What No Line on the Horizon lacks in radical experimentation it makes up for in sheer strength of melody. The album is loose but never tossed off, joyous but never gratuitously so. U2 sound on No Line like they believe in themselves again, and as a result it is that much easier to believe in them.
Primary Colours is definitely a positive change for the Horrors, and while it has some amazingly endearing moments, it lingers in areas.
The band isn’t playing catch-up against a nonexistent reputation; they expect the record to speak for itself. And it certainly does. Every song is catchy and immediately enjoyable while not noisy.
The ferocious lyrics and sinister vibes of heavy bass repetition and steady, yet tuneful drumming by Jack White, make Horehound a charged compilation of music. The album is stylized, sexually charged, and trashy, but the greatest guilty pleasure of the summer. Ride into the night with the devil and then hang me out to dry.
Yes, Lady Gaga’s music as presented on The Fame Monster is still “unoriginal,” but it’s no longer uninspiring. It is a facsimile of various trends and sounds in popular music, from the ’80s to 2009, sometimes even stretching all the way back to the ’60s. But pop music isn’t about originality.
Hazards succeeds through Meloy’s melodic smarts and his band’s constantly maturing compositional sensibilities.
Longstreth is not a brilliant visionary, but he has created a masterpiece to the extent that he is capable. Bitte Orca is either deliberately frustrating or frustratingly deliberate, but in any case, it’s worth a listen. Or two. Or three.
It’d be nice to get a new Strokes record in 2010, but Phrazes for the Young is that rarest of vanity projects: a successful one.
Popular Songs is just as much a joy to listen to as any of the band’s material—it’s merely a good record rather than a great one. And when a discography is as packed with as many of the latter as Yo La Tengo’s, it’s pretty easy to give them a pass on delivering the former.
Overall this record has a tender, beating heart; which is to say that Neko Case is increasingly establishing a recognizable and compelling persona as an artist. That’s something very few even approach, and it’s the mark of greatness.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs establish their control from the start, when the electronic rumble of opener and lead single “Zero” comes pulsating through your speakers ... The song has an absolutely monster chorus which almost climbs that ladder to that sun, before coming back to earth with the disco freakout “Heads Will Roll.”
Only 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II proves more than just a hastily named album with a rehashed cover. It is a true sequel that encompasses the sound of rap in 1995, while leaving the legacy of the original unscathed.
Sharp, confident, and flawlessly executed, Them Crooked Vultures is the best hard rock album you’ll hear this year, and the rare supergroup that isn’t a self-serving waste of time for anyone involved.
Had Wayne Coyne just accepted that he’s an oddball songsmith instead of the wizard of weird, Embryonic would have been much better.
This is a band at the heights of its powers, fully in command of its sound and its creative process, unafraid to try basically anything.
With this third album Arctic Monkeys have shown a new found confidence in their ability that has led to them expressing themselves in a deeper and darker way that is more rewarding for the listener.
The combo of “Girlfriend” and “Armistice” is an unlikely ending, but by the time the toy pianos fade out on the latter, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has already proven it’s point: that Phoenix is one of the leading bands in the Europop world, and are likely to score a crossover hit along with their contemporaries.
Everything on Veckatimest, from the loftiest harmony to the subtlest string pluck, serves a purpose, even if there’s room for a little more.
The Antlers are as commanding as musicians as they are poets. Hospice brings Silberman’s descent into the inferno an unerring dramatic instinct and an ability to transfix the listener by a profound, imaginative manipulation of the tragic and the blackly funny aspects of the experience.