Packaging quibbles aside, this is a great set.

With this encyclopedic set, Smith delivers yet another convincing musical document for his consideration as one of the most accomplished composers/bandleaders currently working in creative improvised music.

Phair mobilized and rearranged some tunes from her Girly-Sound tapes. Almost all of them improve with Guyville’s studio polish, but a couple are better in their original form ... Exile in Guyville remains her most visible and memorable record, but it’s more than a time capsule of early-nineties indie rock. Its most compelling songs (and there are a bunch of them) still generate tensions, among a voice and its bodily contours and the public’s articulations of femininity.

Against all expectations, Brian Wilson has achieved what should have been impossible, and has produced what may be the year's most thrilling album.

Rhino’s new Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky seems like it was put together as much to please Big Star fans as it was to introduce newcomers to the band.

Political protest was baked into her music, often in very explicit ways. Performing “prayer for amerikkka pt 1&2,” from 2019’s FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise in Switzerland, she reminded her audience, “it’s not always time to be neutral.” Speaking truth to power (or audiences, anyway) is one thing, but branch engaged in the arguably more difficult political project of community-building.

This album sounds vast and intimate at the same time, like keenly recorded sketches.

Some of the best songs that the Louvin Brothers ever wrote.

The early material is interesting, if only to hear how "Web in Front" and "Wrong" were fleshed out on Icky Mettle. But it's the album, and The Greatest of All Time, that are the real draw here.

Some of the finest, yet frustratingly overlooked folk rock of the era.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

It’s a majestic, often breathtaking collection of some of the most important electronic music of its time, where Voigt managed the seemingly impossible task of bringing the forest to the disco, or vice versa.

One of the most important anthologies to come along in quite a while.

The Cure emerged from the studio with a grand late-era statement, full of maturity and melancholy, but with an appropriate sort of wisdom.

If you like dub techno - and who among us with a taste for dissociated, repetitive, awesomely deep and gritty music wouldn't? - you're bound to like a lot of this stuff, and love some of it.

If you can get past the non-audiophile recording, there’s some great music here.

Jones and Taylor were only recent regulars in Monk’s orbit, but both align well with his designs and the drummer’s hard-driving sticks goose the music repeatedly. The leader plays with his usual marriage of advanced angularity and idiosyncratic energy, balancing the occasional ensemble uncertainties with a string of strong solo detours to which the band gladly defers. ... Nearly any Monk is Monk of note, but “new” Monk of this nature deserves the encomia it’s sure to engender.

A number of the record’s best songs sizzle and churn on Miracle Year. The atmospherics of the live setting suit the combination of incisive melody and the chaotic fuzz-and-feedback issuing from Bob Mold’s guitar; check out “If I Told You,” “Powerline” and especially New Day Rising’s title track. .... 1985: The Miracle Year includes another four LP sides of live Hüsker Dü, from various gigs in ’85, and you can hear some serious hard psych: “Chartered Trips” from a show in Switzerland, “Eiffel Tower High” from Salt Lake City, “Sunshine Superman” from Hoboken.

It's a fantastic body of work, as vital and fresh-sounding now as it was when first released.

Lamar has once more asserted a great and formidable talent, and good kid is triumphantly and unmistakably his, but the artists that stick around longest are the ones who let us make their art our own.

From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening.

It’s a lot of Gang of Four, and if you’re interested at all, you probably already have a good portion of it. Still, it’s a nicely packaged set from the best years of the career of one of post-punk’s best ever bands.

Given how inspired they sound here, it’s clear their musical chemistry is as instinctive as ever.

From Here We Go Sublime is fantastic all around, and it’s all the more effective for its restraint.

Someday the Smithsonian will file this sprawling musical celebration into their collection between Van Dyke Parks’ Discover America and Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers -- joyous, generous Americana filtered through a singular sensibility.

Sleater-Kinney is back in all its spiky, brainy, let-a-bunch-of-ideas-fight-it-out glory.

“The Song Before the Song Comes Out” seems to be Keenan sketching a possibility with her voice and whatever device she had at hand. This kind of intimacy is evident on a number of the collection’s tracks.

Looks Like Rain, 'Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help the Child--represent an outre high-water mark of sorts in the country singer-songwriter era.