Traversa is sumptuous background music that can brighten the mood or simply soothe the soul.

Sleepless Night is as warm and comforting as a cup of hot chocolate, and while it hardly seems like a major work (and it isn't), it's thoroughly enjoyable and a reminder that you can hardly do better than Yo La Tengo in making a playlist of treasured oldies.

The EP's wistful quality combined with its brevity can make The Rest seem almost unassuming, but it's not slight: it's a welcome coda to the relative exuberance of The Record.

They don't try to reinvent the wheel here, largely sticking to the rootsy punk vibe of blown-out speaker vocals, overdriven guitar twang, and thumping drums. Yet, there are still some ear-popping moments.

Equally thoughtful and energetic, Capture/Release shows that the Rakes have a smart, sharp voice that ultimately sets them apart from the rest of their scene.

By reining in the freedom that made Clovis People, Vol. 3 such a puzzling wonder, Taylor manages to up the ante musically and lyrically on Contraband.

Compared to Usher's previous album, this is weighted more heavily toward dance-pop, much of which is functional and well made but unremarkable.

The way they join the organic and the electronic, the cerebral and the emotional on Close to the Glass makes it the most thoroughly rewarding and enjoyable album of the Notwist's career to date.

The 2018 debut imparted a somewhat avant form of downtempo with singers, players, rappers, and samples -- crossing generations and genres -- all artfully woven into a contemplative statement. Friday Forever is similarly collaborative and collagist.

Entergalactic is a late-era gem in his catalog, a multimedia gift to fans that expands his artistic scope and bodes well for more projects outside the confines of music.

Destroyer is Black Mountain's tightest, gnarliest, and least sprawling outing to date.

There's no reason why its quietly enchanting qualities can't go on to provide her with the breakthrough outside Scandinavia that she deserves.

They give these tracks the same emotional push they give to those on their "real" songs, and that means their fans should lap it up like hot chocolate on a freezing cold night.

The sentimental doo wop vocals filtered through a slightly muddy garage rock lens butt up against the cartoonishly crass punk rock rants and the mild tripouts for yet another album of pure fun and explosive rock & roll antics, with a delivery that by now belongs solely to these wild-eyed champions of inspiration and profanity.

Shine a Light is an album of big ideas and lofty intentions, but the truth is this probably would have been better if Bragg and Henry had found a nice concert hall where they could have recorded it in front of an audience that wasn't running to catch a train.

Frightening and utterly exhilarating. The rest of the album isn't as overtly violent, but it's no less captivating, and it confirms the Assassins' mastery of building apocalyptic sound worlds.

While not quite as immediate or diverse as their full-length debut, Annual slots in nicely among their rapidly expanding body of work.

Featuring a distinctly intimate, shadowy, surf-infused sound, Everything may be dimly lit and occasionally grief-stricken, but it avoids being persistently maudlin.

Even if The Will to Live ultimately proves the old adage that you can't will a masterpiece into existence, what's here is the work of a great band with a fine songwriter giving their all in the studio and playing at the top of their game, and that makes it a great listen, if not quite an example of Ultimate Rock.

Musically however, Shangri-La keeps things fairly light and upbeat, with plenty of memorable, chanted vocal hooks and a satisfying mixture of live and sequenced instrumentation.

We Walk This Road is a consistently surprising tour de force that moves easily through rock, blues, R&B, gospel, and more, sometimes bringing them all together at the same time.

Almost all of the guest MCs have an excellent chemistry with Keith, so the album is appropriately titled, and even with a large supporting cast, it still sounds unmistakably like a Kool Keith album.

Ultimately, My True Story is a smooth, mostly laid-back, and soulful recording by Neville.

SMILE! :D was clearly created with the intention of dealing with sharply conflicting emotions, but it still ends up being more uneven than expected, and it's just not as successful as Nurture.

They're still mockingbirds, but what once felt derivative is now inching closer to vital.

The cascades of noise and occasional glowing chamber sounds almost serve as a wordless balancing element to lyrics that can feel fatalistic, even if they're just accurate assessments of where the world is at present.

This fine debut is also filled with productions from Statik Selektah, DJ Premier, and others whose names hold weight.

Fields is intriguing in a low-key way that grows with repeated listening and will make Gonzalez fans into Junip fans.

Probably because neither of the artists concentrate on their usual instruments of choice, there is a childlike innocence that runs throughout the wash.

While the set is a bit of a chore at 19 tracks (24 on the deluxe version), it's still not as bloated as Culture II. Yet, it could use some trimming if only to clear the clutter that distracts from the solid highlights.

This sparkling, streamlined display adds up to great headphone candy, but ultimately it's a record made for booming club speakers.

Their drive to push forward is refreshing, and the slight updates to the band's intricate signature sound results in an exciting comeback album and a statement that stands on its own regardless of its place in time.

This may be Prinz and Horn's most minimalist music yet, but it's also some of their most rewarding.

Bringing emotional weight and measured playfulness to every song while maintaining a fascinating, cosmic soundscape, it's an album that lingers.

