The way What a Time to Be Alive zooms by, there are songs you might blink and miss if McCaughan weren’t writing some of the most sharply worded lyrics of his career.

Synth-driven grooves that feel communal and cosmic at the same time.

It all looks backward unabashedly--fitting for a band formed 30-plus years ago--but no less resonant.

Every twinkling ambient moment is remarkably humane.

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

Derulo’s latest, Everything Is 4, proves he’s a workhorse, with possibly even (gulp) a vision.

They just want to rock you into peaceful submission, and they are successful about 70 percent of the time. [Dec 2002, p.135]

Medicine is a barrel of tailgating, beer-guzzling monkey bros; the band’s loosest and most dance-able record in a decade or more.

Holland swings far afield from folk and country on her third album, matching her hornlike voice to cool-jazz rhythms. [Jul 2006, p.84]

More hooks (and cowbell) make Smile the band's most accessible album, but Boris haven't softened. [May 2008, p.94]

Wonderfully unsentimental, beautifully tuneful.

That’s the beauty of Universalists: there’s no use trying to pin it down. What’s more, doing so discredits its core thesis: music is music, plain and simple. Gat manages to capture the ecstasy of his live performance, while expanding his production and experimental practice to a global, and—dare I say—universal palette.

Awesome the riffs may be, one might only want to hear them in small bursts lest they risk being worn out. Still, there’s enough variation to stave off sameness, and the band is smart enough to switch it up from track-to-track.

From yellowed headlines, nature-magazine clippings, marker scribblings, torn paper, even Kurt Cobain's visage, Antony extracts a poignancy that beautifully matches his music.

The album represents an impressive development upon what is already one of the most compelling sounds in rap.

Kelela proudly stands within the genre’s tradition. For the most part, she avoids making any grandstanding romantic or political statements, but Take Me Apart finds its purpose within the subdued complexities.

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

With so many legacy-artist posthumous sets, it’s hard to avoid a certain level of brain mush. The final stretches often feel like pointlessly processed outtakes of alternate takes of fake takes of imaginary takes. It’s like extracurricular archaeology, and it’s often not very fun. But even when you’re working up a sweat with your shovel, Funky Nothingness rewards the strain.

A distinctly contemporary album that is in conversation with trendy, critically acclaimed R&B.

The self-production here is a bit murky, maybe, and the drums and vocals have seen sharper days. But these dudes still turn sharp corners.

I Want to Grow Up involves aspirations rather than answers, and thus little is resolved of the album's many inner conflicts. Only the sweet-and-sour music they're set to offers any kind of relief, deep-fried in fuzz and totally stoked for that Juliana Hatfield Three reunion.

Peace Queer includes an acoustic antiwar rant and a ghostly reading of Creedence’s 'Fortunate Son' (with Patty Griffin on backup vocals). But the high point is a ragged bar-band jam about the dissolution of the middle-class dream ('Stuck on the Corner [Prelude to a Heart Attack]').

Its excellence and momentum vastly outweigh one’s ability to describe it.

It's a minor miracle that these Swedish vets' 24-song sixth album clocks in at 94 filler-free minutes, stuffed with late-'60s guitar romps ranging from slow-burn psychedelia to up-tempo struts, and more deliberate mood pieces.

As music alone, the band is looser and more flexible than ever, deploying Superchunk’s Jon Wurster for accents and subtleties outside of his main band’s dynamic range, and punching out the gate with highlights as varied as the Louisiana ragtime of “Southwestern Territory” and the punked-up “Choked Out.”

As you work your way through the new material, it becomes apparent rather quickly that Shabazz Palaces have elevated their jazz-damaged phrasing into a unique musical language. Butler, of course, responds to the music with idiosyncratic lyrics to match. ... Gangster Star leans towards a funkier, more upbeat mood.

Kicky enough for late-night drives, sultry enough for backseat prospecting, and versatile enough to sell anything, it may be the most user-friendly record of Underworld's career and a better follow-up to Play than Moby's own. [Oct 2002, p.120]

Like all of Four Tet’s work, New Energy can be viewed as an addition to this unlikely canon, whose practitioners share a desire to remove a listener from their surroundings and bring them someplace higher, no matter the means.