The contrast between his interiority and the sturdiness of his compositions is striking. So, too, is the contrast between this album and Heartbreaker, his lauded solo debut. Ranking breakup records is a ghoul’s errand; suffice to say that loss was Heartbreaker’s fuel. Here, it’s turned to fumes.

Big GRRRL Small World sounds like the work of someone too tireless to limit herself to genre lines or defined boxes, and it’s hard work resisting rap’s numerous pigeonholes.

Sonically velveteen the whole way through, it’s certainly a comforting album, though Gonzalez’s efforts to capture the commanding, immediate quality of the music of her influences feel, overall, a little too cautious.

He's great with the hook-meoldy algebra, not so hot on figuring out what to say beyond "Love, blah, blah, blah, la, la, la." [Apr 2005, p.108]

From the way she sings, in big gulps and Teen Wolf growls, to the mystical art-rock ballads she bedazzles with sleigh bells, harps, and choirs, there's enough drama here for a Broadway musical. But her delivery is so raw that every mess feels genuine.

Matsson is a Harry Smith acolyte, but his understanding of Americana (and American English) is fractured, and his songs are jammed with enough surprises to make him seem like a singular new talent.

Here, [Hot Chip] beefs up the rhythms and tones down the indie-geek shtick. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Heartache swells from these swooning folk-pop tunes, but the presence of both of the relationship's combatants ensures that they never drown in it.

Too many perfectly good songs that never quite approach greatness. [Oct 2007, p.108]

This is dance music downsized for iPods but also indie rock expanded for the dance floor. [Jan 2007, p.89]

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

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

There isn't a tune on No Cities Left, the Dears' gorgeous second album, that's not pitched at a minor state of emergency. [Jan 2005, p.99]

Quieter and more uniform in sound than the wilfully eclectic Let It Die, the new album emphasizes her sumptuous vocals and ear for a handsome melody. [May 2007, p.85]

Ross's greatest tool is still his presence, which vouches for the strength of his persona when his lyrics can't.

She finally showcases a flow as strong as her vitriol. [Sep 2004, p.114]

As a sequel, Blackout 2 fails to move things forward; but as a revival, it’s a welcome blast.

It's a savage, heartfelt, at times hilarious goth-mosh emopera. [Nov 2006, p.95]

Mostly, it's the wilting pedal steel, warm analog tubes, and lush heartbreak flourishes of "When I'm Gone" that distinguish Rose from the merchants of new country's jingles.

The beats are so simplistic that their minimalist repetition occasionally teeters over into redundancy.

The crisp arrangements often overshadow his stiff, stentorian delivery, but he still manages to convey moments of both personal loss--the death of mentor/Slum Village rapper Baatin--and professional triumph.

If there's a flaw on this Alabama duo's debut, it's predictability. T-Bone Burnett and Jack White serve as executive producer and mentor, respectively, with Laura and Lydia Rogers putting a sister-act spin on dusty Americana--bet you can hear it already.

They’re about the feeling--everything tween inside every grown adult, and thus they are still unmistakably Carly even as she tries on new sounds. When Dedication falters it’s in the latter half, where her producers seem to be trying to chase pop, or at least Spotify “airplay,” by making her sound like everyone else.

Arcology is very much an extension of that pulsing amalgamation of sounds, while filling out an expanded universe of technological touchstones.

of whether the dance-punk grooves and elusive, histrionic hooks resonate, Thorpe has a point he's determined to make: Even the most sensitive fop can be a hormonal horndog.

PARA, is both exactly what its name suggests and a galaxy of far, far-flung musical touchstones.

Masterpiece never quite improves on this impressive opening run, though the profoundly un-country guitar pretzels of “Interstate” and “Humans” give Speedy Ortiz a run for their money, and the former even ends with one of Saddle Creek’s signature found recordings, just like one of those eight-minute Conor Oberst intros.

As music alone, the band is looser and more flexible than ever, deploying Superchunk’s Jon Wurster for accents and subtleties outside of his main band’s dynamic range, and punching out the gate with highlights as varied as the Louisiana ragtime of “Southwestern Territory” and the punked-up “Choked Out.”

Rausch’s ambitious structure is an incomplete but laudable step forward. If Narkopop was a belated capstone on the first era of Gas, Rausch might be the first real statement of a coming second phase. And its status as second-tier Voigt doesn’t necessarily portend dire things to come.

Chapter 2 doesn't merely document; it selects tracks that hold together as an album. [Nov 2006, p.104]

Despite the absence of percussion, it moves as steadily as a mountain stream, a reminder of the pulse connecting club music with a much vaster world beyond. Now, more than ever, we need the long view glimpsed through Pink's rose-tinted rave goggles.

Her crack band of Dap-Kings have enlivened everyone from Kanye to Amy Winehouse, but their most natural habitat is in Jones' Aretha-like tales of sex, independence, and the good Lord himself.

