While Southern Blood is rich with intimations of mortality, it's easygoing too, with a laid-back generosity that recalls Allman's kindest Seventies work.

The rubbery art-trap of “1st 44” sounds like a Mike Will Made It beat run through a blender, “Abundance10edit[2 R8’s, FZ20m & a 909]” sounds like multiple vintage techno records playing over each other, the wubbing “MT1 t29r2” sounds like mosquitos flitting about a sewer rave and “Pthex” is acid nostalgia through a cocaine haze.

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.

There are a lot of great things happening on this record — trickier flows, piercing beats, and acerbic writing — that make it feel significant. But if you suspect it isn’t, I know how you got there.

What sets them apart are Morris' understated wit... and the clear enthusiasm of her bandmates, who hurtle through every jangly chord change like they're falling into a new romance.

That these intimations of progress come slowly for Webster is part of the album’s relatable charm.

Dark Matter greets #MAGA America with his signature brutal comic irony and heartbreaking grandeur.

The album is like a wild ride in a muscle car where someone’s constantly fiddling with the radio, forever chasing the high that comes with hearing the perfect riff at the perfect moment. ... Viva Las Vengeance sounds great, its piston-like licks and soaring solos acting like time machines to a rose-colored-glasses-refracted era.

Beam maintains a strikingly hushed vocal presence yet expands his minimal, mostly acoustic arrangements with unusual percussion, slide guitar, keyboards, violin, distorted electric guitar and multitracked harmonies that never clutter his delicate delivery of durable tunes.

After two albums that were as bland as Simon Cowell's wardrobe, Kellie Pickler turned around her career by following the bad-girl path of fellow reality-show alumna Miranda Lambert, which continues on The Woman I Am.

A dazzling showcase of luxurious Seventies-inspired soul and mellow Laurel Canyon-style folk rock. [Jul/Aug 2021, p.133]

Like Nelson's best Seventies work, Price's latest is both reverent and revolutionary, a traditional-minded statement that nevertheless blazes an urgent path forward.

On Los Campesinos' second LP, he sings about puking in a Mexican restaurant and fucking up some dude's teeth, but he makes those lyrics sound almost uplifting thanks to a supercharged mix of violins, guitars and glockenspiel.

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.

Of the lot, the best is Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town, an unruly ragbag containing everything from mean-eyed industrial hoedowns to ambient drones to a bleary gypsy waltz featuring Tom Waits.

A bit heavier and not as immediate, Favourite Worst Nightmare is a slightly lesser record, though by no means a Difficult Second Album.

In spartan tracks that evoke but never imitate Al Green and Teddy Pendergrass, Hamilton whispers offers of courtly behavior he says would make Oprah jealous.

One of the year's best rock records.

Along with the new reissue of 1965's Freedom Highway, it's a worthy tribute to a gentle giant of American music.

Salad Days is packed with wry, knowing lyrics and washed-out vocals, like a meeting of Stephen Malkmus and Marc Bolan.

On Anak Ko, she’s keeps doing it. The musical range is unsurprisingly wide, shifting from the swirling dreampop to dire guitar grind to smooth Seventies softness to Yo La Tengo-ish, country-tinged guitar pastorals to Nineties alt-rock. It’s all leveraged towards an unguarded sense of personal revelation.

Lyrically, history and modern anxiety morph into freedom songs for an age where, then as now, "the enemy is everywhere," and neither whiskey nor "a pretty good GPA" will save you. But an album this excellent just might.

As usual it's Thug's own sound that predominates: the heroic howls, rasps, mumbles and wheezes of a man who is as captivating a vocalist as any in pop.

Willow's musical ambition has always been there, but here it's matched by larger-than-life rock that borrows from multiple eras, smashing those influences into something new.

With light-touch production by Danger Mouse, this is also the funkiest and sweetest Parquet Courts set yet, trading off some of their trademark guitar fireworks for danceable jams.

The catalog gets cherry-picked here for a killer party mix that combines Fela Kuti's extended-groove trance states and soulman call-and-response vocals with old-school drum machines and synths.

From the charging electric blues of “Change” to the modern soul protest of “Brothers and Sisters,” Staples’ further refines of the type of socially-conscious artistry she rediscovered on 2017’s If All I Was Was Black, in the wake of horrors like Charlottesville and Trump’s child separation policy.

The 10 songs are sleek and clean, as if the Strokes had kept pushing a little longer and maybe bought some old disco records.

Angry, bold, pointed and eclectic as hell, Stag suggests that Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney are just as important to Ray as Simon and Garfunkel.

Dressy Bessy are happy to sound happy, and nothing can spoil the album's impeccable bubblegum flavor.

