The fifth album from this Portland, Oregon quartet (recently expanded from a married duo) is swathed in misty silver-and-blue atmospherics, but it's the songwriting, hooks, and escalating thrum of a capable rock band that pull listeners from each twinkling vista to the next.

Khan's trashy Sam Cooke and Bo Diddley impersonations are uncannier than ever, but it's Invisible Girl's ratio of 1960s tribute to 21st-century blaspheming that makes it his most immediately enjoyable work yet.

Super rates as less essential than 2013’s marvelous Electric because I don’t hear another “Thursday” or “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct,” no grand conceptual coups like their Springsteen cover.

It's difficult to sound this vintage without coming off as contrived, but Alela Diane, her guitarist/producer father, and assorted friends tap into folk archetypes that are often opaquely generalized but always disarmingly pure.

The sound is old-fashioned, but the fury is fresh.

Amid all that cultural confusion basking in a neon glow, Mala in Cuba is a welcome relief, an artist reveling in his uncertainty and building it into something original and authentic.

'Shake the Devil' purrs with a Ray Charles-worthy retro R&B beat and the furious nonvegan chorus of 'Shake that Pig!' [Nov 2008, p.88]

Glasgow quartet Glasvegas are a product of this world--frontman James Allen is even a former semipro footballer--and their remarkable debut gives voice to its fears, frustrations, and heartaches without succumbing to its cliches.

The Luca Brasi Story was more ambitious, but Stranger Than Fiction does moves Gates closer to a larger audience.

The Desired Effect is another gingerly step into the present, Flowers’ present. No one knows how he feels or what he says until you read between his lines.

More hooks (and cowbell) make Smile the band's most accessible album, but Boris haven't softened. [May 2008, p.94]

If it's not yet clear, Centipede does retain much of the band's earnest, knowing naiveté.

When it works best, as on the now globally ubiquitous “Hello” or the show-stopping “All I Ask” (featuring a rending, diva-appropriate performance for the ages), 25 delivers the kind of timeless vibes people have come to expect from Adele, even though the first-person narratives in her songs often still feel oddly generic.

On their eighth album, spouses Brett and Rennie Sparks continue to put a brilliantly surreal twist on everyday subjects, using nature imagery to evoke the weird intensity of all-consuming passions.

Anchored by four tracks from a previous EP that were re-recorded with the hooks highlighted, this nimble full-length wrings catharsis from pop with no lapses into pretension.

This is oval-shaped music, circling around the tracks; it’s accomplished, but not particularly infectious.

XTC proudly displays its roots while subsuming them into a larger sound, one that is wholly their own.

Music tailor-made for the world's hippest elevators. [Nov. 2000, p.200]

The whole thing is pretty, if a bit mild, suggesting not quite another green world, but something ideal for--as its cover art suggests--watching autumnal leaves turn.

From chintzy keyboards to karaoke-style performances, Maus exaggerates the stereotypically artificial to tap into something real.

The best thing about Unbreakable is that it proves Janet can still surprise us.

Fortunately, buried beneath the Lips' psychedelic slop heap are surprisingly exacting pop hooks, clever musical experiments, and insidious grooves that belie the band's wastrel image.

For their second album as a duo, longtime collaborator John Parish gave Harvey finished songs to write lyrics for, and his sometimes brittle, sometimes thundering guitar work provides the skeleton for an array of fleshly narrators.

The duo's relentless cool never quite tips over into White Stripes-style heat, giving Midnight Boom the unapproachable, icy allure of a runway model. [Mar 2008, p.104]

If the lyrics are getting all the attention on Digital Garbage, it’s only because the music is exactly what you’d expect. Mudhoney’s sound hasn’t changed much since the early ‘90s. ... Mudhoney are comfortable with themselves to a fault.

I Bet on Sky is the sound of a great, influential band that, yes, picked up where they left off, but instead of luxuriating in the sentimental hue of the moment, got back to work and kept moving forward.

Pearl may have studied Karen O's textbook, but when her bandmates rev up a proper garage-rock racket, she dives in like she was born with her own irresistible rock-star sneer. [Jul 2006, p.82]

Here, he just wrecks shit... occasionally stopping for moments of necessary reflection. [Sep 2005, p.109]