This is a solid and even occasionally great example of contemporary bluegrass music.
Mr. Lemons is at least agreeable for Phillips’s lack of pretension and his strong ear for a melodic hook.
Dr. John has certainly earned the right to kick back a little.
The album is as likely to please fans of melodic indie-pop and roots-rock as it is fans of the current crop of folk troubadours.
Devastating as his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” may have been, Cash has rarely sounded as accessible as does on Personal File.
For all of its insular, inscrutable put-ons, the album remains an endlessly fascinating piece of work.
As he routinely does with other artists’ material, Burnett has outdone himself on the album’s production.
The final release from Grandaddy suffers a bit for mistaking simple length for thematic scope.
The self-titled debut from Daniel Powter sounds exactly the way Maroon 5 would sound were Adam Levine not scoring so much A-list ass.
Ammunition may not be a call-to-arms, but its introspective, sturdy songcraft promises to endure.
The album’s poke-it-until-it-bleeds attitude is all good fun to a point.
The Elms perform their bar-rock with impressive conviction and admirable skill, but there’s ultimately nothing distinctive about their sound.
For better and worse, there’s no other band that sounds like the Fiery Furnaces.
The album devotes much of its running time to West’s forceful confidence, her wry sense of humor, and her ongoing process of self-actualization.
The album is a return to the band’s detail-oriented form.
The album is an entire box of Fruity Pebbles: vibrant, colorful, and awfully tempting to OD on.
Lost in America is forgettable in a way that all but ensures that its title will turn out to be prophetic.
Bob Delevante is armed with a strong pop sensibility and a gift for composing memorable melodies and even more memorable photographs.
The album seems destined to be regarded as a “transitional” record a few years out.
Whether or not Corbett will be taken seriously remains to be seen, but this debut album makes a solid enough case that he should be.