"Turn the dial on my words," she suggests, and the band's glorious noise obliges time and again.

Despite the occasional mosh-pit flare-up, though, Taking Back Sunday emphasizes the band's crafty songwriting rather than the psychological intensity that defined Tell All Your Friends.

Muttering Jon Langford, golden-toned Sally Timms, and the rest of this sweaty eight-strong mob are at their red-eyed best here. [Sep 2007, p.134]

Shorn of its usual grime trappings, Manuva's deep, gruff lyricism sounds playfully inspired on catalog highlights like "Proper Tings Juggled."

It's an album of scorching, scene-defining hits.

We have You Surrounded is a terrific accessible hard-rock album deserving more than cult attention. [Apr 2008, p.94]

Total Loss is a beautiful album, all ambient longing and sadness and spectral pop, rising and falling without warning - no other artist gets more emotional effect out of leaving things not quite finished. But it still feels not quite finished.

Craft can be a cage, and come the eleventeenth pleasant chord progression and workmanlike melody, the album's title may portend the listener's immediate future.

Hitchcock's second album with the Venus 3, who include R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, is less dazzling than 2006's "Ole! Tarantula," yet still pretty compelling.

At his best, Miller follows ex-bandmate's Jack White's example....Other times, those traditions, however vividly evoked, come off feeling--well a little blanched. [Nov 2007, p.114]

More coherent, conceptual, and organic than their eponymous British Invasion-influenced debut. [Dec 2001, p.154]

The songs remain the same: clear-eyed musings on breakups-as-existential-crises. [Dec 2004, p.124]

For all the period-piece lethargy of "Warm Summer Sun" and 
"I Fall Asleep," though, they balance it out with the blistering "Space in Your Face" and "Honey Bear."

Baroque but not self-indulgent. [Jul 2006, p.83]

The results don't always play to the singer's melodic strengths; ?uestlove sounds a bit reined-in, too. Occasionally, though, they send up some serious sparks, as with a raw garage-funk take on Baby Huey's "Hard Times."

When I Never Learn aims for pop, it's the hazy Shangri-Las variety; the melodies are Li's lushest to date, but the smoke never clears around them.

Scuffed-up and brainy, Object 47 finds Wire still beguiling after all these years.

Instead of reaching that precipice and seeming to over-stretch for some sort of tipping point into the mainstream, he's forged his own world, on his own terms, and invited like-minded artists to flourish there as well.

Food is indeed "the real thing," a satisfying album grounded by familiar funk, rooted in classic soul sounds and focused on the everyday rituals of life: eating.

These pop dirges are comforting until they get preachy about sins and healing. [Jan 2005, p.91]

The spontaneous vibe seems fitting, with Darnielle's ordinary-guy vocals, embellished by Bruno's subtle guitars and keyboards, giving their observant tales of sexual misconduct ("How I Left the Ministry") and weary struggle ("Cruiserweights") the punch of vivid short stories.

Their excellent new Bless Off, which careens even more crank-ably--not to mention somewhat less grumpily--than 2011's also very good Primitive Blast.

Pink works best as a one-woman army.

Gratuitously avant saxophone squawking mars some of the disc's best moments, but Xiu Xiu's knack for grafting lush hooks onto noisy post-rock remains seductive.

An album that’s fundamentally modest, even as it stretches to be both looser and more technically ambitious.

This latest effort shift boils down to two key foci: bolder, less guarded lyrical choices (much of the record deals with Paternoster's ongoing battle with chronic mono) and more strategic space for the frontwoman's legendary guitar solos.

Even by Hyperdub’s standards--a 20-year lineage of beats birthed and incubated in London’s most soot-smeared corners (grime, dubstep) and Chicago’s windwept streets (footwork)--this is not a light record.

The Florida band is now content to catch Pixies-ish waves of gentler mutilation and ride them 
to college-rock bliss.

He falls into mawkishness far too often. [Jun 2007, p.93]

He can disavow his youthful rage all day, but Gabel is at his best when he's feisty.

The shotgun rhythms, spaghetti western guitars, and dubstep explosions intertwine with lover's rock, roots reggae, and other island styles to impressively evoke the pair’s genre-splicing DJ sets.

From the stark black-and-white artwork to the sounds within, Panda Bear's fourth album scales back, proffering succinctness rather than sprawl, exchanging samplers for sequencers, in favor of added warmth and intimacy.

Patrick Sullivan and company hint at broader possibilities on their fourth album, verging on a nasty ZZ Top-like boogie in 'No Dreams," and tiptoeing into funk on the crunchy rocker 'Alive Among Thieves.' [Oct 2007, p.108]

Graves' earnest lyrics are purposely mixed far beneath the caustic instrumentals here, but when a few words do surface, we're treated to thoughtful (if only partial) confessions.

