[Slipknot] has married a little beauty to its beast, with schizophrenic results that are best summed up by the line "The only thing I ever really loved was hate."

With a lineup this eclectic and a songbook as undervalued as Harrison's, a little more adventurousness would have gone a long way.

tween Daft Punk's astronaut gear and Air's analog synth-driven Moon Safari, French electronic musicians have historically shown great nostalgia towards the old space age. Continuing the trend is this soundtrack.

As gleefully weird as anything he's done.

The second Fifth Harmony LP isn't a massive step forward, but with a constant bombardment of hooks, high energy and incredible harmony there's not much time to catch your breath to compare.

Most of the time, Anastasio chills in the background, letting the horn section log play time on tracks such as 'Burlap Sack and Pumps.' This makes for a record that's alternately brainy and backgroundy--the arrangements are sharp, but the flute solos (particularly on the title track, recorded at a 2002 Pittsburgh show) bring "Anchorman" to mind.

In Our Bedroom After the War is mellower, without so much of the emotional turmoil that seethed under the surface of "Set Yourself on Fire."

The ornate tracks are as wow-worthy as the guest list--so it's surprising how same-y the mood of wallowing grandeur can get.

The results veer sharply between transcendent and tepid.

While his funk game is strong and swagger is stronger, Bruno's acclaimed hook-writing (which has garnered four Number Ones for himself and tons of co-writes on other chart-toppers) has seemingly taken a backseat.

It's like a Portlandia satire of the world's most studious band.

Suggests a marriage of Jeff Buckley and early Radiohead, minus the guitar freakouts.

Some of Grohl's lyrical shortcomings become exposed: The sameness and vagueness of his love lyrics blunt their impact.

Their fourth record lacks the innocent fun of their first hits. [Apr 2020, p.87]

With his latest band, the 400 Unit, the former Drive-By Truckers guitarist brings new textures to tracks like the percussion-heavy swamp rock of 'Seven-Mile Island' and vintage-sounding Southern soul of 'No Choice in the Matter.'

On their debut disc, Nau and McGraw craft jazzy folk peppered with pianos, strings and organs, and drive them with down-home vocal harmonies.

Even if this project probably won’t give us any fresh entrants into the large canon of classic Elton songs, The Lockdown Sessions is still a glowing testament to his enduring pop gravitas.

Released just nine months after Stay Dangerous, 4REAL 4REAL flies well below the lofty standard YG set with his first two albums and smells of his eagerness to get out of his label contract.

Regardless of how you view the album Kind Heaven, it’s best digested in microdoses.

[In Limbo] grooves on the easy symmetry of unfussy harmonies and dead-simple, no-hurry guitar, drum, and keyboard parts well buttered with reverb.

The songwriting on mellower numbers like "Promise" isn't as finely crafted as the expansive sound. [25 Aug 2005, p.99]

His chops are pro and his delivery almost compulsively spot on, but he's far too thin on what singer-songwriters probably need most: their own point of view.

Madame X is so admirably bizarre, all you can do is stand back and watch the girl go.

Factor in the music’s kitchen-sink vibe--anchored by a Chamberlin keyboard that triggers tape loops of various instruments--and the album is a lot to take in. But the task can be rewarding.

Interspersed, however, with Campbell's finest performances are several moments that fall short on a record that occasionally feels like a forced final effort. ... Ultimately, though, it's Campbell's voice, still nimble and newly haunting in its frailty, that makes Adiós a worthy conclusion from the legendary singer.

For sheer virtuosity, you gotta hand it to the guy - he sure can make a lot of really weird noises. But who cares?

Singer Ian Watkins has Mike Patton's croon/scream down cold, and his group deftly applies FNM's anything-goes approach: equal parts thrash riffs, symphonic keyboards and moody jazz intervals.

The ballads, many recorded with steel guitarist Bucky Baxter, are much better than the rockers.

Even when the lyrics verge on ridiculousness (on the Tove Lo-featuring "Rumors," Lambert denounces "haterade"), he's one of the biggest personalities in pop.

Although Both Sides of the Sky--the third volume in a vault clearing that began in 2010 with Valleys of Neptune (close to a must hear) and continued with 2013's People, Hell and Angels (a little less close)--repeats songs and fragments found in more fully developed versions elsewhere, it still offers plenty of thrills, as, time and again, Hendrix pushes solos along the knife-edge that separates this world from another.

