The album (re)establishes Whack as one of the most creative rappers in the game.
Musgraves burrows into her psyche and the sounds of folk music for an affecting set of songs.
The album’s cover songs are rendered so pristine that they lose all sense of identity.
While the singer’s voice is as expressive as ever, the songwriting throughout the album feels safe and, at times, almost anonymous.
Working with an outside producer for the first time in years, the band nudges their sound in new directions.
The album amounts to a relatively familiar reflection on aging and the passage of time.
The album finds emotional power in its varied sonic palettes and searching lyricism.
The band attempts to blend a number of disparate musical genres, but the result is often less than the sum of the parts.
The album’s sonic palette is nearly identical to its predecessors, but this is the most introspective release of the trilogy.
The band sounds reinvigorated, proving that the sonic risks of their last album were far from a dead end.
The album is a collection of occasionally catchy dance-floor filler, but it’s burdened with a concept that feels under-explored.
The album isn’t as bombastic or inventive as the singer’s debut, but it reflects her growing introspection.
The album sees the Aussie singer-songwriter refining the at times jagged indie rock of her promising debut.
The album revels in the sounds of ’50s and ’60s pop but lacks the hooks that made that era so indelible.
In an attempt to move forward, the band has repackaged the stylistic traits that made them special in the first place.
The album is spiked with humor and pathos, and Spektor holds the two in balance as skillfully as she ever has.
Though the album is more cohesive than Soccer Mommy’s previous albums, its lyrical themes and melodies aren’t nearly as indelible.
The album sees Styles growing comfortable enough within the pop idiom that he inhabits to push against it—but only ever so slightly.
Toro y Moi’s Mahal feels a lot like the aural equivalent of lazing around on a Sunday afternoon.
Banks’s Serpentina asserts its uniqueness in paradoxically conventional and unsurprising ways.