On the more stripped-down songs, though, Conley's keen intuition pokes through. [Jan 2004, p.102]

A record that's at once stark and lush... Mojave 3 makes sadsack rock of the first order, flying over the lives of the hopeless in such a way as to make their failures cinematic, their pains panoramic.

Fortunately, the old pros gel well often enough to keep things rolling -- with some help. [Jan 2002, p.107]

Without much dissonance or funk in the mix, this falls just short of butter. [Mar 2004, p.96]

On the band's sixth album, they're most comfortable in the spot where Guided by Voices ("Any Other Day") bump into 
the Kinks ("What Faces 
the Sheet") -- slightly psychedelic and frequently sticky, breezily charming and pleasantly woozy.

The subdued exception 'Blue but Cool' aside, the pretentious poetry and overwrought riffing induce numbness, not transcendence.

Why Love Now is reserved in its sonic experimentation. But for a band as sharp and capable as this one, that’s not really a problem. Beneath the acerbic jokes, Korvette is a humane and considerate writer and performer.

Recruiting Cursive’s Tim Kasher (on a single that outs the founding fathers as slave rapists) and Laura Jane Grace for 14 good songs in 40 minutes, Oberst’s made his best album since 2008’s addictive Conor Oberst, and ended up with the white male rage of the year.

These are the weirdest tracks Yorke has ever been a part of. [Aug 2006, p.75]

The album is a dense, cinematic, always surprising and often moving album that sounds like it required the full three years that the L.A. crooner and producer spent chipping away at it to get right.

Mostly great. [Jan 2005, p.96]

The overall affect is a travelogue falling between chillwave's lo-fi explorations and the sophisticated melancholy of Lykke Li's Wounded Rhymes: tightly economic pop tunes that draw on aural largesse as much as claustrophobic bricolage.

Jackson writes open-endedly, shifting between direct experience and metaphor; mysteries left unsolved by her lyrics and persona are alternately heightened and resolved by the hurt in her voice, the assuredness of her arrangements.

He's purely elegant throughout.

The Felice Brothers aspire to the weird, woozy vibe of the Band's "The Basement Tapes," and often approach it. [Apr 2008, p.96]

The new album’s particular saving grace is its self-loathing streak, the sense that scales have fallen from eyes and that Stay Gold’s nebulous disaffection has soured to regret.

Crazy for You is a soundtrack to bikini season as it's actually experienced, racked by impossible expectations and as high as the tide line.

Revivalist? Sure, but this refreshing, smarter side of the late '80s has yet to be co-opted into a hipster fashion show.

The playing is deceptively forceful, and the songs cut surprisingly deep.

The contrast between Purity Ring's two halves is special and compelling, but Shrines goes over best when Roddick's reverent sound and James' lustful fury synchronize and break you off properly, womb-stem-style.

Mazzy Star steadfastly stick to their dusty, psych-folk, dream-pop tableaux on Seasons of Your Day. Yet it feels nothing like a '90s hangover; in fact, the touches of organ and pedal steel that open the album hint at Beach House's hazy indie-pop.

She renders a sad refrain from a lotto ad on 'State Numbers,' slags CSNY on 'The Lighter Side of...Hippies,' and howls that "a loving woman can have the Devil's face" on the acerbic 'Don't Talk in Your Sleep,' making this the duo's most shambolic effort to date.

The album presses pause on Holter and her band at an uncomfortable moment of transience--when their relationship to these years-old songs is clearly comfortable but also mildly antagonistic. However, they still manage to bring out the richest valences of Holter’s pristine and eccentric songs, and more than ever before, communicate her incredible skill as a passionate, intuitive, and controlled performer.

On his solo debut, Jonsi Birgisson--Sigur Ros' spectral voice and six-string skyscraper--embraces a lithe, lush pop his main band is too monolithic to accommodate, and it's revelatory.

Doing away with his human human voice entirely in favor of an android’s syrupy drawl would seem like a logical next step for Sakamoto’s music, and it’s tempting to wonder what Love If Possible would sound like if he’d further indulged his more experimental tendencies.

The male-dominated world of dubstep may dismiss all this as too lightweight and precious, but Katy B may transform into the queen of this boys club yet.

It can be strikingly narrow, to impressive ends--not many producers would be able to wring so much emotion from stoned, spacey, minor-key arrangements year after year. ... But in other ways, the results can be mixed.

With help from Squid producer Dan Carey, the band’s core trio (Donald Johnson, Jez Kerr, and Martin Moscrop) have generated a wealth of modern beats and future-shocked textures, all while remaining in touch with their trademark spongy grooves and sharp rhythmic corners.

A distinctly contemporary album that is in conversation with trendy, critically acclaimed R&B.

The album does an admirable job of living up to its low- key title (with spare acoustic tracks) and its situation (with loosey-goosey, classic-rock-indebted numbers).

