Luckily, it’s also a good stand-alone record, a bong-prog take on the alt-rock grandeur of Gish and Siamese Dream.
With Shields, they still sound like Radiohead at a Buddhist retreat, but the songs are more muscular.
The melodies, guitarscapes and thrift-shop organ swells make for exquisite comfort.
He and his band take a light, spry approach to their groove-centered music, which is experimental but never dour.
The lyrics on Old Ideas reach for the stark power of prayers, hymns and religious riddles.
Lamar is an unlikely star: a storyteller, not a braggart or punch-line rapper, setting spiritual yearnings and moral dilemmas against a backdrop of gang violence and police brutality.
Sometimes the songs drag ... But Apple's kooky energy pushes through the slow spots.
Blunderbuss gets stranger and more fascinating the closer you listen.
When Ocean reins himself in, tucking his words and melodies into tighter verse-chorus structures, the songs have startling force.
Wrecking Ball is the most despairing, confrontational and musically turbulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made.