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.

The 12 tracks on Gaslighter fall into easy, radio-friendly categories: empowerment anthem, cheeky ukulele kiss-off, minimalist protest song. Coupled with a long-overdue drop of the “Dixie” from their name, the arrangement dissolves most of the group’s lingering connections to their street-corner bluegrass origins.

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]

As with Wainwright’s best works, it’s musical theater without the theater (remember, he once interpolated the theme from Phantom of the Opera on Release the Stars’ “Between My Legs”) and it comes with all of the good and bad that comes with stage drama.

The Ride doesn't rank with the classic Los Lobos of How Will the Wolf Survive? or the experimental Kiko; instead, it contains aspects of both and is a tribute to the group's influences. [13 May 2004, p.74]

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.

It both feels like a continuance of the band’s classic Eighties sound and it’s actually good.

Among the album’s most ferocious songs is “Thirty Dozen Roses,” a hairshirt thrasher about being a “lousy prick” which steamrolls over questionable puns with a Hüsker-ish hardcore attack. The most delightful might be “Send Me A Postcard,” the album’s sole cover. ... It’s totally awesome, tortured and joyous in perfect balance, and it does what Mould’s music has always done, even at its bleakest--exorcising demons through rock noise.

He sings in a pretty, dusky warble, but often doesn't enunciate his lyrics; he's less a songwriter than a conjurer of melodies. But at its finest, Blake's mood music has some magic in it.

The precedent is clear: Eighties post-punk, particularly the bony-riff geometry and dublike shadows of Killing Joke and early Siouxsie and the Banshees. So is the freshened, visceral impact.

Wolf's joy is contagious, and there's nothing remotely not awesome about him. [22 Mar 2007, p.80]

His most jubilant disc since Born in the U.S.A. and more fun than a tribute to Pete Seeger has any right to be.

The Beatles are enjoying the speed and lunacy of stardom here.

Depressed guitar poetry that's both elegantly wasted and kinda murky.

Their fifth album is pure misanthropic splendor. [Jul 2020, p.87]

Russell's lighter-than-air voice, murmuring about big-city love, recalls Nick Drake, and his filigreed melodies are stingingly gorgeous.

"Hotshit player" doesn't begin to describe the underappreciated blues-rock figurehead, as this beautiful four-disc set makes clear.

You can hear the energy build as “Jubilee Street” twirls into a mess of melody and noise, with Cave bashing a piano at the end, and both the discordant “From Her to Eternity” and “The Mercy Street” both show the singer’s intensity. The standout here, though, is the title track, a poignant Skeleton Tree ballad about learning to let go that showcases Danish singer Else Torp’s gorgeous and moving soprano. It stays with you.

This is a cratedigger mixtape to rock virtually any party, and spur digging of your own.

Kurt Vile's sweetly slack fifth LP kicks in with a nine-and-a-half-minute song about taking a walk, hits peak stoner wonder in a song called "Air Bud" and fills in the spaces with trank-darted Dinosaur Jr. licks.

Nearly 25 years in, his group has made maybe their best record yet--a line that been repeated, accurately enough, with most every record they've made.

[Lowe] keeps it terrifically mellow without getting mushy in the head.

On Vile's fourth LP, the stoner haze lifts a bit, and he settles on a mood: chilled-out but guarded, and wrapped in gorgeous folk-blues guitar-picking.

Raitt is as bold and sharp on Dig In Deep, made with her longtime road band.

Murray Street achieves that rare thing for any band - real consistency.

Here, he joins American peers for a crossover set that slays, primarily because the players come to his music, not the other way around.

Dacus and her band sound emboldened, confident, like kids who are thrilled they still have something to prove.

There’s so much going on here that nothing ever gets bogged down enough to fees indulgent or wanky; most songs clock in at under five minutes, and even the longer ones seem to go by in a blip, as if pranking our iPhone-addled attention spans. Indeed, there’s humor here.

On his 2008 debut, Justin Townes Earle, son of rebel troubadour Steve Earle, seemed like he was getting up to speed with classic country and folk forms. But he sounds like a natural–born honky–tonker on his new album.

The 23-year-old diva plays a little nicer, adhering to the Mary J. Blige school of gritty, nuanced hip-hop soul.

Early-Eighties jams like the P-Funky "Out Come the Freaks" and the Ronald Reagan-sampling "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming" were avant-disco classics. Later, semihits threatened to make the group pop stars, but its taste for unmarketable weirdness (say, Leonard Cohen croaking about "Elvis' Rolls Royce") won out.

Rather Ripped is an excellent record, one of the strongest to emerge from Sonic Youth's amazing late period.

He sings with renewed strength and even sweetness in these new versions of songs from the Seventies height of his troubles.

The big news, though, isn't YYY's groovier sound--it's the heat they radiate.

