[A] crop of relatively cheerful-sounding — not to mention industrious, and never dull--tracks.

Once it all sinks in, the self-released approach, scrapped-together band, and 29-minute running time should only shock those who expected this to be a huge statement by Grace on anyone's terms but her own. This is no rock opera, no American Idiot, no novelty.

For all of the tension in the music, Barrow and his cohorts couldn't sound more relaxed, natural, and at home weird home.

Two Suns is the rare concept album that's better for the bedroom than for bong hits.

Nominal solo debut notwithstanding, Blunderbuss is the sound of a mid-career stride.

You certainly won’t find a clunker among Hitchhiker’s more familiar cuts, though few of them surpass the official versions. ... Young’s talent is vast and his art contains plenty of contradictions. Hitchhiker stands as proof that no matter how strange his creations might sometimes seem, he always draws them from the same well.

It isn't traditionally enjoyable, and it isn't supposed to be.... It's the most daring record he could've made.

Call it Everything About The Girl. [Mar 2007, p.99]

Both the production and Wyatt's shape-shifting croon are so butter-smooth that it takes repeated plays to sense the hurt that hides behind these dance-floor lullabies.

Matsson is a Harry Smith acolyte, but his understanding of Americana (and American English) is fractured, and his songs are jammed with enough surprises to make him seem like a singular new talent.

Jackson writes open-endedly, shifting between direct experience and metaphor; mysteries left unsolved by her lyrics and persona are alternately heightened and resolved by the hurt in her voice, the assuredness of her arrangements.

The Hives want it all, so they've risked everything on an album that audibly fights to earn it. [Nov 2007, p.113]

Despite passing echoes of Spoon and Violent Femmes, Delta Spirit's rough barroom pop is its own creature, with jangly pianos, rattling drums, and scruffy acoustic guitars making a thrilling ruckus.

Though periodically unfocused, it mostly succeeds in not only championing the spirit of collaboration but also accentuating its guests’ artistic strengths. Throughout this record, Vernon and Dessner find joy in community.

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.

With his first album for Warp, OPN proves his mettle amid labelmates like Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus.

While Fearless (Taylor’s Version) isn’t quite the essential listen that a brand-new record typically would be, it’s certainly a compelling revisitation, executed with the same rigor and attention given to all of Swift’s projects.

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

The result is some of the loosest, most facinating music of their career. [Apr 2008, p.92]

As the conviction of his verses grows throughout the album, so does the scope of its production. Building on the more upbeat instrumentals of last year’s Disco!, MIKE continues to expand his musical palette on production, adding dancehall, bossa nova and more to his signature slowed vocal loops. The result is some of his most uplifting songs yet.

In Conflict is queer outsider art at its most fraught and compelling.

Morning/Evening is beautiful in its own right, if you’re patient.

The libretto and effects boards on Sleep Well Beast may signal doom, but the replenished energy in the music feels life-affirming. Somehow, the most despondent album they’ve ever made still sounds like a celebration.

The album reasserts his status as a uniquely fascinating rapper. On Some Rap Songs, he’s making the most adventurous and exciting music of his career so far.

Though A Brief Inquiry is just as dizzying and disorienting as 2016’s heroically omnivorous i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, the 1975 take themselves a little more seriously now.

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.

Many of the tracks conclude with two- or three-minute outros, but that's where The 20/20 Experience is often at its best.

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.