The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
Sun Kil Moon’s Universal Themes is like a diary with pages that are still blank and need to be filled up.
Ratchet attempts to reconcile Shamir the Internet Phenomenon with Shamir the Artist.
Absent the lightning-in-a-bottle voltage of their heyday, Faith No More’s Sol Invictus is shockingly no more than adequate.
Most of Dark Bird Is Home takes a tone of celebratory resignation to fate.
Why Make Sense? is Hot Chip’s characteristically polished, generously tuneful tribute to wearing your heart on your sleeve.
I Can’t Imagine opts for uncharacteristically hazy sprawl over Shelby Lynne’s usual tight focus.
Fly International Luxurious Art feels both overextended and under-conceived.
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.