They clearly prize improvisation and spontaneity; the songs always sound like they were written this morning, refined over lunch, and recorded in time for happy hour. [Jan 2004, p.103]

His loosest, most inspired set yet. [Mar 2005, p.86]

If Oneida are feeling hunted or hemmed in, they haven’t gone to ground: Expensive Air is, above all else, a barreling rush over the barricades and a frenzied, defiant dash toward whatever remains of freedom on the other side. Here it comes, indeed.

Even when the music flags, Common's remarkably hungry raps push it along. [Jun 2005, p.102]

Stuff this simple can turn into art that's fantastic or a fantastic disaster. Coachwhips walk the line masterfully. [Feb 2005, p.91]

Gut-wrenching, foot-stomping punk. [Feb 2006, p.87]

He's one of the four or five best MCs breathing. [Aug 2004, p.103]

[Death Cab] have never made the truly great album that their best songs promised. Until now. [Nov 2003, p.112]

The surprise here is less that an album about emerging, stronger, from sorrow’s all-encompassing shroud somehow goes down like a goblet of spiked sunshine. The surprise lies more in how much more emotional power the guitarwork—fluid, generous, measured—brings to bear, how much weight it carries this time.

Daniel's bump-and-grind synth lines are all campy humor. [Mar 2005, p.92]

A richly rewarding passage through the last five decades of American music history. [Aug 2005, p.99]

With his knack for extracting humor from the mundane, Skinner’s the perfect poet for this snooze of a topic.

Bright Yellow is the soundtrack for a small town, like New york, where everybody knows too much about everybody else. [May 2003, p.112]

Their best by a mile. [Jun 2003, p.100]

Room's similarity to its predecessor ultimately bespeaks a purity of vision, not a dearth of new ideas. [Dec 2003, p.121]

A dark, tense record, but one still crackling with life. [Sep 2004, p.114]

The live guitars and drums--and vocals more emo than robo--give off an irresistible warmth. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Recall[s] his greatest '90s-electronica work. [May 2006, p.91]

Like running full-tilt through a fun house with smoke machines, tinsel-covered ceilings and a super-size disco ball. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Rife with acid-burn guitars, levee-breaking drums, and vocals that recall Peter Gabriel at his wooziest. [Feb 2006, p.87]

Rounds is a more varied trip, with a darker vibe suggesting the influence of Hebden's labelmate Dan Snaith of Manitoba. [Aug 2003, p.118]

With Don’t Forget Me, Rogers sounds fully confident abandoning the glossiness of her earliest work—she doesn’t need studio flourishes to bolster her transcendent songwriting.

Hooky, spare, and lush all at once. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Webster’s commitment to alt-R&B-style repose, along with some keen sonic quirks, are just a couple of the ways the 26-year-old Atlantan contrasts the ’70s-era singer-songwriters she’s so often compared to. Still, the sheer musicality of what she does deserves boomers’ approval.

Smith's intentions cry out from the album's every discordant corner--he clearly wanted to test himself, to unhinge parts of his sound. [Nov 2004, p.105]

Amazing Grace is at peak moments an amazingly graceful representation of MC5/Stooges skid marks on a psychedelic superhighway. [Oct 2003, p.112]

At its core, Showtime is a classic sophomore album in the hip-hop sense: puffy with bluster, brimming with indignation. [Nov 2004, p.107]

A lovely, eerie album that plays like a digital memory of a lo-fi lullaby. [Aug 2005, p.103]

Tanglewood roars back to life with a massive band, a detailed sound, and a voice that sounds ravaged but right. [Oct 2005, p.142]

Toning down his oddball style and ramping up his storytelling, he drops a pusher’s odyssey as developed and cinematic as any Scorsese joint.

The rare hip-hop debut that does justice to its buzz. [Apr 2003, p.104]

Totally grimy. [Nov 2004, p.118]

The Young-ian guitar stutter remains intact. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Sound wimpy? Well, if you could write a song half as good as "Close The Door," we guarantee that your girlfriend would like you twice as much. [Sep 2003, p.115]

An impressive balancing act that name-checks Ween and cracks wise about Stevie Wonder's vision while spinning bighearted melodies and harmonies over quirky beatscapes. [Jan 2005, p.89]

Antics is so much more fun than Turn On The Bright Lights. [Oct 2004, p.107]

Hovvdy houses their most eclectic transitions and banger-certified pop songs.

Deep cuts like "Man or Animal" are as hot as anything this side of Led Zeppelin II. [Jul 2005, p.95]

A jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994's Live Through This. [Mar 2004, p.89]

Tems’ silky delivery reaches a deeper level of connectivity on Born in the Wild. .... Her biggest, boldest, and most earnest project to date.

