Mew is not as thoughtful or smart as they think they are, but the force of their conviction is inspiring.
Seventy minutes is an almost excruciatingly long time to spend alone with Sean Paul.
On Watch Me Fall, Jay Reatard settles on his best impulses while also neatening them up a bit.
Tribute To is most interesting for the opportunity to hear Jim James’s ethereal voice.
Drake’s ability to juggle standard bling-and-bluster narratives with intelligent narratives bodes well for his future.
See Mystery Lights is by turns buoyantly poppy and eerily satisfying.
The music is defined by a few overpowering elements rather than its intelligence or melodic dexterity.
As good as Molina is at working with gloom, Josephine is thankfully not a one-note slog through the valley of the shadow of death.
Oneida’s Rated O seems to thrive on its own difficulty.
Electric Dirt continues the artist’s reflective summarizing of his musical past.
With this album, Wilco amps up the studio sheen and a weird sense of friendly humor.
Across Murdering Oscar, Patterson Hood’s songs fall into a folksy rut.
Travels with Myself and Another is an attack, but a delicately delivered one.
The material here is rendered almost entirely colorless by its reconstituted nature.
Thankfully, in a thoughtful gesture, Man of Aran is presented as a bonus DVD synced up with the band’s new score.
Throughout, Pop’s lyrics settle nicely into an eerie landscape of dread and malaise.
Crocodiles’s debut album is a hazy collection of familiar rhythms and half-remembered sounds.
Blame it on immaturity or ambition, but there’s an overcrowded sloppiness to Polly Scattergood’s songs.
The album is thick with a humid sense of decaying sexuality, a desperate voraciousness made even grimier by the gritty production.
Reintegration Time is a neat, reserved album, if not satisfying as a close approximation of the band’s live sound.