Free may be her most beautiful album, as well as her cagiest: There are gaunt rock songs and ramshackle ballads, all painted with bold, sure strokes that belie her ambivalence.

Even for him, though, The Rising, with its bold thematic concentration and penetrating emotional focus, is a singular triumph.

She sings in an earthy growl that can send chills, or a conspiratorial whisper that suggests she's sharing sworn secrets, or a weary sigh that exudes the kind of quiet, easygoing intimacy that doesn't come around in songs too much anymore.

You hear the sound of songwriters flush with discovery, a dazzling glimmer of what lay ahead.

Our Raw Heart is a gushing affirmation of self. ... The feel-good deathbed record of the summer.

[A] quietly provocative and compelling album.

“Deutschland” is the only song of any lyrical consequence on Rammstein--the rest piddle between the benign and letchy. But because it’s all in German, it’s not entirely clear which is which. Some of the record’s milder fare sounds seedier and filthier than they would if Lindemann weren’t crooning breathily and hooting and hollering.

Guided by Syd’s laudable ear and angelic voice, Broken Hearts Club succeeds in sewing a narrative of love grown and wilted.

Hushed and Grim never stops giving, and the album’s energy, depth, and power make it a completely unique addition to the band’s mammoth catalog.

Midnight pushes well past the hard-scrabble drive of her 2017 debut Messes, with a bigger, rangier sound.

Has a similar beauty and mystery [as 2007's Raising Sand] with covers of Calexico. [Jan 2022, p.71]

Chloë takes many twists and turns around the movie set, pulling off the impossible feat of making sure its mellowness never grows tiresome.

No one does booby-trapped boutique pop better.

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

From the first ecstatic strains of “Have We Met,” you get the sense that Bejar is still ardently dodging categorization. Here more than ever, he just seems game to throw everything against the proverbial wall and see what sound it makes.

The band revels in its pop modesty, as beautifully as ever.

As great as their Nineties high points, a hazy, globalist British rock that's loose and optimistically eclectic. [Mar 2020, p.87]

The result is impressively visceral darkness. [10 Feb 2005, p.81]

The Weeknd has helped make R&B a creepier place, crooning too-honest come-ons over cavernous, ballad-slow tracks that balance leering sensuality with vague menace.

AM was so heart-wrenchingly excellent that it looms over the Sheffield rockers and their fans, but unlike 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, The Car seems like its true predecessor.

His occasional lack of vocal grace is the reason why 4:44 is so mesmerizing.

With Rooty they fine-tune their classy thump into a pop-house hybrid that owes something to a little guy named Prince.

The handsomely produced Public Domain is so rich in history that it could do brisk business in the Smithsonian gift shop. Rather than just revisit folk gems like "Walk Right In," "Delia" and "Railroad Bill," Alvin completely reinvents them.

Versions of Modern Performance doesn’t just revive a certain sound; it revives the idea of mystery and tension in rock & roll.

His rhyme schemes are as complex as ever, and these resolutely unpop beats--sticky-icky sample collages from producers including Pharrell, RZA and himself--are an ideal canvas.

The melodies and hooks remain as irresistible as ever.

Exquisitely hushed fourth album sounds like a collection of the world's most downcast sea shanties.

On moments like the Elliott Smith-inspired meandering melody on "Chaos and Clothes," or the slow-building, orchestral guitar freakout on "Anxiety," Isbell points to a more expansive musical future, one where he's free to indulge his whims, fully unburdened by the notion that he's the last of a dying breed.

Essence finds Williams returning to the willful intimacy of her earliest records. Laid-back, rock-ish and small in scale, Essence never achieves grandeur but won't particularly alienate the fan for whom her wonders small and large are equally magical.

The MC and the producer click in surprisingly satisfying ways on their first full-length album together.

“Suspirium” is a radium-glow piano ballad that would have fit in nicely on Radiohead’s most recent album; the jazzy soul of “Unmade” and the trip-hop shiver of “Has Ended” are even more surprising, carrying welcome echoes of Yorke and co.’s brilliant Amnesiac-era B-sides. These tunes are vintage Yorke, and they make you wish he’d written more of them for Suspiria. At least until you hear the second half of this record, where the song-songs thin out in favor of even weirder electronic buzzes.

On their debut, Vampire Weekend mostly earn points the old-fashioned way: by writing likable songs you'll be glad to revisit next month.

The minimalist, glassy music, combined with her depiction of her younger companion’s spirited imagination, makes for an ending that manages to contain enough optimism to inspire O, Zinner, and Chase to keep their collective spirit smoldering, even against the 21st century’s brutal headwinds.

