Ken Tucker

Lana Del Rey continues a time-honored pop tradition of developing a public persona that challenges fans to decide what's real and what's not.

The quartet has drawn comparisons to the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and Sonic Youth, but rock critic Ken Tucker says this album proves Parquet Courts is an original.

Platinum continues Miranda Lambert's ongoing project to create songs about women who are complex, fun-loving, and assertive.

Songs feels like the work of an artist who's still figuring out who he is, where he wants to go, and what he wants to elaborate upon — or invent anew.

Williams is commonly considered the most important country music songwriter. Critic Ken Tucker has a review of a newly released CD of radio broadcasts and DVD of TV performances.

The achievement of Supernova is that, five albums in, LaMontagne hasn't settled into a formula or a fall-back recurring mood. Here, the singer-songwriter explores a sunny, psychedelic side.

On Nikki Nack, Merrill Garbus worries over the notion that she's just an accumulation of her influences, and she fights back wonderfully.

Make My Head Sing... is an album of contradictions. It's full of unreliable narrators who sometimes revel in jealousy, willful insanity and drugs, even as her voice and the music suggest otherwise.

Aimee Mann and Ted Leo began performing together in 2012, when Leo was Mann's opening act. Mann began joining Leo onstage during his set. Their debut album is "The Both."

The country singer treats the classic songs on her new album like living, vital pieces of art that can withstand being taken apart, thought about and re-imagined.

The Mekons and Waco Brothers veteran often places his left-wing politics front and center in his music and his art. Here Be Monsters has a way of mixing pretty melodies with harsh criticisms.

Surrounded on the charts by younger men and their big hits about drinking and partying, Sara Evans' hit-single success of Slow Me Down's title song all the more heartening.

Olsen has often been called a folk singer, but Ken Tucker says her new album — her first with a backing band — takes her music into an unclassifiable realm.

To hear G I R L, you'd think Pharrell's world consisted of grooving on catchy beats and flirting with women. It's a lightweight image that draws gravitas from his prolific work ethic.

Mead hooks the listener, eager to show us the bleak side of what seemed like a bright scenario. That's the way he operates during much of Free State Serenade.

Daughter of Everything is a superb pop album with one foot in the past and another in the future.

The band prides itself on technique over originality, but is nonetheless passionate about its craft.

Both Jon Pardi and Jason Eady have to confront the dilemma of all young country musicians: how to navigate the pop current that keeps country music commercially viable while connectin...

Todd Snider, Widespread Panic's Dave Schools and Duane Trucks perform in a new band that specializes in covering working-class songs.

His 18th album is a mixed-bag assortment of covers and originals brimming with undimmed eagerness.