Pretty Girls Like Trap Music, his third solo full-length, feels like a cousin to Migos’ Culture, another highlight of 2017—a bit more sinewy but still overflowing with seven-figure absurdism.

A sultry brew of Gypsy, Mexican, and pop ingredients that's adorably silly and unexpectedly moving. [Mar 2008, p.100]

[A] sensational debut--she’s evolving into an artist serious pop listeners can commit to.

These new songs gleam with nouveau riche sparkle. [Oct 2006, p.96]

Remind Me Tomorrow turns on thoughts of growing older and reflecting on the past, resulting in some of Van Etten’s most mature lyrics to date. Most bittersweet is “Seventeen,” which applies radiant clarity to the hazy, faded production aesthetic of a band like the War on Drugs. Even when swamped in overproduction, Van Etten’s performances are uniformly the best of her career, and Congleton for once gives her the perfect amount of space.

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

Even more than on FLOTUS, the vocal effects and electronic textures of This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You) create a fractured and sometimes staggeringly beautiful sonic environment for his songwriting, which is as strong as ever here.

Tokumaru counters the tweeness of his Japanese-language croon (plus the unrelenting innocence of his twinkly, trebly melodies) with arrangements that densely interweave oddly organic twittering to suggest psychedelia without ever stooping to its cliches.

Adam Freeland--the nu­skool breaks vet who broke through in 2003 with "We Want Your Soul"--dons a suit jacket and hires guns (Brody Dalle, the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, Tommy Lee) for the carefully concocted, pleasantly thumping Cope.

It's a breath of fiery air, then, that their latest is as close to a return to classic form as anyone could reasonably expect.

A collaboration that alternates from alienation and sadness to melodic tenderness, punkish rap bravado, and triumph in 23 minutes. It’s both embarrassing and gripping: never boring and often euphoric. ... It makes for a perfect version of a Kid Cudi album, with Cudi taking center stage under the guiding hand of Kanye’s stellar production.

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.

One of [the year's] most heartfelt albums. [Jun 2006, p.80]

At its best, Fleet Foxes is warm and cathartic, with all the hopefulness of a balmy summer night.

Though Moz's vocal range has narrowed with age, he still delivers brilliantly titled odes to depression and hanging out on his own.

Whether he’s teasing out the darkest parts of America’s history with an acoustic guitar, or allowing a genteel tremolo to ring as a meditation on modernization, it’s easy to get caught up in the disorienting, psychedelic drift of past becoming present. It’s even easier to just relax and float downstream.

Where the strong Horehound and Cowards sounded interchangeably enough like other White projects, Dodge mostly does not.... Dodge and Burn is one of their greatest.

Divers sets itself apart by expanding into new genres and replacing the whimsy of her earlier material with maturity and solemnity.

The music is propulsive and upbeat, but executed with the almost blasé confidence of people who sound like they have nothing to prove.

Even haters will have to acknowledge Opus as being undeniable for what it is, an iconic collection of 21st-century house music that’s so expansive and far-reaching it outgrows its very genre, unable to be contained within any four-walled enclosure.

The album's best cut, 'I Hate People,' is an unexpectedly bubbly May-December duet with Iggy Pop, but all of Break It Up ripples with raw power.

When Fish Ride Bicycles may pay homage to Chicago summers, but this duo rarely break a sweat, rhyming in dulcet tones about designer sneaks and tricked-out GMCs.

The band's interplay has grown both more varied and intuitive.

From beginning to end, Caspian use their structural savoir faire to keep things moving, rarely giving in to passing fancies or individual showmanship.

Their sound is still thrilling, but it’s an album made by men who have watched lives crumble despite willful rebellion and are picking up the pieces to continue fighting, even as the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.

A stylishly sweaty summer party. [Jul 2007, p.102]

The record works best at its most focused and extroverted.

Vroom Vroom is scintillating new ground for Charli, totally unlike anything she’s ever done before, and still quintessentially her in its streamlined, indomitable turbo-pop.

Music this hard-partying can make for a tough morning after. [Oct 2006, p.105]

From ambient juke to haunting, slo-mo house, their debut album kicks and caresses in equal measure.

Though energetic, their danceable chassis and sprawling melodies nevertheless feel weary, as if constantly grinding against some looming, countervailing force. It’s true that wearied, furtive anthems have always been Wolf Parade’s thing, but they feel especially right for these enervating times.

There's a hypnotic purity to Innocents.

Tago Mago is the messy one, where ten-minute stretches of nightmare sound effects are followed by 20 minutes of caveman groove with Damo Suzuki's caveman babble to match.

