Both lyrical and hypnotic, Replica serves as a deeply romantic testament to the possibilities 
of life in the Cloud.

With compressed mechanical wheedles circling each other like birds on “Ghosting” and the self-explanatory “Morning Vox,” the machines pumping through Howl are the most organic you’ll hear all year.

Music remains the Coup's ultimate sweetener, and here the jams hit hard like the words--from the big beat of opener "The Magic Clap" to the grimy guitar on "Land of 7 Billion Dances," departures from the smooth, soothing funk that was once this outfit's specialty.

At any given moment, Gordon’s sing-speak Sprechgesang of catchphrases, commands, Post-It note poetry and cultural keywords (“Bye Bye 25!”) comes off clipped, desperate, laconic, near-death, dominating, erotic, craven, jaded, resigned, empowered. Captivating.

The inspired moments of sunny pop and weirdo noise seem effortless, but so does all the aimless jamming.

The desire to show subtlety and restraint is quickly overtaken by their visceral need to go buck wild (“Gimme All Your Love” is the best example of that roller coaster). While that pacing becomes a crack in the album’s otherwise polished veneer, it can easily be overlooked once you’re sucked in by all of the sounds and colors.

An emphatic and generally more unbuttoned sophomore project. The “surrender” here appears to be two-pronged: First, a submission to the songwriting process itself, as this record is markedly more explorative than the last, particularly in its crunching British rock sensibilities. ... Many of the album’s most affecting moments accompany her urgency to hit the road.

Sports the trademark soul loops, crackling drums, and underwater ambience of his best past work. [Sep 2006, p.103]

They almost reach the orbit of their sister band, the Flaming Lips... [Oct 2001, p.127]

EMA has crafted a wide-eyed, open-eared, reasonably horrified, digi-noise drone-folk treatise about the soul-sucking, privacy-wrecking qualities of online life.

A noisy, cranky piece of work. [Jul 2007, p.91]

The music is melancholic, urgent, enveloping. After more than a decade, her tightly controlled croon has lost none of its flinching effect to communicate shock and smoldering rage. Aside from sparking urgency and indignation, it evokes feelings the other side could use: humility, and shame.

Antony and the Johnsons' third full-length wisely focuses on the frontman's enormous talent, with Nico Muhly's classical arrangements plinking and waltzing but never overpowering.

Recorded leisurely over tea at his sister's place on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, Sidi Toure's second album is an intimate gem of bone-dry acoustic Afro-minimalism.

The loose arrangements nod to the American roots icons Sexsmith idealizes; there's tons of feel. [Aug 2001, p.139]

Radiohead have completely immersed themselves in the studio-as-instrument--signal processing, radical stereo separation, and other antinaturalistic techniques. Even the precious Guitars--saturated with effects and gaseous with sustain--resemble natural phenomena rather than power chords or lead lines. Essentially, this is a post-rock record.... Kid A is not only Radiohead's bravest album but its best one as well. [Oct 2000, p.172]

The first Madonna record in years that feels as effortless as the dance-pop of her Ciccone youth. [Oct 2000, p.173]

Although most of the songs on Patterson Hood's second solo album predate the existence of Drive-By Truckers, they'd easily fit on any of his band's records--same low-life characters, busted dreams, and black humor, rendered in solidly gothic Southern rock.

There’s something more filigreed at work: a thoughtfulness about the band’s mannered chaos as though they’ve come out on the far end of some mass realization.

These are well-loved songs that Ndegeocello loves a little bit more, singing them with a rich, warm tone (she’s never sounded better) and backed by a band who know how to anticipate every bob and weave she might make. It’s one of her best.

The richness of the music occasions her best vocal performances to date. The arrangements are airy with distance and light, but their architecture is boldly drawn: the basslines thick and taut, the arpeggios whirring and spangled, the guitars unfurling in a glossy neon cursive.

Over the course of 24 tracks, we get taut grooves set on Al Green cruise control, lots of havin'-fun-in-the-studio byplay, and the occasional spritz of rude fuzz-box gutiar to give all the gold-leaf detailing some shape. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2004, p.97]

It’s an incredible album strewn with highlights obvious and sneaky, the rare debut that holds up the weight of its backstory, with the added brassiness of assuring us that’s just him on the regular. Now we know.

The Moroder-indebted tunes on Real Life are more pop-friendly, but the chopped-up vocal samples on opener "Looking for What" are guaranteed to meld minds, while airy centerpiece "Keep It Up" defies gravity via handclaps and delicately chiming bells.

A patient, inviting album that feels like a fresh start from a guy whose recording career spans multiple boom-and-bust cycles, both for indie rock and the economy.

"Satan, your kingdom must come down," Plant croons on the penultimate track. Take that, Jimmy Page.

A visceral display of synth prowess that makes exhilarating use of contrasting textures and subtle dynamics.