Thanks to the high level of Tatum's songs and the sound he and Vernhes create, it's just the kind of album that could connect with lovers of slick, catchy pop with real humans behind the controls.

There really isn't anyone else who combines ear-bleeding noise, desolation, and ravenous beauty like the Body, and I Have Fought Against It is one of their most emotionally heavy albums yet.

The album reinforces the unstoppable brilliance of Merritt's writing. At any length, instrumentation or investigating whatever ridiculous subject matter, he somehow manages to be effortlessly charming, funny, odd and above all catchy.

Last Day of Summer is surely weirder than their actual album material, but it's compelling to watch a band rooted in garage rock go so far out of its comfort zone, try some uncharted styles (jazz, prog, tropicalia, and psych-folk), and still come up with some winners.

There's a clear focus to the record, too, virtually all of it centered on mainstream dance of the '80s hi-NRG synth pop variety.

Minks leave listeners wanting more on By the Hedge, a debut that sounds timeless and surprising.

Both Ways... fuses folk, indie rock, electronica, and avant-garde pop with unusual percussion including bottle tops, plants, and saucepans.

Take a couple listens, let it sink in, and then discover that Cole World is one hell of a debut.

Fear of the Dawn isn't often a pleasant listen, but it wasn't meant to be: it's a dark adventure, an album designed to provoke and stoke fears, not to soothe them.

True North shows flashes of their earlier work, and is a step up from their last album, 2010's The Dissent of Man, in terms of aggression.

Whether the album seems ridiculous or spectacular (or both), Rihanna's complete immersion in the majority of the songs cannot be disputed. That is the one thing that is not up for debate.

This beguiling little album is another feather in DeMarco's baseball cap, and will live on in his growing catalog, but you might want to head over to Queens for that cup of coffee before it's too late.

Satisfaction enough for those who kept Mezzanine near their stereo for years on end, but a disappointment to those expecting another masterpiece.

Each of these compositions reveals not only an imaginative use of trace musical elements, but also a maturing sense of how to arrange them.

While obviously talented and often inspired, it is unclear if the Bad Plus are avant-garde enough to appeal to hardcore jazz fans, or pop-oriented enough to grab the attention of rock listeners.

Shaddix's woes connect directly to a large and equally confused audience, and that nobody this side of Kurt Cobain communicates them with as much power.

This time out, Eitzel has built his arrangements around spare keyboard lines, atmospheric electronic samples, and percussion loops that blend with his voice and acoustic guitar to create an effect that suggest a more spare, organic version of Portishead, or a Jon Brion production that's stuck in a blue funk. But the new surroundings suit the songs quite well...

With Molé, Jourgensen has mobilized the fatalism and fury that always rumbled through industrial and thrash music, and left everything else in the staging area.

The Photo Album does not quite meet the standard set by 2000's stellar We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes on a song-for-song level, but it's still a moving and intelligent collection of wistful pop.

Muse have really done it this time.

It lays down incontrovertible proof that Sondre Lerche can make a convincing and exciting straight-ahead modern rock record.

As an album, Orchestrion is as ambitious as "Secret Story and The Way Up," but it is no less brilliant. Here Metheny exceeds our expectations, and perhaps even his own.

The result is a globe-trotting pop album that sounds like nothing he's attempted before, yet still retains enough of his signature arrangements to make Rouse’s multi-ethnic transformation a believable one.

Robyn Hitchcock doesn't really make bad albums, but he doesn't always make legitimately great ones; Propellor Time thankfully feels like one of the high-watermarks of his post-millennial body of work, and it's beautiful, essential listening.

No doubt, Diddy injects so much of his unfiltered self into the album that no hater can be swayed, but it's his unique attitude that makes Last Train such a delight.

The band's sophomore debut tempts fate with a nearly 30-second fade-in (you may think you have a defective disc on your hands, but wait for it), then takes off into a crazy welter of power ballad, electro-glitch, dubstep, atonal, acoustic-based, waltz-funk weirdness that occasionally gets tiring but rarely stops being interesting.

Throughout it all, Rimes hits her marks with ease, and the new version of her breakthrough hit "Blue" illustrates just how far she's come--how she's become a stronger, more nuanced singer over the years.

The Kid's voice has aged, lowered, and mellowed, but otherwise you'd think this witty genre-spanning, time-jumping collection of tropical kitsch and too-cool nostalgia came from the group's golden era.

Wright sounds terrific, navigating through the upbeat, attitudinal jams and slower, romantic cuts with finesse and strength.

It all adds up to a beautifully redemptive album, one of Bibb's best.

Evans the Death is a stunning debut that may not change the way you think about indie rock, but the band plays with so much passion and the songs are so good, it doesn't matter that maybe you've heard it (in some form) before.

On Christian aTunde ADJuah, Scott and company create a seamless, holistic 21st century jazz that confidently points toward new harmonic horizons.

