It’s ambitious, stadium-sized, and risky—the sound of Hollis wringing his newfound star power for all it’s worth. Hollis’ two brief stabs at building up star’s world through balladry feel extraneous by comparison.

Despite their abstraction over the last few years, Autechre aren't an altogether different beast than when they started. In fact, they're smarter, more refined.

The eight songs on New Shapes of Life clock in at a tidy half hour, and sometimes you wish he’d give himself the space to stretch things out further.

At four songs, Ringer is economical, but the diversity within its half-hour run time makes it surprisingly robust as well.

Williams refines her singular voice as a songwriter, bringing a focused, single-minded intensity to her songs without giving the impression that she’s ever repeating herself.

As an album, PITH begins to drag towards the end, closing with a track rightfully called “Flatness.” But as a series of singles, its meld of ’90s grunge and early-’00s noise is delightfully strange.

On Guy, she takes time to steady herself to her inner metronome, finding her voice with her dad’s help.

Spirituals is peppered with clunky, too-literal lyrics that disrupt the spell cast by the music’s emotion. But by the end, we get a glimpse of the next phase of Santigold’s artistry—a project not bound by genre, form, physicality, or language.

There's a sweetly consistent mood throughout; it’s something you can put on and treat as ambient sound, but there’s also a clever subtlety in their process.

The album’s minimalist moments are its strongest.

This is music that proudly exists as sonic information, music that invites you to meditate on how a simple tone with a halo of white noise, pulsing along in medium tempo and working through different melodic combinations along a major scale, makes you feel.

The 19 tracks that make up this confectioner's array sit in neatly ordered rows, most of them sweet, light, and pleasant, with novel ingredients often cropping in the middle or even near the end of tracks.

Cooper and Hoare's deceptively simple interplay slowly worms into your synapses, as their seemingly anonymous melodies gain personality.

What hits quickest yet lasts longest are his more wistful, sentimental tunes.

Despite their detailed imagery and alluring melodies, the songs on Roach are ultimately less complex than Folick’s earlier work.

In contrast [to 'Donuts'], The Shining is more of a general audience record, by virtue of its song-length tracks and pervasive vocals from Dilla and his crew. As such, it presents challenges that Donuts didn't.

As strange and surprising as anything Whitehead has ever made, these 10 songs bristle with an exploratory energy that has long been his best (if rather inconsistent) asset.

The Two Worlds finds ways to communicate between these modes [fantasy and emotional urgency], interior and exterior, resulting in a portrait that feels full and honest.

The album probably doesn’t need to be 100 minutes long. Its length might have worked better if he had more neatly divided its 18 tracks into a right-brain and left-brain side, rather than breaking up its flow by zigzagging between satin-finish soul and misted minimal house. But the few surprises scattered along the way that make its unpredictable course feel worthwhile.

Though Contact is mostly a one-man endeavor, the music generates a sense of proximity, of presence. That tension feels both like an ironic reminder of our current isolation and a gesture toward a more communal future.

Craggy and hard as hell, you'll wish Chance of Rain forged a few more such moments [like the title track], but its consistent, nagging ability to knock you off balance is worth wrestling with.

A deep, abiding melancholy runs beneath the record’s house-party vibe. Bear’s cool sigh frequently sounds like the aural approximation of bedhead, his vowels tousled, his consonants shying away from the light.

With Chill, dummy, P.O.S avoids retreating into the program of Never Better, while also one-upping his prior outing.

Nothing sounds belabored, nothing overthought. Sheff even allows himself to understate like never before..

The record isn't the home run Boosie probably needs. It could stand to be trimmed a bit.

Recorded far from home, these tracks document a band made restless by history, the blur caught in a distant mirror. ... The breadth of R.E.M. at the BBC does become a little absurd; as much as I love “Losing My Religion,” I’ve never wanted to compare six slightly different versions.

No one aspect of Ali's personality really dominates. The Truth Is Here is all the stronger for it, and that can only be considered a good sign.

Even removed from the context of the live performance, Tissues remains charged with resonant beauty and keen-eyed focus, despite the pervasive air of disquietude. Its duality never strives to pull itself apart.