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]