Why Love Now is reserved in its sonic experimentation. But for a band as sharp and capable as this one, that’s not really a problem. Beneath the acerbic jokes, Korvette is a humane and considerate writer and performer.

Recruiting Cursive’s Tim Kasher (on a single that outs the founding fathers as slave rapists) and Laura Jane Grace for 14 good songs in 40 minutes, Oberst’s made his best album since 2008’s addictive Conor Oberst, and ended up with the white male rage of the year.

These are the weirdest tracks Yorke has ever been a part of. [Aug 2006, p.75]

The album is a dense, cinematic, always surprising and often moving album that sounds like it required the full three years that the L.A. crooner and producer spent chipping away at it to get right.

Mostly great. [Jan 2005, p.96]

The overall affect is a travelogue falling between chillwave's lo-fi explorations and the sophisticated melancholy of Lykke Li's Wounded Rhymes: tightly economic pop tunes that draw on aural largesse as much as claustrophobic bricolage.

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.

He's purely elegant throughout.

The Felice Brothers aspire to the weird, woozy vibe of the Band's "The Basement Tapes," and often approach it. [Apr 2008, p.96]

The new album’s particular saving grace is its self-loathing streak, the sense that scales have fallen from eyes and that Stay Gold’s nebulous disaffection has soured to regret.

Crazy for You is a soundtrack to bikini season as it's actually experienced, racked by impossible expectations and as high as the tide line.

Revivalist? Sure, but this refreshing, smarter side of the late '80s has yet to be co-opted into a hipster fashion show.

The playing is deceptively forceful, and the songs cut surprisingly deep.

The contrast between Purity Ring's two halves is special and compelling, but Shrines goes over best when Roddick's reverent sound and James' lustful fury synchronize and break you off properly, womb-stem-style.

Mazzy Star steadfastly stick to their dusty, psych-folk, dream-pop tableaux on Seasons of Your Day. Yet it feels nothing like a '90s hangover; in fact, the touches of organ and pedal steel that open the album hint at Beach House's hazy indie-pop.

She renders a sad refrain from a lotto ad on 'State Numbers,' slags CSNY on 'The Lighter Side of...Hippies,' and howls that "a loving woman can have the Devil's face" on the acerbic 'Don't Talk in Your Sleep,' making this the duo's most shambolic effort to date.

The album presses pause on Holter and her band at an uncomfortable moment of transience--when their relationship to these years-old songs is clearly comfortable but also mildly antagonistic. However, they still manage to bring out the richest valences of Holter’s pristine and eccentric songs, and more than ever before, communicate her incredible skill as a passionate, intuitive, and controlled performer.

On his solo debut, Jonsi Birgisson--Sigur Ros' spectral voice and six-string skyscraper--embraces a lithe, lush pop his main band is too monolithic to accommodate, and it's revelatory.

Doing away with his human human voice entirely in favor of an android’s syrupy drawl would seem like a logical next step for Sakamoto’s music, and it’s tempting to wonder what Love If Possible would sound like if he’d further indulged his more experimental tendencies.

The male-dominated world of dubstep may dismiss all this as too lightweight and precious, but Katy B may transform into the queen of this boys club yet.

It can be strikingly narrow, to impressive ends--not many producers would be able to wring so much emotion from stoned, spacey, minor-key arrangements year after year. ... But in other ways, the results can be mixed.

With help from Squid producer Dan Carey, the band’s core trio (Donald Johnson, Jez Kerr, and Martin Moscrop) have generated a wealth of modern beats and future-shocked textures, all while remaining in touch with their trademark spongy grooves and sharp rhythmic corners.

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

The album does an admirable job of living up to its low- key title (with spare acoustic tracks) and its situation (with loosey-goosey, classic-rock-indebted numbers).

Songs in A&E, finds an eerie strength in quietude and mortality.

Trail of Dead temper their thrash with welcome doses of art rock. [Jun 2003, p.109]

On 2006's What Are You On?, he was too cranky by half, but here he returns to hopeful melancholy, lonely drum machines, everyday drug stories, even a '70s yacht-rock sketch ("Tommy Made a Movie"). Glad you're still breathing, man.

Hug of Thunder is at its best when Broken Social Scene is loose and willing to experiment with its formula.