Vile is quick to conjure up a bevy of interesting images or ideas but struggles to find a compelling way to contain them.
C’est La Vie strikes a balance between happiness and longing that’s often nothing short of sublime.
Collapse’s biggest surprise lies in how warm and inviting it all is.
The album thrives when Orbital strikes a balance between, rather than juxtaposes, disparate tempos and textures.
Hunter is a bold and defiant statement on postgenderism through music that’s alternately elegant and raw.
Trite lyrical moments blemish the otherwise pristine musicality of Wild Nothing’s Indigo.
Interpol’s sixth studio album, Marauder, crackles with the energy of embracing life’s unpredictable turns.
The album eschews guitar rock-oriented maximalism and soaring catharsis in favor of quieter orchestral moments.
Nine Inch Nails’s Bad Witch wrestles with a depraved culture that’s showing signs of impending collapse.
Lykke Li indulges in extremes of either agony or ecstasy throughout her fourth album, So Sad So Sexy.
With Hell-On, Case continues to cultivate fresh expressions of personal growth from familiar terrain.
The album eschews the incisive introspection and figurative lyricism that defined Chvrches’s early work.
Dystopia meets creature comforts on the sci-fi-themed Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
With Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts treats both figurative and literal forward motion as a cathartic act.
Throughout much of In the Rainbow Rain, Will Sheff is content to lean on threadbare platitudes.
Throughout, Alexis Taylor is prone to polar extremes of either mopey self-doubt or contrived affirmation.
For all of the propulsive thrust on display, the band yearns for those quiet, restorative moments.
The Deconstruction reduces the complex spectrum of human emotions to mere binaries.
With its sweeping scope and rippling tension, Virtue captures the anxieties of our current post-truth age.
Love and paranoia go hand in hand for singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes on White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood.