The growth is immense, occasionally breathtaking, and always immediate.

Black twists prog and BBC radio samples into hissing, even "hypnagogic" hip-hop, then hands the results over to Brown, who shouts suicidal thoughts and sex boasts with wild abandon.

Lip Lock may not be the best rap album of 2013, but it's interesting, and it's honest. After 11 years, that's a respectable way to ride out.

This set--six meticulously documented hours recorded before his first proper album--is a progress chart.

The album is full of catchy guitar rock anthems that recall their '90s alt-rock heyday but also showcases some of the maturity and experience they've gotten since then.

These beats and bass lines make for the hardest body music he's ever produced. [Feb 2002, p.111]

The mall-ready hooks and occasional stabs at acoustic pop on Deja Entendu have been replaced by the sort of Radiohead-indebted bombast that begs to be played at lease-breaking volumes. [Dec 2006, p.99]

The endlessly quotable single 'Little Bit'--"For you I keep my legs apart / And forget about my tainted heart," the singer coos over spare electro clatter--is already a viral smash, but much of Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson's debut is nearly as riveting.

Mixing the lawlessness of Hank Williams with the Gypsy fervor of Gogol Bordello, the band's second album is a scrappy, vaguely deranged, country-punk mélange that goes down like an impeccably mixed mint julep: sweet until it burns.

It's weird to think that these Texas upstarts are largely relegated to the fringes of pop--what they do is so basic, so elemental, it's hard to even come up with a modifier to place in front of "rock."

Some will find it a disappointing follow-up to one of the great rock records of the past few years. Some will jump around and pump their fists to every chorus without giving the lyrics much thought; some will live and die by every word. Some will even find it all kind of funny. Nobody is necessarily wrong.

The beats are subtle, but solid, better suited to a small, late-night party than a major disturbance. [Mar 2008, p.104]

This slippery debut from Odd Future's Syd the Kyd and Matt Martians embarks on a journey into Twilight Zone pop, with a lovelorn story arc that transitions from giddy crushing to it's-over melancholia.

Keenan sometimes winks too much, but he knows when to pull back from the brink of ridiculousness. [Dec 2007, p.125]

His songwriting is sharper than you might expect. [Dec 2002, p.141]

Masters of atmospheric storytelling since the early '90s, England's Tindersticks showcase the shivery yet forthright murmur of Stuart Staples.

Its stakes are a little lower, and he’s no longer revealing grand truths about life, but documenting once-dire realities from a rosier lens is still a worthwhile undertaking.

This is music for flash mobs, a valentine to crowdsourcing, and a public engagement proposal to the universe.

Featuring 10 tracks of gooey, dislocated goodness, its gravity-free atmospherics are just right for soundtracking summer moon treks, intergalactic windsurfing, and asteroid volleyball. Down to earth it is not: These deep but compact space jams can't get much higher.

While Purple Reign is not a masterpiece, it is a thoughtful, if slight adjustment on the lens of where Future stands, at a crucial moment in his career.

For their second album as a duo, longtime collaborator John Parish gave Harvey finished songs to write lyrics for, and his sometimes brittle, sometimes thundering guitar work provides the skeleton for an array of fleshly narrators.

If it sounds about as much fun as, say, watching CNBC, rest assured, dude's got a tighter flow than Larry Kudlow.

With Bazan's husky baritone, Strange Negotiations suggests an Americana vet like John Hiatt more than an indie lifer. But the change serves him well on "Eating Paper," which works simple wonders with a chunky guitar riff and a steady cowbell, just as the Lord intended.

Just as his piercing voice and languid tunes echo Neil Young's rustic side, a Neil-like tough-mindedness runs through Green's stark meditations, which confront despair head on.

There's not much emotional nuance in Ray LaMontagne's fourth album, which maintains a brokenhearted downer elegance, similar to Neil Young at his most somber and sepia-toned, sung in a beautiful wail that Van Morrison might envy.

It’s far more interesting and hard-hitting, with bizarre hooks where you least expect.... Taken as a whole, The Powers That B (what a title, right?) suffers from the typical overlong-yet-undercooked double-album dilemma that makes it hard to imagine playing either side in a year that isn’t 2015.

Given Holy Ghost’s two-pronged creation (unlike Lukens, Ewald wrote his contributions before Modern Baseball hit the studio), it’s impressive that the finished product sounds as cohesive as it does. That certainly speaks to the guys’ artistic connection and overall friendship. The union might be even cleaner, though, if the songwriting had been more of a collaboration rather than two separate auteurs’ A-side/B-side project.

Peanut Butter is far more self-aware, and that leads to music with greater resonance and variety.

