The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
Someone forgot to tell country trio Lady Antebellum that “sophomore slumps” are now gauche.
Even when backed by a full choir on the stirring “Move Up,” Griffin still emerges as a real show-stealing powerhouse.
Grace Jones and David Bowie are obvious influences, but it’s impossible—impossible!—to discuss Lady Gaga and not talk about Madonna.
In This Light is inspired by the hustle and bustle of London, and perhaps more so its anxiety and paranoia.
Transference is sparser than Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but it’s no less melancholic.
No one needs to tell you the sea change in the realm of music videos and how we all consume them in the 21st century.
For the most part, My Dinosaur Life consists of power-pop in the proud tradition of Cheap Trick and Fountains of Wayne.
Of the Blue Colour of the Sky is OK Go’s unequivocal stab at lusty, dirty soul.
And so the Mark “Eels/E” Everett train continues to rumble deeper down its quixotic tunnel.
July Flame partially frees Laura Veirs from the constricting mold of her own music.
The Sea is simultaneously intimate and frustratingly opaque.
With Heartland, Owen Pallett officially lays the Final Fantasy moniker to rest.
Enlightenment may just be Hubbard’s finest record, and it’s certainly the new decade’s first essential album.
Vampire Weekend’s Contra grounds the band’s heady sound in a world-weary sentimentality.
Just about the only thing Ke$ha makes convincing on Animal is that the current crop of party girls are every bit as soulless as they let on.
Blige, as always, does her damnedest to sell every clichéd platitude and mixed metaphor.
Florence and the Machine’s music is particularly sensitive to studio gloss.
Where does Lady Gaga fit into the typical conception of a pop musician?
As smart and savvy a songwriter as Keys should be able to do better than this.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact source, but the music landscape of 2009 is perhaps best characterized by its slipperiness.