So Beautiful or So What can be stodgy in its emotions and a bit too devoted to its motifs, but there's something humanizing about the album's shortcomings.

Goldfrapp have spent the past decade moving back and forth between icy electro-glam and atmospheric balladry... [The Singles] makes a virtue of their range.

Beyoncé seized the powers of a medium characterized by its short attention span to force the world to pay attention. Leave it to the posterchild of convention to brush convention aside and leave both sides feeling victorious.

Coles Corner is unapologetically retro to the max but it works.

And yet, that Emeritus often seems more righteous than cynical or hopeless (the latter two are a bit soft) is a testament to Scarface strengthening his flow in age.

YOB’s latest record stands as one of their densest, so it's good that the band's greatest asset, their impeccable pacing, remains intact.

And Then Life Was Beautiful expands her musical range while deepening its emotional impact.

Walker understands her strengths as a storyteller, and on Still Over It, she’s at her most commanding when she sings for herself while evoking the pain of other women who’ve been hurt.

While folklore seemed to materialize from nowhere as a complete, cohesive vision, evermore is structurally akin to something like 2012’s Red, where the breadth of her songwriting is as important as the depth.

Memento Mori is not the hooded masterpiece of Music for the Masses or the hits cache of Violator. But it does signal that there are new ways yet for Gahan and Gore to at least approach their old magic.

On Lookaftering, it comes as a relief to hear not only how pristine Bunyan's delicate vocals remain but that she has retained her understated abilities as a songwriter.

While this record is sure to please longtime fans, it also works as a compelling introduction.

Jenny Lewis has reached her troubadour phase. She’s telling tales like never before, singing live in the studio while charismatically leading a band that includes elder statesmen like Benmont Tench and Don Was, not to mention cameos from Ringo Starr, Beck, and Ryan Adams (recorded before the allegations against him emerged).

Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room.

Thanks to its pared-down gear list and capricious flow, Levon Vincent feels like the work of someone left alone in the studio, sketching in real time with what's at hand and moving on. And that spontaneity gives it an even greater sense of intimacy.

Mirror Reaper simulates that totality of grief, but it also transcends its own function as a eulogy.

WOR$T GIRL is most successful as an argument for Slayyyter’s abrasive style, but the record also contains some of her most painfully and finely rendered human emotion to date.

For those who've been following along for a few years, this is a groundbreaking record that condenses and amplifies Ariel Pink's most accessible tendencies. But the brilliant thing about Before Today is that no prior knowledge of his catalog is required.

Parklive showcases Blur in top form, but live albums are about a little more than a band; they document a moment too.

Mise En Abyme hunts that sensation of flux and liminality, unearthing warmth in a landscape of paranoia.

Her writing is focused and concept-driven, often scaffolded around a single word or image. “Coffee” and “Kaleidescope” are lesser examples—not coincidentally, both are rather somber piano ballads—but “Picture You” is perfectly executed, conjuring drawn curtains and flickering candles in the bedroom where Roan fantasizes alone, “counting lipstick stains where you should be.”

Your Arsenal, unlike the previous year's Kill Uncle, sounded like the work of a real group--as indeed it was.... This edition comes with a slightly muddy but passable live DVD filmed at California's Shoreline Amphitheatre in October, 1991, four months or so after the concert that became the Live in Dallas video.

This is the band's most beautiful record, an expertly arranged blend of their acoustic old school country augmented by pedal steel guitar and bowed saws and sometimes colored by elements of mariachi, gospel, and rural folk.

An album that's full of drama, without the tiresome excess.

The problem here is that, while the guys are definitely on here, they're still nowhere near groundbreaking, and as a result, they rise and fall depending largely on Karen's delivery.

Unfortunately, the album is too top-heavy to be seaworthy, the back end full of Fugazi knockoffs and half a song stretched out to ten minutes in a forced attempt at a showstopping finale.

Phil has moved well beyond the often formless experiments of the early Microphones releases--this is still by no means a record to be digested lightly. And thank goodness for that.

Taking in Bugland’s spree of bright colors and surprise twists can feel like breaking a piñata onto the crazy-pattern carpet in the laser-tag arena: There is so much happening, and nearly all of it commands your attention.