On their third album, this San Francisco–based, Mark Kozelek–led bunch stumble over saccharine set-opener "Lost Verses" (which channels icky Young wannabes America with less success than Midlake) en route to a beautifully depressing array of funereal folk.

It reads like a book, its impassioned lyricism underscored by reverb, pedal steel guitar, and pattering, stick-clacking drums. The sound builds on the musical spaciousness of Ultimate Success, reflecting the environs of the Tornillo, Tx., ranch at which it was recorded. Indeed, the new album’s title offers a straightforward glimpse into its subject matter.

For all the deft, varied professionalism on display here, Lamar’s omnipresence on Black Panther: The Album might be its most compelling feature.

Breezy in its boldness (12 tracks, under 50 minutes), this is a heavily considered album from the only reasonable rap star around.

In the end, like her hero Loretta Lynn, she's the good girl who done got complex. [Dec 2004, p.123]

Her pop hits remain enjoyable, but what makes Feist’s albums hold up is the unexpected. Pleasure perhaps asks more of the listener than her first two records did, but really, the best pleasures do.

American Slang sticks to the template Fallon's been hammering away at since the band's beginning; its stories star the same kind of characters and its garage-punk sound still sparkles with flashes of Motown and R&B.

It's Dynamite's choice of subject matter that distinguishes her from other R&B divas-in-waiting. [May 2003, p.110]

Strikes the perfect balance between the pop-savvy shuffle of Lyle Lovett and the lush loveliness of '80s Englishmen Prefab Sprout. [Mar 2002, p.134]

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

A Kleenex-grabbing, chain-smoking, staring-out-the-window, in-bed-for-days breakup record. [Jun 2004, p.106]

She doubles the weird factor. [Feb 2004, p.104]

A short, precise album which is equal parts inventive and masterful.

The Danish duo condense pop's last 45 years into the pure, simple essence of an early Jackson 5 single. [Sep 2007, p.132]

While he’s tugging at strings that have been otherwise picked up by the stable of Berlin’s PAN (M.E.S.H., Helm, and Visionist) or his Tri Angle labelmates past and present (Arca and Lotic), his extreme repetition of these familiar sounds pushes them euphoric.

The band recorded in a real New York City studio, with a real producer, Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House). And the songs are even better.

Romance is zippier and tighter than previous beer cries. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois and recorded solo with a reverb-swathed electric guitar, is all about doubt and desperation, and Young is never better than when he's unsure of himself.

For all its obvious wit and fizzy energy, Tones of Town ultimately feels self-congratulatory and a bit cold-hearted. [Feb 2007, p.83]

Bottomless Pit is a rowdy and hypnotic 40-minute suite of alienation and controlled anger.

Their most fascinating record to date, and possibly their best as well.

Tinariwen's fifth album takes off on an acoustic path following the open-
ing track's otherworldy 
appearance by Wilco guitarist Nels Cline.

It's his so-twee-it-hurts delivery that'll make you feel you're at a roadside bingo hall in rural Scandinavia, waiting for someone to holler, "B8!" [Nov 2007,p.121]

His sophomore outing sports a looser feel tha his '60s obsessed debut "Tower of Love," adding slightly funkier grooves and hints of electronica to the mix--though the layered, cascading vocals still srecall Brian Wilson at his nuttiest. [May 2008, p.106]

When they ease back on the overdriven electronic intensity, Street Horrsing works tribal, tracelike wonders. [Apr 2008, p.98]

We need to find a way to smoke this.

Forty years down the line, Maiden has proven that they’re still the best metal band in the world; we never had any doubt, but The Book of Souls is one hell of a reminder.

Like a Postal Service for hippies living off the grid. [May 2004, p.108]

Don't worry--eight albums into their reign, Slayer still sound like Slayer. [Sep 2001, p.158]

This strange, fascinating EP dramatizes the desperate fumbling for order amid chaos.

A few tracks seem unfinished, but Deerhunter's obsession with oblivion remains as intact as always.

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.

This reunion with producer Hi-Tek, Kweli's partner in late-'90s underground champs Reflection Eternal, fuels both camps with smart essays on addiction ("Lifting Off") and celebrity culture ("Got Work"), as well as forced, throwaway couplets.

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

Sometimes the album sounds backward when it isn't. Rarely does it sound like one person squeaking out notes in succession--more like a bunch of dudes filling a tape with improvisations, rewinding to the cool parts and haranguing some hapless studio engineer to razorblade it all together.

They demonstrate their impressive penchant for writing a variety of songs that stand on their own, but also work symbiotically. COVID-19 may have briefly put their ascendancy on hold, but with this EP, Mannequin Pussy show that they haven’t lost any of their luster.

