FLOOD

It’s all so calculatedly quirky that you almost wonder if Pee-wee Herman wasn’t called in as a consultant.

Styles has a way of making music with plenty of discernible references, yet it somehow emerges as era-less.

Gallagher’s latest is a sonic show of maturation.

Though she’s always better when she’s just having fun, Madonna constantly yearns to be more poignant.

There is a haunted quality to any music released after the person who created it is no longer counted among the living.

Despite its flawless production, “Lux Prima” is a noticeably restrained affair, considering what a feral creature Karen O has always been.

The level of pandemonium and desperation here makes for deeply unsettling but fascinatingly involved listening.

Though it’s by no means a masterpiece, “Why You So Crazy?” proves that boring is something The Dandy Warhols will never, ever be.

It’s really about the sheer thrill of Redd Kross’ ability to just matter-of-factly, glam-a-riffically rock the fuck out.

Thom Yorke’s soundtrack is that rarest of beasts: music for a cinematic work that can stand on its own.

Echo & the Bunnymen are as much a religious denomination as a band. And rewriting a prayer is tricky business.

None of this has anything to do with what’s currently clogging up the charts—but then, when did Lenny ever neatly fit the zeitgeist?

Existential melancholy and staccato guitars have been Interpol’s signature for well over a decade, and they still carry it out with panache.

This is not music that wants to play on your emotions—rather, it wants you to leave the nuisance of them behind altogether.

Even if you don’t 100 percent buy into all of Lykke’s dark/light kooky mysticism, “so sad so sexy” is what it promises. 

There’s little doubt they genuinely mean every echo-drenched, wall-of-grinding-guitars second.

As much fun as all those disco-fab collabs were, it’s heartwarming to hear Minogue pouring her heart out.

This is the sort of record everyone should make twenty years into their career.

“Criminal” is, in a sense, the new gothic for a new century—paranoid, solitary, and powerfully visceral.

What makes Shame’s debut powerful is just how musically accomplished they are, despite the high-anxiety relentlessness of their sonic gospel.