2 Chainz forges deeper emotional connections, but that surface is as entrancing as ever. B.O.A.T.S II ups the production values like a true sequel should.

Unlike Someday World, the far thornier High Life doesn’t improve much with repeated plays: These are egghead jams whose esoteric textures bewitch more than their relatively static frameworks.

Well, pray the restaurant and lounge crowd is ready for a scruffy fellow traveler who can sing about "Cocaine and bourbon / Pinball and pool" without prompting any check requests.

The DJ's fleet-fingered precision and explosive, intimidating drum-machine attacks are a distinct form of performance art, and one that's hard to fully appreciate through headphones alone; Remixes is simply no substitute for his live act. But these tracks are still a crucial part of his identity.

This Oakland quartet teams with Yo Ma Tengo producer Roger Moutenot to create a make-or-break manifesto that often trumps indie rock's big-leaguers. [Oct 2007, p.110]

On Pebble to a Pearl--an authoritative, refreshingly organic pop-funk manifesto featuring musicians who've played with Al Green and Stevie Wonder--the exhilaration of liberation literally screams from R&B workout 'Can't Please Everybody.'

Evil Urges is easily MMJ's most accomplished and ambitious record, masterfully sifting through genres.

There's a lot of Conor the Character Actor in these folk-rock set pieces. [Nov 2006, p.96]

Man From Another Time cuts a steady rolling groove that wears well, from the opening salvo of "Diddley Bo" (which turns the Bo Diddley backbeat sideways) to the closing cover of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

His beat-poet spiel is more character-actorly than ever, but hyphenated-man is also more accessible than you'd think, thanks to Watt's skittery bass lines.

The band’s first studio album in eight years takes the Farfisa-surf luminescence of 2003’s must-own, career-spanning Anthology deeper into psychedelia, for good and ill.

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

Omaha-based multi-instrumentalist Joe Knapp spent three years making Someone Else's Déjà Vu, and the album is another reminder that lush studio-reliant soft and prog rock of the late '70s can still offer legitimate inspiration.

A mod-rock mix that's somewhere--no, everywhere--between Matchbox Twenty and 'So.' [Apr 2001, p.154]

Music this insistently okay should suffice as sonic Paxil, but there are less complicated ways to treat your depression. [Apr 2008, p.102]

It’s a consistent, methodical unsteadiness that hangs a song on a single blurred synth tone, a suspension bridge between two guitars acres apart in the mix, and then shoots it with bolts of electricity.

Between these boy-noise roils you can see how much the band want to be their generation's Yes. [Feb 2005, p.87]

Adeptly recorded both through the board and from the audience, Remember is a microcosm of the band's career--an ambitious mess.

In terms of maturity and effort, each of these six reverb-soaked romps is as much of a leap forward from last year's King of the Beach as that record was from Nathan Williams' homemade 2009 debut.

[Hannon] deserves to be recognized as the unsung genius of symphonic pop. [Nov 2006, p.97]

FUTURE is lively and engaging, with production and rapping that feels consciously animated.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons continue to smear psychedelic synth cheese and stereophonic airplane noises over chewy grooves that veer closer and closer to straight disco.

It's immersive and transgressive, if you care about this stuff.

They seem less confident introducing more distinctive elements into the flow on their debut, which features six original songs and five remixes.

Like the good postmodern thrashers they are, Gojira blend blast beats ('Adoration for None'), sludge stomp ('Yama's Messengers'), and death-and-doom riff spirals (take your pick) with unexpected quirks, like the solid minute of stick taps that open 'The Art of Dying' and the math rock of 'Toxic Garbage Island.'

A fond, funky farewell.

It’s understandable that Joanne finds Gaga performing authenticity, if only because it’s the strongest way to convey artistic evolution to the masses in 2016. The image here--the illusion, really--is as imperfect as it is meticulously rendered.

Van Weezer continues that trajectory with its hard-rock/metal ethos, but it seldom feels like anything beyond a novelty.