There's a coiled power here equal to Harvey's more muscular stuff. [Oct 2007, p.95]

The emotional arcs are just as fresh and just as gripping [as Barter 6], but here they’re confined to songs, and sometimes to single verses.

Even at the EP’s most florid moments--say at the 11-minute mark, where they zone out for a minute of cobweb-like arpeggios--it remains music of immense impact and gravity.

While Mr. M consists of 11 allegedly different songs, the album has the unified feel of a single multi-movement suite.

These guys sound like they're genuinely torn between looking up at the stars and trying to find an exit to the sewer. Neat trick, that.

By grounding their idealism in simple, anthemic rock and a vague mythology, they’ve created an angsty, mutable codex of sorts, an inclusive machine by which to punch all the hearts.

Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach opens his first solo outing with an acoustic country blues that sounds utterly authentic but signifies mainly as a museum-quality reproduction. Fortunately, the rest of Keep It Hid hews more closely to the Keys’ scuzz-encrusted, blunt-instrument assault.

At its best, Big Ideas jostles with brilliant songcraft that signifies her rapid growth as an artist—if the essential aesthetic is little changed, the execution is often warmer, more mature and expansive.

Grid of Points is as untidy as 2005’s Way Their Crept or 2008’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. What’s different--and what’s key--is that in her ongoing embrace of the piano, Harris has made room in her artistry for a new sensation: the unmistakable glow of comfort.

A guitar record equally suitable for a lost weekend or a good cry. [Sep 2002, p.125]

Beach House’s releases to date have come fogged by intoxicant, nostalgia, and hypoxia, but Thank Your Lucky Stars does what their work has begged for all along and wipes the dew from their rearview mirror. You’re going to like what you see.

Amid such scene-upending sentiments, the band's all-too-Glaswegian moniker represents a clever case of bait and switch. [May 2008, p.98]

Though a handful of tracks sparkle, Under Ocean Blvd is a chore to ingest across its regularly lulling 77 minutes. ... Yes, Del Rey sings beautifully and will rightfully be recognized as a veritable voice of her generation — both in technique and disillusion — but here the cool distance she’s maintained between herself and listeners feels more expansive than ever.

Every twinkling ambient moment is remarkably humane.

Verbal sound bites once provided subtext for Godspeed's cinematic symphonies. But on Yanqui, those voices have fallen silent, and there's too much barren drift. [March 2003, p.120]

Rougher than Belle and Sebastian and lovelier than Mogwai, the Delgados craft orchestral maneuvers in the dark that leave bruises. [Feb 2003, p.98]

Lets you better appreciate his knack for weaving glorious pop songs out of change-ups and mixed signals. [Jul 2004, p.109]

The record’s brutal frankness belies its lyrical depth–small touches, like the reprisal of the intro track “Anytime” as the album’s closer, leave the listener with a sense of a hopeful, if ambivalent, closure.

Blawan never forgets that in addition to turning our rushing heads and moving bodies inward, which Wet Will Always Dry most assuredly does, this sort of music can and should also, you know, entertain.

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

CHVRCHES' debut is at its best on its revenge tunes.

Simply enjoy the band's increasingly deep groove, its rich crosscutting of violin and accordion melodies and its mastery of both Gypsycore trash and lilting Euro-reggae. [Aug 2007, p.106]

This Montreal orchestral rock combo's previous efforts were lush and woozy, like a half-remembered dream, but Roaring Night is the stuff of nightmares.

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

Sometimes trance-inducing, sometimes wildly dynamic, the album is a sumptuous, woozy feast that proudly dances on the lines between nirvana and reality.

Boldly, My Krazy Life is in the vein of Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, with a developed, knotty and, ultimately, deeply moral narrative.

This album should be met on its own terms; it’s willing to do the same for you.

For such crackling peaks, there are also times where it seems Blake has found himself at the forefront of a heady new genre, trap-schmaltz. ... Despite those shortcomings, Assume Form stands as Blake’s most coherent statement to date. The Spartan singer-songwriter tropes of his debut, the half-baked collabs of Overgrown, and the overlong The Colour in Anything fall away to reveal a more dynamic Blake.

Sure, emo bands cry over their myriad problems all the time, many of which are delivered either as mopey confessionals or with Gerard Way-ian gothenticity, but rarely are they so post-apocalyptic.

Thw Quin twins' new-wave pop hooks are stroonger than ever. [Aug 2007, p.109]

Milking the quiet-LOUD dynamic a drop more, this four-song EP's title track morphs a gentle guitar bath into a fuzz-pedal masterpiece.

