The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
The album arrives stateside unburdened by any expectations for an artistic or commercial rebound.
Fame Monster does provide some small, if fleeting, glimpses behind the pretense that is Lady Gaga.
If nothing else, Echo certainly establishes Leona Lewis as a singularly gifted vocalist.
If you thought that success went to Ryan Tedder’s head, Waking Up wastes no time confirming those suspicions.
On The Seventh Seal, Rakim finds himself shackled to a mass of middling producers and unexceptional beats.
What sets Them Crooked Vultures apart from the stockpile of self-indulgent hogwash is the sense of merriment flowing through it.
The album is about as edgy as recent albums by Aimee Mann and Rosanne Cash.
Escovedo’s critical cachet has always outstripped his name recognition and commercial impact.
The Old 97’s have been drawing from the best of country, rock, and pop all along.
Just as Number Ones’s sequencing highlights Janet’s impressive early years, it also underscores her startlingly abrupt decline.
While Shape of Energy isn’t some collection of piss n’ vinegar rock brilliance, it’s a good amount of fun.
The feel of Xenophanes is sketchy and somewhat improvised, but there’s no sense that these songs are simply impressionistic doodles.
What may have in some hands come off as a remarkable display of versatility only reinforces Chris Carrabba’s limitations as a songwriter.
The difference between sticking to a sweet spot and running in place is sometimes vanishingly small.
When taken as a whole, em>The Fountain is significantly worse than any one track would suggest.
Tongue’s paradox is that the more Dizzee and his collaborators don’t work, the more the album does.
She Wolf is unequivocally “American.”
Night Music captures the macabre power of darkness, where ordinary shadows are stretched into ominous significance.
Tara Jane O’Neil insists, rightly and eerily, that as much cold space exists between two people as between two stars.
In Love & War is deserving of greater commercial impact than it is likely to earn.