The latest installment in his band's multi-album cycle Teargarden by Kaleidyscope--is a surprise.

While the mostly up-tempo disc never lacks for energy, some of the more beat-driven tracks (such as the throwaway "Freakum Dress") feel harmonically and melodically undercooked, with hooks that don't live up to "Crazy in Love" or the best Destiny's Child hits.

It doesn't rock, but it waltzes, spinning a tale involving animated trees, demons and what may be peyote cactus tea.

This fire hose of arch-pop cleverness will overload even the sharpest mind. [Jul - Aug 2022, p.120]

The duo's mean, scrappy eighth album is the first to truly embrace their underdog status, wrapping itself in the low-fi, Walkman-ready vibe that has dominated the best of founding members Prodigy's and Havoc's solo work on indie labels.

With dubby beats, choral vocals and signature strings, it's the most haunted song on the group's second LP, a set of genteel indie pop swinging between Dirty Projectors' ornate chamber music and the prep-school dance party of Vampire Weekend.

["Pull It" is] the high point of Loud Hailer (an English colloquialism for megaphone), and its wordlessness is a plus; other songs decry war, apathy, greed, crass media, evil politicians, empty fame and other ills with less art than righteous heart.

A stitched-together, underedited collage of half-finished tunes, random guitar blurts and keyboard flotsam that will be loved by its admirers and royally annoy everyone else. [14 Oct 2004, p.98]

Jeremih has a way with tunes and hooks, and the love-man game is all about finding new ways to dress up the familiar.

Planet Pit plays a bit like a business plan.

Tyler rages at his absent father, scowls through uncomfortable fan encounters and--true to form--spews tons of supposedly ironic sexism and homophobia. If you can get past that tic, there's plenty to admire on Wolf.

Amerie is all grown up on her second effort. And in this case, growth is good.

The storm of guitars here is proof enough that he's still alive and kicking.

The monster beat shell games of "Scud Books" and "Portrait of Luci" show why his jams are a hip-hop gold standard. The vocal takes impress less decisively.

A mediocre follow-up with nothing as great as "Redneck Woman" or "Here for the Party."

There's nothing quite as sharp here as, well, "Here."

Much of the time, Snoop's on autopilot.

Only a few cuts really stick. [22 Feb 2007, p.80]

Only Built for Infinity Links find Quavo and Takeoff more than capable of conjuring the old Migos magic by themselves. It’s a patchy collection that seems to go on a bit too long despite a 59-minute running time.

Their 2008 major-label bid, Agony & Irony, got bogged down in power-ballad overreach, so with its seventh disc, the group is back to its bleak-Blink-182 roots.

He rarely strives for the depth of Lamar or the intensity of Q; there's plenty of clever imagery on These Days . . . ("Residue on my debit card/Don't tell my moms," he rhymes on "Ride Slow"), but a fully realized dude never quite comes into focus.

There are big, well-crafted hooks on the Oasis-y "The Mansion" and the melancholy slow-burner "Indentions," though they're often stuck in clunky arrangements and muddy self-production.

Mika's faith in the campy excess of Freddie Mercury/Elton John-style pomp pop is bracing. But over the course of an album, the shtick's charm erodes.

As with every Ratatat record, Magnifique leaves you wondering what they could do if they fleshed these out into actual songs with real singers.

Peaches seems to intentionally drop the ball throughout Fatherfucker.

Cover versions that once seemed inspired now feel somewhat obligatory.

A quartet that lives, dies and drinks to Exile on Main Street.

Fans of cuddly, home-listening indie electronica ... will want to hear this lovely DJ set of headphone beat candy.

The group's second LP is a showcase for gritty traditionalism.

Simon's songwriting can feel slight but in a dolorously cute way.

Fusing elements of goth, screamo and what was once called nu metal with the late-Seventies new wave of British metal-metal, their sixth LP piles clarion solos atop clean, sludge-chug riffs.

They’re trapped in the dusk on most of the album, and it’s the few beacons of light here, when they sound like they’re all having fun, that cut through the darkness and make for great Pixies songs.

It’s hard for a band like STP to change and grow, especially after the losses of two iconic frontmen, so perhaps Perdida will function more like a steppingstone to something greater. But for now, they sound like half the band they used to be.

A charming concept. [Dec 2020, p.70]

Like a Maroon 5 with some vulnerability beneath the pop sheen. [Jun 2021, p.77]

Getting serious doesn't really suit him, especially with tedious ballads about finding the Lord.

