If you know Rancid and love Rancid, you will love this record like an old friend.

An utterly compelling, even riveting, selection of tunes that go from bright to opaque, to dark and back again by album's end.

Our Endless Numbered Days is very subdued, thoughtful, melodic, and downright beautiful album and the new sound is more of a progression than a sudden shift in values, production or otherwise.

Kids See Ghosts is everything Ye wasn't, delivering a worthwhile listen in spite of the extended PR disaster that preceded its release. With Cudi as the yang to West's yin, the pair inch closer to finding peace and a light in the darkness.

Balancing both his vulnerable and fiercely intense sides, he manages to reveal more of himself in 20 minutes than he has to date.

For better or for worse, they perfected their sound the last time around, so it’s hard to fault them for sticking so close to the fire, especially on such a snowy night.

As produced by her daughter and family friend, Lynn is in good, trusting hands who wish to present her at her best and, more or less, that's precisely what Full Circle offers.

While it's just as fun as the Ocean's Eleven soundtrack was, Ocean's Twelve manages to be subtler and more distinctive in its mix of old and new sounds.

Ultimately, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, with its irony, sincerity, seeming contradiction, and elliptical paradox, is the most expansive, complex record yet released by this always provocative artist.

Where The Outsiders was designed to dazzle, Mr. Misunderstood is built for the long haul: it settles into the soul, its pleasures immediate but also sustained.

Her productions have become far more ambitious, abandoning the straightforward house beats of much of her earlier material in favor of more expansive, detailed arrangements that incorporate trip-hop, electro, and drum'n'bass. Her lyrics are significantly more personal this time, and a far cry from the club-dwelling, cheekily hedonistic persona of earlier hits like "Raingurl" and "Drink I'm Sippin On."

Along the way, despite some familiar musical touchpoints, she establishes a personality that's all her own.

It may be her subtlest, most approachable album yet; though its ideas are just as complex and provocative as those of Blood Bitch or Apocalypse, Girl, there's something welcoming about it that engages the hearts and minds of her listeners fully.

Floating between the interior world and the external one with ephemeral ease, PHASOR is a pleasure to experience -- and another fine example of Lange's receptive, responsive artistry.

It's a fascinating work of words, for sure, but the weight of Carey's arrangements and the Tempest's surprisingly nimble touch as an emcee make for something distinctive and essential.

It can be inaccessible and terrifying all at once, but in a genre overly saturated with formulaic groups, Ire Works is a true standout.

Although all this could have resulted in Hiatus Kaiyote's wildest and most triumphant material, Mood Valiant is intimate and romantic more than anything else.

Decades into Melanie C's storied career, Sweat is one of her best.

Dust is very disorienting and not always easy to grasp hold of, but it never comes close to sounding like anything else, and its best moments are highly compelling.

On Forward Constant Motion, the duo make a leap forward and a little to the left, making for a rewarding, always interesting, and oddly emotionally satisfying album.

Smart and fun in equal measures, In Standard Definition's love letters to long-gone formats and feelings are similarly bewitching.

What they lack in showiness or branding, they make up for in honesty and slightly battered spirit.

For Zauner and Japanese Breakfast, the answer is always something in between and more complex and creatively assured than what has come before. With For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), Zauner invites us into the magic mirror of her life and pulls us through to the other side.

KEN mode have arrived to put on a clinic in muscular, unfiltered anger with their fifth album, Entrench.

These complicated combinations of sounds and feelings suggest that Reznor and Ross are nearly as skilled at emotional manipulation as the film's characters, and Gone Girl's ambiguity and dread make it their most haunting work yet.

The nine pieces on the album are tense and brooding in a way unheard on her previous solo recordings, occasionally peaking in thundering bursts of fury.

Blue Skies elevates Dehd's mysterious auras, thoughtful experimentation, and strong songwriting, but reaches its highest levels of beauty and intensity when the band shares more of their unobscured personalities.

It's always fascinating to hear Barnes take Forest Swords' distinctive musical vocabulary in different directions, especially when the results are as eloquent as Bolted.

With any luck, Pistol Annies is not a one-off for the trio, but rather a regular gig: this is too much pure fun to not repeat.

Though No Shape shows how much his music has expanded since the Learning days, it also proves he hasn't lost any of his ability to connect with listeners. Instead, it reveals him as a sonic adventurer and truth teller who's made some of his most compulsively listenable music.

From the songwriting to the production to the performance, the whole package that the Books present with Lost and Safe works wonderfully and makes for a very rewarding listen.

Despite all the changes she introduces on Cacti, the honesty of Maries' music remains paramount, and the savvy and polish she brings to the album confirm she's an excitingly hard-to-pin-down artist.

It's undeniable that the album takes his gift for channeling dread in subtler, more complex directions and deserves to be listened to under headphones in total darkness.

She is still at her best as a performer, delivering her work verbally, lingering here and there, quavering when needed, framing questions, summoning anger, then letting the needle drop right on the beat. Emotionally, there's a lot to unpack, but the need to feel and engage more deeply is one of her primary decrees and this powerful album is a lesson worth learning.

