Is Recovery a classic album? No. But is it an essential one in shaping Eminem’s future? Absolutely.
American Slang sticks to the template Fallon's been hammering away at since the band's beginning; its stories star the same kind of characters and its garage-punk sound still sparkles with flashes of Motown and R&B.
Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois and recorded solo with a reverb-swathed electric guitar, is all about doubt and desperation, and Young is never better than when he's unsure of himself.
Simmering more than it strikes, High Violet coaxes you into baroque indie darkness rather than shines bright pop lights.
On their third album, those feelings now sound like actual songs, with swelling choruses and an all-encompassing ache.
Ultimately, Thank Me Later‘s revelry concludes with emotional disgorgement, but no messy hangover.
The biggest, boldest, and best moments on their second album nod flamboyantly to influences never before evident — Erasure (“Ambling Alp”) and Haircut 100 (the tropical “O.N.E.”), among others — but somehow they’re seamlessly integrated with trippier old jams.
Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, the sequel to The End of Day, is a revelation, boldly reshaping Cudi’s sound.
Throughout Grinderman 2., the guitars and violins pant and howl with a visceral, veteran’s swagger. Late middle age has never sounded so thrilling.
If Johnson seems uninterested in Nashville's warm-and-cuddly act, he agrees with its insistence on crackerjack songcraft, and that keeps The Guitar Song from hardening into tough-guy drudgery.
What keeps Murphy from being an insufferable know-it-all is how he folds deeper emotions into his references.
The Suburbs burns on behalf of the belief that modern culture is missing its heart — and to give up the search is to send one’s soul to oblivion.
Like frontman Bradford Cox’s solo records as Atlas Sound, Halcyon Digest exists mainly as another iteration of his shifting id, deeply plumbing memories real and imagined with a sound by turns spare and sumptuous.
It's a sinister, orchestral, hugely grandiose affair that owes as much to the artist's self-aggrandizing ego as to the voracious id that would destroy it publicly.