The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
The sheer quality of the Dandy Warhols’s songcraft on Earth goes a long way toward earning them a measure of goodwill.
Look What You Made Me will burn brightly for a few weeks on the strength of its club readiness.
Fast Paced World puts to rest any doubts as to how the Duhks would carry on with their new incarnation.
Juliana Hatfield is often at her best on How to Walk Away.
Loudon Wainwright III is a songwriter who has only gotten better as he’s aged.
Summer of the Whore documents a season of self-destruction and preservation.
My favorite piece of music criticism this year is one of those cut-and-paste subway collage hack jobs.
Brazilian Girls are not from Brazil, only one of them is a girl, and their album New York City has very little to do with the Big Apple.
Tinderbox is an album of nearly limitless depth.
A Little Bit Longer is hard to envision as an album that will allow the Jonas Brothers to transcend their place in this teen-pop cycle.
You & Me is a thoroughly Walkmen-esque album, however tautological it may be to say so.
Dark Shades of Blue is richer and more dynamic, experimental, and psychedelic than Rudd’s previous releases.
Newman’s arrangements, first of all, have never seemed quite this obvious and theatrical.
With Fasciination, though, the Faint find themselves in the middle of the road.
“Everybody But Me” is such a triumphant ode to being antisocial that it makes you want to follow Li into whatever quiet corner of the bar she manages to escape to.
Score one for proponents of teaching sex ed in school.
While filled with rich textures, layered sounds, hypnotic percussion and rippling waves of noise, it ends up being more plodding than epic.
Ra Ra Riot has fashioned a gritty yet polished post-punk sound fit for a Sofia Coppola film.
Inside’s best moments go a long way toward justifying Sugarland’s high profile.
The wanderlust that led to the album’s recording is also reflected in Oberst’s songwriting, which emphasizes the appeal of a transient lifestyle.