The album sees the singer-songwriter moving in a different direction.
The album’s pleasures stand as something warmly new from a major talent.
There’s little here that’s likely to reprise the slow-burning success of the inspirational smash “Unwritten.”
This is the “for the clubs” monster the half-written “Come on Get Up” wanted to be back in 2001 before giving up entirely.
Safe Inside the Day isn’t immediately loveable, but it’s smart and original.
Satisfied relies too heavily on middle-of-the-road mid-tempo numbers.
Machine music this unrelentingly intimate is worth the attention it requires.
Ghostface is no different from other crazy capitalists like Jeff Koons.
The Steeldrivers stands as one of the most accomplished and certainly one of the most distinctive bluegrass debuts in recent memory.
Angels of Destruction! too often smothers its solid roots-rock foundation in strident overproduction.
It really is like as if Sondheim tried to replicate the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The latest album from Rhonda Vincent and her stellar backing band, the Rage, finds the bluegrass star aiming for a more mainstream country sound.
Sia’s Some People Have Real Problems is the first great pop album of the new year.
Top 10 lists are an exercise in futility, scenester-ism and dick-measuring.
For a collection of lo-fi home demos, Rivers Cuomo’s Alone, in its better moments, sure does sound at times like a return to form.
Sweet Dreams is more faithful to snyth-pop’s avant-garde roots than Touch.
For a certain kind of music nerd, the idea of the humorous rock song will always be blasphemy.
The solo debut of Terius Nash includes a few flashes of greatness and plenty of potential.
we could do worse than give Beanie Sigel the benefit of the doubt.
It’s hard to get beyond the very title of Mary J. Blige’s eighth overstuffed collection of affirmations, self-definitions, and keepin’-it-real-isms.
It’s Patrick Wolf who earns our pick for Album of the Year for following two impressive records with one that’s even more extraordinary.