A great relaxed and restrained psychedelic album.

Electric Messiah proves that High on Fire can still blow the unholy horn of plenty, and while fans will know just what to expect when dropping the stylus, that knowledge takes nothing away from the Epicurean pleasure of sidling up to a favorite feast.

A stunning display of the grit and poetry that have been hallmarks of her music for decades, Possible Dust Clouds makes a convincing case that Hersh is becoming a more powerful, more creative rocker as the years pass.

Without losing any of the energetic fizz of their youth, Swearin' look honestly at their lives moving forward, arriving somewhere vulnerable yet impressively more confident than before.

Instead of going big, the way he did on 2014's burly Outsiders, he's keeping things small, a decision that highlights the many savvy ways he expands American musical traditions even as he adheres to them. Perhaps these variations on themes are subtle but this confident sense of sonic adventure when combined with Church's expert craft results in a satisfying album.

Look Now is the work of a man with enough talent to take his muse in any direction he pleases and give us something memorable.

With greater emotional depth and sonic clarity than her past recordings, Working Class Woman is an exciting breakthrough for Davidson.

All the songs make sense narratively and on their own, so they hold together well and would amount to a first-rate soundtrack, if it weren't for those meddling dialogue tracks, which wind up sapping any kind of momentum for the album.

Here, Tunstall has rekindled the fire with one of her tightest and most inspirational records to date.

A collection of songs and finds Grant at his loosest, funniest, and most heartbreaking.

Coleman absorbs and converts all the energy into something else: a joyous act of opposition to unacknowledged tyranny.

The fascinating thing about Loving the Alien is how it makes this period seem more interesting than the individual albums, and that's entirely due to the dance mixes, ephemera, and awkward live material. On these byways, it's possible to hear Bowie grapple with both his past and present in a hungry fashion and that desperation is alien to Bowie, so an immersion into this unease makes for compelling listening.

Frustrated, hungry, and full of rage, The Atlas Underground is a rallying cry set against an inventive and propulsive backdrop that inspires a physical response as much as thoughtful action.

At 67, Graham Parker isn't as angry or young as he once was, but he remains an estimable talent, and he's reveling in the pleasure of making music on Cloud Symbols. You may well feel the same way when you listen.

Occasionally, MassEducation borders on being too stark for its own good, but the songs hold their power in this unvarnished setting.

Created in a time of turmoil, Fighting Season is an album that always reflects the era that informed it, and while Thalia Zedek never pretends to have all the answers, her musings are brave, literate, and full of heart, and this is an important statement from an important artist.

Cherry's songs here are deeply meditative, often implying or directly expressing sorrow regarding planetary afflictions rooted in fear.

Hiatt's band (Yates McKendree on guitar, Patrick O'Hearn on bass, Kenneth Blevins on drums, Kevin McKendree on keys) lays a lean but eloquent groove behind his performances, and the audio is rich and clear. One hopes for his sake that John Hiatt's life is happier than The Eclipse Sessions may suggest, but either way he's given us a dark night of the soul that's compelling and beautifully crafted.

Pink is the work of a band in love with music, doing it for kicks alone and not worried at all about being cool or cute. It's refreshing and fun and some of the best pop music anyone is likely to hear in the late 2010s.

Its six anthems burn with Ilunga's desire to prove himself, and the years he spent refining Noirwave paid off: His vision of a proud pan-African culture is in clearer focus and more relevant than ever.

Lyrics like the closer's "No more listening today" and "No one left here today" may apply to some returning fans, but the invigorated approach to production, arrangements, and, in many cases, performances makes for a still highly listenable set that's at least as likely to excite as to challenge.

Five albums in, Cloud Nothings version of maturing is to go harder and louder than ever--and they sound all the better for it.

On ["Love Means Taking Action"] and throughout The Anteroom, Krell sounds revitalized; by revisiting his noise-drenched past with the experience he's gained since then, he delivers an album that's just as impressionistic as his early work, and possibly even more adventurous.

Wasteland is another example of Uncle Acid's genius, and more evidence that they are the best metal band (apart from Black Sabbath) of the early '70s.

Blasting through 11 songs in less than half-an-hour, Pre Strike Sweep never settles into one mode or frame of reference for long. Instead, the album drags and scrapes itself into being for its entire duration, angry and bleeding and looking for new angles with every new riff, crash, and tortured scream.