It's a marvelously intimate performance, unguarded and open-hearted, unique in its delicate touch: it's Neil Young before the myth crystallized, and listening to it anew, it's easy to fall in love with him all over again.

Plenty of fuzzed, struttin', propulsive guitar work on this disc to assault your ears.

Though Onoffon doesn't quite top Burma's 1982 masterpiece Vs., it manages to sound like the more-than-worthy follow-up they could have cut a couple years later ... only with two decades of experience and musical detours informing its nooks and crannies.

All told, though, as we crawl to the end of this Year Of The Animal Collective, this release can certainly be said to have further elevated their status.

This double-disc live album, recorded during a 18-month-long tour in 2013 and 2014, reveals a clearer and more in-focus look at what Clark offers than Blak and Blu does.

It's Mayfield's most compelling work yet.

MITH is the most powerful album yet from a truly inspirational artist who deserves to be acknowledged as a national treasure.

Birgy's command over both her arrangements and Dolphine's emotional flow meet with some of her best songs, making the album her strongest statement in a history of exceptional work.

A warm throughline of empathy courses through the 19-song set, with tender acoustic numbers like "Splash of Light" and "Every Feeling," and nervy rockers such as "Love you So Bad" -- from the excellent Perpetual Motion People -- and "Restless Year" -- from the even better Transangelic Exodus -- dovetailing into emotionally satisfying moments that evoke John Hughes by way of Wes Anderson.

While this record sounds bleak on the surface, there's a strange sense of comfort in these songs; they acknowledge the sad state of the world even while attempting to transcend its darkness and uncertainty.

The low-spirited moments are typically as alluring as the bliss-outs, and though there's a breakup in the mix, Red Moon finishes as Uchis pushes the reset button on a relationship with a strong sense of optimism.

Distant Call: Collected Demos [2000-2006] is a heartfelt farewell from an act whose inspired -- and inspiring -- music will always leave fans wanting more.

Spoon continues to build one of the most consistent, and distinctive, bodies of work in indie rock -- the band makes changes and takes chances from album to album, but ends up sounding exactly how Spoon should sound each time.

A bewitching album from an artist at the peak of her powers.

The group sounds freer than ever before, almost as though they've never bothered with rock in their lives, and have only happened upon a bare few LPs before beginning their recording career.

While completely enjoyable, Blue World's true value perhaps lies in revealing the quartet encountering this older material with a fully developed musical character, and changing its shapes, accents, colors, and textures according to its own expressive signature. These versions differ (often significantly) from previously issued ones, making Blue World a necessary addendum to the recognized historical record to be sure. But just as importantly, it adds another very satisfying entry to the music libraries of Coltrane's legions of fans.

An emotionally raw yet aesthetically fine album. She may have reached into the depths for these songs, but she's delivered us the gift of a burning light.

The result is surprising and singular, revealing new twists in songs that seemed to be set in stone decades ago.

The album's title is repeated across the variegated yet flowing sequence, utilized as either a mantra or verbal spackle, always in tribute. Just as moving is Thundercat's heart-in-throat salutation in the closing title track, briefly stated just before his bass intertwines with Pedro Martins' guitar to gorgeous effect. As on the earlier Thundercat LPs, outer space and homeboy escapades, comic courtship and elusive companionship, and philosophical insights also inform the material. ... There are no throwaways or novelty tunes.

Different Every Time goes much further than previous comps in communicating the vast range of Wyatt's musical persona and is a brilliant introduction for newcomers.

It was clear that Gwenno had reached her stride early as a solo artist; now with Tresor, she's shifted away from that bright, shiny formula and come up with an album that goes one step further to cementing her in the experimental pop firmament.

While the sheer bulk of this set means it's most likely to be heard by hardcore fans, anyone with a genuine interest in Wilco will find a lot of great music that fell between the cracks on this set, as well as a fascinating map of the many roads Wilco did and didn't take.

This album is extraordinary. It is brave, difficult, and honest. It is utterly moving and beautiful. Because it so successfully marries all of her strengths as a songwriter, singer, and musician, Black Cadillac may be the crowning achievement of her career thus far.

This isn't a piece of nostalgia on Springsteen's part, though. These references deepen a collection of songs that are sweet, sad, and searching, songs that feel finely etched on their own terms but gather a deep, lasting resonance when collected on this enchanting album.

These may be Bird songs, but they are not played the way Bird played them. Lovano and crew tend to slow them down and consider them, as if appending musical footnotes; if Parker was the quintessential bebop player, this is a determinedly post-bop interpretation.

Unlike Dali's separate delivery of the two, Yeezus is an extravagant stunt with the high-art packed in, offering an eccentric, audacious, and gripping experience that's vital and truly unlike anything else.

The Window remains an intensely intimate listen, as if Salvant and Fortner are playing just for you.

Hearing this evolution in microcosm is fascinating: few albums are ever as lavishly and carefully produced as The Wall, and by going through this "Work in Progress," it becomes clear just how much labor Floyd and producer Bob Ezrin exerted on the finished album.

