Two melodies reach back centuries. Strong-voiced frontwoman Amy Sacko delivers the word. And although the ngoni is a mere lute, Kouyate gets more noises you want to hear out of his strings than any two jam-band hotshots you can name.

Sometimes we believe we care, what happens in the tuneful drywall of her shambling dreams.

[I'm] prouder, frankly, when this likable size 12 lets her voice crack all over the big fat scarewords "feminist" and "sexism" on an album that gets dissed for its simplistic songwriting as if that wasn't the point.

She raps better now, shaping her breathy little-girl pout into vulnerability and defiance as circumstances dictate, which often means simultaneously. She rhymes better too.

The finest lyricist to rise up out of conscious country since Miranda Lambert, if not Bobby Pinson himself.

Rocky raps over the music without saying a damn thing older, meaner, and sharper rappers haven't said before. Then, bang, three dynamite songs.... Then, aww, three tracks that could be more obvious by half.

American Idol haunts this artistic breakthrough.

Slowly you'll realize just how rare it is for a major-label Nashville hopeful to put this much care into every song even if you're not convinced by the one that connects whipped cream and whips.

This Leeds-to-Cambridge foursome's unhurried electro-mesh is always more than pleasant and half the time mildly enthralling.

The hook on these 14 two-minute songs isn't tunes except occasionally. It's whichever of the two guys who "sing, if you must call it that" comes packing the most anxiety.

There's more space in these tracks, and unlikely hints of sweetening both orchestral and distaff that come as laugh moments whether the lunatics running the asylum think they're funny or not.

Though he dumbs up his songwriting half the time by fearing fun literally as regards forward motion, don't give up.

The follow-up is his party record, and deeper as a consequence, dark and hilarious and gone so fast you're too busy tapping your inner foot to cavil about pitch or timbre.

Midway through, here comes some madman with the deeply stoopid "31 Flavors" and you realize it wasn't going along fine enough.

It's like H&S [Holsapple & Stamey] never went away.

Their quietest and most fragile album is also their most orchestrated.

I decided that Lukas's stoned-hillbilly affect was just what his dad needed to distinguish this particular assortment of what-thes, why-hasn't-he-evers,​ and written-to-orders from rival entries in his unchartable catalogue.

He's major now, and musically, this locks in top to bottom.

Although more far-out referents might arguably block my passway to his freewheeling freestyles, subcontinental beats like Keyboard Kid's electro-Carnatic "Let It Go" and Harry Fraud's serpent-charming "Wild Water Kingdom" mean to create a world of fun for everyone.

True, the record shudders to a virtual halt when the ecumenical auteur turns beatmaker midway through, and some may judge the rhymes irresponsibly playful.

Almost nothing here dips to ordinary. And beats or not, one reason is that the rapper's rough clarity is musical bedrock.

The atmospheric beats Dr. Dre and his hirelings lay under the raps and choruses establish musical continuity, shoring up a nervous flow that's just what Lamar's rhymes need.

On his fourth and least austere album ventures into songlike territory without ever enlisting a vocalist, although vocal sounds do enter the mix.

Reminds me of a painter pal who in the '60s did a whole slipcase of polarized bicolor sex silkscreens--some lovely, some gross, all yummy.

You'll grow to love the queen of Bowlmor Lanes, the Jazz Age gangster who takes pride in his work, the souvenirs of dooms past rusting in the back of the sci-fi shop.

I like the feisty ones, as I generally do. But "Begin Again" and especially "Stay Stay Stay" stay happy and hit just as hard.

Between speed of delivery and brevity of line, Sandman's nonstop tunefulness here tends jingly no matter how gritty his flow.

Matthew E. White's horn charts are the musical development Darnielle has in store for us. But the dealmaker is Jon Wurster's spare, inescapable drumming.