The singer has yet to discover a sound or sensibility that truly distinguishes her.
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.
Because O=of You is just one example of the impact that Quincy Jones-era MJ has had on today’s crop of young R&B performers.
The songs on American Doll Posse that really work are reminders of how gifted a songwriter Amos is.
It’s in between the showboating that you realize what you’re listening to is pretty fucking close to genius.
When’s the last time listening to a record felt so much like you were competitively getting drunk with your friends?
Playing it safe could not be more inappropriate for a Patti Smith album.
For an act that lives and dies based on their energy and conviction, Tied & True sets a bad precedent.
From the Cradle to the Grave is steeped in death, but Dale Watson’s stories are alive with real wit and insight.
Even the angrier, more polemical moments on Cassadaga are too rooted in allegory to energize the listener.
The Magic Position is a euphoric listening experience not even being a critic can spoil.
It’s only the songs seemingly constructed for radio play that mar the otherwise radiant Reminder.
Apparently we’ve been listening to the wrong album for decades.
Strange Days exists as a document of a sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, and often twisted era of fear and idealism.
Waiting for the Sun features some of the Doors’s most combative, political work.