Funky like Fred Schneider and Barney Fife killin' it at karaoke. [Sep 2003, p.115]

The record could use more songs like "David," where her bratty valedictorian wit is balanced with a sense of real emotional stakes. [Apr 2004, p.93]

As with Watermelon, Chicken, the album drags; still, it's a compelling ride. [Oct 2003, p.110]

Kweli wins by spitting knotty verbiage over high-test beats. [Feb 2003, p.99]

The rubbed-rawness of Uh Huh Her might seem like backpedaling. But the best tracks use the pleasure principles of Stories to update her old approach. [Jun 2004, p.101]

Here they fe-fi-fo-fum with the exacting crankiness of carny punks who've seen it all. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Is a Woman finds Lambchop turning into America's Tindersticks, replacing songcraft with baroque digressions. [Mar 2002, p.134]

Mostly there are ballads--exquisitely poised, expertly arranged ones so dialed into their feminine inspirations that Milosh and Hannibal virtually merge with the objects of their affection.

The music is propulsive and upbeat, but executed with the almost blasé confidence of people who sound like they have nothing to prove.

Paradise lands closer to technical brilliance than emotional resonance, but you can feel the band reaching.

The work on PC Music Vol. 2 is more mature, less obnoxious, and much more deserving of the early hype PC Music received.

It's a given that Gutter, like the ex-Pulp sideman's five previous shimmering, sepia-toned solo albums, has moments of heartbreaking beauty. Too bad those moments are outnumbered by a reliance on secondhand lyrical conceits (songbirds, shipwrecks) and drifting arrangements.

Powered by rattling drums, simmering organ, and Stuart Staples' resonant baritone, the first half of Tindersticks' latest is a can't-miss proposition....Too bad the disc's second half descends into a morass of half-finished, melancholic curios that mostly go nowhere lowly.

A decade-plus of refining this particular sound has led to the purposeful pop of Okovi, her sixth album. Danilova’s vocal performance momentarily recalls darker and more secretive Sia songs.

Yet with its detours into slick synth pop, weepy roots rock, and big Broadway music, the sprawling Genre proves that emo needn't be boxed in by stylistic dogma. [Dec 2007, p.120]

The songs could use more steam, but Crows reveals yet another color in Moorer's palette.

The rhythm section no longer plays the shadows either, blurting out Black Flag–circa-'81 bluster as a deceptively simple assist for their leader's colorful wheedle and strident wail.

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.

On her Dum Dum debut, assisted by Blondie and Go-Go's producer Richard Gottehrer, she cages contagious odes to husband-Crocodiles singer Brandon Welchez (as well as anxious ruminations on losing him) in metallic distortion.

If you gauge artistic success by innovation, you can just filter the best of Culture, a very decent group of Migos songs, into a playlist. But if you appreciate Migos and the sound they ushered into contemporary rap as being one of the genre’s most basic, essential natural resources, it will be easier to let the whole album--a drama of perseverance--ride out.

These parts slide and slip through and around one another, creating a shifting matrix that consumes your attention for as long as the band wants to play.

The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums--a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified.

One Life Stand finds the boys settling down and growing a tad soft in the middle.

Juicing fragile melodies with weeping George Harrison guitar, frontman Luke Steele is pretty even-keeled for a spaced-out pop maestro. [Nov 2003, p.117]

As dark and sweet as baking chocolate and as ambitious as the Mars rover. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Some tracks accordingly veer toward the solipsistic—”Exodus” pushes the newfound Arthur Russell-meets-Tim Buckley vibe a little past the point of viability. But even at his most bleakly compressed, McMahon can still produce a striking melody.

Wincing is a purposefully low-impact affair. [Jan 2007, p.87]

Glass Boys is easier to navigate, and doesn't engender the same awe [as "David Comes to Life"]. But its brevity allows Fucked Up to loosen a little--to indulge in sounds and tones they forwent when their albums sprawled. Less space, and more stuff: the band keeps getting denser.

Everything here, though, feels strangely organic and effortlessly joyful.

Another nuanced collection of mid-tempo '70s-pop-referencing tunes that document the lives of folks who manage only fleeting moments of happiness between protracted stretches of frustration.

Drawing from a syllabus of 100 essential country tunes compiled by dad Johnny in the 1970s, Rosanne Cash delivers the most enjoyable history lesson imaginable.

Braxton's clever, found-sound loops are missed, but the remaining members' rampant ideas and inexorable groove keep Battles engrossing.

Open Mike Eagle’s momentum has raised anticipation for his fifth collaborative full-length (and ninth album altogether), Hella Personal Film Festival, this time made with British producer and vocalist Paul White. But he doesn’t quite scale up his political and personal concerns. Instead, he gives us more modest delights.

He finally gives his dark, dense instrumentals room to breathe on his fifth album. [Sep 2007, p.136]

Though Moz's vocal range has narrowed with age, he still delivers brilliantly titled odes to depression and hanging out on his own.

