Teens of Denial is an album that works until it doesn’t. That moment will come at a different time for every listener.

A couple of the drone bagatelles, though masterfully realized, break Gas’s signature hypnosis and could be mistaken for any number of Kompakt artists rather than being unmistakably his. But at best, Narkopop faithfully upgrades Gas’s murky fundamentals to HD.

Unlike many rockers who cherish childlike ideals only to fall prey to amateurism or whimsy, Ze is aware that kids are both complex in their inventions and earnest in their intentions. [May 2006, p.93]

Robyn achieves the sort of pure pop perfection that her more mainstream records never did. [May 2008, p.108]

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.

The best record they've made. [Apr 2003, p.107]

Given its songs' consistent strength, Rings' extravagant extras rarely seem excessive. [Apr 2002, p.125]

Optimistic, ambient indie rock that floats between the bubble bath and the deep blue sea. [Sep 2003, p.115]

Miguel has impeccable songwriting chops and a deceptively supple voice, not to mention total command of both.

It's a warm, lightly psychedelic sound reminiscent of British strum god Bert Jansch and the quieter moments on Led Zeppelin III, less a soundtrack for Sunday brunch and more a place to get lost in, though our host herself isn't interested in hiding.

Across nine tracks, singer/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger bounce effortlessly from fragile ballads to punk rippers to chamber-pop crescendos, somehow both fully in control and barely holding it together.

Alex G continues to find the sensitivity in rough edges, and offers uneven poetry for our own relentlessly uneven lives. ... An overarching commitment to juxtaposition and bricolage that’s palpable throughout the tracklist. In their brevity and slapdash composition, they feel like essential components of the Alex G m.o. It’s that m.o. that holds House of Sugar together, even as it rejects a single unified concept or “story.”

Grohl (back on drums for the first time on a Foos record since 2005’s In Your Honor), bassist Nate Mendel, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee have imbued But Here We Are with new levels of depth, maturity, songcraft, and storytelling, ensuring it is far more than just an album about grief.

The lyrics explore suburban everyguyism, but the choruses explode like fireworks over a church picnic. [Jul 2003, p.109]

Price lives up to the hype by marrying hardscrabble traditionalism with modern narratives on her debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.

As the overwhelming bulk of Luxury Problems demonstrates, the producer might've learned how to marshal all the dark, weird stuff boiling inside him, but he's not about to relinquish it any time soon.

From the vulnerability in Berdan’s scream to the elegant (no, really) arrangements, American Standard is never corny or contrived. It’s the year’s most intimate, most savage feel-bad music.

Both "Smokin' and Drinkin'," featuring Little Big Town, and the rowdy "Somethin' Bad," her and Carrie Underwood's retort to bro-country, feel forced. These are small missteps on an otherwise solid outing.

He's got an excellent ear, a savvy way with hooks, and an untrained voice that knows its limitations. [Mar 2005, p.88]

Bakesale was the catchy, coherent 1994 breakthrough--a missing link between Nick Drake and Sonic Youth.

A couple of wooly moments aside, Monroe’s third album, The Blade, continues a remarkable hot streak for writers Luke Laird, Jessi Alexander, Chris Stapleton, and Monroe herself.

Without truly breaking any paradigms, the well-respected veterans in VHÖL do all kinds of things well that evade heavier peers, never relying too hard on the math or surprises for a thrill. If anything, its 42 minutes fly by so smoothly you’re surprised to discover there wasn’t a hitch or even a dead spot.

Warm and inviting, his latest opus occasions swan dives into future soul, funky dubstep ("Dance of the Pseudo Nymph"), Theo Parrish–styled house ("Do the Astral Plane"), and astonishingly, Sun Ra jazz ("Arkestry").

By record’s end, Garcia emerges in full command of this mercurial spirit world—a high priestess with a synth and a killer sixth sense.

There's definitely something welcoming about Koi No Yokan's comparative purity, in the band's understanding of how little they need.

[A] beautiful if vague fourth studio album.

In its menacing incandescence, LP1 sounds like nothing else in the world right now.

Barring "Blade Runner," the best pop art by a former adman. [June 2008, p.119]

Stone Rollin's rhythm-and-blues revival can't obscure Saadiq's songwriting talents.

They add enough kinks to the old herky-jerk formulae to make their half-hour in the sun blaze by like nobody's business. [Dec 2004, p.124]

It’s rare when two creative forces like Yorke and Greenwood step away from their still-active primary band and create something this worthwhile on its own merits, and who knows how, if at all, the experience will influence Radiohead’s canon moving forward. No matter what happens, A Light for Attracting Attention is a most welcome vibe flip.

