What once was a one-man basement project becomes a full band to be reckoned with.

Black Messiah has dozens of false starts, short stops, jagged breaks, and backmasked bits. Everything is a little warped. But somehow, the music never falls out of the pocket. And in that commitment to upholding the groove, we find warmth and evidence that we're still moving forward despite the assault on our senses.

While writing some of the most accessible music of her career, she makes fun of the assignment a bit while completing it. The maturity of her songwriting voice on Rebound is staggering, and makes her enterprise feel like an emotionally embodied exercise as well as a technical, aesthetic one.

Evil Urges is easily MMJ's most accomplished and ambitious record, masterfully sifting through genres.

Fantasy's production is loud and proud, but also poignant and gripping, always hinting at some looming danger.

A stunning, sprawling sucker-punch of a finale equally amenable to die-hards and newcomers, Science Fiction is a worthy (if bittersweet) send-off to one of the most brutally honest, forward-thinking rock bands of the new millennium.

If Diane's songs are more accessible, they're still not easy, creating the Inception-like sensation of wandering around in someone's overheated brain, where urgency and a lack of clarity intertwine to disorienting effect.

Slowdive has outdone itself on its fifth full-length, Everything Is Alive, which elevates its pre-breakup work in ways that feel nearly unimaginable. Indeed, Slowdive in 2023 is capable of writing both the hands-down most affecting song of its career (“Andalucia Plays”) as well as its most in-your-face (“The Slab”), while also incorporating modular synths as foundational elements in its creative process for the first time (they’re the first notes you hear on opener “Shanty”).

To say that PRODUCT leaves you wanting more is an understatement, beginning and ending with EDM you can’t dance to, building and toppling all kinds of aural Legos in between.

He’s separated from some of his R&B peers, fellows who douse themselves with sorrow and express their angst through detached, self-centered screeds obsessed with how things should be. Sampha, meanwhile, has an uncanny ability to eloquently express the painful facts of life that we learn to internalize. ... What makes Process exceptional is its delicate focus on relationships corroded and fissured by time and unintentional neglect.

A collection that is arguably a candidate for jazz album of the year: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)). Branch likely would argue that this is both punk and jazz — or neither.

With Father, Son, Holy Ghost's exquisite, beyond-indie melodies, arrangements, and musicianship (the playful "Magic," the elegant "Just a Song," the fiery "Die"), he [Christopher Owens] and bassist-producer JR White flirt with perfection.

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.'

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.

Red (Taylor’s Version) is a highly rewarding listen for fans both casual and manic, bolstered by its excellent source material and Swift’s steady hand in rewriting her own looping history, with a few thrilling footnotes tacked on. ... Red 2.0 is another towering victory, which should be coveted by fans as Swift is surely already onto the next re-recording, furthering the worthwhile fight.

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.

The songs are flat-out rollicking, like what Fugazi might come up with if their tour-van radio got stuck on the classic-rock station. [Feb 2003, p.98]

As punk's dumbing down has proven, anyone can make abrasive music, but few can do something new and compelling with apocalyptic heaviness. That Portishead manage to do both 14 years into their recorded career is an unexpected triumph over the darkest clouds that have shaped their art and soul. [May 2008, p.93]

She’s got a superb knack for melodies, even if it means swiping them from Radiohead (“I Miss You” is a blatant “Creep” rip, probably another country first) and maybe Jimmy Eat World (“Silver Lining”). “Dandelion” is so gorgeous that anything other than teenage notebook poetry would wreck its mood.

Hynes impeccably orchestrates his jazzy art-funk, resulting in the best sounding music of his solo career.

An indelible quiet-storm jeremiad.

Sweetly alienated knockouts like “Ice Cream (On My Own)” and “Sometimes Accidentally” lend a gravitas to twee as shruggily out of place in 2016 as Tallulah was in 1987--and every bit as necessary.

A Deeper Understanding feels like the ideal War on Drugs album--the one where the songs are the strongest and the instruments the most uniquely cathartic, and with a mist that gives it all an alluringly blinding sheen.

Untrue deepens and expands his emotional range. [Feb 2008, p.92]

The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener’s emotions without necessarily revealing any himself.

A conduit for sound at its most expressive potential, No Home of the Mind squeezes all it can from the five-person form into something warm and full and unprecedented.

Yet if Johnson seems uninterested in Nashville's warm-and-cuddly act, he agrees with its insistence on crackerjack songcraft, and that keeps The Guitar Song from hardening into tough-guy drudgery.

Although he's stretching traditional, time-tested folk templates culled from around the world and back again, Tyler's vision is both distinctly American and deeply modern.

Japandroids fans will be happy to know that Near to the Wild Heart of Life is a Japandroids album, pushed to 11 even in the quiet moments: towering riffs played on maxed-out amps, drums hit with due diligence, big whoa-oh harmonies, passionate, evocative rock n’ roll songwriting about girls and alcohol.

Virtually every song slaps like crazy.

Throughout Grinderman 2, the guitars and violins pant and howl with a visceral, veteran's swagger. Late middle age has never sounded so thrilling.