The CD is like spending a cloudy afternoon on Jupiter with the old man, his quizzical sonic tricks at arms reach, his singing as ageless and haunting as the ammonia rain. [Dec 2007, p.128]

Grim Reaper is an unedited adventure of blossoming soundscapes, vision-blurring, dissonant melodies, and cheerful robot dance numbers like "Principe Real." It hardly hits the same note twice.

Imperial Teen still sound as fresh and vital as ever.

The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums--a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified.

Eat Pray Thug is 11 songs in 40 minutes with the most emotional moment, "Flag Shopping," up soon at track five, paving the way for the intense trilogy that closes: "Al Q8a," "Suicide by Cop," and "Patriot Act."

The Ark Work is best at its most explorative rather than its most punishing.

Despite all this defiantly cosmopolitan music, Wheelhouse finds Paisley in bittersweet reverie.

The "neon" in the name is both a hint and a misnomer: This Austin, Texas duo's debut emanates bright colors even while the glow is muted by lo-fi haze.

For those who can keep up, some exultant and righteous highs await.

The male-dominated world of dubstep may dismiss all this as too lightweight and precious, but Katy B may transform into the queen of this boys club yet.

Guest producers give Frank its greatest highlights. ... Though much of the album is well within Anakin’s comfort zone, it also sees him trying more melodic approaches.

Consistent with his acclaimed “New History Warfare” series, it captures a human arpeggiator reconstituting post-minimalism, jazz, and metal in growling, moaning pieces with far more syncopated parts--percussion, bass, melody, harmony--than one guy recording without overdubs should rightfully account for.

Even at roughly the same length as past Waxhatchee albums, Storm feels more compact. The second half sags briefly between the undifferentiated buzz of “Hear You” and delicate breathiness of “A Little More,” but in the final stretch, the band pulls through.

Though made by only two people, Civilian never feels less than fully realized.

They offer a survey of rock’s history, but their take is revisionist.

The entire point of Melody’s Echo Chamber is for listeners to find their bliss while Prochet quests for hers. While Emotional Eternal sustains this winsome, pastel streak, it’s mellower, more assured, more grounded, far less a product of happy studio accidents than what came before.

Dear All Tomorrow's Parties: Book this band immediately and meet your future.

District Line is essentially the same furiously melodic pop Mould played way back when. [Feb 2008, p.98]

The hooks are hidden in dense atmospherics, but after a few late-night sessions, these grand, moody songs will reveal secrets worth waiting up for. [Oct 2008, p.122]

They're career musicians active since the '90s, but here, they actually sound excited again.

No matter how enthusiastically some claim Beck as a zeitgeist-embracing pop chameleon of the Jean-Luc Godard variety, he's far more a craftsman of the Louis Malle school: sophisticated, assured, self-aware, and incessantly torn between competing genres.

Broke With Expensive Taste is a project dripping in confidence, class, bursts of brilliance, and personality.

Buraka assemble Jamaican dancehall, Brazilian favela beats, South African ghetto-tech, and video-game ear candy like colorful Lego blocks on an earthy yet impeccably crafted working-class fiesta for dance-floor zombies and vampires of all nations.

An eclectic vanguard sound. [Jul 2006, p.88]

It moves according to the oblique logic of the subconscious, entering your mind through the back door. A newfound attention to space has allowed Big Thief to expand their palette even as they’ve brought the volume down.

Heartbreaking Bravery is both entryway and endpoint, a listening experience that's harrowing and gripping and, no matter how you come at it, moving. In other words, it remains true to its title.

Brilliantly unhinged rock spiked with R&B and power pop. [Jun 2006, p.80]

He's put together a record that's as full of unforgettably kaleidoscopic melodies as it is surreal shoutouts to Dolly Parton and Kurt Cobain--pom pom is just about as beautiful of a mess as Pink himself.

It's a major work, one that confirms that she's only marginal in the sense that she's vibrating on her own wavelength, way out at the edge of the spectrum.

Wilco (the album), the band's seventh studio effort, treats verse-chorus-verse basics like holy truths. The result is the rare rock album about acceptance. And it's fantastic.

Revealing more to outsiders than, say, that entire Nirvana box set, it revels in the seemingly defunct L.A. pop greats' status as old-school virtuosos who turned the new school on.

Forward, it’s enticing--but in reverse, it’s sublime.

Like most free jazz, it's music of the moment, a work of granular epiphanies that accrete, finally, into a magnificent whole.

Her voice is a bear hug in the literal sense; succumbing to it is like being carjacked by Patsy Cline.

Delivered in a frail squawk recalling Seattle singer-songwriter Perfume Genius, his coming-of-age songs carve intuitive, 
idiosyncratic paths (spidery guitar, buzzing electronics) to mountaintop indie-rock catharsis.

