Years spotlights Shook’s effortlessly refined gift for songcraft.
Messy, uneven, and at times unlistenable, the album’s sheer audacity makes it utterly intriguing.
Aiming for playful rebirth, the Decemberists instead land on cloying kitsch with I’ll Be Your Girl.
A Productive Cough is Titus Andronicus’s freshest, wildest, most unexpected work to date.
As well-realized as the original Twin Fantasy was, it’s obvious that Will Toledo sees the project as a fluid work.
First Aid Kit has gotten exceedingly proficient at imitating their favorite American artists.
Mavis Staples’s album is hopeful and optimistic not in ignorance of political reality, but in spite of it.
All American Made is a testament to singer-songwriter Margo Price’s fiery independent streak.
A quintessential stopgap album, Lotta Sea Lice sees Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile cruising throughout.
ken showcases the most commercially appealing elements of Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar’s oeuvre.
It effortlessly recalls the band’s much-too-short original run while also settling into a lived-in, comfortable groove.
The National continues to display highly polished craftsmanship of simmering balladry on Sleep Well Beast.
If LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream is intended as a nostalgic cash-grab, it’s a piss poor one.
The album’s pseudo-danceable moments add welcome wrinkles to a formula that’s otherwise begun to feel leaden.
Iron & Wine’s Beast Epic mostly just drifts by like a pleasant but fleeting summer breeze.
Everything Now is by far Arcade Fire’s most upbeat and easily digestible effort to date.
Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield runs out of new things to say well before Out in the Storm ends.
Sheer Mag has created an album on which even their breeziest hooks drip with tension and rage.
The album is convincing evidence that the Nashville sound can and should encompass more than just country.
Black Keys frontman’s DanAuerbach’s Waiting on a Song is, first and foremost, a piece of studio art.