Utopia is full-on music-theater unlike anything Björk has yet attempted, and the rare tenth album by such an established artist to genuinely surprise with unforced and meaningful reinvention.

Although False Priest, Of Montreal's tenth album, is easily Barnes' most accessible, you can still hear his estrangement in the unpredictable chord progressions, the anxiously whimsical rhythms, and the distancing effects in the melodies that counter easy consumption.

Wasting Light is much more than a salad-days nostalgia trip -- it's Grohl's most memorable set of songs since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.

Though they may take several listens to reveal their beauty, the payoff for your patience and attention is substantial.

Rounding off the edges of its tried and true punk-rock grind with the melodic and rhythmic tropes of '60s psychedelia, Unwound has perfectly re-imagined a sound that most art-students wouldn't even spit on the first time around.

At the piano bench for the poignant ballad 'Fix' and the stunning, assured finale 'Arc,' Blackshaw makes you forget all about his guitar and your earthly cares.

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

Kiss delivers plenty of unexpected layers, employed judiciously in service of Beam's usual ruminative ideas about good and evil, love and death.

A supremely dainty-assed achievement that jerks real tears. [Oct 2002, p.111]

While his 2010 solo debut Mshini Wam (translated as Bring Me My Machine Gun) was promising in a guided-by-M.I.A. kind of way, Father Creeper is downright epic.

Open Your Heart improves the band's focus even as it widens its range, ditching the harrowing, hacking-death-cough stuff and reaching for something more.

Where she once had a compelling songwriting portfolio, here she has a compelling mood. That mood’s best described as “content.” ... It’s not a belting voice, but it’s a remarkable instrument, capable of imbuing with winsome empathy songs.

The album, as intended to be heard, deftly captures the whiplash mood swings of a volatile relationship, showing how giddy exuberance and bitter despair can intertwine.

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.

It’s as good a model of modern folk music as has come along in some time.

Though Drake’s globetrotting is seeping into American pop (hi, Katy) More Life still stands apart. Its closest recent antecedent is probably Drake’s own Take Care, itself a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that pulled horizontally and vertically from across music.

Like Joni Mitchell’s spare 1976 masterpiece Hejira, Not Even Happiness is a lonesome travel album par excellence: a document of transience and half-formed inspiration, reveling in riddles and paradox rather than firm conclusions.

It’s a bold step forward for the now 20-year-old Rodrigo—an incisive unraveling of the chaos and disappointment of young adulthood, dating and fame with a side of sizzling with zingers and rage. It’s her Melodrama.

McMahon’s most transcendent statement yet. ... Freedom rings as both immediate and timeless, intensely personal and easily understood. ... Freedom exalts in subtlety. It offers powerfully economical songwriting.

Over ten songs detailing a young man's despair and self-doubt, he delivers a performance that's both deeply confident and convincingly vulnerable, replete with stark, piano-based meditations and fuzz-pedal-abetted fury.

It’s a seamless, flawless mix that in Moodymann’s hands becomes a timeless capsule spinning across the galaxy to rally any generation that finds it.

New Bermuda both expands their range and sees them coming further into their own.... Bermuda is ace metal.

A swaggering, electric, and passion-fueled statement that lives up to the towering persona being put forth at its outset. ... African Giant is easily Burna Boy’s most cohesive and strongest project, with even the diverse list of guest stars—from Damien Marley to Nigerian rapper Zlatan to Jeremih and Future—being used expertly without overkill. Burna Boy is the true star at the center.

They continue to blur the lines between art, psychedelia, alt metal, and prog rock with undiminished curiosity and skill. ... As with previous work, on Fear Inoculum, the band’s songwriting can at times seem like a riddle, daring listeners to lean in and figure out exactly what is going on.

On her excellent second album, she brings us the whole block.

The wealth of talent on A Seat at the Table is well-showcased--it’s among the most exquisite productions of the year, each track silken-smooth and replete with quietly virtuosic instrumental flourishes—and in service of a story of pain and healing.

This inspired, two-disc, 29-track set is one part musical grandstand like Prince's Sign O' the Times, one part marital saga like Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love. [5/2001, p.139]

The result is an eclectic mix of tempos and moods that maintain Kozalla’s sense of whimsy without sacrificing earnestness.

The band recorded in a real New York City studio, with a real producer, Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House). And the songs are even better.

Aided by producers Organized Noize and Mr. DJ, Sir Lucious Left Foot is a monster of an album.

The result is artistic click bait, and its genius and connective power is that it doesn’t treat music fans as factions. This one is for everyone, all at once.

Roni Size and Reprazent come back so fast and furious on In the Mode that their record sounds less like a jungle reinvention than a call to arms. [Nov. 2000, p.207]

It’s an album of expertly crafted dark-pop confessions with flecks of glitter and aspiration — a purposefully fitful project mimicking her racing thoughts. The high-gloss pop production marks Midnights as a sullen sister to Lover, her honey-dipped 2019 effort, rather than a successor to 2020’s heartstrung Folklore and Evermore.