Food & Liquor II has the usual Lupe deficiencies: a hectoring tone ("Bitch Bad") and bombastic beats that pile-drive messages home. He's better when he relaxes a little: Songs like "Hood Now," a celebration of black cultural takeover, have a lighter touch, and hit twice as hard.

She purrs every song in slow motion--but given lyrics like "We're like the roses/Stoned in the backyard," that's probably the point.

The lyrics, built from Kerouac's prose, often feel wordy. But the singers channel Kerouac's angst, and when they combine their magnificent voices, as on 'Sea Engines,' the effect is striking: ugliness spun magically into beauty.

The jokes don't always relieve the earworm annoyingness of the Xeroxed tunes. Still, you can only hate so much on an accordion medley titled "Polka Face."

Revelations are few on Back to Me; instead, Fantasia and her collaborators – including guest Cee Lo Green and Ne-Yo - bask in mostly stripped-down live arrangements.

Banks' list of grievances can get wearying, but the music's dour detail is alluring too.

Beckett vividly renders what it's like to be a kid facing real-world issues, dealing with adult relationships ("Beware! Cougar!") and leaving home.

Clarkson's sense of grievance, inflated to gargantuan size by her huge voice, can be wearying over 14 songs, particularly when the music sags.

There’s a lot of feeling here, sometimes too much.

Long stretches of #1 sound like the synth-pop soundtrack to a vintage video game: thin and static.

Too self-consciously crafted for its own good.

Shangri-La is one of those archetypal "it takes a few listens" albums -- although even songs like the meandering title track do eventually make an impression.

Unfortunately, most of the songs... are simply retreads of past works, with only the occasional fresh perception.

The problem is that Alone never peaks -- it's without a memorable riff or melody or chorus standing out from the mellow flow.

Pryor delivers wounded-boy bromides that are so shopworn, they sound indifferent.

Though new vocalist William DuVall doesn't have his predecessor's talent for shaping Seattle sludge into molten-dread anthems, founder Jerry Cantrell's expressively torpid guitar steps up to become its own kind of lead voice.

What's missing? Killer melodies to give some weight to their arty moves. A couple of hits of Ritalin might help.

This time around her songs are more pleasurable for seeming less deeply felt. [5 May 2005, p.72]

Their straight-shooting renditions don't reinterpret material so much as celebrate it wholly.

The result sounds like a time machine back to the Eighties.

She aims directly at the torn-and-frayed guitar groove of her Nineties records, but with flourishes of her recent detours into Memphis soul and Nashville country.

Audio, Video, Disco preserves the ginormo beats and synth bass of Justice's club jams while adding Seventies-style arena rock.

Pusha is too reserved to pull off the revamped sound--he's more Raekwon than Rick Ross, better suited to quick-tongued storytelling than to bombast.

A little more glitzy polish and loads of gloppy decadence.

Smith is incapable of writing five bad songs in a row; even hopeless records (1992's Wish) sport some saving grace ("Friday I'm in Love"). But he can write four bad songs in a row, and Cure albums tend to leak filler like an attic spilling insulation. The latest, Bloodflowers, is half dismissible droning, an unforgivable ratio considering it's only nine tracks long.

Songs like "Hearts All Gone" are pitched between Black Flag and Six Flags ("I'm a little bit shy, a little bit strange and a little bit manic!" DeLonge journals). But just as often there's sophistication and introspection (check those pianos ton "Kaleidoscope"), and darkness lingers at the edge of suburbia.

Culture II ultimately feels less like a celebratory howl from the mountaintop than a transitional inventory dump. With its easily-trimmable 24 tracks, Culture II appears to be tailored to finesse chart rules, which count 1,500 individual song streams toward one full album sale.

On his third disc, his lyrics come off as more cinematic than believable; the title track finds him "sleeping on the Santa Monica pier with the junkies and the stars."

As EITS's music for Friday Night Lights proved, they really need a stage as big as a football field.

Like his fellow goth-punk godfather Nick Cave, Spencer is a master of the offhandedly irreverent blues move, turning riffs like 'Crazy Pritty Baby' into prime perversion.

At 50 minutes, Motion to Rejoin's jams drift off into the ether, but that's their whole charm: Surrender to the flow, and you'll never know where the time went.

On a Wire quivers with the anxieties that must have arisen as the Get Up Kids left behind what originally made them.