Lead vocalist/head louche Greg Dulli's dark obsessions and predatory narrators manage to sound as erotically entrancing as he pushes 50 as they did when he was courting 25, aging gracefully like a snifter of peaty scotch rather than a cup of flat beer.

They vacillate between flotational devices and skull-crushers. [Apr 2006, p.91]

If this reunion... isn't a revelation, it still has its thrills. [Aug 2005, p.103]

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.

Imagine if N.E.R.D... were from France and used to make house music before going soft rock. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Pierce's flimsy voice and material buckle under the weight of the Technicolor bombast on Let It Come Down. [Oct 2001, p.127]

Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.

After a few listens, the line becomes representative of a larger realization. In acknowledging certain personal and artistic shortcomings, Presley has uncovered a hidden well of confidence and skill that couldn't be contained in his home recordings.

The pub stompers are as rowdy as ever, but they're balanced here by laid-back ruminations on romance. [Jun 2007, p.91]

Leave Me Alone is a friendly, enthusiastic album of coppery six-strings glinting in the sunlight with the more-than-occasional flat note, scuffing up the album’s already sand-blasted texture with an endearing scrappy quality.

Refining Gutter Tactics' murky metal rap with subwoofer bass frequencies and fierce drum programming, MC Dälek and producer the Oktopus still find inspiration amid the noise.

Ignore (or embrace) the similarities [to Spoon] and there’s plenty to love about songs as lightly brooding and likably grabby as these.

Whether driving a military tank through Glastonbury or recording a synth-pop tribute to playboy '80s auto mogul John Delorean, Super Furry Animals' frontman makes the gimmicky sublime.

Perfect for Magnetic Fields fans let down by 2010's concept-heavy Realism.

The pseudonym and title (a wink to Yo La's mostly-covers Fakebook) indicate how this lark, with oft-inaudible vocals, is meant to be held up against the band's canon.

Previously, that technique fostered playfulness, but Menomena's fourth album mostly just broods.

Like Animal Collective, Youth Lagoon craft modernist pop so perfectly of its time that we're hardly aware of how much time has passed.

Pulling a Bon Iver-gone-to-Walden Pond move might be grossly overdone by now, but Lord Huron has skillfully overturned the tired mulch in favor of tuneful new growth.

Much of the rest is hollow pop-punk; nothing New Found Glory or Simple Plan hasn’t already repurposed many times over. Without its F-bombs, the sugary title track could be a JoJo Siwa song. But as we collectively emerge (again) from the pandemic, with hope to reclaim some semblance of easy fun, Love Sux is a fine soundtrack. The production is slick, Lavigne’s vocal is unwavering and loaded with just enough attitude.

While that obsession with the "big sleep" gives Own Your Ghost a gloomy power, these cross-cultural pals might consider a less depressing repertoire next time.

But primally satisfying as it is, the band's meat-and- taters thrash leaves one hungry for some Mastodon- style lateral thinking.

This young band’s musical growth supersedes the album’s imperfections, and hopefully Down in Heaven will eventually be regarded as a transition to something more career-defining. Untapped potential is an energy too.

T-Bone Burnett's understated production suggests an aqueous atmosphere, with a few actual sea shanties.

Pretty Girls believe in anthems, which would be irritating if they didn't make you believe, too. [Oct 2003, p.107]

While Gap is tougher and more fun than 1998's bland debut, Behind the Front, the Peas just aren't that good. [Nov. 2000, p.209]

This Montreal group's first full-length features a slightly brighter, looser sound than their wonderfully sludgy 2006 EP, perhaps due to the input of Justin Vernon (a.k.a. folkie marvel Bon Iver), who coproduced with the band.

These Englishmen have learned impulse control. Frontman Eamon Hamilton's playful yelp has given way to a sturdier sound.

Sam Beam's breathy croon is as soothing as a lullaby, but just as limited--which becomes an issue over two discs and 23 songs. Yet that very sameness helps this patchwork of singles, soundtrack cuts, and unreleased tracks cohere.

Here, a founding multi-instrumentalist member, a longtime bassist, and several supportive additions forgo the initial trio’s psychedelic pop for angular guitar riffs and agile Latin rhythms that evoke an adventurous, timeless sense of fun.

Guitar-less but heavy on the organ, sax, and hands-to-the-heavens claps, this home-recorded debut swings like demos of actual '60s hits. Lyrically, it's less finessed.

