The band’s first album in a decade is more haunted than its arena-sized choruses suggest.
Fated is limited in scope, frustratingly laconic, and somewhat derivative, but it’s never boring.
Wilder Mind is a thoroughly competent recreation of what Mumford & Sons think an adult-oriented indie-rock album should sound like.
My Morning Jacket’s forays into synth-heavy prog and arena rock on The Waterfall are alternately inventive and bafflingly blockheaded.
Next week, Mariah Carey will launch her Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace.
The Magic Whip is a mature, measured document from a band that’s never rested on its laurels.
For better or worse, Zac Brown Band refuses to continue churning out the same old formula on Jekyll + Hyde.
Cherry Bomb is further proof that Tyler, the Creator is a talented but conflicted voice.
Never Were the Way She Was is less a duet than a battle, a folie à deux between two oppositely pitched instruments.
Sound & Color is proof that Alabama Shakes have got the chops to be a lot more than Muscle Shoals revivalists.
Passion Pit’s Kindred is mired in a sonically limited pop vocabulary.
I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside sees Earl Sweatshirt digging even deeper into a psyche clouded with pot smoke and self-doubt.
The rollout of Madonna’s new album, Rebel Heart, continues to be a bumpy one.
Stranger Cat’s In the Wilderness is an impressively well-formed debut.
With its chintzy synths, plastic horns, and feather-lite reggae and lifeless white-guy funk, the album might as well be made up of outtakes recorded 30 years ago.
Though it’s a return to form for the band, Kintsugi falters is in its sacrifice of momentum for structure.
Barnett’s band lends these story-songs a live-feeling, loose accompaniment.
Lamar is greatly invested in the post-rap sound he’s aligned himself with, which is another pointed departure from Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.
Their music once defined by wanderlust, stylistically and thematically, Modest Mouse now seems content with driving ranges and bingo night.
Its Stevens’s hope for illumination, rather than the blindness of grief, that lingers most.
The second half doesn’t always live up to the standard of poetic lyrics or dynamic pacing Moorer set on the best of her past releases.