This dense, complex document is an impressive display of vitality by the Athens, Georgia–based Elephant 6 collective, as Will Cullen Hart of the late Olivia Tremor Control weds that band’s bizarre breakdowns with Apples in Stereo’s earnest tunefulness.

No myths to sell, just the idea of a working rock band reclaiming what's left of a center-right boomer rock coalition. Hynoptic Eye gets my vote.

This horribly named duo's towering pop songs are buried so deep in reverberating juju that it's sometimes hard to follow them.

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

100th Window is a masterpiece of haunted sonics. But the spirit of community that once warmed this band's angsty soul is missing. [March 2003, p.117]

This Gift flags halfway through when an odd excursion into retro-'60s twaddle gums up the works. [Feb 2008, p.97]

the monster of folk's slow-jamming, white-suited funk would seem fresher and riskier (at least in this godless era) if Matthew E. White, another Southerner with that old-time religion/romance on his mind, hadn't carved out similar turf on last year's equally ambitious and somewhat superior Big Inner.

These Los Angelenos deliver a brash follow-up to 2006's platinum-selling "15." Spewing filthy oaths and sweet promises, sometimes in the same line, frontman Josh Todd does his best to give misogyny a good name.

The band's freak-out, slacker glam jams return, but it's Earley's comparatively focused alt-country side that impresses.

Built to Spill used to grab for structure, dividing albums between compact songs and epic gushers; now the songs themselves throb like big guitar solos. [Aug 2001, p.137]

When it all cooks properly, as on the sultry, sweaty "Number One," Jackson's retro pastiches generate steam heat. [May 2002, p.125]

No one song sticks out so prominently this time around, but that’s just because Star Wars works so well as a cohesive whole.

What we have is an album that’s mostly pretty good. It’s certainly an improvement over Tha Carter IV--likely his least memorable album ever--but it’s also not a record that is going to reignite a second peak from Wayne, if that was the hope.

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.

These arch Frenchmen make precision-tooled pop that somehow retains a sense of urgency and playfulness--an impressive balancing act consistently slam-dunked by effortlessly ingratiating choruses.

Blessed feels more like a country-blues toast to the pissed-off side of interpersonal relations, set to coproducer Don Was' sturdy barroom roots rock. And Williams calls 'em like she feels 'em.

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

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

As before, the least substantial choruses often repeat the longest, but it's a shortcoming offset by archly charming verses flaunting byzantine puns and rhymes that prove the Maels are as ambitiously eccentric as ever.

Extraordinarily irrational and willfully convoluted, Jhelli Beam is avant-rap as quantum physics. Hopefully, his choir gets it.

So strength meets strength on this unusual album-length remix, as Smith's skittering beats and ghostly soul divas put Scott-Heron right where he belongs: in the future.

Her extreme choices can fall extremely flat when she tries too hard to force them to be what she wants (or, to put it in Sinead's own terms, when she winds up coming off as bossy instead of as a confident, charismatic boss). But when they pay off, it's all worth it.

What a Time to Be Alive is not the best album of 2015, but it is the album that best defines 2015 so far.

[It] should have been the new Fall album. [Jun 2007, p.96]

Thing is, dubstep's slithering textures actually suit Davis' demented croon, particularly in the cuts produced by Skrillex.

It's the band's most diverse album yet—and, diversity being their strength, it's also their most accomplished.

While we're used to Common in the role of poetic prophet or self-righteous rhyme slayer, Universal Mind Control is primarily a rhythmic celebration, paying tribute to Afrika Bambaataa and Jonzun Crew jams.

No matter the new producer (Steve Albini), new label, or new percussionist (Emil Amos replacing Chris Hakius), Om's droning bass/drum take on heavy metal still resounds.

Reprising the underground all-star lineup from Chesnutt’s 2007 opus "North Star Deserter" (Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion) yields similar results.

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

By any math, though, Candidate Waltz is a solid entry point, showcasing the band's mid-tempo stomps (reliably 4/4, despite the title) and Johnson's Zevon-cribbing rasp and wit.

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.

Turner's keen lyrical skills have outpaced the band's musical development, and the ultimate role of guitars (which aren't crucial here) has yet to be determined. But if you want expertly creeping unease, dive in.

Chapter 2 doesn't merely document; it selects tracks that hold together as an album. [Nov 2006, p.104]

You don't have to know Cody ChesnuTT's back story to appreciate all this--the journey is right there in the lyrics.

Every sweetly conflicted track sounds almost exactly the same, but his perverse playfulness makes that limitation almost feel like liberation.

Getting away from his brother really does seem to make Liam happy.

Despite the fact that Carnell appears on the cover of his own record drained of both pigment and life, this record’s full of both--moments of calm that justify the storm, peaceful lapping waves that follow the tempest.

