The result is classic Blondie, the band's best album since it reunited--maybe its best ever. [No.142, p.53]

Death Song isn't a wild step in any new direction but instead a grindstone-polished showcase of what the group does best. [No.142, p.52]

This collection wraps its three decades' worth of maudlin magic in one neat black bow. [No.142, p.51]

Pollie's sulky tenor is perfectly suited to these tales of heartache and lost affection, with muted backing tracks that intensify the tear-soaked scenarios that bring him solace. [No. 142, p.57]

Paradise still sounds like the work sf an artist turning her face back, if somewhat slowly, toward the sunlight. [No. 142, p.55]

"Praise Ye The Lord" opens the album on a dramatic note, with Previte's cymbal work adding power to the ardent lyric. [No. 142, p.53]

The lyrics are overwrought, and the music is dark but lacking the edge that would make the songs compelling. ... Thankfully they bracket the album with "Love You To The Sky" and "Just A Little Love," up-tempo gems that prove they haven't lost their magic touch. [No. 142, p55]

Although Powell's new land Of Talk is considerably more contemplative and understated, Life After Youth is an evocative and powerful step forward. [No. 142, p.57]

The tunes here are understated. The atmospheric arrangements give the material a feel that's more reminiscent of empty bedrooms than smoky barrooms. [No. 141, p.55]

Waves of corrosive guitar distortion surfing minimal, hammered eighth-note bass and programmed beats, with just enough feedback to aid recollection of the band that created Psychocandy. [No. 141, p.59]

Its wide-open sound is full of giant guitars, processed keyboards and retro beats, suggesting a meeting between Lee Hazelwood and Ennio Morricone at the Brill Building. [No. 141, p.57]

Organically crafts sounds that are reminiscent and yet uniquely its own. [No. 141, p.57]

Both [At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem and All The Way] elicit a simultaneous sense of terror and wonder as to what demons are flowing through her bloodstream and how she's managed to harness them for the power of artistic good. [No. 141, p.57]

Both [At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem and All The Way] elicit a simultaneous sense of terror and wonder as to what demons are flowing through her bloodstream and how she's managed to harness them for the power of artistic good. [No. 141, p.57]

We All Want The Sam Thing is the best of his three solo albums because it lets the music serves the stories. [No. 141, p.55]

Let The Dancers Inherit The Party is slickly produced, dramatic and cohesive but still has the drawback of sounding derivative and overly familiar. [No. 141, p.55]

There are moments that could've been excised, but BJM demonstrates a most robust path when its psychedelia lasers fix onto a starting point and add to the established theme. [No. 141, p.55]

Emperor is solid, dexterously played hard rock from a band that used to crush listener skulls. [No. 141, p.59]

Any doubts that the Old 97's could sustain this creative resurgence are summarily dismissed with Graveyard Whistling. [No. 141, p.60]

A set of wistful, stirring anthems. [No. 141, p.61]

It's best record. [No. 141, p.61]

[An] effortless fourth album, which is every bit as blissfully pretty and/or unremittingly milquetoast as what came before. [No. 141, p.61]

It's never going to set the charts alight, but Weller obsessives should take it to heart. [No. 141, p.61]

Yes, this album is a turophile's dream, but only the most black-hearted cynic could resist joining the party. [No. 141, p.61]

Even in the more sedate moments, there's an underlying insistence that ties the 11-track set together in a typically neat package that sits comfortably and appropriately in one of rock's greatest band catalogs. [No. 141, p.58]

Tillman wisely scales back the orchestration and flourishes to their bare minimum in order to put his voice and lyrics at the forefront. [No. 141, p.54]

The succinct 10 songs on Brood X are all upbeat workouts. [No. 141, p.53]

The album is the reliable mix of shorter, inverted blues-rock dirges and extended workouts one has to come to expect from this well-oiled machine. [No. 141, p.53]

He's all over the phrasing but never sloppily and always expeessively. [No. 141, p.52]

The album, fun though it is, also burns with anger and tension. It's another way Spoon throws into sharp relief what there--and what's not. [No. 141, p.51]

The beauty of Pleasure's vintage danceteria lies in its sharp 21st-century focus and Lerche's consistently reliable songwriting skills. [No. 141, p.59]

If you want to hear him reconciling the roots of his music with a future he hasn't found yet, this is the next fearless step into the future. [No. 159, p.61]

