The Cribs' songs hold up even when slowed down, and they're able to paint outside old lines with the added shadings, nodding to Sonic Youth ("City of Bugs") and the Smiths again ("Save Your Secrets"), while still delivering plenty of their typical Britrock momentum.

There are no musical clangers, and occasionally the guitar work is more ambitious than it needs to be. Bryan’s voice, when it is low and slow, is more exciting than his bro-holler, but both are pleasure for pleasure’s sake--and pleasure is enough reason to listen to this collection.

The Fragile Army trades the cluttered arrangements... of their first two albums for tightly focused orchestral pop with big Technicolor hooks. [Jul 2007, p.102]

Slight echoes of her past work seep through, but mostly she's casting a refreshing new spell. [Nov 2007, p.125]

Not all moods suit Andersson--the sultry, overdramatic 'Locusts Are Gossiping' falls flat--but she builds enough goodwill elsewhere that you’ll want to hear her try everything.

The songs are foundationally solid enough in their swaying rhythms and sublime melodies that they don’t need twists to keep them interesting, but the care Emmy puts into the album’s crevices makes it one of the fullest-sounding and fullest-feeling singer/songwriter LPs of early 2016.

Super rates as less essential than 2013’s marvelous Electric because I don’t hear another “Thursday” or “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct,” no grand conceptual coups like their Springsteen cover.

Unshackled again from the need to craft radio-­ready riffs, the guitarist unfurls long­-winded but beguiling keepers.

Well known as purveyors of viscous guitar sludge, the duo of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson expand their ambitions and make some startling jazz-ensemble noises on their seventh album.

Compared to the sleek, grandiose flash of Coldplay's last two albums—Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto, both underlined by help from Brian Eno--Ghost Stories feels as melancholically light and airy as Parachutes, while ironically sounding more like Eno.

Player Piano's handcrafted tales of loneliness and bad romance draw quiet power from Hawk's charmingly reedy vocals, while the layered synths and other scruffy keyboards evoke subliminal longings and anxieties.

Only a snob could hate these 11 songs, which wear their bright, adrenalized grooves, lucid melodies, and arena-ready choruses the way the Hi-Fi boys wear their vintage Poison T-shirts: proudly and without a shred of irony. [Mar 2003, p.119]

Wallentin has reined in her seductive-foghorn voice, and Wildbirds & Peacedrums are a more subtly compelling band for it.

Believe it or not, though, this appealingly lightweight set of funky robo-rock jams actually makes good on Homme's promise.

The Mountain Will Fall is only somewhat transcendent in its quiet moments, and the highs are too few and ephemeral. It’s quaint--a step away from the zeitgeist, but not quite future enough.

Elegant and nimble songs that are intricate in their beauty and restless in their heartbreak.

Campaign--a mixtape in name that feels not quite like a mixtape but not exactly like an album, either--is at its best when it carries on that tradition of richness of sound as a virtue in and of itself.

Lindstrom is becoming increasingly diverse; but his style is immediately recognizable--probably as good a proof of artistic development as there is. Cheap and dirty, he still shines.

Given time, Isbell could be roots rock's Flannery O'Connor. [Aug 2007, p.102]

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]

Occasionally, you wish Peñate would just calm down already -- even the ballads feel a little rushed -- but his ordinarybloke vocals and eager hooks never fail to please.

His latest release (aided by fellow Texans Okkervil River) is wizened and epic, marked by squealing guitars and a deep wistfulness.

The music might be prime kicking-back fare, but that doesn't mean Braids can't sneak some gentle urgency into the mix as well.

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

Just as winningly sloppy as its source material. [Nov 2006, p.104]

Even when Electrelane ditch the cheer completely, they inspire more smiles than growls. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Bright, anxious pop-rock melodies that pulse with a geeky charm. [Sep 2006, p.114]

"I know it sounds strange," chirps mullet-rockin' Yo-Landi Vi$$er in "Rich Bitch," "but I used to count change." In fact, that's one of the more credible claims on this South African rave-rap crew's delightfully low-rent debut.

As deft revivalists of “country” in all its forms, the four guys in Deer Tick are entitled to wallow. Luckily, though, their second album delivers doses of pop buoyancy.

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

Supergrass' Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey deliver 12 blasts of stylistic tinkering that never subsume the songs' original intent: to rock.

Amid overwrought theatrical gestures, MJB still finds a slinky groove.

Belle and Sebastian's latest full-length succeeds in pointing out societal injustices with just enough sweetness to lighten the bitter frustration lurking within. And yet, at times the endless flutes, synths, and strings risk of giving the listener a cavity.

