There are more hits than misses.
For all the 40-year-old reference points, Big Inner never feels like a pastiche; it's audibly more than the sum of its influences, in the same manner as Lambchop's Nixon.
What's striking is how easily Savages slip the moorings of their influences and come up with something fresh.
This fifth ... manages to connect those different directions – the muscular riffs of Humbug and the wistful pop of Suck It and See – with the bristling energy and sense of fun that propelled their initial recordings.
It's the subtlety, and the self-awareness, that make this album exquisite.
The songs on m b v ... are more melodically complex, intriguing and often pleasing than anything he has written before.
At its best, The Electric Lady is audacious, intrepid and brilliantly executed.
It's better to concentrate on what Settle is than what it isn't, because what it is is laudable.
The abiding mood of James Blake's second album may be one of melancholy, but in every track there is a glinting nib of beauty wound into the melody or set at odds to it, something to cling on to.
Its flaws are outweighed by moments that justify the excitement. It felt like a major event before its release: more incredibly, it still does once you've heard it.
Noisy, gripping, maddening, potent, audibly the product of, as he put it "giving no fucks at all", Yeezus is the sound of a man just doing his job properly.