Somewhere in here is a 40-minute program with greater impact. Getting to know the whole thing well enough to make a custom-contracted edition is worth the time.

Changes shows Bradley still has plenty of new ground to explore at the age of 68.

Channeling the sense of yearning expressed by the poetry the album draws from, Medieval Femme is sorrowful yet freeing.

"Hello, Hi" reveals that even when he's playing quiet so as not to wake the neighbors, he's still keeping it alive, and if you need some music for a quiet morning, this will ease you into the day quite nicely.

If My Maudlin Career falls a tiny bit short of "Let's Get Out of This Country," and it does, it's only because that album was so wonderful.

Additional guests Kendrick, Pharrell, and Wiz Khalifa add to the star power, but the main attraction is Bruner's singular combination of tremulous yet fluid bass and aching falsetto.

This offers another slight change from Willner's past--enough to maintain perked attention from listeners in love with his sound, while those who are less enamored won't hear enough that distinguishes it from any other Field album.

The Golden Age may simply be the Eitzel and Vudi show, but that's more than enough to make this a rich and rewarding set of songs whose gentle surfaces belie their troubling strength.

Rather than issuing directives, Bird, like most of us, is struggling to figure out what to make of trying times without reducing himself to the level of the worst among us, and the process has helped him create an album that is likely to stay relevant and satisfying for a long time to come.

It's her fierce nature -- whether saucy and confident or just plain wrecked -- that makes every twist and turn of this impressive debut so easy to fall in love with.

Fans looking for a middle ground between Jamey Jasta's output with melodic hardcore outfit Hatebreed and sludgy metalcore group Kingdom of Sorrow will find a great deal to love about the workhorse frontman's solo debut.

Scuba has achieved something hard to define with this mix program, and that's part of what makes it so enjoyable.

Pujol really shines when he pulls out his protest signs and shares his shrewd, but never cynical, take on modern society.

What's especially nice about his full-length debut, Spiderwebbed, isn't that it's good, but that it's surprisingly great.

Hayman's brand of pop has always been on the intellectual side and the archival nature of these Morris texts dovetails well with the kind of music he's been making in the years leading up to this fine release.

The majority of the verses are, however, devoted to street survivalism. The more combative, the better.

Stop Mute Defeat is a recharge and a reinvention for White Hills, and is, by necessity, their most focused work.

The best moments of Rainford prove that Perry's creative flame is still burning bright, more than five decades after he first began making music.

In classic punk rock tradition, many of the songs on High Risk Behaviour clock in at well under two minutes; meaning that it never drags.

No matter how much Kelly Finnigan cloaks or smears his sweet and sour voice, he's one of the more affecting singers of his kind, the focal point amid an expertly arranged band and supporting voices, strings, and brass.

This is lacking neither imagination nor creativity, and is another transfixing exhibition of the beatmaker's command. The tracks are a little longer on average but still rarely exceed two minutes. What few tracks eclipse the mark never drag.

All of these cuts are loose, clever, and inspired, and they make for one of Lund's liveliest records.

Her music has always been thoughtful, personal, and uniquely constructed, but Godmother is especially exciting as it runs so far and so fast in a different direction than she ever has before, committing fully to the risks and swooping changes that come to define the album.

More consistent than 2021's Somnia and 2019's All Aboard the Skylark, The Future Never Waits is, at once, more exciting and musically adventurous -- even with the (minor) missteps. This is a significant late-career highlight from Hawkwind.

All Her Plans isn't an album for folks looking for a playful, pop-punk experience, but it's a brave, powerful record that's a reminder of how much punk rock can communicate with so few moving parts.

Gregory Alan Isokov finds the sweet spot between mystical and relatable, pairing simple folk melodies and lyrics that house profound truths.

When Rodney Crowell feels like rocking a bit, Airline Highway gives him all the swagger he needs, and even when he doesn't, he confirms he's nobody's fool and remains one of the best songwriters in the Americana community.

Hopeful in a deeply honest way, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She chronicles an evolution that brings out the best, most adventurous aspects of Wolfe's music.

There's a young man's honest pain behind all of the flowery English vernacular.

Price's material-starved fans are craving his words more than beats, so don't call it a comeback but a wicked, wordy return.

What Hookworms might lack in image and clarity, they more than make up for by making music that isn't built to linger in the background. It demands attention and deserves it, too.

A deeply thoughtful and obviously personal album.

While the band's involvement, particularly more active drums, help the sound lean forward, Frankie Cosmos' essential musical qualities remain: hooky melodies, a disarming lyrical style, and impressive efficiency (Vessel's 18 tracks clock in at 33 minutes).

With a genuine sense of melancholy that is far beyond their young years, the Söderbergs have taken the mild success of their sophomore record, Lion's Roar, in their stride, and with the expert hand of Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis once again producing, the lush harmonies and melodies of this album show that they are worthy of a place in the mainstream.

Free for All is a fascinating, innovative record that provides a fresh perspective on trap and other contemporary hip-hop styles.