An ambitious but interior new sound. On i,i, Bon Iver’s expanding universe feels at once new and familiar. ... Vernon is still the dominant creative force, but on i,i, he steps confidently into the role of curator and conductor (an approach he may have adopted from his work with Kanye West). The result of this collective energy is an album that’s both frank and easygoing, reveling in the magic of close personal relationships.

His third album mostly shelves the wit and sui generis style-clash. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Haunting. [Dec 2006, p.98]

A rousing, enjoyable pastiche from start to finish, Thirteen Tales is an awful lot of fun...

The Von Bondies' calling card is the urgency of [Jason] Stollsteimer's voice as it sands down the shop-worn chord progressions. [Mar 2004, p.92]

Her latest musical effort, More Issues Than Vogue is proudly campy (that cover art) and deeply poignant.

Let's just put it this way: Throw All of a Sudden on while playing GameCube, and you'll have the most dramatic LEGO Star Wars experience imaginable. [Mar 2007, p.94]

Despite the Dap Kings versatility--they were more hushed and drowsier backing Charles Bradley on last year's Victim of Love--and Jones' indefatigability, there aren't many new ideas here. That's not the point, though. The point is that music from another time can still thrill us in this one because of its practically tyrannical insistence on bliss.

If there's a method to this madness, you definitely won't find it here. [Nov 2005, p.101]

Dirty Sprite 2 is a tremendous compendium of everything you want from a Future album in 2015.

Galactic struggle to accompany all these signifying voices, sometimes resorting to hard, strident rhythms that don't really augment the performances.

[He] gets back to the sweetly twisted folk rock that he does so well. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Libraries seems huge, a cathedral of the grandiose emotional desperation that Phil Spector and Brian Wilson once framed so dramatically.

Start Here does a great job of cataloging the highs and lows of early milestones: first kisses, first breakups, leaving home for the first time.

Even if your knowledge of Turkish is zilch, you can’t help feeling these 10 songs deeply. Verily, Garip is sonic alchemy.

Night Thoughts honors Suede’s longstanding place in Brit-rock history as theatrical brooders with a penchant for pop and post-punk, while also celebrating the five-piece’s growth by supplying listeners with another round of swirling dance ballads (the gloomy, arena-filling “Outsiders” and the twinkling “No Tomorrow”) and operatic, Dog Man Star-ry ruminations (“Tightrope”).

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.

Those noisy, waxy workouts (“Tarpit,” “The Post”) that served to make the hookier tunes even brighter on the ’80s Dinosaur albums have mainly been left behind with the band’s youth since their 2007 return. But the swaying, softer respites on Not prove just as effective.

The storytelling here isn't as sharp as on Common's previous albums. [Feb 2003, p.100]

Gleefully impurist and highly addictive. [Sep 2004, p.122]

Their jabs cut and the beats burn. [Nov 2004, p.118]

His single, "Cannonball," will be there for you after your next breakup. [Nov 2003, p.117]

[It] documents Stevens' transformation from unremarkable folkie Jesus freak to unorthodox Christian mega-talent. [Dec 2006, p.101]

This is not the story of lost faith that these thematic bookends seem to augur, but rather just a bunch of really good songs that have relatively little to do with each other.

Dive is a pretty and sturdily crafted collection of techno maybe-memories-- hypnagogic pop for a very discerning Ikea shopper.

Skillful if occasionally rickety, Lightning showcases a confident, evolving voice.

The Center Won’t Hold is a real-time examination of the fraying that takes its toll on peoples’ insides and outer shells during times both good and bad. Agitations about screen-borne life and unpleasant urges bounce off grander existential horrors; there’s no digging out of them, this record bellows, but thrashing around and attempting to find others to share the burdens will at least stave off malaise.

Run Fast is certainly more benevolent and interesting than the myopic records most people make post-40 about their changing place in the world.

In the hands of dapper producer Mark Ronson, the glibly sloppy, lo-fi brats are almost sculpted into garage-punk sophistication, adding extended psychedelic guitar lines, fleshed-out percussion, even retro-soul sax.

Unsurprisingly buoyant. [Oct 2005, p.137]

He sounds as if he's just seen his own specter in the mirror, but no worries--records don't get much more alive than this.

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.

A soulful strut, abetted by a backing singer who's a ringer for Sam Cooke, plus subtle psychedelic touches demonstrate why they 
don't call it classic rock for nothing.

Armor is Bachmann's most vigorous post-Archers of Loaf full-length since 2003's Red Devil Dawn.

Equal parts faithful-but-twisted boom bap and avant-indie rock, the album drips with elbow grease. [Mar 2007, p.91]

Lazaretto's experimentation sounds ambivalent, its songs fractured and distracted.

