Gone are the frantic raps, menacing synths, and general hardness of the band's past three albums. In their place is a mellow approximation of the jazzy, old-school charm of The Roots circa Things Fall Apart.
In spite of the album’s potential obesity at 18 tracks of wildly different musical ideas, the three keep the weight off by welcoming coherence and by evenly spreading out their interests.
Have One on Me isn't at all a ploy for greater likability. It's an affecting, indulgent, and thoroughly fleshed-out monument to Newsom's considerable ambition.
Even though the steady presence of featured performances helps beautify Cosmogramma, this is essentially Ellison's crowning achievement. The album is sequenced with a sense of purpose, evidential from the promo being presented as a long continuous track.
Arcade Fire, because they’re really this damn good, are among the very few indie bands that could attempt a 65-minute album about the philosophical quandaries of the suburbs and pull it off completely.
This Is Happening is a record that knows -- made by a band that knows -- that disco is better when it's just not so satisfied with itself.
The greatest success of Teen Dream ... is its thematic connection ... Teen Dream is concerned with nostalgia for love lost with time; the kind of love that can be explained only by harmonious moans; and the kind of devotion their last album only touched on.
The best part of Treats is that it makes you rethink the possibilities of this kind of music. It is possible for a former girl-group member and a former hardcore guitarist to get together to make an album that is more daring and more fun than anything you'll likely hear on Top 40 radio this year.
High Violet is one of those rare albums where a band’s rising profile and rising talent meet in a perfect storm of anticipation and excellence.
With My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West has lurched to the vanguard of modern mainstream music.