Songs in A&E, finds an eerie strength in quietude and mortality.

Trail of Dead temper their thrash with welcome doses of art rock. [Jun 2003, p.109]

On 2006's What Are You On?, he was too cranky by half, but here he returns to hopeful melancholy, lonely drum machines, everyday drug stories, even a '70s yacht-rock sketch ("Tommy Made a Movie"). Glad you're still breathing, man.

Hug of Thunder is at its best when Broken Social Scene is loose and willing to experiment with its formula.

Watch Me Fall is even more melodic. Reatard classes up the joint a bit, smearing organ, hard-strummed acoustic guitar, and strings on the unrequited-love epic 'I’m Watching You.'

She lacks the flexibility that jazz demands--she simply can't swing. But when she interprets material (from downbeat bards Randy Newman, Colin Meloy, and others) that matches the drug-ravaged wreckage of her vocal chords, she kills.

The relative quietude—there are still grooves aplenty—makes you lean in, sizing up elements of songcraft and musicianship that might’ve previously hid underneath the band’s dancy, psychedelic scrim. This serves Khruangbin well, since they make music to Santo & Johnny’s level of wistfulness, and they can play their asses off. The performances are so good, in fact, you sometimes want to divide them into stems.

Too often, Blige's voice doesn't get the space it needs to cut loose with emotion. [Feb 2006, p.85]

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

Cheerfully ignoring stylistic boundaries, Brit duo Malachai (formerly Malakai) polish their cut-and-paste skills on this follow-up to last year's tantalizing Ugly Side of Love.

Kings dial their usual bellow and wallow routine way down, while mustering just enough passion for the album’s occasional rock setpieces: “Hesitation Gen” and “Seen” are their most effective rippers in several albums.

The racing tempos and Christian Hjelm's paranoid-sounding yelp push the songs to occasionally exhilarating heights, but beware the inevitable comedown. [Aug 2006, p.78]

Cape Dory establishes an enviable fantasy: two lovers happily adrift. Where Best Coast is too cool for school, Tennis seem (almost) too good to be true.

As usual, her melodies stubbornly refuse to turn into hooks, preferring to twirl into new territory. But her approach suits the material, which flows like the colors on a weather map, from Los Angeles to Nevada, from New York to Virginia, gathering thunder along the way. [Nov 2002]

With the band's pop instincts craftier than ever, these songs might even reach past the keg party. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Often gorgeous and never soothing, the damaged pop on Phantogram's mesmerizing debut is pure nightmare fuel.

Though periodically unfocused, it mostly succeeds in not only championing the spirit of collaboration but also accentuating its guests’ artistic strengths. Throughout this record, Vernon and Dessner find joy in community.

Unlike U2, whose left turns have felt like oblique strategies in the band's pompous struggle to redeem rock, R.E.M.'s stylistic shifts tend to feel like survival skills. Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo or whatever, much of Reveal moves with the graceful drag of 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction, yet with more ebb and flux. [June 2001, p.143]

Buckner's singular pipes and surrealistic lyrics tug the songs toward the esoteric, but the band pulls them back. [Oct 2006, p.95]

Although Young Thug moves away from exploring emotional pain, SS3 is still very much informed by introspection.

It leaves us with a streamlined New Romantic sound, but one that at times feels like emotional Teflon.

Masters of atmospheric storytelling since the early '90s, England's Tindersticks showcase the shivery yet forthright murmur of Stuart Staples.

It’s not quite a caricature of what an average rock fan considers The Killers to be, but it’s close. Still, Mirage is markedly superior to its uneven predecessor, 2017’s Wonderful, Wonderful, largely due to the presence of several guest artists.

They hew to a similar early-'70s aura -- nodding to a time when spacey keyboard effects and alt-country dust carried serious cachet.

Positively exuberant. [Sep 2006, p.114]

He's brilliant when juxtaposing rhythmic brutality against euphonious familiarity; but here, he seems exhausted by the former and ashamed of the latter.

Two Suns is the rare concept album that's better for the bedroom than for bong hits.

Gonzalez sings mostly about memories (occasionally unintelligibly), but refuses to accept that some dramatic gifts don't necessarily have to be exhausting. Still, the album is full of goose-bump moments

The ex–Drive-By Truckers guitarist shares his former band's lyrical penchant for the dark end of the street.

Myth Takes juxtaposes tribal post-punk with crooked attempts at actual pop, giving their epic groove-riders a booty-stimulating boost. [Mar 2007, p.86]

Throughout the album, she shifts from restrained cool to soaring sentimentalism in mere seconds; this dynamic is something that Civilian possessed, but Shriek masters.

Complicated shows a real grasp of musical history. [Jul 2007, p.99]

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, feels more like a collage of sounds and styles than a coherent, considered statement.

His mildewy folk rock is dourly impenetrable. [Apr 2005, p.108]