While the band itself might still be metal newcomers, their music goes down like an aged mead, and Void Worship is an early contender to be one of 2014's most satisfying drams of doom.

This is Jonas’ complication: talking his way into, and then through, sexual minefields. The theme suits his peculiar pipes--the jutted-jaw pout, the texture he scratches into his more insistent notes--which, in turn, take the burden from the compositions.

King Buzzo, et al.'s 19th studio album is downright sugary, a sludge-pop romp that mostly plays like a distortion-charred version of the Bay City Rollers or Sweet.

The songs appeal broadly, but they're tailor-made for two people.

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 hooks are stronger, the production richer, and the scale grander. [May 2007, p.84]

Rich Forever, the mixtape teaser for his forthcoming God Forgives, I Don't, is quite successful at doing nothing new at all.

Slivers of banjo, rattles, kalimba, and what sounds like a coffee percolator swirl across winsome exotica minitures. [Nov 2008, p.93]

Tidy and concise, clocking in at 43 minutes, it favors the diminutive gesture to the cloying, hammy affectation that derailed so much of his prior discography.

Buoyed by girlfriend and former Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian and ex-Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, Tare has plenty to bounce off of here.

Dawson keeps Thunder Thighs from becoming too precious or intense.

Rap's most hotly anticipated debut works best if you don't think of it as a rap album at all.

While the album is more a series of word puzzles than a memoir, it does occasionally illuminate the man behind the mask.

Here Be Monsters sounds like a fleshed-out band, graced with Mekons-derived musical trademarks.

Offering a vision more golden age than apocalypse, Thundercat's music sparkles, and the effect is both lovely 
and overwhelming.

Warrior is likable enough, but not only can't it match its predecessor, it's not nearly as exhilarating or disruptive as what fellow slizzered California trashdancer Dev or assorted K-poppers have done in the past two years with basically the same raw materials.

Thankfully, their debut album does little to clarify the group's intriguingly eclectic sound.

Beneath the arena-friendly sonics and the streamlined storytelling of Teeth Dreams lies the same old band that kicked off their very first number with a little bit of Mott The Hoople self-mythology, that fist-pumping Hold! Steady! chant within "Positive Jam."

I'm Having Fun Now is all whimsical, tongue-in-cheek cutesiness, but with songs this sugary, it'd be churlish to complain. Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and singer-songwriter/boyfriend Johnathan Rice have both had their moments of pure-pop confection in the past, but never as crazily delicious as here.

Fever Daydream is a surprisingly assured debut that, at the very least, evokes electronic music of the past and present.

Preparations will leave you dizzy and wondering what it all means-- which may be the point. [Nov 2007, p.124]

Nelson makes his competition sound like thin parodies... he burns the melody down to ashes, never letting a howl do what a moan can do better. [Nov. 2000, p.208]

Four albums on, Mike Stroud and Evan Mast have barely altered their instrumental electro/indie/hip-hop hybrid, except to expand and refine its tasteful details.

On this solo-ish debut, though, he gives that funk factor full reign, recruiting pals Karen O and David Byrne to sing over synthed-up disco-rock that's brighter and bouncier than his main band's anxious throb. Maximum Balloon deflates when Sitek switches into avant-cabaret mode.

Here, perhaps his most deft rhythm section (Clutch drummer Jean-Paul Gaster and Rezin bassist Jon Blank) acts as a liberating army -- trad doom, hardcore tempos, mathematic instrumentals, and a Fugazi lope ("Wild Blue Yonder") coexist perfectly with his famously piercing, rounded guitar tone. It's change any hesher could believe in.

The 14-track effort staggers in its breadth, especially since the album never loses its central through line: his knack for spinning pretty, heavy, and pretty heavy tracks.

For an album whose most apparent traits are simplicity and broadness, Miracle Temple's best moments are pretty idiosyncratic.

An outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza, Chinese Democracy feels like a perfect epitaph for all the absurdity and nonsense of the George W. Bush era--one final blowout before Principal Obama takes our idiocy away.

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.

Those Darlins open up their sound even more -- to '60s girl groups, surf-punk guitar, and song structures that imagine the Quarrymen wanting to be Patsy Cline instead of Buddy Holly

The album’s production also settles into more coherent beats, a more richly-textured take on the sparse, sample-based sounds favored by underground artists like Navy Blue, MIKE, and featured artist Pink Siifu, who flows hectically over the creeping funk of “Obsidian.” ... Though one of her most conventional projects to date, Black Encyclopedia of the Air adheres to the radical tenets which defined Ayewa’s prior genre-defying work.