The Universe And Me feels like Sprout’s sonic scrapbook and philosophical star chart folded into a single stellar statement. [No.139, p.60]

It all comes out pure, 100-proof Godfathers, as hard-rockin', contemporary and fresh-sounding as ever. [No. 139, p.55]

Love If Possible is a delightful confection, and Sakamoto keeps it just the right amount of sweet. [No. 159, p.59]

Not as intentionally abrasive as its predecessor, 2013's Testimonium Songs, even if the new record also opts for clangor and heard edges over tuneful song structures. Still, if He's Got is noisy, it's not unmelodic. [No. 159, p.58]

Smashing. [No. 159, p.57]

This is very tasty Coffey. [No. 159, p.53]

Thematically, vocalist Michael Berdan mines the issues, burdens and neuroses for lyrical content that spans an overdriven line between unsettling experience and triumphant discharge. [No. 139, p.61]

It's a smooth-sounding work you can easily imagine serving as the soundtrack at your favorite hip urban restaurant or retail establishment. [No. 139, p.61]

At times reminiscent of the Lilys' Better Can't Make Your Life Better, Snowdonia works within formula, but it does so with aplomb. [No. 139, p.61]

The peculiar genius of the Sadies is to find new variations on a sonic model that, by this point, no other band is working with quite as much earned confidence. [No. 139, p.59]

He calls this collection of tunes "California noir," and the album delivers on that promise with songs that explore the deteriorating American dream in all its faded glory. [No. 139, p.59]

The pulse of their motorik grooves feel more mechanical than menacing, and the decision to put '80s-vintage synthetic drums and pomp-rock synths up high in the mix distracts from evil intent. [No. 139, p.59]

With guitar ace Marc Ribot and pedal-steel master Eric Heywood along for the ride, she continues exploring the intersection of hope and heartache. [No. 139, p.57]

The more writerly approach hasn't dulled the duo's riffage one iota, even if this is their most musically expansive and easily their most musically expansive and easily their cleanest-sounding outing yet. [No. 139, p.56]

It's beautiful. [No. 139, p.55]

The production effects on the voice and guitar give the LP an eerie feel that complements Cunningham's tales of quiet masochism. [No. 139, p.55]

With Anything Could Happen, Stinson not only shows that Bash & Pop 2.0 has potential staying power but also that he's worthy of comparisons to his mentor. [No. 139, p.54]

Basinski has proven remarkably capable at existing far outside of his own legacy, his uncanny ability to wring entire worlds from his famously deep tape archives proving more remarkable with each subsequent release. A Shadow In Time is no exception. [No. 139, p.53]

This latest offering carries an overwhelming feeling of desperation. [No. 139, p.53]

There's craft galore on display here. [No. 139, p.52]

It continues to add up to something special. [No. 139, p.51]

If you're not fanatical about the racket created by unfathomable guitar noise, you'll find songs on Motion Set overly long and veering frequently toward incomprehensible. [No. 138, p.57]

Subtle acoustic bass, quiet drums and occasional strings and piano accents support his strummed acoustic guitar, leaving his quiet, expressive singing at center stage. [No. 138, p.61]

On "Kingfisher," the album's centerpiece, they prove when it's perfectly balanced with a subtle instrumental approach. [No. 138, p.61]

It doesn't add a lot to our understanding of Revival. ... Still, it's cool to discover the unreleased songs, including Johnny Cash "One Piece At A Time" homage "Dry Town" and to be reminded of how great Revival is. [No. 138, p.61]

It may not be what you expect, but it's got the same Dwyer DNA that's always made he band compelling. [No. 138, p.61]

Essential listening for any heavy-music fan ... or youngsters wondering what that whole Seattle fuss was all about. [No. 138, p.61]

As mood music for a particularly rainy series of months, it's a perfectly bummed-out comedown. [No. 138, p.60]

The songs on Citizen Of Glass feel more solid and lyrically grounded in the known world. [No. 138, p.59]

Superheroes, Ghostvillains & Stuff also shows how the Notwist masterfully blends organic and inorganic textures outside the studio, but it's also a reminder of how adventurous this band can be. [No. 138, p.59]

The nine songs blur together over the 36 minutes, and they offer few surprises once you enter their heavy-handed world. [No. 138, p.58]

