Yan and Hamilton manage to capture old clichés in new ways and that, filtered through their weirdness and idiosyncrasies, the sentiments seems new (or at least more original).

There is nothing here but a band very awkwardly trying to have a good time, and that’s the kind of party you always leave early.

Nearly everything else on Old Growth consists of middling blues-rock with impressive soloing but negligible heft.

Fun and fresh enough on the first couple listens, it remains to be seen whether Vampire Weekend can find long-term favour with the listeners and critics so taken with them at present.

Women As Lovers is a beautiful masturbation, and a little death for us all.

Aesthetically the album is an equally awful collection of pabulum, completely derelict in its offerings of arrangements and tones, sanded smooth of its personality and as derivative in its every moment as the bands it’s most derivative of.

Protest the Hero suck off the idea of metal tropes and also think they have a sense of humor.

Hey Venus! is like a really good haircut: it's brisk, light around the ears, and after so many 'do permutations it's bound to get some compliments about how civilized it looks, how grown up.

In the Future is a great second act, a consolidation of strengths, better songwriting and more ideas.

Excessive length aside, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark constitutes a solid rebound from the overly scattered A Blessing and a Curse.

It is logically a bloated, uncomfortable, saturated throwback to no genre, time period, or movement in particular.

One could dwell on the poetics of Vermont’s lyrics if they were more understandable; despite a high-flying voice, she enunciates with a marble-mouth worthy of Michael Stipe. Even Bejar isn’t invulnerable here, tacking on guitar solos to cover holes in the songwriting walls.

Despite its painfully obvious flaws, Distortion isn’t bad in the sense that it lacks gratifying melodies or does not possess a certain nostalgic charm.

'Superstar' boasts a sanguine hook and a sophisticated mess of rhymes about fame and backlash and fandom and such. Unfortunately much of the rest of the record lacks this clarity, and while the first part of that “sophisticated mess” description remains valid the second part becomes dominant.

White people shouldn’t try to be funky.

It's a broken diorama, exceedingly imperfect, and as moving for what it isn't as for what it is.

Really, the sad emptiness of these raps needs little explication from me.

Parades is an album of slow-growing rewards from a band with whom relationships are formed, not instantly identified.

It is an expertly crafted and detailed work which accomplishes total immersion in the listener. [Review of UK release]

This is the best music Jay-Z can make as a human--at least by my (his) definitions of what he (we) can do.

Heim is very nice and also very spare. Less ebulliently cheating with surprise and indulgence is Hvarf, worth the band’s typical awe just for the official addition of live staple 'Hafsól' to the band’s buyable repertoire.

There’s wit and meticulous posturing in the hills: we’ll be waiting right here for tomorrow. After all, there are enough immediately delectable grooves in his eleven tracks today.

It wants to be danceable, sexy, and a defiant response to the media shitstorm. It's not even that danceable.

All in all, Teenager stands as both a distillation of the band’s strengths and an impressive step forward, and perhaps more importantly, an irony-free, immensely relatable look at the heady emotional extremes of youth.

Load Blown is damaged as a whole, even despite its overwhelming internal coherence that makes for few surprises along the way.

La Cucaracha is still a bit of a disappointment, short on memorable tunes and a bit muddier and more piecemeal than it should be.

This record, though, feels complacent, like he’s a bit stuck and is trying to find a way forward.