Overall, the set could use some emotional weight to match the level of wit and craft.

Produced with finesse by Four Tet, whose ability to mix live drum grooves and electronic muscle is unrivaled, it's music that beats its own path, brilliantly.

As a 50th-anniversary souvenir, the Stones have assembled a three-disc, 50-track compilation that is the best and most comprehensive collection of the band's high points available.

Cantrell brings bell-like vocal clarity to her stories, which illuminate more than explain--just enough to make you want to hear 'em again.

With Being Funny In A Foreign Language, they reassert themselves at the forefront of 2020s pop-rock, fusing together the textures and musical ideas of soft-rock hits from three decades ago with modern sensibilities in a way that sounds instantly familiar, yet distinctively of-the-moment.

But Brothers, recorded largely in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with little outside help, has a higher ratio of compelling songs and distress [than 2008's Attack & Release].

His finest batch of songs since This Is Hardcore.

On their debut disc, Post-Nothing, guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse deliver a rush of fuzzed-out rockers and stoner-metal grooves, plus an awesomely bummed-out drone called 'I Quit Girls.'

What is lost in warm immediacy is gained in eclectic cool...

Kasher... wrenches sad-eyed beauty out of slow indie-folk arrangements while eulogizing several affairs. [30 Sep 2004, p.188]

Against all odds, and for no earthly reason at all, these London goth-punk fashion plates suddenly sound as demented and hungry as they look.

It’s the sound of a freewheeling star at the top of her game, reimagining rock history in her own platinum image.

Country has no shortage of wanna-be outlaw neotraditionalists, but Johnson's songs are crisper and more tuneful than most.

Help Us Stranger and Let’s Rock are simply great records from very different bands coming from the same ideals: Rock is a living thing, and guitars can be your best friends in the war on jive.

Color Theory could have been a true indie-rock stunner if more of its songs hit with the same individually distinct charge as the ones on her debut. Still, Allison’s nostalgic sadness suggests a bright musical future.

Beware of the Dogs is a triumph on its own terms, going from high point to high point as she maps the pains, pleasures and anxieties of her personal patch of twentysomething bohemia.

Fading Frontier follows 2013's dark-hued Monomania with a brighter, freer dream rock. It's their most eclectic album.

These alternative-country heroes steer clear of the complacency that afflicts their genre, electrocharging their music with the heat and heart of conjugal passion, and, at spots, with a rock & roll stomp that puts many a vaunted garage band to shame.

A triumphant album.

Four singer-songwriters tag-team in a folk-rock vein, and the high points are when voices unite.

[The album] has sweet moments of song. But Banga's real magic happens when the words start flying off the grooves.

At 17 tracks, This Land feels packed with too many ideas, only some of them landing. At its best, though, the album points to a new way forward for Clark. It’s a crucial stride for an artist who’s long been searching for direction.

10,000 Gecs ultimately rises and falls on songcraft. “Doritos & Fritos” is a burst of surrealism and dance-punk angularity that lyrically pairs “eating burritos” with “Danny DeVito.” But “Hollywood Baby” feels too literal in its rebel-girl sentiment, even as the duo mock the idea of celebrity. Still, punters will find plenty of fun singalong chants to repeat when 100 Gecs hit the festival circuit.

Sentiment is a place to jump right into her sonic world, with a proper pop pace: 10 songs in 37 minutes. The indie-rock tunes mix with orchestral interludes, synth drones, field recordings, found sounds from nature or the city streets, all full of raw emotion.

Here, she and her double-tracked voice sound bigger, thanks partly to help from dudes in Beirut and the National.

It ["I Can See You"] and "When Emma Falls In Love," a glittery ballad about an alluring older-sister figure, are perhaps the best summations of the Taylor's Version project, bridging the years between Swift's youth and her present with the sort of tenderness that comes from paging through dog-eared scrapbooks and dusty photo albums.

This three-disc remastered Ya-Ya's includes the original in all its gritty glory. Disc Two is a five-song EP from the same shows, with acoustic performances--"Prodigal Son" and "You Gotta Move"--from Richards (playing a resonator guitar) and Jagger. The third disc is an unexpected treat: blistering sets by openers B.B. King plus Ike and Tina Turner (doing an outrageously steamy take on Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long").

Q rhymes in a cool, clipped style that can break into a remorseful groan or a higher-pitched desperation. Digi+Phonics, Black Hippy's go-to production crew, handle most of the beats, which are plush with sumptuous, weed-hazy pleasures but steeped in a dank, justifiable paranoia.

The return of wonderfully abstruse Nineties guitar-benders Polvo might not be the splashiest indie-rock comeback (that distinction goes to their Chapel Hill, North Carolina, homeys Superchunk). But it's one of the finest.