We weren’t sure if Madonna could surprise us anymore. Until she did.
This is an album riddled with clichés and fraught with unconvincing cries of rebellion.
Loud is a decided step away from its über-personal, melodrama-drenched predecessor.
Throughout, John O’Regan reworks grand, organic melodies with unassuming warmth.
Despite its quiet release, Small Craft on a Milk Sea comes loaded with all kinds of external baggage.
Despite its top-notch instrumentals and über-polished production, The Lady Killer stands out for Green’s breathtaking vocal performances.
Pursuing genius at the expense of consistency might work out just fine for Cudi.
Not a damaged wail and not a burst of joy either. It’s the wizened sound of acceptance.
Down There is not an Animal Collective album.
Jamiroquai’s latest is a calculated effort to return to a more organic funk sound.
The album is one of the most revealing and none-too-flattering approximations of the mindset of a certain sort of adult’s Christmas spirit.
Sidewalks lacks a considerable amount of the bite of its predecessor.
North displays an astonishing level of growth and maturity when compared to Darkstar’s earlier hyperkinetic dubstep material.
“Runaway” is less of a video for the track of the same name than it is a film designed to be visual accompaniment to the whole of the Fantasy album.
There are very few artists with the desire to experiment with their sound during the twilight of their careers, and even fewer with the ability to do so convincingly.
Olympia is a lush, at times dazzling album that doesn’t always seem entirely aware of its own silliness.
This is how an ostensible country act makes a full-on pop album that sounds contemporary and relevant.
The Fresh & Onlys’s new album, Play It Strange, provides a trip back to the early 1980s.
Glasser is like Bat for Lashes or Florence and the Machine, but with less commercial ambition.
What charm the album does possess owes chiefly to the strength of the source material.
“Worn Out Tune” says it all, with its bluesy but not-quite-bleak atmosphere, and Elizabeth Ziman happily embracing “the ones we just can’t get enough of.”