As clever as Fuck Buttons are at cobbling together unlikely juxtapositions, they're master builders when it comes to tension and release.

An aesthetic- and career-defining set, it's the album they were destined to make. [Nov 2006, p.103]

Made sounds dirtier (i.e., more Southern) than its polished predecessor, though it still relies on a bevy of soul samples. The best is the Hall & Oates bite on 'Never.'

The Roots' hardscrabble classicism and maverick whimsy cohere seemlessly, making Rising the group's most potently evocative work yet. [May 2008, p.98]

Here, she's captured twice in concert feverishly reading her phantasmagoric memorial to friend and artist Robert Mapplethorpe with the accompaniment of fellow savant Kevin Shields, the reclusive My Bloody Valentine leader who matches the ebb and flow of her morphing prose with thunderstorms of guitar sustain that weep and roar empathetically.

The sound isn’t funereal, but exultant, the slashing and stoned pinnacle of everything the trio had built to over the course of their decade of existence.

With its surges and dips, Confessions mimics the rising/falling action of, say, a DJ set, a hit of Ecstasy, or Madonna's own career. [Dec 2005, p.106]

The band's freak-out, slacker glam jams return, but it's Earley's comparatively focused alt-country side that impresses.

Antics is so much more fun than Turn On The Bright Lights. [Oct 2004, p.107]

Mercer rants like the end is extremely nigh and songs refuse choruses, stapling together shattered fragments of classic psychedelia and the bits of Springsteen riffs that their countrymen Arcade Fire left behind.

The indie Tina Turner follows up her tightly wound 2005 comeback, "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise," in the company of Drive-By Truckers and Muscle Shoals vets, whose mannered blues shuffles unfortunately sound like they're backing a beer commercial.

Overall, though, the absence of pretense does more good than harm here. By emphasizing his singing rather than the usual wailing walls of distortion, Segall expertly treads the fine line separating rockist classicism from lo-fi innovation.

There's a simultaneously appealing and slightly off-putting looseness to all this, conjuring the sort of drowsiness where you'd rather sleep for a week straight than let in more heartbreak.

Amid the hasty scribbles and marooned, half-finished concepts, there are lots of seeds and stems. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Call it Nick Diamonds Gets His Groove Back. Former Unicorn Nick Thorburn went a bit dark and dreary on 2008's "Arm's Way," but with Vapours, the transplanted New Yorker relearns his playfulness.

Divorced from their HBO series, the songs have room to stretch a little, only occasionally sacrificing context. [May 2008, p.98]

[It] should have been the new Fall album. [Jun 2007, p.96]

It's the sound of a man moving to his next stage, unsure how he should make his machines howl. Mournful or loud? Why not both?

As he has for two decades, singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston plays the unreliable narrator in this exquisitely unsettling folk-rock collection.

Jonny Greenwood’s electric fuzz, supplementary rhythms, and beloved vintage Ondes Martenot synthesizer add real bulk to this Middle East meets East plus West experiment in cultural diplomacy.

For a lo-fi project, Celebration is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts.

Though Drake’s globetrotting is seeping into American pop (hi, Katy) More Life still stands apart. Its closest recent antecedent is probably Drake’s own Take Care, itself a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that pulled horizontally and vertically from across music.

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

Compared to the spontaneous hodgepodges of 2009’s Psychic Chasms or 2011’s Era Extraña, VEGA INTL. Night School is a far more intricately assembled product.

Songs are still suite-sized, but this is the toughest and catchiest Isis record since their 1999 debut full-length, "Celestial."

Scales are Middle Eastern, obviously; tempos range from up to mid-plus; the programmed drums generate rhythms that few American tub-thumpers could map, much less replicate. There's far more variety in what Sa'id plays than in what Souleyman sings--flute sounds, an orchestra once. But Souleyman's intensity nails it.

Terje can make an aging gigolo's commentary on the folly of his misspent youth the centerpiece of his otherwise invigorating dance album because he's the rare crowd-pleasing DJ whose musical skills trump his proven ability to move butts.

Gang of Losers leaves behind the preciousness of 2003's delicate No Cities Left. [Oct 2006, p.105]