The relative quietude—there are still grooves aplenty—makes you lean in, sizing up elements of songcraft and musicianship that might’ve previously hid underneath the band’s dancy, psychedelic scrim. This serves Khruangbin well, since they make music to Santo & Johnny’s level of wistfulness, and they can play their asses off. The performances are so good, in fact, you sometimes want to divide them into stems.

Too often, Blige's voice doesn't get the space it needs to cut loose with emotion. [Feb 2006, p.85]

A masterful intersection of emotion and musicianship, Robert Ellis is one of 2016’s finest.

Cheerfully ignoring stylistic boundaries, Brit duo Malachai (formerly Malakai) polish their cut-and-paste skills on this follow-up to last year's tantalizing Ugly Side of Love.

Kings dial their usual bellow and wallow routine way down, while mustering just enough passion for the album’s occasional rock setpieces: “Hesitation Gen” and “Seen” are their most effective rippers in several albums.

The racing tempos and Christian Hjelm's paranoid-sounding yelp push the songs to occasionally exhilarating heights, but beware the inevitable comedown. [Aug 2006, p.78]

Cape Dory establishes an enviable fantasy: two lovers happily adrift. Where Best Coast is too cool for school, Tennis seem (almost) too good to be true.

As usual, her melodies stubbornly refuse to turn into hooks, preferring to twirl into new territory. But her approach suits the material, which flows like the colors on a weather map, from Los Angeles to Nevada, from New York to Virginia, gathering thunder along the way. [Nov 2002]

With the band's pop instincts craftier than ever, these songs might even reach past the keg party. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Often gorgeous and never soothing, the damaged pop on Phantogram's mesmerizing debut is pure nightmare fuel.

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.

Unlike U2, whose left turns have felt like oblique strategies in the band's pompous struggle to redeem rock, R.E.M.'s stylistic shifts tend to feel like survival skills. Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo or whatever, much of Reveal moves with the graceful drag of 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction, yet with more ebb and flux. [June 2001, p.143]

Buckner's singular pipes and surrealistic lyrics tug the songs toward the esoteric, but the band pulls them back. [Oct 2006, p.95]

Although Young Thug moves away from exploring emotional pain, SS3 is still very much informed by introspection.

It leaves us with a streamlined New Romantic sound, but one that at times feels like emotional Teflon.

Masters of atmospheric storytelling since the early '90s, England's Tindersticks showcase the shivery yet forthright murmur of Stuart Staples.

It’s not quite a caricature of what an average rock fan considers The Killers to be, but it’s close. Still, Mirage is markedly superior to its uneven predecessor, 2017’s Wonderful, Wonderful, largely due to the presence of several guest artists.

They hew to a similar early-'70s aura -- nodding to a time when spacey keyboard effects and alt-country dust carried serious cachet.

Positively exuberant. [Sep 2006, p.114]

He's brilliant when juxtaposing rhythmic brutality against euphonious familiarity; but here, he seems exhausted by the former and ashamed of the latter.

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

Gonzalez sings mostly about memories (occasionally unintelligibly), but refuses to accept that some dramatic gifts don't necessarily have to be exhausting. Still, the album is full of goose-bump moments

The ex–Drive-By Truckers guitarist shares his former band's lyrical penchant for the dark end of the street.

Myth Takes juxtaposes tribal post-punk with crooked attempts at actual pop, giving their epic groove-riders a booty-stimulating boost. [Mar 2007, p.86]

Throughout the album, she shifts from restrained cool to soaring sentimentalism in mere seconds; this dynamic is something that Civilian possessed, but Shriek masters.

Complicated shows a real grasp of musical history. [Jul 2007, p.99]

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, feels more like a collage of sounds and styles than a coherent, considered statement.

His mildewy folk rock is dourly impenetrable. [Apr 2005, p.108]