If the least they do is keep revealing new shades of the familiar, it's worth sticking around and seeing this band through.

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

For all the banging beauty in its beats, Evolve or Be Extinct is too forced and uncomfortable, as though he figured he'd evolve if he just over-thought it enough.

Murdoch pipes up now and again, but he's mostly content to play puppet master in his own lush­pop cabaret and revel in the fact that he only has to write and produce these brilliantly classic­ sounding songs, and not warble them.

Most of these songs have good parts--they’re just lost in long, boring stretches of the band faintly nodding off to their distant, better work.

[A] pensive disc. [Oct 2005, p.137]

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.

A perfectly pleasant contribution to the mysterious forces driving indie pop these days.

Ultimately these would-be activists end up with more nervous bark than bite. [Aug 2006, p.77]

Though Django and Jimmie could have been a mere nostalgia trip, it’s more akin listening to your favorite uncles at family reunions, telling stories that they aren’t supposed to.

Sez So doesn't particularly benefit from the brighter light. It's all fun and harmless garage blooze--the bottom-heavy slow-burn 'My World' is a standout--but it's ultimately as trifling as their '73 debut was essential.

ANTI is Rihanna’s first aesthetically personal album, and throughout its disorderly roaming, it remains revelatory in a strict sense; it’s a musical step sideways but an artistic step up.

Despite the album’s cornpone reflex and occasional meandering, guitar-diddling foray (“Muck Machine” should have been dragged to the trash folder), provisions has its Southern-fried charms.

Sometimes Volume Two drifts in a Valium haze of deep sighs, or its lyrics wanly drain the fun out of romance.

It’s like a vacation slide show in which vivid memories turn hazy.

It never quite captures the other-worldliness that it clearly seeks. [Nov 2006, p.96]

The Diary is almost certainly for the diehards but even casual fans will find a lot to like.

The album won't hold you rapt for the entirety of its 45 minutes, but it'll never totally release you from its grasp either, seeping its way into your pores like an insidious fog.

No instant classics... but the productions remain fresh, hype, and kaleidoscopic. [Oct 2006, p.94]

Their diverse third release occasionally finds new ways to induce grins.

Full of playful swagger, the Kidz rarely let their emotional guard down.

His third solo album is promoted as "new classical," but "J. City" sounds more like a grievous stab at alt-rock.

[WE] is more thoughtful and concise about the proverbial end of the world. And as with all Arcade Fire albums, it’s an urgent, earnest piece of work — no less vital than their worshiped LPs Funeral (2004) or The Suburbs (2010).

The song choices aren’t a deep excavation from the quicksand of their record collection (“Friday I’m in Love,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”), and the uniform decision to do these all in a clean format with brushed percussion and campfire acoustics is exactly what one would presume from an all-covers venture.

Moodier moments respectably imitate Dylan and Neil Young, but often fall asleep at the wheel. [Sep 2006, p.110]

It's gleefully cheeky, but a little safe. [Oct 2007, p.96]

We are offered 20 more, a handful of these tracks bordering on genius, a few offering genuine yuks, and the rest sounding so half-baked they could be an ice-cream flavor.

It’s a commendable effort, with Cole putting himself in a creative territory to respond to critics, peers and progeny. His messages are timely despite the fact that they continue, rather than conclude, a larger conversation.

Seldom do aural hallucinations feel this triumphant--or this real. [Jul 2007, p.92]

Of course, it’s much too much, but the fact that it works at all is a testament to their commitment to well-honed rock hypnosis. Good luck finding the front door when it’s done.

Marling's voice, rich and tenuous, recalls Joni Mitchell, but her fatalistic screeds--sung over acoustic guitar, with an occasional burst of percussion or strings--owe more to Nick Drake and Will Oldham.

Hull's greatest skill is making his emotions sound as extravagant as they feel, especially when he screams.

More classic-sounding raveups like 'Last to Die'and 'Livin' in the Future'--a perfect hybrid of 'Tenth Avenue Freeze-out' and 'Cover Me'--work on their own merits, but we already know what these merits are. [Nov 2007, p.122]

St. Catherine is just as pleasant than its predecessors, but, ironically, its dusted-off, straightened-out recording and more substantial lyrics point out the music as, well, a little less so.

Wooly and long-winded, Weather Diaries gathers eleven rock songs of astonishing vapidity; it has the feel of a term paper printed five minutes before class and forgotten the moment of submission.

