The real story of this breathtaking follow-up... is Romeo Stodart's transformation from merely a good songwritier to an outstanding one. [Feb 2007, p.85]

It’s hard to overstate how exceptional Ti Amo is: every song is complete in its own way, and while there’s perhaps the slightest softening of focus near the end, it never starts to coast on its sultry aesthetic.

Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.

Somehow, Pool transmutes fatigue and anxiety into a hallucinatory magick that’s far more cathartic than a jacuzzi soak or a glass of wine. It’s Radiohead doing Radiohead on a molecular level, via controlled burns. Their weary indifference to us becomes our transcendence.

Amid all the fight songs, Santigold's sensitive interludes only bolster her power, her harmonies rendered more invincible for their vulnerability.

Alex G has always found power in the broken and uncertain. He’s just gotten a lot braver about spinning that chaos into beauty.

ESG's DIY tracks have a raw, unfinished feel--echo-drenched vocals buried deep in the mix, jagged hen-scratch guitar, taut bass lines as infectious as mononucleosis, and reverberating layers of percussion... The group's 1981 debut single, "Moody"... is one of the funkiest songs ever recorded. [Sep 2000, p.181]

The five-disc set breaks down the album to its building blocks, while the two-CD version provides outtakes and an edit of what the original final product might have been: part tribute, part cartoon, part dream.

The most roundly captivating pop album released so far this year, indie or not. It’s a record to wear out through Labor Day, if not longer.

Old Ramon is sinuous and unhurried, a beautiful downer of a folk rock record that has the lithe and shadowy promise of the ocean.

A sci-fi tint shifts the perspective from Atlas Sound's usual layered introspection: Inner space now has become outer space.

In its menacing incandescence, LP1 sounds like nothing else in the world right now.

Neither a timid repeat nor a knee-jerk departure, the bigger, bolder Neon Bible better captures what Arcade Fire achieve live. [Mar 2007, p.85]

The anticipated follow-up to her Grammy-winning masterstroke, 2018’s By The Way, I Forgive You, is once again magnificent — a triumphant patchwork of Americana, folk-rock, pop and soul anchored by yet another show-stopping centerpiece in “Right on Time,” the album’s towering lead single.

Like floating from level to placid level in Monument, listening to this record prompts your imagination and encourages discourse and reflection. Not the academic kind, but the kind of communal discovery people have been doing for ages.

Ultimately, what makes Excavation such an awesome and absorbing listen is precisely its indifference to the listener.

Nirvana's headlining gig at the 1992 Reading Festival looms infamously large because of (a) that amazingly creepy photo of Kurt getting wheeled onto the stage looking like Norman Bates' mother, and (b) the show was a mind-blower--sloppy indie rock as stadium-filling psychedelic punk.

If 2004's killer Shake the Sheets was Leo's Give 'Em Enough Rope... Living With The Living is his London Calling, an hour-long Rolodexing of sounds and visions. [Mar 2007, p.94]

From the rock of “Nganshé” to the roll of “Coco Blues,” two forward-looking cosmopolitans (plus friends) craft new directions in urban sound.

She ascends further into the pantheon of songwriters who consistently deliver despite unimaginable expectations. For all its mayhem, 2020 has unlocked the best work of her career.

What once was a one-man basement project becomes a full band to be reckoned with.

Black Messiah has dozens of false starts, short stops, jagged breaks, and backmasked bits. Everything is a little warped. But somehow, the music never falls out of the pocket. And in that commitment to upholding the groove, we find warmth and evidence that we're still moving forward despite the assault on our senses.

While writing some of the most accessible music of her career, she makes fun of the assignment a bit while completing it. The maturity of her songwriting voice on Rebound is staggering, and makes her enterprise feel like an emotionally embodied exercise as well as a technical, aesthetic one.

Evil Urges is easily MMJ's most accomplished and ambitious record, masterfully sifting through genres.

Fantasy's production is loud and proud, but also poignant and gripping, always hinting at some looming danger.

A stunning, sprawling sucker-punch of a finale equally amenable to die-hards and newcomers, Science Fiction is a worthy (if bittersweet) send-off to one of the most brutally honest, forward-thinking rock bands of the new millennium.

If Diane's songs are more accessible, they're still not easy, creating the Inception-like sensation of wandering around in someone's overheated brain, where urgency and a lack of clarity intertwine to disorienting effect.

Slowdive has outdone itself on its fifth full-length, Everything Is Alive, which elevates its pre-breakup work in ways that feel nearly unimaginable. Indeed, Slowdive in 2023 is capable of writing both the hands-down most affecting song of its career (“Andalucia Plays”) as well as its most in-your-face (“The Slab”), while also incorporating modular synths as foundational elements in its creative process for the first time (they’re the first notes you hear on opener “Shanty”).