Goodbye Bread sounds more like a "real album" than anything Ty Segall has done to date, but not so much so that it robs him of the loose-limbed soul that makes him memorable.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Credit much of the album's dusky allure to the atmospheric production of John Parish, which lends a shadowy beauty, revealing new layers of subtlety lurking underneath the band's ragged guitar-pop approach; the focal point is still Van Dijk's searing vocals, which harness the extremes of both pride and desperation to devastating effect.

A wonderful balance of beautiful indie rock and subtle country.

It's not a perfect album -- it's far too indulgent for that -- and would have been stronger as a single disc, but its ambitious sprawl makes for a powerful statement that Nas disciples will surely savor.

By turns breathtakingly radiant and heartbreakingly melancholy... the record is both comforting and challenging, its placid surfaces masking poignant meditations on resignation, dislocation, and loss.

Wedding might not be Oneida's most way-out album, but it's as satisfyingly restless as anything in their catalog.

Drab Majesty have crafted an album that works on its own merits, with songs that you may want to revisit just as much as your favorite vintage post-punk classic track. There's also a nice emotional arc and flow to the album that speaks to the band's theatrical nature as they recontextualize a kohl-eyed '80s goth aesthetic for the next doom generation.

By incorporating these offhand allusions to the past while being firmly planted in a mature present, Modern Nature showcases a band whose members are aware of where they've been and grateful for what they have.

The album feels like getting to really know someone: at first, it's polite and a little restrained, but then its real personality, with all of its charming idiosyncrasies, finally reveals itself.

There is a Hell finds Bring Me the Horizon at the top of their game, and its lack of over indulgent production makes it an album that'll not only please fans of the band, but may surprise fans of bands like Converge who are interested in seeing what the kids are up to these days.

It's ambient music at its absolute best, providing a space that the listener can be enveloped in completely just as easily as they can drift away from it without noticing.

With Crutchfield as forthright as ever and collaborators suited to drive home her position, Out in the Storm hits with as much strength as emotion.

No Age's brief moment of near-mainstream notoriety may have passed by the time Everything in Between was released, but their growth as recording artists was progressing nicely and the album stands alongside Nouns as two of the finest noise rock/pop albums of the new millennium.

Foxygen has made something that reaches out for so many possibilities it ends up reverting inward, ultimately sounding insular, like a highway of endlessly firing synapses in someone elses' brain.

Throughout the solid set of songs, Fitchuck and Tashian prove a tasteful fit for the duo, reinforcing and embellishing the sisters' languid technique but also staying out of their way.

Reflektor is as fascinating as it is frustrating, an oddly compelling miasma of big pop moments and empty sonic vistas that offers up a (full-size) snapshot of a band at its commerical peak, trying to establish eye contact from atop a mountain.

The result is a masterpiece, and a master class in what songwriting is really all about. Songs.

It's a flat-out joy.

Where her previous album was ethereal and ephemeral, IRM is exciting and eclectic.

C'mon, while well short of sunny, is an album devoted to the search for answers amidst the darkness, and it's a powerful, deeply moving work from a truly singular band.

Layered viewpoints, bittersweet situations, and complicated anger flow out of this articulate effort, but the sweet trick of the album is how approachable it is, living up to its title with equal shares of Mourning and Dreaming.

Warmer Corners is like most Lucksmiths records; it's meant to be swallowed whole, and in an age of singles with albums attached to them, it's both refreshing and nostalgic at the same time.

Their voices are strong and clean (maybe too clean) and the parts are played well enough, but when you remove the punk from pop-punk, the attitude goes with it and you'd better be sure that the material underneath is something of greater interest than these largely forgettable acoustic emo ramblings.

Revival ranks among their best work and is definitely their most contemporary effort in tone.

Coming in at 24 minutes and with seven cuts on the track list, this is EP-sized and not long enough for the full artist picture, but that said, there's no filler, either.

Small Town Dreams is at least as strong as 2013's fine Never Give In and more sharply focused. His gifts as a lyricist and melodist are prodigious, and his confidence and ambition find equilibrium here.

Any and all of the bands they draw influence from would be happy to add them to the noise club; if they keep making records as good as Distractions, they may end up ruling the club someday.

Bacteria Cult needs a little time to get into your bloodstream before it can be reckoned with, but ultimately, it's an infection worth sweating through.

While not all of Utopia Defeated's tracks are as immediately engaging as the aforementioned highlights, Perry introduces a unique vision and his impressive debut is well worth the time it takes to let it decant.

Even without some of the more advanced effects he's able to use in a proper studio setting, he's still able to do a lot with his limited setup, wringing unearthly sounds and textures from decaying tape loops.

Built to Spill expands on the big sound that they crafted with Keep It Like a Secret.

In the end, however, the album's coherence comes in its incredible architecture of all these ideas, and the way the band sells them with everything they've got, taking what could be incredibly obtuse music back into the realm of pop from which it was born.