It can feel both more possible, and yet further out of reach.

The money shot is still the original 13-track album, which stridently argues (and proves) the thesis that Uncle Tupelo were the Velvet Underground of '90s alt-country.

Final statement Funeral Mariachi is a showcase of their lush, accessible side while remaining as peculiar as ever.

A confident and assured debut proving that home address aside, he fits squarely into the Black Hippy aesthetic.

Dose attempts to go everywhere and do everything. Opener “None of Your Business Man” is classic Abraham ascendancy (and the perfect anthem to quit your job to). “Torch to Light” introduces the double LP’s first moment of psychedelia, a new-ish venture for the band that’s sprinkled throughout. Mascis’s contribution on “Came Down Wrong” is, unsurprisingly, fuzzy, lackadaisical indie rock. “Dose Your Dreams” is disco. “Two I’s Closed” is a Beatles ballad. “The One I Want Will Come for Me” recalls shoegaze-y Cure.

Women’s Rights has its share of more complex situations as well, not to mention the occasional fourth chord.

Minogue delivers bliss like no other (wo)man or machine.

These parts slide and slip through and around one another, creating a shifting matrix that consumes your attention for as long as the band wants to play.

It's an album designed for playing late at night; even peppier tracks like the popping-piston "Burn The Pages" and the jittery "Hostage" have a darkness to them. That darkness might not make Sia the world's hugest pop star, but it sure makes her one of its more compelling ones.

Everything in Between is nearly 40 minutes long, which is epic for a band whose last two full-lengths were triumphs of brevity. And while 2008's Nouns alternated between rave-ups and bliss-outs, here the band spends more time, well, in between.

On Head First, the singer's bandmate-producer Will Gregory creates a pitch-perfect neon-lit '80s wonderland with Hi-NRG bass lines and plenty of that fat synth sound made famous by Van Halen's "Jump."

Although Feast comes packed with Europeans and expats (Butler currently calls Vienna home), the rhythms strike with Yankee assertiveness, the vocals now direct yet far more diverse.

The pink-slime pop of Mature Themes is made to epoxy itself to your ears for days on end.

Alright's sparkly high-life beats... all gleam with upmarket panache. But strong medicine always requires a little sugar. [Feb 2007, p.82]

Gone are the prior albums' "tasteful" (i.e., boring) slow-burners; El Camino's 38 minutes are pure thrust.

Recognizable shapes of jazz and post-rock often accompany Gira's baritone croon, but they're always delivered between passages of fastidiously crafted clamor that's as cauterizing as ever.

The man could turn a Sesame Street sing-along into a deathbed confessional. "With piranha teeth / I've been dreaming of you," he moans here with typical cheeriness on opener "The Gravedigger's Song," a throbbing, reverb-heavy swirl that... feels like the sort of love song someone might write just before pushing their lover in front of a train.

Here, on the band's first album in seven years, he returns with the profoundly playful shrug of a cosmopolitan busker.

Like Lifted, Once Again offers a mesmerizing blend of canny sample science and Stevie Wonderful life-band R&B. [Dec 2006, p.96]

The result is one of Cave's hardest-rocking records, but also one of his funniest. [Apr 2007, p.86]

From bracing opener "Precious Stone" to the chugging fan appreciation "Rock Crowd" to a heartfelt version of Gram Parsons' "Wheels," Yorn emerges with his most purposeful, affecting album yet.

Nouns evolves gradually, with 'Teen Creeps,' 'Sleeper Hold,' and 'Cappo' adding Superchunky pop riffs to their relentless punk vigor. [May 2008, p.109]

Deeply felt, gorgeously rendered folk-pop songs.

For Belong, they step up in class with producers Flood and Alan Moulder, who have overseen alt-classics from Depeche Mode's Violator to PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love.

Her voice and her lyrics are just a part of what makes Sleeper such a gripping listen. The record evinces a rumpled bohemian chic resembling a Purple Fashion editorial come to life, but behind that effortless cool is an impeccable sense of craft.

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

Rancid doesn’t venture too far outside of its sonic comfort zone on Tomorrow Never Comes and 30 seconds into each song, it’s not difficult to guess their structure and how they’ll likely resolve. Rather than being a weakness, this is one of the album’s strengths.

Occasion opts for Kanye-esque stadium-status beats, merry lyrics that include perhaps the only rap reference to a "bar stool in Poughkeepsie," and a joyous closing cut called "Walk on Air."

Easy Tiger plays like a tightly focused best-of compilation from Adams' past six or seven efforts. [Jul 2007, p.96]

Mixed Emotions falls right into place, then, indulging both musical and emotional nostalgia without falling victim to any particular trend.