It's jauntier, if still jaundiced, and contains some of Gainsbourg's best compositions. [No. 138, p.57]

Weight is the inexorable comedown: a graceful and timely maturation that might just take a little editing to come through clearly. [No. 138, p.56]

Dreamless might not be as thunderous as Endless Summer or as hooky as Crimes Of Passion, but it vastly improves on the scattershot Boys. [No. 138, p.55]

What's striking is how her voice, which once epitomized the prototypical fair young maiden, remains just as compellingly austere. [No. 138, p.55]

Hamburg Demonstrations is the most carefully produced and executed music of his career. [No. 138, p.54]

Third World Pyramid, like its recent predecessors, is yet another gorgeous, quasi-psychedelic slice of the band's kaleidoscope-eyes popcraft. [No. 138, p.53]

The vocals are random, directionless moans and the open-ended delivery hardly screams, "Listen to me again!" [No. 138, p.53]

Through the dark, Cohen smartly questions everything from the prickly possibilities of future romance to, quite possibly, the sacred Zen Buddhist religion where he once solidly and stoically placed his faith. [No. 138, p.51]

Tastefully rendered and thoughtfully executed, American Dreamer invites you into its loose embrace while still maintaining a certain emotional distance. [No. 135, p.59]

Autumn is as solid an effort as any in its catalog. [No. 135, p.

The most psychedelic moments on the album come during the long instrumental fades on tunes like "Silence Can Say So Much," "Cast The First Stone" and "Love Is Like A Spinning Wheel," but the middy instrumentals mix often mashes the sounds together into an indistinguishable pulsation of spacey sci-fi noise. [No. 137, p.55]

As 1991 albums go, Out Of time in its own way is an era-defining as Nevermind, Loveless or Spiderland. [No. 137, p.58]

Daniel Bachman is the guitarist's most emotionally complex and stylistically integrated work to date. [No. 137, p.53]

The songs sound fresh and spontaneous, gull of a delicate passion. [No. 137, p.53]

Only the last song, Wild Sun's straightforward, vulnerable take on "Easy Way Out," finally hits the mark. [No. 137, p.61]

Worth a listen, for Ween fans and armchair guitar heroes alike. [No. 137, p.61]

Spektor's knack for orchestral arrangement is more vivid than her writing here. [No. 137, p.61]

The songs are quiet and emotionally intense, and they unfold like a collection of short stories in which characters and themes recur and play off each other. [No. 137, p.60]

Easily the most vibrant they've ever sounded. [No. 137, p.59]

Alone's as good a Pretenders record as has been made. [No. 137, p.59]

Consider the jarring Highway Songs a retrenchment in the wake of its creator's publicly nightmarish 2015: the album as spirit quest, as bridge. [No. 137, p.59]

Their playful mutability keeps them from being genre exercises and makes I Had A Dream a delight. [No. 137, p.57]

FLOTUS is unexpected, occasionally inscrutable and fascinating. [No. 137, p.57]

Walls could be their portal to lingering greatness. [No. 137, p.57]

This is a mature work. [No. 137, p.54]

Perhaps both the best and worst you can say about Revolution Radio is that it sounds exactly like Green Day. [No. 137, p.55]

Too frequently, though, the new material doesn't have the constitution to withstand the heavy hand of producer and former Dawes guitarist Blake Mills. [No. 137, p.55]

Naked and nearly innocent, the raw talent of Buckley is finally revealed. [No. 137, p.53]

After the actors have their poignantly emotional say, it's Bowie's own tremolo-rich, baritone voice and the noir-art-industrial-jazz band he employed on Blackstar that top off Lazarus stage-songs. [No. 137, p.53]

LP2 is certainly worthy of standing next to a genre classic. [No. 137, p.53]

Vernon's gorgeous falsetto and vice grip on melody hold it all together beautifully. [No. 137, p.52]

No, we haven't heard this Cave before, and though magnetic, emotive and tenderly merciful, one prays for his sake that we never hear it again. [No. 137, p.51]

So well-versed are Jacuzzi Boys in hooky guitar pop that their boisterous personalities occasionally get lost in the mix. [No. 137, p.55]

There's nothing else like it, and once you listen, you'll never forget it. [No. 136, p.61]

There's not an ounce of flab on this record. [No. 134, p.60]