Ashes & Fires remains compelling throughout thanks to its peaks and valleys.
You have to break before listening to any other music, so you don’t interrupt the sense of peace and joy you get after this record ends.
Summer Camp evokes the feeling of an idealized vision of these adolescent days of summers past with some bittersweet and irresistibly catchy pop songs.
Watch the Throne turns out to be a success, even if it isn’t the landscape-altering LP the world had hoped for.
What elevates Yuck above the typical nostalgic, lo-fi noise revivalist is how the band defies predictability by shifting styles and directions between, and even within, songs.
No amount of hip hop swagger or style can save this album from being exactly what it’s desperately trying not to be: your standard bedroom synthpop record.
Eternals is not a Death Metal record in the slightest, but easily the most bandy album in the Mountain Goats discography.
Replica catches Lopatin at the peak of his powers, realizing his esoteric vision with a newfound brazenness
There is very little to back up a claim of true musical growth, but it’s something of a start.
21 is a good album that shows the world Adele’s talent, but one that is just a precursor to bigger and better things.
Every track is full to the absolute brim with the genius of seasoned veterans.
While looking for 50 Words For Snow, she has found 50 other original ways to express herself effortlessly, creating another intriguing piece of work.
The album ... rides like a dream along the freeway and blazes forward on its own path more than it follows in the footsteps of the others.
It sticks like a demented structure that’s mysteriously magnetic and, in the end, really fun.
The unexpected twists in melody throughout the record nicely balance the more repetitive strains.
He can really, really rap, plus sing and emote and put on a show better than 90% of his hip-hop counterparts.
Supergroups rarely have any business sounding this good.
Aside from being a top-notch album musically, it very well may be Lennox’s most accessible work to date.
It maintains an ever-so-perfect pace throughout, fraught with big beats, catchy choruses, and smooth textures, making it one of this year’s finest debuts by far.
They bring to the table the most interesting, depressing, and drug-infested R&B record in years.
Apocalypse is one of those rare modern jazz records that’s remarkably unpretentious without having to cheapen the daunting complexity jazz is noted for.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost succeeds thoroughly at nearly everything it does.
He takes his fair turns at singing, as opposed to unearthing, and delivers some of his more satisfying softer moments in recent memory.
But more than any theoretical narrative or concept, this is a rock album at heart, and it certainly does rock
Parallax offers a miniature glass menagerie of fragile songs ascribed with heaps of intimacy, all shedding the most light on Cox’s whole artistic persona.
With Skying, the band has moved on to their own distinct personality by simply evolving.
The album is a culmination of female vocal power, with Anderson borrowing, recreating, and updating a sound that so many females before her have revolutionized.
It’s essentially a 37 minute jam session; one where they’re carving out their current sensibilities and seeing where they run.
It’s an album that makes you sad that it’s not longer; sad that it can’t just go on forever.
4 continues the Beyoncé tradition of making amazingly catchy, anthemic records with some of her best songs to date.
Take Care shines bright, utilizing the same concepts and notions as its predecessor but with far more lethal and appealing results.
Kaputt is the sort of record that arrives only once in a while: an expansive world that captivates you from beginning to end, impresses you with its self-awareness and cohesiveness, then releases you from its grasp when it's all over.
w h o k i l l is an album indulgent in eccentricity, compelling in its variety, and downright impossible to not enjoy.
Although Dreaming sports slower, more introspective ballads, there’s also a pantry’s worth of interstellar jams, chock full of sounds you’ve probably never heard before.
James Blake is an essential for anybody interested in witnessing how pop music can and will continue to change, progress, and grow into something new with time.
Wasting Light has cornered the kind of ideas that make up the best of the band’s catalog in an earnest attempt to go as big as possible, while staying relatively grounded.
It’s an awe-inspiring, challenging album in all the best ways. PJ Harvey has created an album that will be at the top of everyone’s “Best of” list come December.
Black Up is not the best hip hop album of the year so far, it’s the best album of the year so far.
The album is a shoo-in for being a timeless great, no matter what we say.
Strange Mercy achieves that sweeping goal, delivering on its promises, challenging thematically and intellectually, while also entertaining.