The album sees the singer-songwriter moving in a different direction.
The parade of ’80s-aping acts marches onward with the cleverly monikered I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness’s ominous debut LP.
Pay the Devil is a well-intentioned homage to a brand of music now seemingly alien to those in Nashville and elsewhere.
Given the extraordinarily brief shelf life of most imported art-rockers these days, these currently bright Stars could flame out tomorrow.
It’s hard to think of a better single-disc collection to represent Johnston’s prodigious catalog.
The album’s high enjoyability factor is likely incidental to Willie Nelson’s true aims: honoring one of country music’s most enduring songwriters.
Smooth flow and occasional inventive beats notwithstanding, this is an album that feels bloated, overextended, and much too calculated.
Ringleader of the Tormentors makes you wonder if seven-year gaps between albums are necessary.
Unfortunately, nothing else on A Girl Like Me matches the audacity of “SOS.”
Wilderness is on Jagjaguwar Records not American Idol, and their new record, Vessel States, bears zero crossover appeal.
The problem is not the Coup’s OutKast influence, but that the comparison illuminates Riley’s significantly weaker flow.
Other True Self is the exact medicine that Vernon Reid’s Black Rock Coalition is asking for.
As a stand-alone, this first volume suffers a bit from just how well-read the first chapter of Tommy Boy’s history is at this point.
For better and worse, there’s no other band that sounds like the Fiery Furnaces.
The album devotes much of its running time to West’s forceful confidence, her wry sense of humor, and her ongoing process of self-actualization.
The album is a return to the band’s detail-oriented form.
Mike kinner’s uncomfortable response to fame is genuinely human, but the artistic expression of his crisis is a drag.
The album is an entire box of Fruity Pebbles: vibrant, colorful, and awfully tempting to OD on.
Lost in America is forgettable in a way that all but ensures that its title will turn out to be prophetic.
Bob Delevante is armed with a strong pop sensibility and a gift for composing memorable melodies and even more memorable photographs.
The album seems destined to be regarded as a “transitional” record a few years out.