Madonna’s most focused effort in decades, the album earns its nostalgia by prioritizing it.
With a few exceptions, Gretchen Wilson’s One of the Boys doesn’t go out of its way to debase women or pander to the neo-con demo.
Plague Park introduces Handsome Furs as the rare side project that isn’t entirely superfluous.
Both as a writer and a vocalist, Osborne has the chops to record a killer soul album, but this tasteful-to-a-fault effort isn’t it.
While Maroon 5 is down a drummer, luckily they haven’t lost their mojo.
As wraithlike as Air’s moon-rock, Boxer is also as focused and rugged as a great punk record.
I was less than enthused at the news of what seems like a premature Smashing Pumpkins reunion.
Straight Up! would be completely gratuitous if the selections on her previous hits collection weren’t so screwy.
Hype can be a cruel mistress.
Rufus Wainwright must have one hell of a rolodex.
Even at their most retro, Wilco is among contemporary pop music’s most vital acts.
Who walks down to the sea in the morning to sit in the long grass, and then rhymes “sea” with…“sea”?
Small Gods may not signal the birth of a star as bright as Springsteen, Etheridge, Crow, or even DiFranco, but it’s one worth keeping an eye on.
Lambert is a country music legend in the making, and the most vital artist Music Row has produced in a generation.
If you’ve ever heard a Clientele album before, you’ve more or less heard this one.
The album finds the band trying to recreate the frilly pop splendor of their previous successes.
Kick is what’s most sorely lacking throughout Grime Silk Thunder.
Homogenic is an album that proves that Björk’s musical evolution is best measured vertically.
Keren Ann is too often in danger of getting lost against the wallpaper.
A glorified karaoke bar isn’t exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find an artist with a career as varied and prolific as Tori Amos’s.
What works on Volta will probably endure as long as what (little) worked on Medúlla.