Cut Mr. Hansen up, and he reassembles nicely, but weirdly enough, it's tough to out-Beck Beck. [Jan 2006, p.92]

You won’t hear much new on Vertigo, but what’s there is lovingly, potently rendered.

Like Coldplay killing time with the Happy Mondays at Manchester's Hacienda club. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Romantic defeatism can be charming if you infuse it with enough daydreaming, art-school blues. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Feels like rock that Beavis would play if Homme were his pal.

Often lives up to its title, but they ought to find a kind way to break it off with the horn section. [Jul 2003, p.110]

As up-to-the-minute as the album sounds, Kim herself remains stuck in the past, eulogizing B.I.G. or strapping on the horny scorn she birthed so long ago. [May 2003, p.110]

After ten years, Rancid's still-rock-solid kinship is evident in their lock-step chemistry. [Oct 2003, p.108]

Both intoxicating and deliciously unmemorable. [Oct 2003, p.113]

Jimmy Eat World might still be stuck in "The Middle" a year from now, but this album's more thoughtful homestretch at least suggests the possibility of alternate futures. [Nov 2004, p.115]

Peaches seems to be having much more fun with her sleazy subject matter. [Nov 2003, p.116]

Summer Sun sometimes sounds like a band treading water at low tide, but obsessively exploring the contours of a moment is what Yo La have been about from day one. [Jul 2003, p.109]

Where Basement Jaxx's diversity used to serve a club-DJ flow, here they let it off the leash, with mixed results. [Dec 2003, p.126]

Unfortunately, Coombes seems to have the glam era's fuzzy-brained approach to pop songwriting nailed a bit too well. [Apr 2003, p.106]

If The Cure feels like a recapitulation of the band's career, it's because they've recorded songs very much like these before. [Aug 2004, p.103]

Hoffer preserves [Trevor] Horn's professional sheen but not his swinging charm, leaving us with all bathwater and no baby. [Feb 2006, p.86]

Musically, A Blessing and a Curse is the Truckers' least complicated album. [May 2006, p.93]

Uneven but fascinating. [May 2006, p.92]

Talkie Walkie 's detachment is still, well, pretty -- virgins might commit suicide to it, but most likely they'll just swoon.

The radio-friendly album Liz Phair should have made. [Oct 2003, p.113]

Both jarring and hypnotic. [May 2006, p.91]

Over blotto new-wave/industrial beats, they party hard and get lost on the way home. [May 2003, p.116]

The sharp riffs only occasionally add up to anything with a pulse, but the Pornos have always been bad mathematicians. Archaeology -- that's their subject.

Vanderslice's arrangements glide between loping acoustic strums, delicate picking, and stately piano chords, though for such a quiet affair, Kid Face has a surprisingly sturdy bottom end.

She might be Hank’s granddaughter, but Holly Williams doesn’t let the lovesick blues get her down on this twangy-yet-smooth sophomore effort.

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

Many of the tunes emerged after the duo’s chance meeting in Todos Santos, the Mexican town Buck calls his second home. This sense of discovery shines through the record’s layers of polish. Its immediacy makes Arthur Buck a rarity in 2018: a record that wears its messy heart, as pleased with its flaws as it is with its power.

The old comedy adage goes that if it bends, it's funny, but if it breaks, it's not. Tell that to Drive-By Truckers, who break everything in sight yet still strike tragicomic gold every time. The Big To-Do, their eighth full-length, features another cast of walking-dead survivors struggling with their vices in a Faulknerian landscape of rocked-up desperation.

Grooming their jam-band shagginess and spotlighting their songwriting chops, Philadelphia indie poppers Dr. Dog produce a clean, big-sounding album that uncannily evokes Summerteeth-era Wilco and Soft Bulletin–era Flaming Lips.

What Tapes lacks in classic names, it makes up for in flow.

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.

Long on cryptic references (you mean you haven't read Curzio Malaparte's 1944 novel Kaputt?) and Euro-weary mood, the vintage electronic-pop ambience of Destroyer's ninth album recalls the days when MTV emphasized music.

Her tender songcraft grows stronger.

Fussy knob-twiddling grounds a couple of tracks, but this skyward-reaching album delivers plenty of solidly earthy pleasures.

