The band’s first album in a decade is more haunted than its arena-sized choruses suggest.
If rap critics had their way, Jean Grae would be the queen of conscious hip-hop.
Ghosts in the machine, indeed.
No musician has mastered the slippery genre called “bedroom music” quite as well as Ernest Greene.
If Not Now, When? is a step in the wrong direction for a band that can still pen enthralling tunes.
Rabbits on the Run isn’t quite Carlton’s Extraordinary Machine, but the album signals that she just might be capable of such a magnum opus.
SBTRKT proves wildly entertaining while it’s on and fairly easy to forget once it ends.
Like many of Eno’s projects, Drums Between the Bells skips around fitfully off a loose central theme.
“Shuffle” rekindles the dynamism that was somewhat absent from last year’s Flaws.
The jazzily named Bakin’ @ the Potato! compiles an inscape of a set list from what are arguably Keneally’s most restlessly philosophical LPs.
We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves is engineered for minimal accessibility and maximum pretension.
Black Up reveals Shabazz Palaces as an artist much more in line with the future, voicing his dissatisfaction by carving his own path.
It climaxes with a dramatic percussion break that counts among the most visceral moments in the Björk canon.
YACHT gets heavier on Shangri-La, a descent into dance-floor philosophizing that threatens their otherwise polished groove.
The three songs on this EP are little more than reiterations of the band’s basic template.
An explanation for the continuing endurance of Buddy Holly’s musical legacy can probably be boiled down to one word: simplicity.
Digitalism is at their best when immersing themselves in the trappings and embellishments of full-blown electronica.
The Beastie Boys’s “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” gets the Major Lazer treatment.
The album identifies Faithfull’s persistent ability to merge individual personality and musical connoisseurship.
With The Light of the Sun, Scott reasserts herself as a relevant voice in modern R&B.
RIAA be damned, Lupercalia is a golden record if ever we’ve heard one.