The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
By downplaying their gift for memorable hooks and melodies, a band known for an unbridled sense of joy comes across as dour and bored.
You Are All My People never gives the impression that it’s more than just a one-off novelty project.
Mega Breakfast is all relentless, delicious parody.
For the most part the brothers Kadane stick with what’s worked in the past.
Lightbulbs is an album solely for the initiated.
Altogether, the specifics amount to less than Will Sheff’s elusive descriptions of Marie, Cindy, and Holly in Stage Names.
The album is filled to the brim with elite production and rapping, but it lacks the hungriness, spirit, and craziness of a classic.
Loveless again reasserts her place as one of the premier artists not just of the country genre but of contemporary popular music.
From the covers to the polished production, the choices on Promised Land all work well and play to Williams’s strengths.
That Simpson is audibly at least a quarter-pitch sharp on at least half of the album makes a good case for the use of Autotune.
Though Flamingo manages to maintain a certain cohesiveness throughout, its individual tracks are largely hit or miss.
Entanglements is an orchestral-pop-meets-modern-classical song cycle that thematically spans from the frantic pangs of adolescent lust to more mature, contemplative desire.
Most of the songs on Little Wild One pay tribute to New York City.
If they’re able to harness their Southern-revival hymns with the bravado of ’70s guitar rock, Delta Spirit will be a force to be reckoned with.
There’s a unique pleasure in hearing a once one-dimensional rapper discover complexity.
The album is a reassertion of Mogwai’s strengths and testimony that they are still credible and productive.
Apollo Sunshine is the kind of band that thinks because everything has already been done, the only thing left is ironic pastiche.
Caught in the Trees finds Damien Jurado at the height of his powers.
There’s no question that Kitchell’s on the way toward finding her voice as both a singer and songwriter.
Playhouse is a major disappointment for anyone other than George Jones completists.