M83 needs to step out of the '80s, and back into the future. [Apr 2008, p.100]

Widow City goes on for a while--maybe too long. But it's quite a trip [Oct 2007, p.106]

Sorta silly lyrics like "Rollin' fast down I-35/Supersonic overdrive" indicate the road that Phosphene Dream navigates: It's all blacktop stretching through reverberating vistas--ultracool if a little predictable.

Wisely, the album flows like a mixtape rather than a stab at artistic self-definition, with Brooklyn funk band the Dap Kings laying down a unifying groove and Ronson's love of vintage '80s synthesizers providing a stylistic through line.

It's wittier than it is moving or insightful, but give McGuinness time.

These trebly, trenchant Brits have truly gone pear-shaped.

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

Best known as the distinctive voice of backpack hip-hop faves Jurassic 5, Chali 2na is sometimes reduced to a supporting role on his solo debut.

It's not an essential set, but there's enough here (take the gallant "Grand Army Plaza" for a stroll or seven) to tide you over till the Veckatimest crew sets sail again.

[The] sense of resignation threatens to render Noctunes a laborious listen, but moments of lightness give the record a little bit of balance.

It's an LP that makes virtually no sense in the Pumpkins' chronology, but is a satisfying enough half-hour of Alternative Nation-era would-be-smashes.

Tricky reengages with his pain that gave him his original power. [Sep 2008, p.128]

When the messy, antic songs go pop (the Of Montreal-esque "Paperback Suicide"), they really pop; when they head into comedown territory ("Party Crashin'"), aimlessness ensues. Thankfully, Evening mostly partakes of the good stuff.

Here, they deliver the sort of mid-tempo, orch-pop fussiness that they'd been praised for transcending.

For his full-length debut, Greene teams with producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) to revisit his '80s reveries, crafting Balearic bliss ("Eyes Be Closed") and refreshing New Romantic flounce ("Amor Fati"). He even invigorates '90s trip-hop's head-nod ("Before," the title track), making for an even better coast soundtrack.

For all his three relationships spanned and catchy tunes composed, Gibbard is too nice to dish it out, and too bland to reveal any meaningful lessons learned.

Viva la Vida Familiar.

The result is seductive and understated, with familiar '60s touches. [Nov 2007, p.116]

A joyless slog through mossy folk tedium. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Nothing here quite matches the effusive, quirky 'Montreal -40C' from 2006’s Trompe-l’oeil, but 'Luna' sounds like Animal Collective gone mainstream and 'Dragon de Glace' sambas with Air--both fine rues to traverse, oui?

So much of Wolf is about distancing Tyler from the listener, whereas the vulnerability and melodic mirroring of "Answer," awash in sad organ glissando and two decades of unmet emotional need, is the album's truly shocking moment, in large part because it's so much better than everything else. From there it's another eight problematic songs until a pulse returns during Earl Sweatshirt's guest verse on "Rusty."

Hynes stumbles into typical self-indulgent twentysomething pitfalls -- his ideas can be overdetermined, and he often misjudges the thin line between disaffection and narcissism. Still, his imagination is formidable.

The miserable bastard can still write melodies that make the medicine go down, and ultimately, that's his redemption.

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.

What passed for refreshing last year is merely rote here. [Dec 2005, p.105]

Despite (or maybe because of) his peculiar web of influences, Beal is a strikingly singular performer, synthesizing various muses into something deeply unique.

He's just retracing past missteps. [Dec 2006, p.100]

While Atlantis sacrifices some of Rebellion's gospel spirit, its collaborations push boundaries with eclectic nerve. [Feb 2007, p.84]

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.

Songs sag and soar at once.

The result is a satisfying if not uneven release that never drags in its lament, looking toward the next ballad lost among the chaos. Richly produced fuzzed-face guitars and clattering percussion accentuate the band’s classic noise-pop formula without ever feeling staid.

Sweetly and unmistakably, That Lucky Old Sun limns the sunset of Wilson's career, while still showing how California is at its most beautiful through his eyes.

Issa Album needn’t be The Infamous, but it could’ve benefitted from a clearer and tighter direction.

Let Me Come Home goes widescreen with a vengeance, trading in too much of the band's unhinged jig and bounce for a more generic-sounding epic soundtrack -- guitar and bass to the front, strings in the middle distance.

Yet even this fits with Kid Sister's vibe of retro irrepressibility. Dream Date's every track virtually dares you to resist her.

Hooky, blood-soaked bad-love allegories such as "Draculina" and "Dine, Dine My Darling" (check the punny Misfits nod) satisfy like heartburn-inducing comfort food.

