With NINE, they add new layers—of mystery but also flippant humor—to their sound.

Lenderman has honed his songwriting such that I’d nominate a couplet for short story of the year: “Kahlúa shooter/DUI scooter.” He’s got lines that’ll paint a stupid grin on your face.

The brilliant In Rainbows represents no such thing [downshift]. Nonetheless, it's a very different kind of Radiohead record. Liberated from their self-imposed pressure to innovate, they sound--for the first time in ages--user-friendly.

Despite the new song structures, guitar solos, and drum fills, Brownstein's guitar still roars wildly, Weiss's drums still thunder, and Tucker still wails with a primal urgency that is one of the most compelling sounds in rock music today.

It’s a lonely album with a whopping heart, a hungry siren call for connection.

Only God Was Above Us is also the most honest album Vampire Weekend have made, an encapsulation of what the band does best, melodic and abstruse in Koenig’s own masterful way.

What the Isley Brothers achieved can't be contained in a single album nor can it be adequately summarized in a hits collection. They seized all the tumult, all the excitement, all of the sounds of their time and turned it into enduring commercial art whose endurance and depth is best appreciated in a set like this, where the actual records can be heard in their entirety.

Slow Forever thrives in that existential anxiety, as though Wunder and Fell realized they had a lot to lose but even more to gain. As surprising as it may seem for an album where death, despair, and destruction linger in every word, Cobalt gambled on resurrection and, against the odds, advanced.

Every song here, even the slow stuff, feels giant and propulsive—a grand celestial tour of rock and R&B, guided by one of the few singers and multi-instrumentalists with the range and intuition to pull it off.

Spoon's latest is their magnum opus to date; it takes a scalpel to the highlight reel of their career, cutting and pasting a 35-minute tour de force that ends too soon.

Tame Impala prove far more exciting because, by maximizing the use of the available technology, they tap into the progressive and experimental spirit of psychedelic rock, and not just the sound.

Per Sunn O)))'s long-standing dogma, "Maximum volume [still] yields maximum results." But this time, there's enough musical range and temperance to usher even the most resolute naysayer into this intricate wonderland.

KD3’s most effective songs are the ones pulled toward opposite poles:.

Her writing is as richly fetid as ever—replete with bar brawls, murder-suicides, Afrin addictions, and serial killers—but a bright red yarn of heartbreak wends its way between these songs, little cuts coming together to form one gaping wound.

With these highly capable ringers driving the arrangements, Howard pushes the boundaries of sound and space in search of fulfillment and decency. In a world that requires so much fixing, the music works effortlessly. Armed with a deeper understanding of self, Jaime becomes her gospel of empathy.

For Bandana, the pair taps into that heritage and allow themselves to be shaped by its highs and lows, its heroes and villains. Finding themselves within that slipstream of black thought and life, they plot their course on their terms. Bandana is tradition and transgression: one rapper, one producer, no limitations.

As obsessed as Pallbearer is with endings, the music here is timeless.

We Are Beat Happening, a new vinyl box set that collects all of the bands’ records in one place for the first time since 2002, is a crucial step in recognizing the trio’s seismic influence. Though Beat Happening are frequently written off as cloyingly twee (which, to be clear, should not be an insult), in truth, the band created a crucial link between the minimalist experimentations of post-punk and Riot Grrrls’ demystification of perfection.

Harvey has never settled. She has never released a staid or unsurprising album in her life. She has always favored uncompromising gestures. ... And here, scattered across these six LPs, is a surplus of proof.

There's never a dull moment across AWLWLB's 38 minutes. It's all peaks.

Uchis’ vocal performance across the record represents a leap forward too: 12 years ago, she possessed the more limited—but still soulful—range of a lounge singer; now she stretches her voice to a fluttering whistle register on “¿Cómo Así?” When she dives into Latin American idioms, Uchis is unstoppable.

While IDLES don’t sound dishonest on Joy as an Act of Resistance, both the urgency and the vagueness of this record create the impression that a declaration of “joy” might be a little premature.

What's most exciting within Art Angels is the sheer will and fearlessness of Boucher's fight to be heard and seen on her own terms.

This is the Weeknd’s most ambitious project in sound and scope, and the most effective record he’s put out in years. Part of the thrill comes from hearing him take himself a little less seriously

That Complete Recordings has long gone out of print makes Black Tambourine an essential acquisition for current In the Red, Woodsist, and Slumberland loyalists. And even for old-school adherents, the bonus tracks included warrant a repurchase.

Mellon Collie is a Smashing Pumpkins record that just so happens to be 28 songs in length, stunning in both its stylistic range and overall excellence.

It would be foolish, however, to think that you could get through a Nick Cave project this ambitious without a few clunkers. At least here Cave's missteps occur when his reach exceeds his grasp, and the songs that fail manage to do so dramatically rather than boringly. [average of scores of 78 for 'Abattoir' and 74 for 'Orpheus']

The Best of Blur serves as a document for an astonishingly consistent career full of hits over in Britain.... As with any retrospective, the track listing isn't going to please anyone.... Still, it's hard to argue with the material that made it to this record. The disc, though not sequenced in chronological order, covers all facets of Blur's career.