Across nine tracks, singer/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger bounce effortlessly from fragile ballads to punk rippers to chamber-pop crescendos, somehow both fully in control and barely holding it together.

Alex G continues to find the sensitivity in rough edges, and offers uneven poetry for our own relentlessly uneven lives. ... An overarching commitment to juxtaposition and bricolage that’s palpable throughout the tracklist. In their brevity and slapdash composition, they feel like essential components of the Alex G m.o. It’s that m.o. that holds House of Sugar together, even as it rejects a single unified concept or “story.”

Grohl (back on drums for the first time on a Foos record since 2005’s In Your Honor), bassist Nate Mendel, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee have imbued But Here We Are with new levels of depth, maturity, songcraft, and storytelling, ensuring it is far more than just an album about grief.

The lyrics explore suburban everyguyism, but the choruses explode like fireworks over a church picnic. [Jul 2003, p.109]

Price lives up to the hype by marrying hardscrabble traditionalism with modern narratives on her debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.

As the overwhelming bulk of Luxury Problems demonstrates, the producer might've learned how to marshal all the dark, weird stuff boiling inside him, but he's not about to relinquish it any time soon.

From the vulnerability in Berdan’s scream to the elegant (no, really) arrangements, American Standard is never corny or contrived. It’s the year’s most intimate, most savage feel-bad music.

Both "Smokin' and Drinkin'," featuring Little Big Town, and the rowdy "Somethin' Bad," her and Carrie Underwood's retort to bro-country, feel forced. These are small missteps on an otherwise solid outing.

He's got an excellent ear, a savvy way with hooks, and an untrained voice that knows its limitations. [Mar 2005, p.88]

Bakesale was the catchy, coherent 1994 breakthrough--a missing link between Nick Drake and Sonic Youth.

A couple of wooly moments aside, Monroe’s third album, The Blade, continues a remarkable hot streak for writers Luke Laird, Jessi Alexander, Chris Stapleton, and Monroe herself.

Without truly breaking any paradigms, the well-respected veterans in VHÖL do all kinds of things well that evade heavier peers, never relying too hard on the math or surprises for a thrill. If anything, its 42 minutes fly by so smoothly you’re surprised to discover there wasn’t a hitch or even a dead spot.

Warm and inviting, his latest opus occasions swan dives into future soul, funky dubstep ("Dance of the Pseudo Nymph"), Theo Parrish–styled house ("Do the Astral Plane"), and astonishingly, Sun Ra jazz ("Arkestry").

By record’s end, Garcia emerges in full command of this mercurial spirit world—a high priestess with a synth and a killer sixth sense.

There's definitely something welcoming about Koi No Yokan's comparative purity, in the band's understanding of how little they need.

[A] beautiful if vague fourth studio album.

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

Barring "Blade Runner," the best pop art by a former adman. [June 2008, p.119]

Stone Rollin's rhythm-and-blues revival can't obscure Saadiq's songwriting talents.

They add enough kinks to the old herky-jerk formulae to make their half-hour in the sun blaze by like nobody's business. [Dec 2004, p.124]

It’s rare when two creative forces like Yorke and Greenwood step away from their still-active primary band and create something this worthwhile on its own merits, and who knows how, if at all, the experience will influence Radiohead’s canon moving forward. No matter what happens, A Light for Attracting Attention is a most welcome vibe flip.

Injecting a familiar formula with a justified newfound seriousness, With a Hammer further cements Yaeji’s place as one of the most valuable producers active in electronic pop today.

He's still way too fond of show-tune orchestration, and then there's the tossed-off corny stuff, but the orneriness of Newman's now-64-year-old wit makes George Carlin seem like Dane Cook. [Sep 2008, p.120]

Sam Amidon works similarly quirky alchemy here [as Moby did a decade ago], reinventing public-domain songs (plus one modern-day ringer) as rustic mood music for watching distant super-novas explode.

Greenwood’s previous PTA scores provided feral atmosphere first and foremost, or in Inherent Vice’s case, a convex take on classic Hollywood film noir incidental music. Phantom Thread’s score, on the other hand, feels like another main character or storytelling voice in the film. Greenwood’s abilities have never served one of Anderson’s films better, or proved so integral to its power.

The album is claustrophobic and unrelenting, but also intensely exhilarating in its brevity.

High drama of the blunt, uncliched sort unheard since the Afghan Whigs' '90s heyday. [Jun 2007, p.94]

The album reasserts his status as a uniquely fascinating rapper. On Some Rap Songs, he’s making the most adventurous and exciting music of his career so far.