For what it is, The Greatest is exceedingly well done, and people who have never heard of Cat Power before could very well love this album immediately. However, it might take a little more work for those who have loved her music from the beginning.

The lyrical content, along with the album's constant energy, make this Everything Everything's most focused effort thus far, one that bundles brawny indie rock with 2010s Zeitgeist.

It's a dense and lyrically challenging record, as you would expect from two highly intelligent individuals who have lived through the bars they deliver, but it ends on their most salient point: "Can't escape yourself, please love yourself," Riz MC's final words on "Din-e-llahi."

For an act that has been operating creatively since the mid-'70s, Amadou & Mariam once again prove their art can thrive in just about any setting.

The experience of The Director's Cut, encountering all this familiar material in its new dressing, is more than occasionally unsettling, but simultaneously, it is deeply engaging and satisfying.

It rivals "Dance Hall at Louse Point" for its willingness to challenge listeners, but it's far removed from "Uh Huh Her," which was arguably more listenable but a lot less remarkable. In fact, this may be Harvey's most undiluted album yet.

Anyone who has already decided that jazz is dead, that the great innovators have come and gone, needs to listen to the Bad Plus to be proven dead wrong.

4eva Is a Mighty Long Time is a mighty long album, at 20 songs and two brief skits, but K.R.I.T. clearly has a lot to say, and he expresses it with vigor and passion on this ambitious work.

Kill or Be Kind is a watermark for Fish. Her writing, singing, and playing all serve the truth of what she seeks here: the heart of song.

It's one of the most affecting works to date from a brilliant, one-of-a-kind band.

Replete with consummate musicianship, Ouroboros is a deliberate work of album rock.

If you want to hear a clever, ambitious, and blessedly noisy set from four people who know how to do it right, then the Dream Syndicate's return to duty will find an honored place in your music collection.

On the whole, Green to Gold reshapes the Antlers' once somber and brooding chamber pop into something bright and smiling. The songs strip away the sharpness and volatility the band reveled in on earlier albums to reveal a pleasant glow that was all too often hidden in the shadows.

While Lanza has never come across as diffident, she is at her most poised and direct on Love Hallucination, another serving of bubbly avant-pop only she could have made.

Saturnalia is mysticism and hedonism, saints and sinners, dark and light, but this is no clear-cut Manichaean collaboration. Both Lanegan and Dulli represent this, both contain all the good and the bad they sing about, sometimes at different moments but very often together, and it's that joined duality, that very disturbingly human quality, telling us things about ourselves we'd rather not acknowledge, that makes the album so absolutely alluring.

While some of the lyrics may be a little too on the nose for some, regardless of age ("This crummy town is filled with wild boredom"), there is no age limit on angst or catharsis.

variety here, but Keep It Hid never draws attention to Auerbach's eclecticism, especially because it moves along at a rapid clip, never staying in one place too long.

While Big Ideas could be accused of being uneven, filler is a matter of personal genre preference here, left turns that are fun or even funny dominate, and with a closer like the helium-voiced disco entry "Slay Bitch," any remaining scolds should be few and far between.

Breaking Kayfabe is a cohesive set of songs, backpacker in the best of senses, smart and witty and provocative, experimental and well-produced, but at the same time very raw and very real-sounding.

Jaiyede Afro marks a welcome return for Orlando Julius and overall is an excellent, fingerpopping, ass-shaking collaboration.

The mysteries of love, life, and the world are broached with a light yet nevertheless unshakeable touch on Faithful Fairy Harmony. Foster has made a record that feels like a psychic connection to inner worlds as well as an outer one, and the visions she summons are at once vivid and rarified.

Mixing a sophisticated amalgam of melody, sound, and poetic lyrics, Hawley's artistry lies in his ability to communicate a deeper vulnerability that openly engages hard questions about identity, and the often overlooked yet profound benefits of romantic love.

It may not be a step forward, but it is a strong step in a very pleasing direction, especially for fans of a more unfiltered Iron & Wine.

The album is at its most gut-wrenching when it puts the humanity behind its creation on display.

Harris takes a minimalist approach on Grid of Points, but she imbues it with so much feeling that it could never be called slight.

Regardless of whether or not the band lost whatever career momentum their debut generated, as a piece of music, Three Fact Fader fully delivers on the promise that was left hanging in the air for so long.

Palpable big beat electrifies Call Me Sylvia, but Low Cut Connie aren't only about sound--they're crack songwriters, bashing out big hooks and riffs in songs that are sharp, clever, and funny without succumbing to cutesiness.

She's clearly making her own way, unafraid to knock suitors down a couple pegs ("How That Taste"), allowing her vulnerability to shine through ("You Should Be Here"), and affirming her individuality.

Surrounded is so overflowing with life that it demands repeated spins to truly take it all in. With songs this strong, however, repeat listening is hardly a problem.

All of Widowspeak's experience feels channeled into The Jacket's poetic, poignant songs, and after more than a decade together, they're continuing to build one of the quietly great discographies of the 2010s and 2020s.