Injecting a familiar formula with a justified newfound seriousness, With a Hammer further cements Yaeji’s place as one of the most valuable producers active in electronic pop today.

He's still way too fond of show-tune orchestration, and then there's the tossed-off corny stuff, but the orneriness of Newman's now-64-year-old wit makes George Carlin seem like Dane Cook. [Sep 2008, p.120]

Sam Amidon works similarly quirky alchemy here [as Moby did a decade ago], reinventing public-domain songs (plus one modern-day ringer) as rustic mood music for watching distant super-novas explode.

Greenwood’s previous PTA scores provided feral atmosphere first and foremost, or in Inherent Vice’s case, a convex take on classic Hollywood film noir incidental music. Phantom Thread’s score, on the other hand, feels like another main character or storytelling voice in the film. Greenwood’s abilities have never served one of Anderson’s films better, or proved so integral to its power.

The album is claustrophobic and unrelenting, but also intensely exhilarating in its brevity.

High drama of the blunt, uncliched sort unheard since the Afghan Whigs' '90s heyday. [Jun 2007, p.94]

The album reasserts his status as a uniquely fascinating rapper. On Some Rap Songs, he’s making the most adventurous and exciting music of his career so far.

Whenever the party gets too polite, Gorillaz drop an unruly banger like the kaleidoscopic “Damascus” featuring frequent running mates Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def), reminding us that everyone’s always welcome on the dance floor.

American Dream is good enough to dispel all of those concerns. The passing of their imperial phase has left them like any formerly Teflon hipster: honest, and ready to move on from whatever they found at the heart of the party. Admitting for real that they’d lost their edge is one of the most interesting things they could’ve done, and hopefully they keep making more records after this one.

Despite the signs of sonic evolution, All Hands is mostly cut from the same cloth as its predecessors, with the record's heat generated from the braiding of lead singer Tucker's histrionic vocals and Brownstein's deadpan backup and everywhere-at-once guitar.

It's not gallows humor, just the most natural thing in the world. [Oct 2003, p.113]

It's a testament to both Cee-Lo's vision and the producers' artistic sympathy that the collaborations maintain a coherent, vintage R&B vibe. [Mar 2004, p.91]

His new mixtape's best moments gain their power from such good-idea/bad-idea indulgences and batty risk-taking.

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

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

If Slave Ambient represented a breakthrough, this one is an out-and-out star-maker that should rank among the year's best albums.

Across 14 tracks, there is no obvious hit to match the enduring success of 2014’s “Archie, Marry Me” or 2017’s “Dreams Tonite,” each touting a cool 70 million listens on Spotify — massive numbers for a band that began in the outlands of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. But each song has its place and raison d’etre amid this fully realized batch of tunes detailing heartache, lonesome fury and wistful wonderment.

Perhaps the most ambitious moment on the album is its warped title track which goes from a whisper to a scream when Eilish’s crystalline vocals burst from power ballad to an explosive Metallica-esque electric guitar anthem. Still, it’s the unwavering vulnerability of Eilish’s songwriting that makes Happier Than Ever most impressive.

With her deft band, the New York-raised, New Orleans-based musician (on cello, banjo, and guitar) pairs music from her Haitian-American roots with threads of its Caribbean, Latin-American, and African family tree. .... It’s the most engaging, dynamic and, crucially, personal of her five solo albums.

Tems’ silky delivery reaches a deeper level of connectivity on Born in the Wild. .... Her biggest, boldest, and most earnest project to date.

An eight-song, 34-minute miniature more substantial than just a handful of outtakes, but also in execution not as complete or united as his album-ass albums (starting with 2011’s Section.80).

Though crunching at their heaviest, the band still shines brightest when they edge toward indie-rock approachability.

One of the best albums from a restless artist who understands the ridiculousness of being a Restless Artist, but trusts that a consistent voice will make sense of his cross-genre meanderings.

They've never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world.

You certainly won’t find a clunker among Hitchhiker’s more familiar cuts, though few of them surpass the official versions. ... Young’s talent is vast and his art contains plenty of contradictions. Hitchhiker stands as proof that no matter how strange his creations might sometimes seem, he always draws them from the same well.

The first single's called 'Pretty Wings,' but the whole thing flies.

The 78-minute Spiral Shadow supersizes everything, from song lengths to layers of deep-focus space-rock effects, but the sprawling songs are still built around riffs as sweaty as a south Georgia summer.

