Joanna Newsom’s third album, “Have One On Me,” runs against every trend in contemporary culture. It’s a work that flaunts its anachronism—musically, lyrically, temporally. It’s music that demands not just to be heard, but to be paid attention to, music that reveals something different upon…

Frightened Rabbit’s new album “The Winter of Mixed Drinks” would make a great soundtrack for the life of a college freshman. This isn’t necessarily an insult. The Glasgow quintet has created perfect music for indulging one’s loneliness and sense of nobody-understands-me uniqueness. But it lacks…

Critics tend to have a difficult time categorizing the Clogs’ music. In reviews of the band’s previous four albums, the word “classical” appears frequently, though seemingly as a stand-in for “instrumental”-which really just means the group’s songs often lack vocals. But calling the Clogs a…