Principe doesn’t carve any revolutionary niches on or off the dance floor so much as it patiently, oh so patiently, chips away at Thomas’ own reputation as a space-disco purveyor

These New Puritans prove the model perfected by New Order ain't dying anytime soon. {Apr 2008, p.106]

His best in more than 30 years, he teams up with members of Ladybug Transistor, Teenage Fanclub, and others for songs heavy on rememberance but energized with chin-up horns and strings that'll sound fresh to fans of the Decemberists and Arcade Fire. [Apr 2008, p.92]

When [Albarn] stays away from the light and the mic, Humanz shines.

Of course it's nothing new, but Guided by Voices' precision messes are their own reward. [Aug 2002, p.110]

In flashing back, Cox smears just the right amount of Vaseline on the lens. [Mar 2008, p.96]

The melodies and rhythmic accents here hang together as decent hooks, if not poppy ones.

What the album lacks in focus, it makes up for in sheer listenability.

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.

These are heftier tracks that, because of their added weight, move slower; and like any collection of thematically linked subwoofer-challenging, chart-charting songs, some feel a little Skyped-in--or at least tailored a little too much to their guiding spotlights.

Extra Playful is as easygoing and steady rolling as he's ever sounded, serving up hooks, elegant Euro-beats, and a modicum of glee in poking fun at his own uptight image.

Glowing Mouth's general disillusionment anchors its sprawl.

A visceral display of synth prowess that makes exhilarating use of contrasting textures and subtle dynamics.

There aren't any plinking pianos or Hollywood strings, but the music still goes big the way we've grown to expect from Green Day.

The ballads tend to turn murky, but the rockers are terrifically drunken reveries.

You Can Have What You Want floats dusty folk-rock melodies in thick echo, giving the vocals an otherworldly cast.

Interesting as these personal/lyrical developments may be, overall the latest round of self-therapy just isn't quite as tuneful as previous ones.

His most accessible [album] yet, crammed with melodic Brit punk played at maximum speed. [Nov 2006, p.97]

Singing en español, clear-voiced Andrea Echeverri ponders subjects like immigration ('Bandera') and pregnancy ('28'), projecting unflappable confidence.

Nice as F**k are not a “girl group”; they’re a Spoon that owes two dozen quarters to a washing machine.

Gibbs elevates this eight-song EP above '90s-gangsta-rap homage with his baritone-deep hauteur and studious lyricism.

Twenty years since their last album of new material, Gill and vocalist Jon King spit out splintered riffs and skewered tropes that approximate the band's peak on grabby party-starters ("Who Am I") and mesmerizing midtempo grooves ("A Fruitfly in the Beehive"). The rest are only slightly damaged goods.

The band's typically thunderous melodic sprawl and cryptic musings on life and death perfectly fit the conceptual bill, with everything cranked to its natural extreme.

Troubled frontman Anthony Green and his mates have embraced glossier production while reconnecting with At the Drive-In's teeming passion.

The Bronx native's tenth LP is consumed by legacy: his lengthy career, his harrowing life, and his craft.

Time on Earth is an assured, soothing collection of sweet-tempered pop tunes ("Even a Child"), and ballads ("Pour Le Monde").

Clatter arises from songs and songs from clatter, and it's maddening how so many of them seem to randomly end before committing to actual endings.

Blitzen Trapper's Eric Earley performs the amazing feat of making alt-country seem fresh on the band's gripping sixth album.

Age of Transparency is his best album yet.

Fleshed out with sinister synths and laid-back drums, the Swedish folkie's songs breathe and groove like never before.

An anthology that holds its own against MacLean's "official" releases.

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

Don't call these noisy Swedes a nostalgia act. Reuniting with producer Rick Rubin, whose low-gloss production emphasizes the quartet's adrenaline rush, the Conspiracy unleash a barrage of topical bulletins.

Mountaintops has plenty of upbeat romps, but the most compelling moments are the epic, minor-key laments.

Transpose the communal exuberance of Los Campesinos! to the U.S. and you've got this quintet, who prove that sunny, adolescent, pop-rock catchiness will never go out of style.

Ferreira is finally fully reveling in the swirling cacophony that is her sound and her life.

Though they might always hit the sweet spots of DJDS’ first album, Stand Up and Speak’s comprehensive offerings--more substantial in structure and content than your average EDM--nod to the gilded early days of dance music across the country.