His avant-electro minimalism can get pretty vacant--to the point where you may not be able to tell it's on. [Jan 2004, p.100]

Mark Olson's harmonies are missed, but Gary Louris' shaky/sweet vocals suit the album's rueful vibe. [May 2003, p.116]

A distinctively dark, insinuating aesthetic of measured instrumentation and abstract lyrics. Rather than sinking all its resources in squalls of feedback and distortion, the band diversifies its portfolio by adding canny production tricks and keyboard noodling to its impressive resumé of guitar innovations.

The deadpan humor that animated the band's early werk is missing. [Nov 2003, p.117]

He fumbles the obligatory Canibus dis, and the self-aggrandizing title track, deftly strewn with fuzz-bass by London junglist Adam F, is mishandled by a don who's now too staid to come correct. [Oct. 2000, p.180]

Sometimes the best results, though, come when Kelly drops the exercise completely.

Pretty great for mindless pop-punk, in other words.

[Steele's] way-back machine is aimed precisely for 1985. [Aug 2006, p.85]

[John Gourley's] thin, inexpressive singing and gloopy lyrics lack the mumbo-jumbo grandeur of Marc Bolan, an obvious influence.

A curious collab from some unlikely bedfellows, these nine songs carry the propensity to become a gateway drug to discover legendary works from Lee Hazlewood to Scott Walker to Ennio Morricone to such modern askew prairie- and desert-dwellers as Jim White and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb.

It's crate-digging redefined for the chill age.

The title of Clinic's sixth album cheekily nods to the surgical-masked Brits' current, revamped sound--a softer spin on indie pop with their usual gritty agitation almost completely scrubbed away.

The new three-piece is no supergroup. Robyn’s best work rises above mere competence, and while every song here will keep people on the dance floor, Love Is Free transcends nothing.

The duo's effortless ability to plunder electronic genres without losing their identity makes Attack consistently fresh. [Oct 2007, p.111]

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.

Get Guilty dwells on the past, and that pensive reflection mutes the second half, turning Newman's boast into a wistful memory.

Their seventh studio album bucks and chugs, balancing the quartet's original alt-country impetus with Rhett Miller's love of power pop. [June 2008, p.116]

She's become masterful at painting in the blues and grays of everyday emotion. [Feb 2005, p.92]

This Is Not The World isn't quite the breathless playground once populated by robots and carnival kids, but 'Think Tonight' possesses a fist-pumping riff that's one piano short of an Andrew W.K. song. [July 2008, p.96]

Kudos to main Pretender Chrissie Hynde for changing the script: Her collaboration with young Welsh singer JP Jones feels fresher than anything she's done in years.

A disco-swept dreamland. [Aug 2006, p.83]

Black Dirt delivers sulky dirges ("Blood Moon"), alt-country hangovers ("Mange"), and funeral ballads ("Goodbye, Dear Friend") with equal aplomb, as their leader's bedraggled voice groans with hard-earned heaviness.

Mostly wordless and free of Birgisson's trademark rapturous build-and-release, Riceboy Sleeps is more ideally suited for yoga poses or total headphone absorption.

This is the kind of bedroom folk pop E's done prettier--and weirder--before. [Jul 2003, p.111]

Tonally challenged singing, spastic electro beats, and boldly nonlinear, ideologically sharp rhyming. [May 2003, p.116]

She tries to be jokey, warm, even friendly on occasion--but she also sounds awkward. [Jul 2004, p.105]

As is, Uptown Special plays a little like a Spotify playlist on random--fun, and unexpectedly thrilling at times, but jarring and never totally satisfying.

A record that’s more reflective and human than you’d ever expect from a band of literal cartoons.

Sunflower Bean have enough homegrown ability between them to draw up a series of immersing and original compositions.

The Kooks... boast an ingenious pop-rock sound. [Nov 2006, p.102]

While some of the instrumental workouts (like "Safari Strut") are loose and inspired, it takes a handful of appearances from backpack-friendly rappers Percee P ("Reverse") and Mr. Lif ("The Gift") to keep Earthology from fading into lava-lamp background grooviness.

Unlike Mirrored or 2011’s underrated Gloss Drop, La Di Da Di is where Battles demonstrate their competence rather than their virtuosity; there’s never that moment of dominos falling to their death or the mutated instruments and real-time looping opening portals to parallel dimensions.

Thanks to KT Tunstall's compelling whiskey-and-cigarettes voice, everything she tackles demands to be heard -- though not everything here absolutely needs to be.