Peaches seems to be having much more fun with her sleazy subject matter. [Nov 2003, p.116]

If this album had been released five years ago, it would've been a blast. Today, it's the same new same old. [Nov 2003, p.117]

Barroom confessions that are more soulful, if somewhat less tuneful, than her day band's. [Sep 2006, p.106]

Pairing with producer T-Bone Burnett (who helmed 1986's rootsy antecedent "King of America") and a distinguished pickup band of country heavyweights, he gives his typically fussed-over tunes a tent-revival authority.

A primary-color blast of major-key melodies, airy boy-girl vocals, ringing guitars, skipping rhythms, brass, woodwinds, and rolling piano, the rather exhaustingly charming third album from this Canadian collective radiates with the earnest warmth of a child's finger painting.

Singer-guitarist Jeffrey Novak pulls off a neat stunt on the second Cheap Time album, bringing fresh life to the most timeworn garage-band conventions.

Accordingly, In Light is best absorbed in small portions, allowing you to savor the seriously catchy melodies and uplifting vibes.

Despite this abundance of raps about the unadulterated greatness of rapping, the Slaughterhouse four pull it off with extraordinary sincerity, and Our House avoids devolving into some tired treatise about how these guys make "real hip-hop" and other rappers don't.

While 2010 debut Treats was an exotic, overdubbed roar (Big Black-meets-the-Waitresses for people who give a shit about those references), and 2012's Reign of Terror winked through a heavy heart at Mutt Lange's scorched-earth sound field, Bitter Rivals is sly and sleek.

Though its list of guests may suggest a hedge, Echo largely hews to the road that's less heavily trod upon.

What you get on Perdida is a band that as they get comfortable with another new singer, is pumping out songs that are more reflective of who they are today.

Pretty.Odd lives up to its title because it dares to be optimistically beautiful at a time when sadness and ugliness might have won them easier credibility. [Apr 2008, p.92]

Heavy Rocks is a monolithic take on everything from trippy Funkadelic acid sludge to galloping Blue Öyster pöp to lightning-riding '80s thrash; yet it all billows fluffily from the same dreamy doom factory they constructed on 2005's Pink.

Return is neither a step up or down from 2010's wave-warping Causers of This or 2011's time-warping Underneath the Pine, yet it's not more of the same.

For all the squiggly melodies and bumpy computer beats, however, Smoke's strength is his spacey chameleon voice. [Dec 2007, p.126]

Food & Liquor II is fine and good. It's just not The Great American Rap Album.

To most listeners, though, Through the Devil Softly will simply function as a collection of breathily perfect lullabies.

A dark lark, but worth a listen.

Get Awkward's forced rhymes and attitude sound almost calculated. [Apr 2008, p.92]

There's no instantaneous party classics on Jack Ü – no worthy successors to "Turn Down for What" despite its obvious influence, but maybe a "Bubble Butt" or a "Big Bad Wolf." As a guileless continuation of the escapist, dub-tinged blowout that Diplo effortlessly pursued with Major Lazer, it's one of the beatiest prizes of the year so far.

Whichever side you fall on, King is worth myriad repeat listens: Dolph bridges the gap between his hometown and the Atlanta production that dominates rap’s mainstream.

A grand, sweeping album of heavenly melodies and rich, full textures.

Ultimately, Guilt Show feels about as transitional as its predecessor; Pryor has stripped the cuteness from his songwriting but hasn't figured out how to make his dispatches from adulthood resonate the way his teenland stuff used to. [Apr 2004, p.91]

The People's Key proves Oberst has learned to balance a cutting perspective with a bleeding heart.

Nothing sounds new, and yet it has no parallel in the old Alice catalog, because they were just so much weirder than we remember.

The group embraces its status as a classic-rock band, and make no mistake, this is a classic-rock album--one that evokes the sort of denim-clad '70s-rock vibe that Guns N' Roses and Foo Fighters tapped into.

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.

Sounds of the Universe comes on a bit softer, with less industrial guitar clang and more of chief songwriter Martin Gore's dreamy atmospherics.

Their first full-length collaboration since 1991's stellar "Mavericks" is a beautiful set of grown-up pop, meshing Holsapple's emotional directness with Stamey's headier approach.

The earnest but tepid Clear Heart Full Eyes, which as a solo album makes an excellent argument for sticking with your apostles.

The wordless howl of delight on the exuberant gospel stomper "Looking Up" is Everett's most compelling statement yet.

Let Us Pray offers a familiar Scarface tableau, but Pusha and cast (including a demonic Tyler, the Creator on "Trouble on My Mind") paint his fantasies with requisite fervor.