Few of the album’s 11 ensuing tracks are quite as barnstorming as “Devil,” but the album remains gigantic throughout.

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

Aside from a new perspective on Myrkur’s music, Mausoleum provides a welcome diversion from the general praxis of live albums as we know them.

While Jonathan Meiburg’s uneasy high quaver has always generated the kind of simmering intensity that made Jeff Buckley so gripping and unnerving, canny tonal shifts give his introspective songs a bristling, heightened urgency.

It’s more of a mixed bag.

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]

The overall dark, diaphanous sound here almost oversells the title, but it's impossible not to get lost in 
the drift.

[Fox Confessor] shows that for all her versatility, she has a singular vision when it comes to her own music. And Lordy, it is dark. [Mar 2006, p.92]

An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]

The tonal palette is warm and lush, with a transporting quality that’s twofold, sending the listener both to the artist’s western locale and back in time.

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]

Daddy’s Home manages to reveal the most accessible music of [her] career.

As ornate and bloated as West's ego. [Sep 2005, p.99]

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.

“Mother and Son” plants its feet and doesn’t move. Much better is “Meek AF,” in which the electro-groove matches Grant’s growl.

While mediating the difference between bitterness and hooks was such a hallmark of past releases, it feels good to hear them find catharsis here, even if it’s in small doses.

The Hold Steady are mellowing, and it doesn't really suit them.

As concept and program, Sullivan's best album to date boasts every curtain call and lighting effect designed to flatter its star.

The libretto and effects boards on Sleep Well Beast may signal doom, but the replenished energy in the music feels life-affirming. Somehow, the most despondent album they’ve ever made still sounds like a celebration.

More prosaic and profane than many of his labelmates. [May 2004, p.108]

It feels more like a band playingto a multitude of strengths than the formal wrestling of Kid A. [Jul 2003, p.103]

Where Marina’s appeal lies in her writing her emotions large through her music, Christine achieves something more challenging and arguably richer in gleefully obfuscating hers--making her as difficult to read in song as on her minimalist and tonally flat LP cover, but essentially inviting you to come and be puzzling with her.

I See You is still distinctly and deeply an xx album, but in the gap between albums the group has found a way to move unmistakably forward while still sounding like themselves.

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.

With its intermittent clean vocals, abundant alt-rock solos, and near-constant warmth, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love qualifies as Deafheaven’s most accessible effort thus far, not to mention one of 2018’s most universally-palatable collections of heavy music.

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.

Tankian remains the sort of agitprop trickster whom partisans on both side so fthe aisle are wise to distrust. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Whether the devastation of the aforementioned accident has imbued Baizley with new life, or his dual successes in the arts are just making him a fuller person, somehow Purple is still heavier than Yellow & Green despite being a leaner machine.

The dreamy project leaves the snide social critiques and radicalisms to the wayside for 36 minutes that feel of its own realm, where the dichotomies and bodily desire feel self-contained. The intimacy is never lost within the set’s high concept: For an album centered on lonesomeness, Aromanticism feels warm.

There's a nifty kind of egolessness about the NPs: They're team players in a way that few other bands are right now. [Aug 2005, p.93]

This guy has written 40-plus albums of material, so it's saying something that Benji is one of his more challenging listens.

Subtle... build their hybrid from a quarter century of pop and college radio, then animate it with a megawatt jolt of race/class anxiety. [Dec 2006, p.100]

The strongest [tracks]... get to Smith's best impulse: a willingness to find the innocence in life. [May 2007, p.94]

If you come to this collection strictly as a fan of one particular period, you may have to work to appreciate the others. An Artist’s Legacy is certainly comprehensive, but it fails to highlight any common threads that might help us navigate Cornell’s long and varied career.

More avant-opera than pop. [Jul 2006, p.90]

Just as messy as the Mescaleros' first two stabs at relevance. [Jan 2004, p.102]

With help from frequent collaborators Paul White and Black Milk, UK electronic producer Evian Christ, and crate-digging maestro the Alchemist, Brown brings his persistent terrors to life.

Surprisingly hot to the touch, Wild Beasts' third album does more with less, paring down the quartet's groove-inflected chamber pop to expose raw burning desire.

She simply delves deeper and gives what few artists can deliver: a self-contained world of warmth, crystalline detail, and intimacy that lies far beyond a Twitter feed.

Though she's celebrated for her post-1960 Chess recordings and '67 Muscle Shoals scorcher Tell Mama, her '50s singles, collected here, trace the development of soul's first queen.