Welcome to the Dirty North, y'all. [Feb 2005, p.88]

Leanness and vitality have replaced the cokey bloat of their last few studio trips. [Jun 2005, p.103]

Good records from the Descendents and Bad Religion in one year? Joe Strummer's ghost must be keeping close watch. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Playfully sleazy, creatively reckless, and ridiculously, abstrusely, hyper-generously funky. [Jan 2004, p.95]

An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]

Sexistential (Young) arrives not as a nostalgia exercise or victory lap, but as proof that Robyn’s particular synthesis of pleasure, vulnerability and pop rigor remains maddeningly hard to replicate.

Miguel has impeccable songwriting chops and a deceptively supple voice, not to mention total command of both.

Throughout Dear Science, TV on the Radio--which includes the rhythm section of bassist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton--flesh out Adebimpe's and Malone's ruminations with relentlessly inventive arrangements that make even familiar sentiments seem fresh.

By facing down the exhausting nature of depression and loneliness (seriously, Coyne sounds so depleted that he can barely muster the dejection to sing, and yes, that's a compliment), the Lips have retroactively strengthened their entire artistic credo.

This is the most important artistic statement from NIN leader Trent Reznor since the late '90s.

Where [Time Out Of Mind] stared down heartbreak and mortality with somber melancholy, Love and Theft finds Dylan taking on those same themes loaded up with piss and vinegar. [Nov 2001, p.127]

They've never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world.

Puberty 2 isn’t shaped like an opus; it’s jagged and slight and the auteur has already expressed second thoughts about the liberties taken with its addiction-themed coda. But it’s a high-watermark of post-irony indie, a cracked safe of perspectives previously unheard in lump-throated punk.

Grohl (back on drums for the first time on a Foos record since 2005’s In Your Honor), bassist Nate Mendel, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee have imbued But Here We Are with new levels of depth, maturity, songcraft, and storytelling, ensuring it is far more than just an album about grief.

She may sing about her belief in herself faltering, but her sincerity is actually stronger than ever. The victory here isn't just that Nikki Nack betters Whokill by beefing up its feral ferocity with more sophisticated chops, or that she triumphed over her detractors by proving she hadn't already peaked. Garbus found power in a hopeless place.

If it’s not Giant Steps, the album that type of casual Coltrane fan knows is A Love Supreme. Both Directions at Once isn’t definitely isn’t Supreme, but it enhances our understanding of how that group of musicians came to make it.

The result is the alternative pop album of the decade--one that imbues the Killers' "Hot Fuss" and MGMT's "Oracular Spectacular" with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse.

On Halsey’s 13-track oeuvre, they present a masterclass in songwriting and production overflowing with a seductive industrial canvas as well as noise-rock, punk choruses, and fuzzed-out guitars.

This unpredictability -the 25-year-old band's trademark attraction--is what keeps them at the forefront of metal's vanguard, and what makes Koloss, for all its "normalcy" (joke quotes intended), the first real contender for the genre's album of the year.

This is not the sound of settling.

Radiohead have completely immersed themselves in the studio-as-instrument--signal processing, radical stereo separation, and other antinaturalistic techniques. Even the precious Guitars--saturated with effects and gaseous with sustain--resemble natural phenomena rather than power chords or lead lines. Essentially, this is a post-rock record.... Kid A is not only Radiohead's bravest album but its best one as well. [Oct 2000, p.172]

Like the sugar in hot sauce, all the additional soulful and jazzy flavors - pale blue chords, sax-y loops, mellow piano comping - just bring out the stinging attack of the beats more fiercely.

So rewind to indie-rock the way Mark E. Smith started it: reduced, smart, and dirty-sweet as used bubble gum. [Oct 2001, p.130]

Channel ORANGE feels like one long, moonlit, air-conditioned ride.

It's practically the entire history of the band crammed into a mock boombox. Designed by bassist Paul Simonon, the set incorporates retrospective essays, reprinted fanzines, a poster, dog tags, stickers, badges, and so forth; die-hard fans have probably sold off their existing Clash collections just to afford it.

Trading obscure metaphors for assertive personae, Amos sings with a remarkably forceful focus. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Godspeed is all about wide-open spaces here. And it's easier to find transcendence in the desolation, to get hypnotized by a single note, or get lost in rearranging the four vinyl sides into your own personal manifesto.

There is no note out of place or sample used without careful thought. The album asks the listener to unpack each second, find thrills in its surprises and layers, or simply get lost in the rhythms that will make one’s body jerk and jut out in ways not yet defined. It is the work of an exacting mind, one that should challenge other producers and musicians in the future.

On Yellow & Green, he [John Baizley] finds the confines of metal itself too limiting; so Baroness dive, dive, dive, dive into '90s commercial alternative harder than a sackful of Yucks and come out smarter and weirder and better than any metal band this year.