All of Something is full of smart, sweetly slashing indie-rock that recalls peers like Swearin' and Waxahatchee, with wonderful tunes about wasting anxious hours on nervous boys, "biting my nails and biting your tongue."

The album’s musical backdrops range from breezy to absorbing, but it’s Koffee’s performances that are consistently bewitching.

Map of the Soul: 7 is their most smashing album yet, showing off their mastery of different pop styles from rap bangers to slow-dance ballads to post-Swedish electro-disco to prog-style philosophizing.

A gorgeously produced, hook-studded record with cocked-eyebrow trepidation adding a jittery edge--a combination that's very of-the-moment in 2017, even if it veers outside of pop's rigid lines.

Cox values songwriting ahead of texture these days, and the effort is paying off.

It's refreshing to hear them switch things up on this, their seventh full-length release, by writing more immediate pop songs without sacrificing their rich, thoughtfully placed instrumentation.

Familiars finds the Antlers on a new, magnificent level of heavy songwriting.

An honest album, full of truths and delivered as only she can.

The extras are a feast for serious Pavement lunatics.

Pure indie-rock sunshine. [Jun 2021, p.77]

Addressing Nigeria's history ("Slave Masters") and militarism ("African Soldier"), Seun's proper coming-out closes with some positive thoughts on cannabis ("The Good Leaf"). Fela lives, indeed.

Kalimbas and koras pulse throughout, but with surprising solo turns, a gentle middle section and a spoken vocal, this is proof that In C remains spry as ever at 50-plus.

It adds up to an album by turns confounding and enthralling. It's no Detox. It's something realer, and better.

Throughout the LP, he seems to ask: Who is with him and who is against him? Who truly knows him and who pretends to? Who’s a real fan versus a fake fan? This comes at a cost, making the album a bit thematically repetitive and lacking some of the political depth of past projects. But it is an unflinching look into the celebrity psyche, and Bad Bunny keeps it ruthlessly honest.

Human Performance is the first album you could describe as your typical Parquet Courts record--it gathers their best tricks in one place, along with new ones you wouldn't see coming.

Past the similarly herky-jerk "Voodoo Doll," the rest of Grey Tickles returns to far more satisfying orchestral opulence and electronic drama.

Writer's Block is one of those albums where the songs seem familiar in a good way.

The mood is more celebratory than maudlin, but the father in also floors you with his grief. [Feb 2021, p.73]

It’s the fuzzy sound of a band unconcerned with the past, ignoring their legacy and responding to a new, darker reality.

His voice lacks Van Zandt's sweet frailty, but it brings gruff tenderness to classics like 'To Live Is to Fly.'

Drunk Tank Pink really takes off when the assault gives way to a groove, a la art-funk gods ESG or Liquid Liquid. [Feb 2021, p.73]

Silent Alarm is dance rock, but highly caffeinated.

Vocalist Jehnny Beth's affirming lyrics and torrid, imperious Siouxsie Sioux-style vocals elevate guitar atmospherics and angularly forceful rhythms, giving songs like the explosively lurching "I Need Something New" and the bracing dance-rocker "Evil" an open-armed grandeur.

Earle serves here as a trusted travel guide, offering a nuanced portrayal of a time and place (21st-century Appalachian mining) that likely feels a world away for the majority of his listeners.

The sound is still ornate--on "Glass Hillside," nylon-string embroidery melts into gilded choirs, with oddball melodies recalling Brit proggers Soft Machine. Elsewhere, simple cybernetic beats and synths dominate.

Overall Gumbo is another strong offering from an artist who has mastered his craft, and is just fine sticking with it.

Isbell kicks up dust by looking backwards, and Reunions is at its best when he’s doing just that.

Quaranta shows that Brown has lost none of his musical acuity. Like post-punk icons Hüsker Du in the 80s, Brown knows how to assemble a compelling project, leaving fans to argue which one is the prettiest of the bunch.

But as challenging as this avant-garde music is, it's also warm, absorbing and gorgeous.

Teetering on the brink of indulgence, De-Loused proves just how much art you can pack into steadfastly aggressive songs and still call them punk.

Vampire Weekend were late arrivals, lacking the Strokes’ switch-blade attitude and the art-punk edge of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. But Vampire Weekend now look like the smartest guys in the room, marshalling a sumptuous, emotionally complex music perfect in this pop moment.

Despite their hookiness, the thirteen uniformly upbeat tracks do sound a little too samey at times.

The Future and the Past has a glossy, nostalgic sheen, but that only makes Prass' messages about getting past the world's current ills land harder.

Paak’s output is keeping pace with his ambition. But good as his records have been, this set included, you still get a sense that the best work still lay ahead.