Finn infuses his windy tales of youthful debauchery with a mixture of detective-fiction luridness and first-club-show romanticism. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Apparently, you can go home again, and it's still plenty loud and comfortable.

Though he sounds slightly out of place on the screeching "Lies X 3," standouts "We Live by the Beat" and "Kontrol Phreak" impressively blend synth-funk and neo-new-wave glamour.

This isn't a great album, but it is a good one, in a year quietly blessed with a small crop of good records (Metric, Gossip) with dreamy synths and girls up front.

Pink works best as a one-woman army.

Valedictorian frequently collides with bracing beauty, sometimes of the of the conventional sort, but more often like nothing else before it. [May 2007, p.85]

When it comes to trap raps, he's coined and refined a slick, successful musical formula that TM103, easily maintains.

It swaggers like prime Replacements, though with far better polish. [Jan 2008, p.103]

Journeymen that they are, though, McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) understand the poignant vindication in being remembered at all.

Matt and Kim (their real names) come on like a punked-up Mates of State--a couple so cute that you'd walk away from their frantic live shows feeling mushy, if someone hadn't just mushed you. But the love songs on their second album are for their home borough of Brooklyn as much as for each other.

Somehow the group manages, with masterfully restrained piano and strings, to wring joy from bygone heartache.

Although frontman Mikel Jollet still falls on life's thorns, the band's second album supports his weighty themes with more instrumental muscle.

With Strong Arm Steady's MC trio of Krondon, Phil Da Agony, and Mitchy Slick (plus extended fam like Planet Asia, Phonte, and Fashawn) dropping lyrical barbs ("Telegram") and creatively reheated thug-isms ("Needle in the Haystack"), Madlib chops up loops bubbling with quirky humor and analog soul.

Wainwright never runs short on clever conceit. [Jul 2001, p.130]

while he name-checks fiery saxophonist Albert Ayler on "Love Cry," the track's steady, nine-minute crest signals Hebden's return to meticulous melodicism.

The emphasis put on the soundscapes for these songs--unprecedented for the singer/songwriter--results in her lyrics occasionally getting buried under the synth swooshes, but for the first time in a long time, the majority of Taylor's lyrics don't really demand your attention anyway.

The bedrock combination of redlined guitars and Mark Arm's adenoidal wail has only been rendered more caustic by two decades of watching lesser lights cash out. [June 2008, p.114]

Flockaveli's flaw is not Waka's coarseness, but his generosity--25 guest verses from anonymous Brick Squad cronies suck up air instead of letting Waka breathe without mentor Gucci Mane's oxygen tank.

The results vary: "Lost Weekend" is some kind of romantic peak, while the Lennon-esque "I Am the Psychic" is not.

If Dirty Projectors are no longer indie A-listers with the expectation of having each album provide shapeshifting genius, the upside is Lamp Lit Prose sounds like something Longstreth wanted to make rather than had to.

Modeselektor sprinkle the Flying Lotus–style funk sparingly, melting their Teutonic cool just enough to reveal a previously missing musical link: soulfulness.

PARA, is both exactly what its name suggests and a galaxy of far, far-flung musical touchstones.

All 6's and 7's is an admirable attempt at balancing Tech's heavy-metal rep and hard-won maturity.

They seem to be having fun. [Jun 2006, p.79]

When pop structure interrupts the soundtrack-y vibe, it's modestly and briefly too much of singer Sian Ahern's sad, smok voice would lessen the mystery. [Apr 2008, p.102]

A 20-minute appetizer that's short, sharp, and impressively tart.

Gimmicky yet compelling, the delicate second album by Miami's Postmarks presents 11 numerically titled covers in ascending order, plus Sesame Street's cute 'Pinball Number Count.'

They sound like serious witches--impossibly high, fluttery voices singing mystic incantations over pulsing, six-minute jams that gun for another astral plane, and occasionally reach it.

They might not know where they're going, but they have no doubt they'll get there.

Each trek follows a similar path: a tumultuous hike through sludgy quagmires and craggy doom, culminating in a melancholic, melodramatic guitar solo. This repetitive pattern accordingly obfuscates the LP’s overarching dynamic arc, although the record’s not without its surprises.

Mogis never allows the arrangements to pull focus from the Söderbergs' vocals.

There’s hardly an original thought here, but with arrangements so expertly composed, who’s complaining?

The album's guitar- and keyboard-heavy production obscures some of his folky Britpop melodies, but it shows off his Bruuuce heart in a big way. [Oct 2006, p.105]

There's real drama in the band's sweeping crescendos and ringing guitar chords; there's something genuinely affecting in their newfound emo overtones.