While the reduction in lucid hooks and the uptick in wince-inducing lyrics diminish the album's appeal, the charms are hard to repel.

No longer able to croon as he once did, Nelson opts for playing around with the rhythms of his delivery, a move that makes him seem limber, adding a sense of vitality to Last Man Standing. Willie realizes he's not going to be here forever but he's made up his mind to make the most of his time here, and that's why Last Man Standing feels richer than so many self-conscious meditations on mortality.

These may be the same songs in the same sequence as Funeral for Justice, but they have the character of an entirely different album, and that's a tough feat to pull off.

The Necks move incrementally forward in their quest for the musical unknown on Body; it displays all their creative strengths in a single typically engrossing work.

Restlessly creative and challenging, Gentle Confrontation is James' most moving work since For You and I.

Throughout, RE-ANIMATOR's crisp, melancholy anthems, if less colorful than prior albums, remain captivating, bringing with them an existential poignancy that lingers beyond the closer, up-tempo rocker "Violent Sun," and its apocalyptic chorus ("I wanna be there!/When the wild wave comes/And we’re swept away").

It's quite arguable that this lean, muscular remix is a marked improvement on the original mix, as it's easier to focus on both the songs and group's interplay.

Heterocetera is more than a worthy successor to Damsel in Distress--it's some of Lotic's most exciting music.

Countless Branches, perhaps due to its profound yet intimate vision as well as its craft, just may be Fay's masterpiece.

Drew's music stresses the importance of the communal rave experience, and reminds us that everything is possible.

Concise and lively, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a remarkable blend of focus and creativity.

Certainly few, if any, bands of the era made an album as consistently great as Hope Downs. Not many in Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's era have, either. It's a small-scale triumph of hooks and guitars from a band whose members have figured it all out and delivered a debut album that comes as close to perfect as any guitar pop album can.

Crowded and long overdue as it is, In My Mind is a satisfying and mature showcase for one of the most skilled and creative talents in R&B.

Arcadia is a long-awaited return for Krauss and Union Station; here they reframe American traditional music in a context informed by modern production aesthetics, yet still sound kinetic and completely organic.

The Tallest Man on Earth, keeps it sparse with a summertime EP of fingerpicked acoustic guitar and vocals, written on the road just after the release of The Wild Hunt.

As different as it is from anything else in her body of work, Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" is an affecting example of Gibbons' willingness to take her music in unexpected--but ultimately winning--directions.

Though it's wildly excessive and indulgent, it's also inarguably among the most inspiring, thought-provoking, and accomplished of his works.

Long Lost Solace Find has traces of Dinosaur Jr.'s most hushed moments, Anne Briggs' heartbreaking clarity, and the resigned grandeur of legendary artists like Karen Dalton or Nick Drake. It's a stunning turn of heel, and one that instills a sense of anticipatory excitement for where Polizze will take his music next.

Though earlier albums saw her crafting a strange otherworld, the perpetual sunset hinted at before is painted here in new dimensions, making this set of songs her best and easiest to revisit.

The new material didn't merely simmer.

A remarkably assured set of bold-faced indie rock and maximalist goth pop teaming with earworm melodies, intelligent, darkly romantic lyrics, and thespian bluster.

Takk... is still very much a Sigur Rós album, due in large part to the ever-present, otherworldly vocals, but also because the only real changes are the activeness of some arrangments.

The best Delfonics album since 1970.

Cronin's second album is a step forward from his debut and shows off a guy with enough talent to step out from behind Segall's shadow and make it on his own.

Every track on this album is densely constructed, colorful, and unpredictable, and while it may seem lighthearted at first, it manages to cover a wide range of emotions. One of the most inventive debut albums of 2018, for sure.

Moisturizer is more confident, and more revealing, than Wet Leg's debut. These are love songs for people who don’t want to fall in love, made by a band that sounds more comfortable in its skin than ever.

Like her debut, Inner Song covers a lot of emotional ground, and her exploratory spirit is just as captivating as the messages she expresses.

As worthwhile as Shields' contributions are, it would be a mistake to let them eclipse the rest of this fine soundtrack.

Thematically, this work -- with its references to German cabarets and nostalgia -- echoes Waits' other Wilson collaborative project, Black Rider. Musically, however, Blood Money is a far more elegant, stylish, and nuanced work than the earlier recording.

Impresses on the same level as the best of his career.

A magnificent set, awash in textures, atmospheres, moods, and emotion.

Everything here certainly belongs and contributes to the rich, gritty, and ultimately joyous tone of this wonderful album.

Intense, emotional, and often revelatory, Ecstatic Computation further establishes Barbieri as a truly visionary artist.

Artful, delicate, and mesmerizing throughout, the album's subtle, gradual suspense may find some straining not to miss a moment.

Moves in the Field is more Philip Glass than John Cage (in fact, Glass' longtime engineer Dan Bora recorded and mixed the album), with Moran's thoughtful writing and restrained use of what could have been show-stopping technology creating an insulated world of understated, wintery elegance.