or a plea, depending on your lens.) Songs like the less emotionally ambiguous “Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance” are generally less impactful — Tyler thrives on discord.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 8, 2021
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This new album is the most successful of the lot--calmer but not remotely calm, more emotional but not at all tender.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 4, 2017
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Superb. ... “Big Time” (which she recorded in Topanga, Calif., with the producer Jonathan Wilson) is charged with a continuous current of weighty, transformative and bracingly cleareyed emotion.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 3, 2022
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- The New York Times
- Posted May 13, 2013
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While it may not be his most immediately affecting album (that remains “Yesterday You Said Tomorrow,” from 2010), it offers the kind of slow-burning immersion that most of his recent records have only gestured at.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 22, 2019
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- The New York Times
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Despite the album title, religion barely figures on “Magdalene.” FKA twigs seeks a person to believe in, not a creed. In these songs, that would be vocation enough, a chance to find transcendence by giving everything. It’s the faith of so many pop songs: the glory of love.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 7, 2019
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The album is complete in itself. It's just 39 minutes, made brief to be listened to as a whole.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 21, 2011
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The strikingly good “YHLQMDLG” (which stands for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana,” translation “I Do Whatever I Want”) moves in a different direction, looking deep inside the genre’s long history and proposing that there is enough information in the past on which to build a whole worldview.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 26, 2020
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The low-fi yet meticulous arrangements only add to the sense of isolation and the poignancy of the songs. [18 Oct 2004]- The New York Times
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The soukous guitars are still there, now and then, but solitary post-punk guitar lines also hang in the air, and they share a spooky, precarious soundscape that changes with each track: heaving with distorted bass, warped by the echoes and shifting reverb of a psychedelic-dub production, invaded by noise.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 1, 2015
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Rhythmic layers crackle and coil, percussion spatters prettiness, and noise sometimes looms from murky corners....Radiohead has also reclaimed its tunefulness. Its new songs take care to string long-lined melodies across the rigorous counterpoint.- The New York Times
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Tame Impala saves itself from mere revivalism with 21st-century self-consciousness and, tucked amid the swirl and buzz, touching confessions of insecurity.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 3, 2012
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Words are secondary for Sunn O))), a k a Greg Anderson on bass and Stephen O’Malley on guitar, who long ago made thunderous resonant sounds their stock in trade. What’s striking about this new release is its wealth of additional textures: woodwinds, brass, strings, male and female choirs.- The New York Times
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The groundbreaking compilation Haiti Direct gathers 27 tracks from those decades: big bands with jubilant horn sections (including the one led by the compas pioneer Nemours Jean Baptiste); “mini jazz” bands that replaced horn sections with guitars; rock bands with a psychedelic streak; small twoubadou (troubadour) groups and more.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 18, 2014
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It’s an album of breezy confidence and sly ingenuity, easily moving among futuristic electronics, 1990s nostalgia and Latin roots. .... Lavishly layered vocals nestle among glimmering electronic sounds and programmed beats, and on “Orquídeas,” her voice sounds completely untethered by gravity.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 11, 2024
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“Dawn FM,” his fifth major-label album, is sleek and vigorous and also, again, a light reimagining of what big-tent music might sound like now, in an era when most global stars have abandoned the concept.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 10, 2022
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This album doesn't match the weird, woozy brilliance of "Supreme Clientele," from 2000, and there are a few too many guest verses from rappers who don't come close to upstaging their host. Still, this might surpass his 2004 CD, "The Pretty Toney Album," though it's too early to tell: when you get a new Ghostface Killah album, the only reasonable reaction is to get lost in it. [27 Mar 2006]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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It’s at once emotive and cryptic, structured and spontaneous and, above all, willful, refusing to cater to the expectations of radio stations or fans.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 6, 2016
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- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 15, 2015
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- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 6, 2013
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The music toys with nostalgia, with the reassuring dependability of structure and instrumental arrangements.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 1, 2016
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“In These Silent Days” consolidates Carlile’s strengths: musical, writerly, maternal, political.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 5, 2021
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Another collection of all originals, it is just as unrelenting as “Omega.”- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 2, 2022
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Blonde is dewy, radiant and easeful, with an approach to incantatory soul that evolves moment to moment. It’s feverish but unhurried, a slowly smoldering set that’s emphatic about loneliness.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 22, 2016
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Mr. Brown’s voice, which lacks power and nuance, and lays even flatter the goopier the lyric. That liability becomes even clearer as the musicianship around him elevates, not just by his band members, but also guests, like Mr. Grohl on drums, or Oteil Burbridge (of the reconstituted Allman Brothers Band) on bass. But the gifts Mr. Brown receives here are plenty, and he has spun gold from far less.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 30, 2013
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Los Lobos has swerved away from the upbeat music it plays on the jam-band circuit, harking back to its quietly startling 1992 album, “Kiko.” [25 Sep 2006]- The New York Times
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What elevates these beyond mere plaints is Ms. Evans’s robust and sweet voice. She sings with power, grace and dignity.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 11, 2014
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Every so often, this imperative to speak big-tent truths can become strained and make her lyrics frustratingly vague, as on “Children of the Empire” (“we tend to live long, that’s why so many things go wrong”), but that song’s gorgeous vocal melody and Mering’s impassioned performance lift it beyond its limitations.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 17, 2022
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A thorough but imposing six hours of material, this collection is less about any specific unearthed gem than the larger transformation it charts.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 30, 2020
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Even amid the most abstruse music, these songs have an emotional immediacy. The physicality of Björk’s voice and the strings are even more striking against the impersonal electronic sounds, all the better to reveal the interior landscape of heartbreak and healing--not a simple story, and all the better for it.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 21, 2015
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She fully commands the foreground of her songs. Her voice is upfront, recorded to sound natural and unaffected, with all its grain and conversational quirks.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 13, 2017
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This warped, lovely album suggests that a true longtime partnership isn’t two people who love each other even for their flaws, but of two people accepting decay--their own and each other’s--and choosing to ride it out nonetheless.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 9, 2015
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Mitski’s songs about love are a tangle of mixed messages in precise, idiosyncratic packages. ... On this album, even more than she has before, Mitski makes the music her partner.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 22, 2018
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In fairness to the XX, that song was one of Aaliyah's most languorous, its eroticism delivered in small, subtle kicks, but that does little to soften the airlessness of the XX's version. And it's that same fundamental reluctance to engage that suffocates this group's self-titled debut album, which has become a favorite of bloggers and the British.- The New York Times
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Arcade Fire mines classic U2 and Bruce Springsteen far better than the Killers recently did. And Arcade Fire didn’t lose its own voice in an attempt to sound bigger and grander. [5 Mar 2007]- The New York Times
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Working separately, the songwriters converged in lonely reflection; the album adds up to a composite portrait of a ghost.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 1, 2015
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