We weren’t sure if Madonna could surprise us anymore. Until she did.
Head First is a brief trip, but it’s saturated with enough hi-NRG motifs and sounds for countless sweaty workouts at Jack LaLanne.
The album may be bookended by its two best tracks, but the material in between is not exactly less consistent.
The album displays an inventive, freewheeling approach to pop songcraft.
In the Dark has gigantic aspirations.
This is an album where the mind-boggling and the mind-blowing are wall to wall.
The album strains to make the trio sound like countless other acts currently mining a retro-minded aesthetic for instant indie cred.
The most surprising—and rewarding—development on The Monitor is sonic, not thematic.
As with most of those serial dramas, Black Swan adheres to a predictable formula and familiar emotional terrain.
You know you’re in trouble when your marketing strategy is the most interesting thing about your new album.
The album asserts itself as a refreshingly pointed piece of chamber pop.
The album is Xiu Xiu’s most vibrant experiment since Fabulous Muscles.
Beat the Devil’s Tattoo isn’t some heady exercise in rock transcendence or romanticism.
The Winter of Mixed Drinks is, in a lot of ways, Frightened Rabbit’s weightiest record yet.
Like jj n°2 before it, n°3 strikes a balance between the blasé and the magical, matching facetious.
Broken Bells boasts some truly marvelous songs, but these peaks are sandwiched between tracks that struggle to exceed colorless tedium.
Have One on Me is a strange and strangely pretentious mess.
Black Light impeccably delivers on everything you could possibly want from the 14-year-old band.
Shearwater’s The Golden Archipelago is the kind of album that makes other bands look lazy.
Peter Gabriel’s first album in eight years carries the definite stink of pandering opportunism.
Corbin doesn’t reach the same heights of George Strait’s best singles or even of his halfway-interesting recent albums.