They remain fascinated by heartland mythos, but by becoming more comfortable with their glitzy roots, they've actually found the pulse of something more authentic.

Less of an anthemic, balls-to-the-wall affair than Elements of Freedom (still her strongest album overall), this one does have its own liberating, empowering charms.

The band is smart, then, to play to their strengths on Something to Tell You: experiments at small scale.

Ditto's huge voice can't do soft, so it shoots skyward on 'ove Long Distance,' and coupled with a mechanical piano and canned beat, the band starts to sound a bit catatonic. But the rest of Music for Men is a tightly wound disco-punk conjugation.

Prince’s main weakness is the urge to display his own mind-boggling talent.

First Impressions may not be the best Strokes album, but damn if it doesn't feel like the last. [Jan 2006, p.88]

If there's an ounce of you that's ever been keen on Pearl Jam, or even if you've never bothered, grab a pair of headphones and let Binaural pummel and soak into you, and relax about it.

Bloodflowers smartly pulls up the weeds and cleans a bed for mid-life flowers akin to Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man or Dylan's Time Out of Mind, though it doesn't reach the creative heights of those albums.

Even as Intimacy gets sonically or lyrically precarious--'Zephyrus' recalls 'Jesus Walks,' for Christ's sake--it does so while reaching hard toward something exhilarating.

Here, though, watery, joke-free confessionals like "This Is Home" and "After Midnight" sound comparatively adrift.

Bingham made Junky Star with Crazy Heart collaborator T-Bone Burnett, but the A-list producer mostly resists applying his trademark chamber-roots atmosphere.

Pretend turns out to be an enticing fusion of her wintry, pop-paradise homeland, and the West African musical roots she picked up from her father, the late Maudo Sey, all tempered with raw empathy; her masterful pop-soul captures depressive moments and makes them soar.

Though Blow Your Head leans hard on the Diplo cohort (Major Lazer, Rusko, Borgore), its colossus is James Blake, whose shower of warped arcade-game synths and butchered old gospel vocals is stunning--heaven for believers and headaches for everyone else.

Cherry Bomb is both impressive in its ambition and absolutely stunning in its aimlessness, weaving countless genres into multi-part suites but still coming off undercooked in its entirety.

Not long ago, Ben Bridwell's reedy vocals and slow-burn guitar were compared to Built to Spill's Doug Martsch; Bridwell himself is now a touch- stone. But when does "consistent" translate to "rut"? For Band of Horses, not yet.

Fender Rhodes–heavy groove of 2006's self-titled breakthrough gives way to more discernible melodies and socially conscious lyrics (see "Oppressions Each"), buoyed by soulful horns and backup vocals.

Equally comfortable with dance grooves ("When I'm Alone"), country-tinged laments ("Everywhere I Go"), and epic pop dramas ("Loosen the Knot"), Illinois-bred, California-based Elisabeth Maurus is a promising work in progress on this smoothly produced debut.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who listen for lyrics, and those who listen for beats. If you belong to the latter group, then Views will be one of the best albums released this year. If you’re in the former, well...

A collection of workmanlike whimsy... [12/2000, p.225]

You’ll discover plenty of laconic beauty wherever you drop into The House, and it glimmers with the songful club music that made its predecessor great for getting ready to go out. But a profusion of digital-pastoral vocal settings makes it unlikely to displace Pool from constant shuffle rotation.

Their rhymes tend to feed off settling scores rather than giving pleasure, and as a result, this group debut favors punch lines over crafted songs. Still, the single 'The One,' which emits a stanky, rock-starry panache, could be an edgy crossover hit if such a thing still existed.

The band retains the frenzied organ chug and indie-prog lurch of days past, and newish frontman Breck Brunson (who joined in 2006) is an impressively expressive yelper, but Ghost Games never skirts the border of sanity as much as it threatens to.

Over 34 irresistible minutes, Summer of Hate has as many barbed, house-party hooks as nihilistic blasts.

Asobi Seksu do something My Bloody Valentine can't--leave Shields behind.

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

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

Should these two musicians choose to continue their professional reengagement (and here's hoping they do), jettisoning the vocalists and second-rate John Cooper Clarke monologues in favor of the noisy anti-pop skank they helped invent might yet yield wondrous results. Less talk, more skronk.

High Flying Birds isn't a total knockout, but it should keep Liam sleeping with at least one Beady Eye open.

At home with a variety of tonal colors, Alpers is a basement Björk, stacking her multitracked voice until it hits the ceiling.

Upbeat sentiment is scarce, yet there's barely a downcast moment -- no insignificant trick -- and somewhere Alex Chilton nods his approval.