While familiar-sounding, the soundtrack brings something new to the table instead of being a pointless retread, and in general, it just sounds amazing. Definitely worthwhile for any Carpenter or Halloween fans.

Few bands have the courage to trust fully in it and/or in their ability to not only maintain but give heart and texture to it, but Cave do, and the result is riveting. Allways is their warmest-sounding record to date, and its Delphic charms are a pleasure to get lost in.

This may be familiar to the dedicated whose allegiance never wavered, but for those who believed R.E.M. faltered after Berry's departure, R.E.M. at the BBC is a gateway into the band's last act.

Her most varied and generous LP yet.

At its best, which it often is, Here If You Listen plays like a hybrid of Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell and CSN, a combination that is soothing and surprising in equal measure. It's an album that confirms that Crosby is at an unexpected and satisfying latter-day creative peak.

On Aviary, Holter answers the chaos of 21st century life by following her bliss; the results are a constellation of moments that celebrate the fullness of her music and, as always, make for fascinating listening.

This is a Western album where ghost towns stand silent and the stars shine bright at night, but the heroes don't so much ride off into the sunset as sink into a shimmering haze of a late-afternoon mirage.

A thoughtfully curated soundtrack, Bohemian Rhapsody offers a compelling narrative of Queen's storied arc into rock legend.

Self-aware and unrepentant, the Struts succeed where other artists who look to the past often fail, in large part because, like the Darkness before them, they possess both pop smarts and considerable amounts of moxie.

In looking to capture the ugliness of humanity and parse through the despair that slithers malevolently in its wake, Daughters have crafted their most vital outing to date.

Segall didn't write any of the songs on Fudge Sandwich, but these performances are as much his as anything that's come from his pen, and if you still need to be convinced that he's one of the freest and most adventurous minds in contemporary rock & roll, this might just do the trick.

Although not for the casual music listener, the song ["Legacy of Neglect"] and the album work not only because of Leonard's good melodic and dramatic instincts, but because he is equally charismatic with both quiet acoustic song and outraged, off-balance rock. In this way, the album's riveting album rock-slash-exasperated art rock is reminiscent of figures like Bowie and Reed while remaining completely idiosyncratic.

Steeped in the lurching, groove-laden thrash attack of the band's late-'90s/early-2000s heyday, Ritual evokes the savagery of Cavalera's tenure with Sepultura, eschewing some of the more overt world music predilections that have come to define Soulfly over the years with something leaner and more uncompromising.

Unlike similarly conceived recordings, this doesn't act as a pleasant backdrop for engaging in other activities; instead, it quietly refuses revelation without active participation from the listener.

Through a Wall is as smart, powerful, and articulate--or simply as good--as punk rock gets in the 2010s.

She Remembers Everything is a challenging and rewarding set from an artist who is at the peak of her abilities, and if anyone needs to be reminded that Rosanne Cash is one of America's best and smartest songwriters, all they need to do is spend some time with these songs.

As an unofficial soundtrack for ritual madness, religious ecstasy, sex, winemaking, and song, Dionysus excels.

If Only There Was a River rewards return listens with a deepening flow of new revelations and curiosities, as the power of the songs grows more apparent with each spin.

Elastic Days is another example of the strength and confidence he's gained from turning down the volume.

Listen underneath that gloss, and it's possible to hear Davies working out his ideas in a space free from the spotlight. Such seclusion may have meant he wasn't as focused to deliver songs with pop aspirations, the way he was in the '60s, but that's also the appeal of the collection: it's a polished version of a notebook from a strong writer, so it's by nature fascinating for anybody interested in the music of Dave Davies.

When combined with the gut-level hooks, this barbed wit results in a record that's simultaneously immediate and enduring: the first listen demands attention, but it's the left turns, in both the lyrics and melodies, that makes Bought To Rot so satisfying.

While Simulation Theory might appear to be overly polished mainstream trickery--all part of the simulation!--it's purely Muse at heart, successfully merging electronic-pop songcraft with their typically urgent, stadium rock foundation.

Holy Hell is both a teardown and a rebuild, and while it isn't always an easy listen, there is some hard-won catharsis to be found in its attempt to distill the messiness of grief into four-minute blasts of sonic demolition.

Only the less impressive closing song "Fingers" sounds primed for mass appeal with traditional hooks. More compelling are the moments that showcase Lil Peep's unique relationship with self-expression and self-destruction. His delivery, lyrical choices, and sincere examination of difficult feelings seemed curious when he was alive, but take on a profound significance in the pallid wake of his death.