Over and over, these songs reveal how a wisecracking record geek can still achieve rapture. [Mar 2007, p.98]

M.I.A.'s border-crossing dance pop is a revolutionary manifesto set to the victory-party vibe of the future. [Sep 2007, p.127]

There’s a good balance here: classicist in the Lee Ann Womack neo-countrypolitan sense, yet neither stodgy, frail, nor nostalgic, but rather as thoroughly in tune with modern millennial existence as Taylor Swift.

Accept its odd phrasings and vast negative spaces and Lorde’s sophomore effort reveals itself dark and glorious. ... The smoky, slightly hoarse warmth of her maturing voice immediately sets the new material apart from rivals, and from her 2013 debut Pure Heroine.

[An] all-consuming a ritual as rock music is capable of giving us, and also as viscerally, joyously life-affirming.

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

Kendrick is at his best when he’s rapping through the abyss, and better when his flow pulls in rappers from times past.

The ten songs here are a euphoric whirl of church choirs, lushly layered cymbals, poppy clap tracks, and heady psych rock, evoking peers like Tough Alliance and Tanlines.

On Reloaded, he's written perhaps the most vivid rap album of the year--and possibly of his lifetime.

There was little to nothing as picturesque and vivid in major-label rock as OK Computer in 1997, and it’s debatable if there’s been anything since. ... If OK Computer seemed to wither over its runtime, there is a more consistent, punchier quality to the second album sequenced out on OKNOTOK–full of big guitars, sweeping sentimentality, and drier wit. Here, its bold half-ideas, this many years on, sound better than ever, and find a new coherence.

It's still the best mix of fury and fluency since phony Beatlemania bit the dust. [Jan 2002, p.107]

An impishly brilliant 12-song set of scruffy garage rock with moments of dreamy shimmer, Monomania leaves no confusion about what sort of band Deerhunter are: one that won't stoop to conquer.

With Cash gone and Willie spent, hopes hang on Hag to deliver classic country, musically and poetically. And he doesn't disappoint.

We Got It from Here could’ve been a self-referential nostalgia piece, a militant call to arms, or a Tribe and Friends-style fame flex, but it transcends such shallow concerns.

They've also inflected the mix with OutKast's quick complexity; and, like 'Kast, the Coup have progressed from story rapping to more mercurial rhymes. [Oct 2001, p.125]

XTC proudly displays its roots while subsuming them into a larger sound, one that is wholly their own.

Planet Earth is a consistent, exhilarating winner from our reigning genius. [Sep 2007, p.121]

For a lo-fi project, Celebration is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts.

Ida Maria throws herself into every song as if it's all a big finale, which makes for an auspicious beginning.

In her tuneful insistence that every unhappy couple is unhappy in its own way, Lewis remains one of our foremost chroniclers of heartache and its discontents.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest distinguishes itself in Callahan’s catalog not just by its subject matter, but also by the holism of its compositions. Paradoxically, they achieve their feeling of tossed-off informality through an astounding intricacy of form.

Musically, the hooks are softer, the arrangements more ambitious, and 1960s British psychedelic folk (Fairport Convention, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle) a far more palpable influence than the Americana that fueled the band's 2008 debut.

The strangest and most ambitious album yet by the electronic composer and producer born Daniel Lopatin. For all its references to the past, Age Of is a distinctly 21st-century collage. ... When the Baroque arpeggios that close “The Station” enter a lockstep reminiscent of his synth-drone score for the 2017 thriller Good Time, for instance--it’s a musical thrill that renders questions about historical fidelity irrelevant.

It is exceedingly rare to find a producer who does so much, with so little, that he distilled from, again, so much.

In declining to meet expectations, the Body have gotten free of the potential pigeonholing that plagues both them and the genre at large, providing something so utterly resigned, hopeless and, above all, barren; the most exciting bits on No One end up heightening the frustration and disappointment we crave more and more with each listen.

Deerhunter’s inspiring and surprisingly triumphant seventh album.

It doesn't excite with sonic innovation and lyrical reinvention, it excites by just sounding really, really, really good, and coming from a voice that, in more ways than one, we've never quite heard before. And that in itself should make it one of the most thrilling albums you hear this year.

Though it would still be a potent political statement, Hopelessness would be something of a joyless slog if the music weren’t so gorgeous, matching the intensity of the subject matter without overwhelming it and giving the appropriate space to ANOHNI’s voice, which remains a glorious instrument.

Its long-awaited threequel (after a beloved detour for his Social Experiment crew’s Surf last year) hits less directly and challenges its listeners to engage with something downright lovelier than usual.

There's an exhilarating bleakness at the center of Virgins--the hollow at the heart of all things, nibbling inexorably away.

It's one 
of the most overly complicated hard-rock records 
of the past ten years. It's also one of the best.

A near-masterpiece of magical sounds that are both familiar and wildly new, a stunning blend of classic Americana and classical orchestration.

Radiant with apocalyptic tension and grasping to sustain real bonds, The Suburbs extends hungrily outward, recalling the dystopic miasma of William Gibson's sci-fi novels and Sonic Youth's guitar odysseys.

Forever is livelier, grittier and better [than "Be."] [Aug 2007, p.101]