Black Dice are the perpetually esoteric older Crumb brother Charles: inscrutable, agoraphobic, undeniably brilliant but just as undeniably demented. All descriptions apply to their fifth album, with each track bursting at the seams with warped sounds.

Rarely has dispiritedness sounded so uplifting. [Mar 2007, p.88]

Sometimes the results are stunning ("Hearts of Love"); elsewhere, the barrage of studio effects leaves you wondering if they're merely covering up crap songs. Either way, Sleep Forever never bores.

Open Mike Eagle’s momentum has raised anticipation for his fifth collaborative full-length (and ninth album altogether), Hella Personal Film Festival, this time made with British producer and vocalist Paul White. But he doesn’t quite scale up his political and personal concerns. Instead, he gives us more modest delights.

Ultimately, the most appealing thing about American Wrestlers is its lack of obvious guile or pretension.

She's made a fine, loud career out of channeling childlike abandon, and the rumbling acoustic guitars and schoolyard choruses (featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guys, Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, and the Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin, among others) are both joyful and foreboding.

In the hands of dapper producer Mark Ronson, the glibly sloppy, lo-fi brats are almost sculpted into garage-punk sophistication, adding extended psychedelic guitar lines, fleshed-out percussion, even retro-soul sax.

Bassist Ariana Murray steps up to provide sonic stability. [Sep 2007, p.129]

The Melodic Blue has little else in common with The Massacre, but the former’s fascination with the latter may help to map out the sprawl of his debut studio album. ... Throughout the project, Keem’s production is often as bold as his lyrics.

Alternating meticulous power pop ("Measure") and anxious aloofness ("Let's Write a Book") with relaxed twang ("Clear Water") and pliant balladry ("Curves of the Needle"), the Brewises seek a certain balance on Measure. But over this geekily ambitious 20-song double album, that effort proves entertainingly futile.

The album's first half is suffused with a longing that flits between hopeful and resigned, unsure which is the worse fate. At other times, she sounds a little exasperated--mournful even--but throughout, her elegant arrangements remain taut and full of energy.

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.

Employing a variety of producers, Everything undertakes a cathartic reinvention via late-night, sex-driven trips through dim, sweaty basement parties.

At an hour and 45 minutes, it’s a lot. But throw QC’s formidable team at streaming services and something will probably stick. ... For anyone willing to take the full plunge, it’s a mostly satisfying chance to hear the sound of contemporary rap evolving in real time.

Doing away with his human human voice entirely in favor of an android’s syrupy drawl would seem like a logical next step for Sakamoto’s music, and it’s tempting to wonder what Love If Possible would sound like if he’d further indulged his more experimental tendencies.

It's a small, controlled, uncommonly focused album, by an artist well into the kind of middle age that prizes refinement and brevity.

Defying logic, the famously productive Robert Pollard is getting even more prolific with age.

Chopped gives a thrilling, real-time glimpse into one of indie's true adventurers creating her legacy on the fly.

Knopf’s unpredictable melodies and funky orchestral arrangements (played by 35 indie- rock acquaintances!) keep tracks like 'I Say Fever' and 'Always Right' lively, resulting in an album that leans more toward epic than emo.

Slow burners like "Dying Slowly" and "Sweet Release" smolder like Chesterfields in the rain. [Sep 2001, p.164]

When any of Hinterland‘s nine disco-punk tracks gets in the pocket, the bass, guitar, and drums could run out for a half-hour, remaining insistent in their funk without breaking stride or sagging in momentum.

Sometimes, as on the Velvets-y vacuum of "Evol," the trio merely imitate instead of inhabit. But those moments are redeemed by many others that prove original thoughts aren't always necessary for a gritty good time.

Essentially a synthesis of the various phases of the band's career. [Jul 2006, p.85]

Much has been made of Yelawolf's Southern rock fandom, but Radioactive is more an ode to the Southern hip-hop movement that started to seep across the world a decade ago.

The product of a joyously short attention span. [Jul 2007, p.92]

Bragg gets the balance of message and music just about right. [May 2008, p.94]

The title track is a garrulously burbling treat, but the piano-led whale song 'Seal Eyeing' reveals the group as comfy at the deep end of their sound pool.

He sounds too lecherously happy to reach the emotional depth of his best work, but for lessons in proto-Brit-rock, he remains a top authority. [June 2008, p.119]

Moonwink's manic tunes are miniature rock'n'roll extravaganzas, with intricate melodies and airtight, detailed arrangements providing a dramatic setting for chamingly woozy singer Nick Krill. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Laufer flushes out the dark corners of last year’s blushingly sexy No More EP with velvet-voiced rapper Jeremih, turning it into his most ambitious and cinematic album yet.

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.

Their creepy, absorbing third album brims with the brittle pop practiced by everyone from Sparks to Arcade Fire. [Nov. 2007, p.125]