While longtime fans might be a bit perplexed by the shift, they will find plenty of familiar ground to cling to as the record plays and the smartly written and tear-filled songs follow one after another.

The Blue Room is a brave experiment, but one that pays off handsomely.

Other Life, while being a solid album, falls short of being any type of definitive statement about his place in the landscape of his scene or the world at large.

At times sounding like the Beatles, Teenage Fanclub, Harry Nilsson, Fleet Foxes, Big Star, and the Beach Boys all tossed in a blender, Ivan & Alyosha's All the Times We Had marks the arrival of a great band fully formed.

The album's 19 tracks weave an icy, cinematic narrative as Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge pick choice cuts from their record collections.

Lyrically and melodically it plumbs the depths of emotion, making it among the most compelling entries in Jesu's catalog.

Bluebird reveals Landes' healing process in emotionally raw, delicately crafted songs.

This is the satisfying return album fans have waited for, no more, and certainly no less.

A successful exploration of dance music both subtle and sharp.

Good as his bandmates are, on Can't Forget, Cohen is the star, and he's as strong, as witty, and as willing to lay himself emotionally bare as ever; it's anyone's guess how much longer he intends to keep going, but there's nothing here to suggest he needs or wants to quit now.

Souther's command of both his music and his voice on Tenderness is total; he makes it all sound easy. But that's deceptive: it takes a lifetime of commitment and hard work to deliver a gem like this.

While High Country doesn't always work, it's constantly working toward moving the band forward, which means that were probably only a few albums away from a hair metal makeover.

Cradle To The Grave relies on the sharp melodic construction of Tilbrook and Difford's diffident wit, a combination the crackles throughout this lean 44 minute record.

The overall result is a spirited collaboration that digs through the past for inspiration, but seems to prefer to keep memories a bit hazy.

Mixing humor with pointed social satire, Rest in Chaos finds Snider and his group tackling both darker moods and high-spirited rock.

It's not uncommon for these songs to bloom into something celebratory during their second half, such as on the rippling, shimmering "Wandering Still." Between Waves is easily the strongest, most inspired Album Leaf release in at least a decade.

Eastside Bulldog doesn't sound like a typical Todd Snider album, but it's very much a product of his irreverent wit, and if you're looking for some tunes to turn up the party in the 30 minutes before last call, this could be just what you need.

They may not have broken the mold, but delivering a rock-solid album that plays well from front to back is no easy feat, and this second volume is a winner.

The record's hazy harmonies and sauntering pace provide a cozy sanctuary for daydreams that may not lead to happy outcomes but feel good while they last.

Ainsworth's ornate palette and attention to detail may not attract casual listeners, but those drawn to the icy yet vulnerable strangeness of acts like FKA twigs or certainly Ainsworth's first album will find a rewarding set that expands with repeat plays.

Taken as a whole, Communicating presents a multi-layered universe of off-center pop well worth exploring.

Ultimately, Starsailor have been around long enough to earn veteran rocker status and All This Life, with its perfect balance of emotional gravitas and buoyant lyricism, is an album worthy of that status.

Ultimately, while it takes on big-picture perspectives and complicated emotions, Mount Qaf is a feel-good release whose hooks and invigorating spirit may be its most powerful takeaway.

The set comes across as remarkably crafted and measured, from its predominantly slow tempos and recurring elements to the coalescence of shrewdly applied samples and participants who also include pianist Peter Gabriel and saxophonist Kamasi Washington.

Despite the overwhelming melancholy that drenches the album, it remains a gorgeous collection that is mostly indebted to trip-hop and his pre-millennial output, with a few nods to the quieter moments on 2013's Innocents.

Johnny Cash: Forever Words has some brilliant moments and is an often-moving tribute to Cash's gifts as a writer, but as a listening experience, it's unfortunately inconsistent. Maybe some of this was better left on paper.

This album is smart fun from a band that actually makes something fresh out of the sounds of the past, and as long as La Luz keep doing that, they'll be worth hearing.

While it's unlikely that Bird Dog Dante will win him many new fans, its curious, intimate, casual approach will certainly appeal to those who have embraced Parish's earlier--and no less idiosyncratic--recordings.

Ultimately, superfans might be polarized by the experimental musings of Elephants on Acid, but those with some distance will find this curiously assembled collection pleasantly puzzling in its layers of trippy appeal. Something this unexpected from such an established act can't help but feel refreshing.

While the best material here represents stylistic evolution or at least enhancement of the best parts of Cherry Glazerr's recent sound, Stuffed & Ready as a whole spoils quickly, fizzling from righteous anthems of anger and self-questioning into monotonous and self-absorbed alt-rock rewrites.

With the exception of a couple specific later singles, this is the best and most comfortable the O'Jays have sounded since the '70s.

The production throughout Daughters of the Sky seamlessly melds mallet percussion, trippy effects, and enticing synth textures, maintaining an atmosphere that's both organic and otherworldly. A handful of somewhat darker instrumental interludes are present, but there's still a cautious sense of determination to them.