Corgan delivers something unexpected: music that's rich but settled, music that plays to his strengths, music where he seems happy in his own skin.

There's both a sadness and warmth to Streisand's performances on Walls that befits the album's subject matter and speaks to her own ability to communicate to, and often for, her audience.

With some of the best and most interesting flashes of library music's colossal archives, Unusual Sounds offers a look at an arcane avenue of music that will engage those previously unfamiliar and well-versed fans.

B.E.D, is a delight. The performers work to fit their individual skills into a cohesive unit.

Ghost Forests offers listeners an expansive offering of the duo's strengths in improvisation, songwriting, and interpretation. Yet, for its considerable imagination and creativity, there is also an elegant restraint that allows listeners access to an interior world of sound and poetry perhaps previously unimagined.

He's mined this territory before, notably in Gorillaz's Demon Days, yet the very fact that the Good, The Bad & The Queen function as a band, drawing strength from their own interplay, gives Merrie Land a human resonance that echoes long after the final song ends.

Despite--or perhaps because of--its brevity (just over 30 minutes), El Mal Querer is arresting in its tension, passion, and creative ingenuity.

No songs are highly energized, but Carey sounds like she's deriving joy from each one.

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.

The previously released portion of the compilation, significantly less than half of its 36 selections, all dates from 2010-2017, an era represented with Teebs and TOKiMONSTA's warped beatmaking, Daedelus' MPB-tinged folk, Martyn's pellet-spraying U.K. garage mutation, and disparate varieties of funk from Mono/Poly and bass god Thundercat. ... Among the other exclusives and glimpses officially issued first through this set are Thundercat's trippy "King of the Hill" (with BadBadNotGood), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson's sublime "Kazaru," and Moiré's Prescription-meets-Dial beauty "Lisbon," progressive slices of soul, jazz, and house.

Walker plays it exceedingly straight, even when he's delivering good-time numbers like "Kit Kat Jam." This po-faced sincerity winds up underscoring Walker's debt to Dave Matthews Band--they now seem like a clear influence on his adventurous folk-jazz--while also highlighting the imagination behind the original set of songs.

Throughout the record, Tropical Fuck Storm intentionally eschew formulaic song structure, relying on unconventional songwriting rather than mining pseudo-psych-rock. As a result, the sense of apocalyptic adventure is palpable; luckily, it's a joy to go along for the ride.

By combining the autobiographical perspective of their earliest work with the flexible sounds of their later albums, Powerhouse showcases the entire scope of Planningtorock's music--and the results are moving in more ways than one.

Later lyrical transgression aside, the LP is a pleasurable thrill ride.

These tracks are vibrantly cross-pollinated, touching upon lush a cappella ("The National Manthem"), R&B flamenco ("Love a Girl Right"), and buzzy, exotic club bangers ("Wasabi"). No question, Little Mix are in charge here.

In its own quiet way, Warm is one of the most powerful works of Tweedy's career, and it's the sort of music too many of us need today.

Somehow, they manage to keep it engaging from start to finish; then again, that should be no surprise from two artists who rarely run out of ideas.

Ora delivered a confident pop gem that stands tall on its own.

It seems that Gardner has found his calling as a psychedelic spaceman, and Somnium is a laid-back delight that's a perfect soundtrack for inner flights and star-filled nights alike.

Cheap Thrills was the album that made Janis Joplin one of the biggest stars of her era (and rightly so), but Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills reminds us she didn't go it alone, and it's the work of a strong and memorable band as well as a world-class singer.

The LP is joyously nostalgic, decked with strings, horns, and a trio of background vocalists including secret weapon Sy Smith.

Through it all, Krgovich applies his years of clever pop acumen to the situation at hand, sounding reliably like himself, but allowing his present circumstances to propel him somewhere new in life and song.

As arranged by Good and Ferry, these are all wry and romantic productions that evoke the smoky ambiance of Babylon Berlin's Weimar Republic-era setting. Elsewhere, Ferry transforms the new wave sophistication of "While My Heart Is Still Beating" off 1982's Avalon into a slinky, half-lidded crawl, and similarly mutates the pop exotica of his 1985 title track "Boys and Girls" into a slow-burn flamenco fever dream.

