Ear-bleed guitar glory and woolly-headed grandeur from J. Mascis and Co. [May 2021, p.76]

Like Portishead if they spent a weekend in a Nashville studio. [May 2021, p.76]

Put this record on and see how long it takes to utter your first joyful expletive.

The record feels like a culmination of all her experience, suffused into an album that threads decades of music and heritage into a thrilling, organic whole.

The most uncanny, and most impressive, thing about the record might be that the pair sound even more focused, and more comfortable in their unforced eccentricity, than they did on Superwolf. There’s really no one else out there making songs like this; let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 16 years for more.

The only downside, if there is one, is that with so much happening at once, She Walks in Beauty is best taken in small doses to appreciate its majesty.

Thanks to all the cheeky winks and nods that the Who dressed the record with, it transcended mishmash status. Now this exhaustive, super deluxe edition box set is showing the genius at work behind The Who Sell Out.

Some of the best music can be raw while remaining widely accessible. Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine is Brockhampton’s best effort to balance these approaches; their hard times and brash raps go down more smoothly than ever.

The new versions somehow sound less slick than the original. Her voice feels lower in the mix this time around, but for the most part she’s gone to extreme lengths to mimic the polished Nashville textures and soundscapes of the first Fearless. ... The final half-dozen originals — all previously unreleased — are revelatory glimpses into Swift’s working process.

All that conflict and drama might be a little too overpowering if not for Lee’s abiding faith in the power of a nice hoo. The album’s best moment is also its most self-assuredly poppy.

It's her incisive songwriting that makes her fifth LP a treat. [Apr 2021, p.73]

Eighty-year-old sax great Sanders pushes his sound to its most heavenly extreme. [Apr 2021, p.73]

It’s the cheekiness and humor of Deacon that really shines, without sacrificing the complex theatricality that has made Serpentwithfeet such a standout project.

This compilation is a welcome reminder that Cornell was so much more than his scream.

He’s a convincing rap sage; a captivating spitter offering his nefarious experiences with an abundance of awareness of their nuances and influence.

While it may not have as many grandiose showpieces as its older sibling – no nine-minute “Venice Bitch” to be found here – Chemtrails is every bit as sharp and prescient of a cultural artifact from pop’s premier Cassandra.

At 10 compact, differently beautiful songs, Driver is the work of an artist entering the springtime of their brilliance, as good as singer-songwriter indie-rock can get. It’s the kind of record you can’t but feel lucky to live in.

Her EP is a captivating flirtation with the Latin music world. Selena en español is a revelation worth revisiting on a full-length project.

As a whole, 77–81 presents Gang of Four’s brilliance while putting it on context.

On Obviously, they’re still oddballs, but in the best way. At a moment when pop strives for lo-fi, solitary-world intimacy, the jazz-pop-whatever band refuse to think small. Fully living up to the water imagery in their name, they’ve made their first truly abashed yacht rock record — with all the hooks, musical interplay, sophistication and sometimes dodgy lyrics of that genre.

Most of the arrangements here keep things simple, generally leaning on unamplified sounds to complement Lynn’s country-as-grits voice. ... Lynn’s journey hasn’t always been an easy one. What’s amazing is that, 60 years into her career, that experience is still feeding her creatively.

June has never sounded more fully and thrillingly herself than she does on her latest album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, which merges pop ambition, folksy open-heartedness and blues wisdom.

Aims for the cosmos but lands in an indie-pop Twilight Zone. [Mar 2021, p.73]

The band's eighth album is an arena rock of the mind, tempering the strapping anthemics of hits like "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody" for songs that stretch out en route to arriving at a serene kind of swagger. [Mar 2021, p.72]

Tones down the guitar wizardry of previous releases to show off her formidable pop chops. [Mar 2021, p.73]

Largely, Cooper and longtime producer Bob Ezrin know what they can get away with on an Alice Cooper record, and when they hit their stride, it’s a lot of fun. Figuring out how to do that seems like an artform unto itself.

As on Weld, Way Down in the Rust Bucket showcases a reconvened band that sounds newly motivated after increasingly sluggish and creaky shows in the Eighties. They’re not yet the smooth-galloping machine they would become on the full-blown tour, though. What we’re hearing is the musicians feeling their way.

For as sparse as it sounds, there’s great depth to Carnage.