The pervasive sense on Visions is of a young woman carefully pushing out of her own introversion, which makes the moments where she sings from the gut instead of the throat ("Circumambient"), or strives for human-on-human sensuality ("Skin"), all the more thrilling.

Emerald City may be his most unsettling work yet. [Aug 2007, p. 110]

The Bay Area band increase their stylistic range, with flashes of psychedelia, and creatively druggy overtones to balnce out the epic pummeling. [Oct 2007, p.104]

Gather, Form & Fly extends Megafaun’s back-porch mad science into unexpectedly epic realms, including straight blues and even pure pop, embellished with skronky, experimental sound effects.

The Dirty Projectors' best album by a mile holds that balance, all magnificent wobble, no collapse.

It’s a lot to take in, especially from a band formerly so minimalistic, but musically, it holds together.

There’s a feeling of forward momentum to the entire album but we might not like where it’s headed.

Banisters is far from the flashiest or most radio-friendly album Del Ray has produced, but rarely have fans gotten such crystalline, autobiographical work from the guarded star, who appeared to revel in the cool distance of her early albums. Now, she feels more present, and much closer to her music.

Consistent with his acclaimed “New History Warfare” series, it captures a human arpeggiator reconstituting post-minimalism, jazz, and metal in growling, moaning pieces with far more syncopated parts--percussion, bass, melody, harmony--than one guy recording without overdubs should rightfully account for.

Hello, Mimi Sparhawk, who sings lead on five of these 11 songs instead of her usual one or two, and it is glorious to behold.

Gigaton has a little something for everyone. It’s a complex, dynamic album full of earnest emotion and subtle humor. Its form factor recalls both 1996’s No Code and 1998’s Yield.

[A] crop of relatively cheerful-sounding — not to mention industrious, and never dull--tracks.

“Outer Acid” remains uncanny in its mix of blissful keys and menacing acid squiggles and “Spy” diffuses some dubby harmonica into Heard’s atmospheres. “Inner Acid” returns to the squelchy acid house Heard made back in the ‘80s and the knocking beat and bells of “Nodyahed” suggest that he can still make a dancefloor quake.

As clever as Fuck Buttons are at cobbling together unlikely juxtapositions, they're master builders when it comes to tension and release.

An aesthetic- and career-defining set, it's the album they were destined to make. [Nov 2006, p.103]

Made sounds dirtier (i.e., more Southern) than its polished predecessor, though it still relies on a bevy of soul samples. The best is the Hall & Oates bite on 'Never.'

The Roots' hardscrabble classicism and maverick whimsy cohere seemlessly, making Rising the group's most potently evocative work yet. [May 2008, p.98]

Here, she's captured twice in concert feverishly reading her phantasmagoric memorial to friend and artist Robert Mapplethorpe with the accompaniment of fellow savant Kevin Shields, the reclusive My Bloody Valentine leader who matches the ebb and flow of her morphing prose with thunderstorms of guitar sustain that weep and roar empathetically.

The sound isn’t funereal, but exultant, the slashing and stoned pinnacle of everything the trio had built to over the course of their decade of existence.

With its surges and dips, Confessions mimics the rising/falling action of, say, a DJ set, a hit of Ecstasy, or Madonna's own career. [Dec 2005, p.106]

The band's freak-out, slacker glam jams return, but it's Earley's comparatively focused alt-country side that impresses.

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

Mercer rants like the end is extremely nigh and songs refuse choruses, stapling together shattered fragments of classic psychedelia and the bits of Springsteen riffs that their countrymen Arcade Fire left behind.

The indie Tina Turner follows up her tightly wound 2005 comeback, "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise," in the company of Drive-By Truckers and Muscle Shoals vets, whose mannered blues shuffles unfortunately sound like they're backing a beer commercial.

Overall, though, the absence of pretense does more good than harm here. By emphasizing his singing rather than the usual wailing walls of distortion, Segall expertly treads the fine line separating rockist classicism from lo-fi innovation.

There's a simultaneously appealing and slightly off-putting looseness to all this, conjuring the sort of drowsiness where you'd rather sleep for a week straight than let in more heartbreak.

Amid the hasty scribbles and marooned, half-finished concepts, there are lots of seeds and stems. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Call it Nick Diamonds Gets His Groove Back. Former Unicorn Nick Thorburn went a bit dark and dreary on 2008's "Arm's Way," but with Vapours, the transplanted New Yorker relearns his playfulness.

Divorced from their HBO series, the songs have room to stretch a little, only occasionally sacrificing context. [May 2008, p.98]

[It] should have been the new Fall album. [Jun 2007, p.96]

It's the sound of a man moving to his next stage, unsure how he should make his machines howl. Mournful or loud? Why not both?