Those who expected Blow. to be McCaslin's return to jazz will likely be disappointed. That said, those who enjoy adventurous rock--indie, prog, and otherwise--will likely find the album to be greatly enjoyable and perhaps even revelatory.

Supremely joyous and creative, Ens feels like the beginning of a new chapter for Holtkamp, and it's one of his most enjoyable works.

Clocking in at over an hour, The Prophet Speaks breezes through its run-time with memorable performances and joyous vibes. This is a late-career surge that is all the more remarkable because Morrison really seems to be enjoying himself--he continues to hunger after the music that inspired his vocation in the first place.

Socks is a durable holiday gift, but one that's immensely more fun and enjoyable than its wry title implies.

What really makes this collection worthwhile is how these robust performances put the lie to the notion that acoustic Neil is sad, sensitive Neil.

Romano has always been a tough artist to pigeonhole, but there's a feeling here of having shed a few more layers and dug a little deeper into his psyche, and the results are frequently exhilarating.

We're Your Friends, Man proves that they (he?) haven't lost a bit of their vision and skill, and while it's hard to say where one should start investigating the Bevis Frond's massive body of work, this will give you the lay of the land just as well as most of their albums.

Another triumph, Mandy reaffirms his mastery and hints at how much more he had to contribute.

Foxwarren remains both off-kilter and irresistibly comforting, like the feeling of the pull of sleep.

Even if it's familiar territory, he remains a master of this particular hip-hop niche, and Evil Genius is a late-era catalog highlight.

While the energy tapers off on the second half of the album, these midtempo jams are as addictive as the euphoric singles, providing contemplative balance and additional opportunities to showcase each inspired collaboration. What Is Love? was worth the long wait, taking the promise of "Rather Be" and topping it many times over.

Andy Partridge, Rivers Cuomo, and Peter Buck & Scott McCaughey all deliver new songs--and it has the same feel, blurring the lines between the past and present so thoroughly that it no longer matters to discover where they're separated. Schlesinger's presence is also a tell that Christmas Party leans into power pop. ... [Micky Dolenz's] having a great time, as is everybody else making the record, and it's hard for the listener at home not to smile too.

Even though the album is still arranged and produced with great care and Quever's vocals and melancholy melodies are as affecting and cozy as ever, there's a bit of extra energy and spirit in these songs that give the album a huge boost and help make this the best Papercuts album yet.

From the weariness and wonder in its title to the mix of delicacy and anger in its songs, Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? is one of Deerhunter's most haunting and thought-provoking albums.

Moving slowly but deliberately, the Delines dwell upon the lingering, lasting melancholy of bad decisions and bad timing, creating an album ideal for the twilight moments when revisiting an old heartbreak proves to be irresistible.

It doesn't just repeat the past, it mines it for gold while tossing out the dross, a process that works to refine this record until it gleams like a precious gem.

While it sometimes feels like Rogers could be even bolder than she is on Heard It in a Past Life, it's a strong debut that shows how well she's growing into her fame as well as all the dimensions of her music.

As it acknowledges current hardships and allow the tiniest glimmer of hope for tomorrow, It Won't Be Like This All the Time proves the Twilight Sad are making some of their most vital music more than a decade into their career.

De Facto is the work of musicians seeking something sonically and emotionally better and getting very close to the burning, white-hot center of it all. It's a challenging listen at times, but there's never a moment where the effort doesn't feel worth it and the rewards of digging deep into the sounds and songs are many.

On The Unseen In Between Gunn's guitar is the hub on which his songs turn, but is not their centerpiece. For guitar fans, there's an abundance of fine playing here, but the songwriter's aesthetic shift delivers listeners his most consistent album to date.

Well-conceived, vibrant, and executed with attitude and aplomb, About the Light is a career standout for Mason.

All of this works nicely, and reinforces the notion that at over twenty years into their career, Papa Roach are handling maturity pretty well.

I Used To Be Pretty is an unexpected triumph from a band far too compelling to be a one-off.

Some artists stumble when they move on from a strongly minimal aesthetic, but Sneaks sounds justifiably confident on Highway Hypnosis, and this suggests any number of new directions where her talent could travel.

Where I Wasn't Born to Lose You was electric with the excitement of Swervedriver's rebirth, Future Ruins is the sound of a band that's happy to be back and ready to get down to the business of pushing their sound forward.

Tyler builds on his already sterling reputation as a player and composer, while further establishing himself as a bandleader, on this breezy but neatly sewn collection.