BAIO’s always had strange and smarts to offer in his world-class quartet; The Names finally gives us a first-person view.

Spell-casting pop and Twitter branding this is not; the excellent force of this album is how it taps into the sheer pain, anger, and sensuality of the idea of “the witch,” rather than its archetypal signifiers in pop culture.

Lotus and his fellow former collaborator Kamasi Washington turn up again here to add to the downcast din, but their inclusion only highlights Bruner’s dispositional shift.

With ridiculous Auto-Tuned hooks, filthy lyrics ("Bustin' on your ass / Can't believe I said that / Never been a racist / I left her with a wet back"), and jittery beats from Young L and the Cataracts, it's worth putting your name on the guest list.

At its best, We Fall treats its revolving door of guests less like a cavalcade of strangers than a band of familiar colleagues.

Her confidently unsteady voice has a refreshing energy, serving as a cohesive, quivering throughline for her intentionally nomadic debut, The Fool.

Despite such surface gloss, it’s clear Franz Ferdinand are still finding their creative footing without McCarthy. The taut arrangements present on previous albums can occasionally give way to moody repetition (“The Academy Award”) or sluggish tempos (“Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow”), robbing the record of immediacy. This is a small quibble, however.

Carried To Dust's songs travel a trail that seems carved out of ancient echoes. [Sep 2008, p.114]

Josephine Olausson's Ono-esque delivery remains an acquired taste, but that's surely by design: If she sang any sweeter, Love Is All's songs might evaporate like cotton candy.

Unlike much of the current post-Animal Collective psychedelia, there's a palpable, full-bodied force and galloping beat behind the bliss.

The frequent Röyksopp collaborator has clearly learned a thing or two from the dance mavens, sprinkling Ten Love Songs with the mainstream-minded, four-on-the-floor thumping that should make American pop stars seethe with envy.

That’s Storyteller as a whole: expertly arranged, dense without overwhelming the force of its captain.

Four years later, with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, he’s dropped the album that Kanye haters wanted Kanye to make.

Japandroids have a point of view (young, male, infatuated with the promise of the present) and an M.O. (excellently fuzzed-out garage rock played as if at the apocalypse), but more impressively, they've mastered another secret to swaying the public: confidence without smugness.

Those noisy, waxy workouts (“Tarpit,” “The Post”) that served to make the hookier tunes even brighter on the ’80s Dinosaur albums have mainly been left behind with the band’s youth since their 2007 return. But the swaying, softer respites on Not prove just as effective.

Both a big relief and a mild disappointment. [Mar 2007, p.90]

The Twilight Sad walk a fine line between drippy sentimentality and rough-edged realism. [May 2007, p.91]

Cudi's unrepentant attitude is partly why Indicud sounds so engaging, at least during the album's sparkling first half. (Sadly, he doesn't have enough good songs to fill out its hour-plus, 18-track length.)

Although critics of Morrissey's solo career have justifiably argued that his post-Bona Drag ensembles haven't met the Smiths' lofty bar, World Peace Is None of Your Business is the first Morrissey album that's often stronger musically than it is lyrically.

Remarkably, the songs on Avalanche are nearly as good as the ones on Illinois, although with surprising synth bursts and craggy guitar noise that were sandpapered off of its predecessor. [Aug 2006, p.79]

Listening to Non-Believers is like clasping hands with an old friend: It’s warm, accessible, and sweetly familiar.

Its finest moments ('Let It Die,' 'Sunrise/Sunset,' and the beautifully tortured opener 'Hands')--featuring the duo's heartaching harmonizing--capture a uniquely tender gloom amid the droning atmospherics.

Ignore the lyrics, Spears sounds even more like a programmed Britbot than on 2007's Blackout.

Whether he's drunk on optimism or writhing in psychic pain, his relentless quest for enlightenment is gripping and inspiring.

On W.A.R., the Queens MC is still in a linguistic fervor, rapping about being in the streets "like catalytic converters" on "Clap (one day)" and comparing himself to a preacher with a ".38 snub-nose" on "Let My People Go."

Trouble Man is his first album since that second bid; it finds him finally returning to the lane that he abandoned somewhere around the time he included two Wyclef Jean songs on T.I. vs. Tip.

Smart, left-field parodies such as 'Hardcore Gentlemen,' which sends up early-'90s horrorcore, prove that Tanya Morgan may go hard in pursuit of rap dreams, but they haven't lost their infectious sense of humor.

Early exploits including a ridiculous rhyme about T-Rex amorousness ("Dinosaur Sex"), jabs at vapid art-school scenesters ("Art Bitch" and "!Franchesckaar!"), and some indecipherable indie-dance vocoding ("I Wanna Be Darth Vader"). True Romance is a strident departure from those frivolities so far as solid, true-to-aim songwriting is concerned, but the divergence and a touch of the silliness remains.