He’s strip-mined one thing he loves in order to drive another. In doing so, he’s found a wonderful, unexpected kind of combustion.

Even if it can’t measure up to Spirit, Band of Brothers is still a showcase for what Nelson does best.

In the Lonely Hour comes from a personal place, it doesn't end up feeling like a very personal record.

Reality Testing stands as one of the year's best, most luxuriant, and accomplished electronic albums, more proof that when it comes to forging a new future out of what’s already taken place, Cutler remains at the top of his game.

Love Frequency isn’t a complete disaster, if only because the new, chastised, and chaste Klaxons aren’t really capable of doing anything that could inspire that sort of animus. At their best, Klaxons dredge up the kind of sounds that keep the Coachella Sahara Tent bumping all weekend, composed to be aggressive and participatory, yet strangely ambient and easy to ignore.

While she makes some big strides here as an artist, she’s also made sure to keep one foot planted firmly in the style that some of us consider nearly perfect.

Against all odds, they’ve become one of the most interesting indie rock bands working, and the stately beauty of Familiars is the latest satisfying effort from a band that continues to reward those listeners who give them the attention their elegant, secretly weird music deserves.

With Niggas on the Moon, though, it's hard to shake the feeling that Death Grips might benefit from a change in aesthetic and conceptual focus.

This is principled music, not doctrine, and while inspired by its surroundings, it’s defined by its leader making bracing art.

Too often Favorite Waitress sounds too too clever to accommodate something as visceral as a groove.

As both look back and a step forward, it serves as a possible gateway album, and more intriguingly, it hints at a new chapter in the band’s chameleonic career through which all their scattered points of reference might operate in beautiful, deadly unison.

The album sounds exactly, defiantly like Mariah, acknowledging her place in the pop ecosystem both implicitly and explicitly without chomping at the bit.

A solid, conventional effort by an artist who once seemed so vital.

Ultraviolence finds one feeling--a seedy, desperate, hyper-romanticized sense of isolation and loss--and blows it up to drive-in screen proportions, saturating the color riding the blue crest of sadness for the better part of an hour. Whether or not you want to take this particular ride will largely depend on how much stock you put in “authenticity,” your tolerance for Del Rey’s vocal tics, and your reflexive response to her lyrics.

Though it’s laced with "Twin Peaks" references, Charmer ends up sounding more influenced by another example of uber-90s television--the one where people stop being polite and start getting real.

Overall, CLPPNG is chock full of ideas, and if its failure is due to overambitiousness, well, there are worse ways to fail.

Making the Saint is a refined yet minor record that works as an intimate aperture into the subtle wonders of Schlarb’s catalog.

III is, indirectly, Led Zeppelin’s own version of Pink Floyd's Meddle--the folky, pretty early record that was never too popular and hence a favorite of indie types skeptical of such a massive mainstream band.... III has easily the best bonus material too.

The bonus disc is a mildly interesting amalgam of alternate mixes and rough takes--the kind of stuff anyone but the most dedicated obsessives will listen to only once--and there’s little advance here lyrically from the debut, but II is still close to perfect.

Led Zeppelin is one of music's most assured and fully realized debuts; individually, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were great players, but the whole of their sound somehow exceeded the sum of its parts. But even above the instrumental virtuosity, Led Zeppelin is a triumph of production, each part clear and forceful but adding up to something even more powerful.

It’s darker than Roar, but also wiser, more mature in its conflicts.

You can feel their newfound focus and commitment here, racing through every new crest Hernandez hits or each burly refrain Hill bellows.

If not all of Dub Thompson’s ideas work, the more important takeaway is that, at this early stage, they sound like a band with no lack of them.

What's Between provides some compelling glimpses at Kelly's cimmerian headspace, but knowing that he possesses the ability and the vision to flesh out his own ideas, it's hard not to be left wanting more.

Love Me ultimately confirms what we already knew about Barfod’s solo work: he plays well with others, but a greater overall consistency might garner him the love he’s seeking.

House of Spirits doesn't bring much in the way of sonic surprises beyond a few drum machines and synths, but it does find the band making subtle changes to its M.O., delivering a set of songs that's less urgent, but--in a freaky-yet-endearing way--more personal.

While nearly every track on Nausea finds Vallesteros trying to grapple with these issues [feeling displaced and connected at the same time], he rarely wrenches out any insight or personal detail.

As a distilled 5-song EP, Stockholm might have served as a refreshing slap in the face--a potent reminder of what a vibrant jolt of lightning Chrissie Hynde can be--but instead, it's a rather wan listen.