Annie Zaleski

Bob Dylan said of Leonard Cohen, who passed away yesterday, November 10, 2016, at the age of 82, is "very much a descendant of Irving Berlin," in that both are "incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think." The many, many covers of Cohen songs, by artists both expected and unorthodox, prove his latter observations to be true. But like Dylan's body of work, Cohen's compositions have been transformed in the hands of other people, and functioned as malleable source material ripe for interpretation and illumination.

Sometimes the simplest music is the most affecting. And so it goes with PJ Harvey's new studio album, White Chalk. Absent are the scorched-earth guitars and feral vocals of previous releases; Chalk finds solace and strength in ascetic arrangements. This is largely a piano-and-voice album. Icicles drip from the ivories...

Interpol's major-label debut isn't as monochromatic as its two predecessors. "Pioneer to the Falls," which channels the stormy textures of the Cure's Pornography, is possibly the richest song the act has ever recorded, with death-march piano and a giant quivering mass of strings adding counter-melodies that swell in the mid-section...

While her flamboyant outfits might never be polite, Björk's last few albums certainly were. The ice-crystal percussion and melodies on Vespertine were stunning but mannered, like an immaculately decorated parlor, while the nearly a cappella Medulla -- an album on which beatboxing and throat-singing replaced traditional instrumentation -- felt too...

Those who think that pop-music junkies represent music fandom's lowest common denominator should read the comments left on iTunes about "Girlfriend," Avril Lavigne's cheerleader chant from hell. "The avril i looked up to was her own person, and proud of it. She wasn't afraid to act like herself, and rebel...