Amygdala is the most fearless and most accomplished thing he's ever made: a smorgasbord of sonic possibility, a new idea around every corner, each vibrantly alive in a wide sound field.

Winging away from Major Arcana‘s dark, tense pockets--the jagged, crackling riffs and the jarring way Dupuis’ voice faltered at the end of her desperately insightful verses, as if she were about to fall off a cliff--stretches Speedy Ortiz thin at times on Foil Deer.

Open Your Heart improves the band's focus even as it widens its range, ditching the harrowing, hacking-death-cough stuff and reaching for something more.

What once was a one-man basement project becomes a full band to be reckoned with.

He does have a sharp facility for steely Bakersfield guitar licks and cinematic countrypolitan strings and clever honkytonk wordplay and so many other elements that defined country in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. But he never feels out of time on $10 Cowboy.

All Hell throws up no barriers to access--if you have an abiding interest in great stories told by a great new storyteller, it'll welcome you in.

With their fourth album Värähtelijä they’ve finally made a record that fully follows through on the paradoxical promise of their component parts.

It’s not at all certain that this lovely, gentle record will ever get a follow-up--fortunately, it already sounds damn-near timeless.

That it reads like it came from NAO’s diary points to her greatest achievement on Saturn: every song can shine as a standalone track, but they sound even better together.

YG has gone and done himself one better, creating a record that stands tall alongside the full-lengths he once mined.

Wildflower is a shaggy document, to be sure. Not everything’s a stunner like “Because I’m Me” or “Harmony”--sometimes there’s moldering AM Gold like “Light Up.” But now it’s not about the journey into paradise, more like a rush to the finish line. They’re out of time, but they still made it.

Idlewild are compelling when they put Woomble's sad-sack lyrics front and center, but on aggressively average rockers like "You Held The World In Your Arms" and "Century After Century," the band's turgid squall swamps his words. [Jun 2003, p.103]

Obviously, hip-hop loves its thugs, too, especially if they're the antiheroes of a relatively nuanced piece like this one.

The LP is the group’s most enjoyable, but also their most potent, all the more menacing for its unlikely grinning.

The album’s production also settles into more coherent beats, a more richly-textured take on the sparse, sample-based sounds favored by underground artists like Navy Blue, MIKE, and featured artist Pink Siifu, who flows hectically over the creeping funk of “Obsidian.” ... Though one of her most conventional projects to date, Black Encyclopedia of the Air adheres to the radical tenets which defined Ayewa’s prior genre-defying work.

Lightest Ono album ever? Probably. Heaviest avant-pop from a 76-year-old mainstream pariah/underground innovator? Hell, yeah!

The pop ingenue’s impassioned, sassy and highly satisfying debut album.

Skying lacks the urgency of their raucous goth-punk debut Strange House, but the broadly hooky single "Still Life" could fill an arena nicely, and the band actually sound interested enough to entertain the possibility.

Lisbon, like 2008's You & Me, is a gorgeous journey into the elegiac, inspired by the music of Memphis' Sun Studios.

Nearly forty years in, Williams, 63, is at a place where some are likely contemplating the mortality of her career, too. But on The Ghosts of Highway 20, she’s never sounded more alive.

LP builds a steamrolling production and piston-like percussion out of broken electronics and heaps of scrap metal.

That [the "Heaven Sent" track's] parent album is as fun to listen to--with its soaring harmonies, left-of-center biblical influences, and total abandonment of traditional genre restriction--as it is insightful is a credit to its author.

Playing out like a one-man Verzuz, Pusha moves deftly between Pharrell’s outer-space soundscapes and Ye’s on-the-nose vocal loops. Despite their audibly different production styles, the two artists occasionally mirror each other as they cater to Push’s sinister style.

Gang Gang Dance are back to testing boundaries. For them, it's a return to the future.

Beyondless is a far cry from the New Brigade immediacy that attracted fans, but it offers something perhaps much more valuable: longevity, if you’re on their side.

In a genre where “authenticity” is supposedly located in stripped-down effortless amateurism, Priests is at their most authentic when they’re using performance to challenge themselves and their audience.

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

Throughout Grinderman 2, the guitars and violins pant and howl with a visceral, veteran's swagger. Late middle age has never sounded so thrilling.