Beirut actually rock, in their extremely geeky way. [Nov 2007, p.114]

Triplicate is not a shining hour for Dylan when put into the full context of his fifty-plus-year career. But nonetheless, his insuppressible spirit is baked into every moonstruck moment.

Fully in charge on The W, RZA ditches the longeurs of Forever, borrows some adrenaline from Ghostface Killah's relentless Supreme Clientele, forsakes the Alesis drum machine, and returns to the crates to make the dirty, inexplicable music Wu fans want. [2/2001, p.106]

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

Rest’s intimacy contrasts Gainsbourg’s personal reticence, and softens a storytelling void that might doom a lesser stylist.

More than ever, Green is the surreal deal.

Matmos have captured with discomforting vividness the sheer surrealism of the modern vanity industry, the medieval tortures people gladly endure in pursuit of physical perfection.

Big Black Coat works best when the music is as committed to frenzied, all-consuming libidinousness as the lyrics, and on those grounds, it’s a surprisingly successful reinvention for the duo: one that feels more in line than recent efforts with the strengths (if not the tones) of their earliest material.

After last year’s uninhabited Kurt Vile collaboration, she has a second album called Tell Me How You Really Feel that restores confidence in her tunes and the way her guitar lines snake through them. ... Settle into Tell Me’s crinkled smarts and Barnett remains as observant as Sometimes demonstrated.

Though restlessness is the dominant lyrical theme here, Nothing Is Wrong sounds familiar and comforting (see the airy, aching "Fire Away," featuring Jackson Browne)

Pink showcases every sound Boris can make.

You're Nothing turns everything up--it's smarter, faster, catchier and noisier than their debut, more a Funhouse than a Rock for Light.

Nadler's fifth album benefits from a newfound directness. Over acoustic fingerpicking, splashing cymbals, and languidly twanging steel guitar, Nadler inhabits her strongest set of songs yet, pining in a barely adorned soprano for both lost loves and a conjoined twin.

With little more than tense bass, wiry guitar, and that signature uh-AH-uh-uh-AH percussion, the songs (recorded on the quick in Daniel's house) crackle with the freshness of rough-cut demos.

Changes continues to find him doing what he does best--performing chicken-scratch rave-ups in a raw and unkempt emotional squall, and finding unexpected meaning in authoritative cover songs.

On their fourth album, this Scottish indie-pop band's fondness for woeful heartache and Phil Spector–esque production reaches a poignant peak.

The Golden Age is their most placid disc since 1989's "United Kingdom."

Ultimately, it's their sisterly harmonies--not their lyrical content--that provide the salve of this First Aid Kit.

Their unholy fuzz feels less triumphant, and the Helmet impression in opener 'Sound Guardians' is some kind of weird. Still, Lightning Bolt's basement has never sounded bigger.

After several albums of caustic, cryptic scuzz-punk, San Francisco's Ty Segall finally cleans up his act--or, at the very least, dustbusts it around the edges.

Pig Lib is both the loopiest music Malkmus has ever made and the most direct. [Apr 2003, p.104]

Tokyo psych-folk mystics Ghost add lavish accompaniment that lures these tiny, opining songs out of the bedroom. [Oct 2000, p.184]

A swaggering, electric, and passion-fueled statement that lives up to the towering persona being put forth at its outset. ... African Giant is easily Burna Boy’s most cohesive and strongest project, with even the diverse list of guest stars—from Damien Marley to Nigerian rapper Zlatan to Jeremih and Future—being used expertly without overkill. Burna Boy is the true star at the center.

As addictive as ice-cream dots. [Jul 2006, p.88]

On their third album, these dizzying British metalcore chemists swing erratically in an effort to shake genre conventions, flirting with dystopic Max Headroom stutter, electro gloom, and tender indie-folk cuddles.

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.

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.

Reflektor is long and weird and indulgent and deeply committed. It has three to five genuinely great songs; it also wanders off into the filler hinterlands for 20 minutes or so (out of 70).

From murky ambience to noise, free jazz, and beyond, Hval deploys sounds with a careful attention to feeling, building lush collages with a strategic intent further amplified in the lyrics. While ultimately smaller and less ambitious than her previous full-lengths, The Long Sleep grasps at ideas about presence, affect, and influence, recognizing the important potential of networks of all types in the lives of all who listen.

Gainsbourg and Beck generate one catchy track after another without producing much heat, but sometimes canny dabbling is its own reward.

Blankly drawn out, they are as unlike expressive human speech as anything in rock.

Sun Coming Down is Robin Hood-rich with pithy one-liners punctuated by Keen’s hi-hats, crashing through Darcy’s free-associating swarm of noise like that one person in every New York-based rom-com or sitcom wending his way through an avenue packed with people.

On Persuasion, which came out in August, Blondes waste no time stripping three tracks to their most essential elements, decorating them with just scraps of tinsel.

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]