Preoccupations works with a richer emotional palette.

It's so London-specific that it almost requires an England-to-English translation for us Yanks. [Feb 2006, p.92]

While her sound is still dominated by typical darkwave elements--doomy synths and the pishy patter of minimal drum machines--the rest is unexpectedly warm, illuminated by her indomitable voice.

West's third album is memerizing and alienating, like all the purest forms of pop culture. [Nov 2007, p.114]

The best bummer-country band of this sucky century. [Dec 2005, p.107]

No Time for Dreaming wails in a world of "Heartaches and Pain" (see the memorable closing track), but Bradley's despair is never less than stirring.

The tunes barely let up until the Mann-led "Hummingbird" and "Honesty Is No Excuse" more than halfway through, and even then the usual boring singer/songwriter-isms become a nice resting place from the otherwise inescapable hooks.

The sweetness of Strawberry Jam is savvily balanced by the sour, or at least the edgy. [Oct 2007, p.98]

The Twilight Sad walk a fine line between drippy sentimentality and rough-edged realism. [May 2007, p.91]

The swollen, baroque-pop arrangements... may ruffle the band's more delicate followers. But the songs are always smart, and it's the music-librarian's humor that helps keep things from slipping into the maudlin. [Nov 2003, p.109]

There’s something whimsical about the new record that’s hard to pinpoint. The disparity between the lyrics and the sounds is a little disorienting at first, but progresses into something remarkably natural, and invigorating.

Black Mountain refine their position as the psychedelic hard-rock/goof-folk revivalists that you can actually stand for an entire album.

Here Be Monsters sounds like a fleshed-out band, graced with Mekons-derived musical trademarks.

Friedberger has always been a storyteller, but these tracks are rife with the kinds of details that breathe life into fiction, like white socks on a girl roller-skating down Market Street ("When I Knew"), and characters with names like Reggie and Peter ("I'll Never Be Happy Again").

It’s not only Vegyn’s curation of shifting instrumental sound, from jazzy and transcendental to glitchy and trip-hop symphonic, that showcases his dexterity. At the album’s centerfold, three tracks (“Everything Is the Same,” “The Path Less Traveled,” and “Makeshift Tourniquet”) repeat the album’s title in three different tones: one a scratchy, insidiously inhuman voice, the next a distant human echo that feels like a fading memory, and the last that’s closely spoken like a self-reminding mantra. Its meaning morphs and settles like a redemptive exhale and inhale.

Vedder has never been shy about naming his influences, and here they form a buoyant cloud lifting the enterprise up among the stars.

On the good side, there’s the spacey disco-funk of “Palace of the Governors” and “Begin Countdown.” Describing Deerhoof songs frequently forces you to invent delirious fictional bands to compare them to; the latter of these two sounds like the Meters as covered by an ensemble of Teletubbies. On a handful of songs that litter the album’s second half, however–”Sea Moves,” “Singalong Junk,” “Kokoye”--the band searches at its borders for a new sound to bring back and doesn’t find anything very interesting.

The MC trio rhyme with distinct cadences tuned like instruments, while engineer Earl Blaize compiles keyboards, drums, and software blips into an Afro-surrealist space opera.

Singer Christopher Owens remains unchanged: Choked on teen melodrama and blessed with a documentarian's keen eye, he's the rare indie rocker with a tender hooligan's heart.

Merritt's wordplay has never been slicker. [Jun 2004, p.105]

Clinic remember that Britpop is supposed to be fun. [Mar 2002, p.127]

Alternating meticulous power pop ("Measure") and anxious aloofness ("Let's Write a Book") with relaxed twang ("Clear Water") and pliant balladry ("Curves of the Needle"), the Brewises seek a certain balance on Measure. But over this geekily ambitious 20-song double album, that effort proves entertainingly futile.

Like its predecessor [Reputation], Lover shines when the bombast is stripped away and the songs are humble and discreet, even muffled.

Baldi and Co. take the best bits from Albini's tutelage, apply them to lo-fi pop-punk structures and infuse all of it with tightly wound angst.

If nothing else, the music is aggressively okay (there's coiled-spring potential in the crackling, anxious "White Teeth Teens"). But its overall unspecialness undercuts Pure Heroine's devotion to playing both sides of Lorde's "only 16" coin.

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

With Light and With Love sounds bigger, though, more accessible, conceived with an ear toward top-down, tear-out-of-town FM anthems of summers past.

The nakedness of Crutchfield’s music is the source of both its confidence and its vulnerability.

If there’s a quibble with II, it’s that like most doubles, it would be more effective as a single disc.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy can be a harrowing listen, but it’s also laced with jokes and music that’s fun and invigorating.

Two Tongues is some of the most powerfully original music either camp has released, with the intimate production raising the goose-bump factor of Conley's and Bemis' earnest, if wildly contrasting, vocal styles.