An outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza, Chinese Democracy feels like a perfect epitaph for all the absurdity and nonsense of the George W. Bush era--one final blowout before Principal Obama takes our idiocy away.

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.

Those Darlins open up their sound even more -- to '60s girl groups, surf-punk guitar, and song structures that imagine the Quarrymen wanting to be Patsy Cline instead of Buddy Holly

The album’s production also settles into more coherent beats, a more richly-textured take on the sparse, sample-based sounds favored by underground artists like Navy Blue, MIKE, and featured artist Pink Siifu, who flows hectically over the creeping funk of “Obsidian.” ... Though one of her most conventional projects to date, Black Encyclopedia of the Air adheres to the radical tenets which defined Ayewa’s prior genre-defying work.

Finn infuses his windy tales of youthful debauchery with a mixture of detective-fiction luridness and first-club-show romanticism. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Apparently, you can go home again, and it's still plenty loud and comfortable.

Though he sounds slightly out of place on the screeching "Lies X 3," standouts "We Live by the Beat" and "Kontrol Phreak" impressively blend synth-funk and neo-new-wave glamour.

This isn't a great album, but it is a good one, in a year quietly blessed with a small crop of good records (Metric, Gossip) with dreamy synths and girls up front.

Pink works best as a one-woman army.

Valedictorian frequently collides with bracing beauty, sometimes of the of the conventional sort, but more often like nothing else before it. [May 2007, p.85]

When it comes to trap raps, he's coined and refined a slick, successful musical formula that TM103, easily maintains.

It swaggers like prime Replacements, though with far better polish. [Jan 2008, p.103]

Journeymen that they are, though, McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) understand the poignant vindication in being remembered at all.

Matt and Kim (their real names) come on like a punked-up Mates of State--a couple so cute that you'd walk away from their frantic live shows feeling mushy, if someone hadn't just mushed you. But the love songs on their second album are for their home borough of Brooklyn as much as for each other.

Somehow the group manages, with masterfully restrained piano and strings, to wring joy from bygone heartache.

Although frontman Mikel Jollet still falls on life's thorns, the band's second album supports his weighty themes with more instrumental muscle.

With Strong Arm Steady's MC trio of Krondon, Phil Da Agony, and Mitchy Slick (plus extended fam like Planet Asia, Phonte, and Fashawn) dropping lyrical barbs ("Telegram") and creatively reheated thug-isms ("Needle in the Haystack"), Madlib chops up loops bubbling with quirky humor and analog soul.

Wainwright never runs short on clever conceit. [Jul 2001, p.130]

while he name-checks fiery saxophonist Albert Ayler on "Love Cry," the track's steady, nine-minute crest signals Hebden's return to meticulous melodicism.

The emphasis put on the soundscapes for these songs--unprecedented for the singer/songwriter--results in her lyrics occasionally getting buried under the synth swooshes, but for the first time in a long time, the majority of Taylor's lyrics don't really demand your attention anyway.

The bedrock combination of redlined guitars and Mark Arm's adenoidal wail has only been rendered more caustic by two decades of watching lesser lights cash out. [June 2008, p.114]

Flockaveli's flaw is not Waka's coarseness, but his generosity--25 guest verses from anonymous Brick Squad cronies suck up air instead of letting Waka breathe without mentor Gucci Mane's oxygen tank.

The results vary: "Lost Weekend" is some kind of romantic peak, while the Lennon-esque "I Am the Psychic" is not.

If Dirty Projectors are no longer indie A-listers with the expectation of having each album provide shapeshifting genius, the upside is Lamp Lit Prose sounds like something Longstreth wanted to make rather than had to.

Modeselektor sprinkle the Flying Lotus–style funk sparingly, melting their Teutonic cool just enough to reveal a previously missing musical link: soulfulness.

PARA, is both exactly what its name suggests and a galaxy of far, far-flung musical touchstones.

All 6's and 7's is an admirable attempt at balancing Tech's heavy-metal rep and hard-won maturity.

They seem to be having fun. [Jun 2006, p.79]