Somehow they've upped their jubilation game without making too many sonic changes since 2005's self-titled debut.

Survivor is relentlessly inventive in its recombinations. [Jul 2001, p.126]

This gorgeous 1970 folk-blues masterpiece teams a gnomic songwriter from Leeds with David Bowie's future guitarist (Mick Ronson), and Elton John's future producer (Gus Dudgeon) and string arranger (Paul Buckmaster).

Throughout the album, Newsom's language is more colorful than on Mender; at its best, it works as music even on the page. [Dec 2006, p.95]

For all of Coldplay’s experimentation, though, there’s no doubting that Viva La Vida, with its sturdy melodies and universal themes--think love, war, and peace--is an album meant to connect with the masses.

If Tillman's this brilliantly pointed as a paramour, we're scared to hear the breakup album.

There’s no particular secret to what makes RTJ4 the best Run the Jewels album and one of 2020’s best by anyone. It’s shorter and more acute.

A masterful intersection of emotion and musicianship, Robert Ellis is one of 2016’s finest.

For his full-length debut, Greene teams with producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) to revisit his '80s reveries, crafting Balearic bliss ("Eyes Be Closed") and refreshing New Romantic flounce ("Amor Fati"). He even invigorates '90s trip-hop's head-nod ("Before," the title track), making for an even better coast soundtrack.

On American Saturday Night, Paisley extends a hot streak began with 2003's "Mud on the Tires," singing about regular life in the USA wit and charm that make suburbs sound like heaven on earth.

Some songs fade out just as they're transforming into something else; others split into several movements, and poetic lyrics psychedelicize hefty topics like war and slavery. Even at 18 tracks, The ArchAndroid feels condensed.

The real story of this breathtaking follow-up... is Romeo Stodart's transformation from merely a good songwritier to an outstanding one. [Feb 2007, p.85]

It’s hard to overstate how exceptional Ti Amo is: every song is complete in its own way, and while there’s perhaps the slightest softening of focus near the end, it never starts to coast on its sultry aesthetic.

Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.

Somehow, Pool transmutes fatigue and anxiety into a hallucinatory magick that’s far more cathartic than a jacuzzi soak or a glass of wine. It’s Radiohead doing Radiohead on a molecular level, via controlled burns. Their weary indifference to us becomes our transcendence.

Amid all the fight songs, Santigold's sensitive interludes only bolster her power, her harmonies rendered more invincible for their vulnerability.

Alex G has always found power in the broken and uncertain. He’s just gotten a lot braver about spinning that chaos into beauty.

ESG's DIY tracks have a raw, unfinished feel--echo-drenched vocals buried deep in the mix, jagged hen-scratch guitar, taut bass lines as infectious as mononucleosis, and reverberating layers of percussion... The group's 1981 debut single, "Moody"... is one of the funkiest songs ever recorded. [Sep 2000, p.181]

The five-disc set breaks down the album to its building blocks, while the two-CD version provides outtakes and an edit of what the original final product might have been: part tribute, part cartoon, part dream.

The most roundly captivating pop album released so far this year, indie or not. It’s a record to wear out through Labor Day, if not longer.

Old Ramon is sinuous and unhurried, a beautiful downer of a folk rock record that has the lithe and shadowy promise of the ocean.

A sci-fi tint shifts the perspective from Atlas Sound's usual layered introspection: Inner space now has become outer space.

In its menacing incandescence, LP1 sounds like nothing else in the world right now.

Neither a timid repeat nor a knee-jerk departure, the bigger, bolder Neon Bible better captures what Arcade Fire achieve live. [Mar 2007, p.85]

The anticipated follow-up to her Grammy-winning masterstroke, 2018’s By The Way, I Forgive You, is once again magnificent — a triumphant patchwork of Americana, folk-rock, pop and soul anchored by yet another show-stopping centerpiece in “Right on Time,” the album’s towering lead single.

Like floating from level to placid level in Monument, listening to this record prompts your imagination and encourages discourse and reflection. Not the academic kind, but the kind of communal discovery people have been doing for ages.

Ultimately, what makes Excavation such an awesome and absorbing listen is precisely its indifference to the listener.

Nirvana's headlining gig at the 1992 Reading Festival looms infamously large because of (a) that amazingly creepy photo of Kurt getting wheeled onto the stage looking like Norman Bates' mother, and (b) the show was a mind-blower--sloppy indie rock as stadium-filling psychedelic punk.

If 2004's killer Shake the Sheets was Leo's Give 'Em Enough Rope... Living With The Living is his London Calling, an hour-long Rolodexing of sounds and visions. [Mar 2007, p.94]