The best rock bands create their greatest work with their backs against the wall — witness the Rolling Stones — and the legendary British hard-rock powerhouse Motorhead was no exception. Forty years ago, the band had seen the dissolution of its classic “No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith” lineup accompanied by a pair of sub-par studio albums, […]

Without overstating the case, when the Avalanches’ debut album “Since I Lost You” arrived out of a clear blue sky (to anyone outside of their native Australia, anyway) in 2000, its impact was like the arrival of the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique” eleven years earlier: a mind-melting leap forward in the art of sampling, a […]

There have been many innovative R&B albums made over the past decade, but few have meshed futurism and tradition in quite the way that Danielle Ponder does on her second full-length, “Everything Has Changed.” She possesses a glass-shatteredly powerful, church-reared soul shouter voice, but uses its power sparingly, moving between it, a mid-range alto and […]

Ahead of his third album, 2023’s “Something to Give Each Other,” Troye Sivan teased the era as a dance-pop fantasia with singles “Rush” and “Got Me Started.” It was his post-pandemic record, one that promised to capture the crackle of electricity that came with no longer being on lockdown, finally free to connect with others. […]

What is the Beatles’ best album? “The one you’re listening to right now” is always the correct answer, of course, and that could encompass “Meet the Beatles” or “Let It Be” at any given moment. But for most fans who aren’t just being sentimental about their first point of entry, it’s usually going to come […]

Few artists have cast as vast an influence in as short a time as Joy Division, the pioneering Manchester post-punk quartet whose dark, haunting songs and sound helped shape many genres and scenes that were to follow, from the obvious — indie-rock, goth, industrial — to the less-obvious, like electronic dance music. Yet the fact […]

Being eliminated from the “Dream Academy” reality-TV series that produced Katseye might be the best thing that ever happened to 22-year-old Slovakian native Adéla Jergová: After a summer of lighting up festival stages from Lollapalooza to Reading, the arrival of “Prima” makes it more obvious than ever that a group couldn’t contain her. While her […]

Well, just how good can grief be? That’s a question raised by Sara Bareilles’ “Good Grief,” which, true to its promissory title, deals primarily with loss and death and the kind of tough stuff that folks in a marketing meeting might suggest slightly downplaying when one is releasing one’s first studio album in seven years. […]

If there’s anything Phoebe Bridgers knows how to do, it’s land a punch line. There are a lot of them in “Lost Weekend,” her first solo record in six years, and she doesn’t waste any time in getting to the first of the album’s many great jokes. Possibly the most quotable couplet comes right in […]

On the surface, Ariana Grande’s “Petal” is a sister album to its predecessor, 2024’s “Eternal Sunshine” — it was made with the same two collaborators, Ilya Salmanzadeh and Max Martin, and it also was entirely written, performed and produced by the three of them. Usually, that formula means a chapter two: more of the same but […]