Void beats enjoys advantages over lesser Stereolab releases like 2001’s Sound-Dust by offering a rockish danceability they never explored. But the Faustian bargain also ensures there’s no easy pop song like 1996’s “Cybele’s Reverie” or 2008’s “Self-Portrait With ‘Electric Brain’” to break up the largely instrumental bleep-sweep.

His sophomore outing sports a looser feel tha his '60s obsessed debut "Tower of Love," adding slightly funkier grooves and hints of electronica to the mix--though the layered, cascading vocals still srecall Brian Wilson at his nuttiest. [May 2008, p.106]

Despite their wintry chill-out origins, Nordic keyboard pair Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland create smooth, sunny sounds perfect for roller-skating on rainbows.

Roan coaxes with an almost deliriously euphoric art-rock swagger, while O'Connor infuses every track with hedonistic energy. Amazing Baby are desperate to dazzle--and they often do.

If you’re not feeling Surf right away, stick with it long enough and it just might bring you to its wavelength.

Before Today still sounds like it was dubbed to cassette and left on the dash of a 1983 Datsun for an entire summer. Every aspect seems faded and warped, but that doesn't obscure Pink's savvy maneuvering.

Some marriages end with shrieks, others with sighs. On Loud Planes Fly Low, Rosebuds co-conspirators Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp set their breakup sighs to a Greek chorus of lo-fi keyboards, singing things they can't bring themselves to say.

The songs are actually strong enough to hold the weight of the over-the-top arrangements. [Jun 2007, p.96]

Both seem to be having a blast acting out their fantasies,, which makes Volume One consistent fun. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Guitarist Adam Kessler's exit makes room for a more overtly expansive approach on the Drums' just as solid sophomore outing.

Sheets is Campbell's hallucination of a cozy English garden party. [Jan 2007, p.94]

Fans of TVOTR's early density and difficulty might get dismayed at their gradual transformation into the thinking stoner's Coldplay. But it's impossible to listen to Seeds' luxurious fuzz and think that this is a band who mean to be anything but fat and in love.

I’m Up is not a major work in Thug’s catalog. It’s brief and feels disconnected at the beginning and end, and for the most part doesn’t exercise his considerable chorus-crafting muscles. But it’s a fascinating creative time capsule, and feels like a welcome detour during a hugely prolific four-year period.

All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ manages to find a balance between necessary gravity and inviting wistfulness. The message can be preachy, but the pace is conversational.

Peas leader will.i.am mixes up house and disco beats, Chic and Slick Rick samples, wonky Moog hooks, crunchy guitars, and '70s funk bass into one of the year's wildest sonic stews.

Their sophomore effort, the result of a song cycle commissioned by WNYC DJ John Schaefer, shows a thoughtful maturation from winsome debut Taller Children.

The erstwhile pixies preacher takes compliant care of Art Brut's ludicrous good name--rock-fanboy allusions and cheeky declaratives are well repped.

Embrace Maximo for being smarter than most or just shimmy along. Either works.

Second Hand Heart is a whisker less awesome, but in the last month only Earl Sweatshirt’s album could match its acerbic brevity.

While producer Budo creates melancholy set pieces--from the funereal piano of "Bloody Poetry" to the soulful organ grinding of "Heartbreak Hotel"--Grieves shines as a friendly, thoughtful voice, gladly ready to share secrets.

Slave Ambient feels like a more back-alley Byrds filtered through a gauzier Spacemen 3 lens.

Era Extraña picks up as if that criticism (and 2010) never happened. Some tracks sound 25 years old and they're one Martin Rushent assist away from being genuine synth-pop hits.

What elevates their debut beyond your average twee-punk rager is the gentle psych dabblings.

She follows up 2007’s covers and remixes album Yes, I’m a Witch with another collection that’s just as strong and intriguing, mainly because of the smorgasbord of indie and electro-pop oddballs and A-lister names attached to it.

Over punchy, driving riffs and crackling drum work, Stollsteimer howls like a guy with much to be pissed about, while the sharp production and dark pop hooks offer a vision of garage rock that's more grand than grimy.

The living, breathing aspect of Arnalds' music is more evident here than on his previous six years’ worth of albums and EPs, which makes Winter easily his most straightforwardly accessible and mainstream-leaning effort to date.

It’s a cohesive meditation on the legacy of avant-garde greats like Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt and peers such as Tim Hecker--and, of course, an essential part of Stetson and Neufeld’s own impressive canons.