Easily the band's finest work yet, Illegals' little quirks and huge emotions have what it takes to sweep listeners off their feet.

A lovely, stimulating debut album, Contrepoint is a beautifully written love letter to musical history and creativity.

This is not just a nostalgic look back at a classic album, but Merchant fully inhabiting the material in the present tense. The depth in these recordings makes it a welcome companion to Tigerlily.

Combined with schizophrenic production (Evian Christ, Boody, Balam Acab, Lunice) that leaps from horny trap to frantic electroclash, Riot Boi overwhelms with twists, turns, and surprises, all of which are exhilarating.

While each disc stands on its own, it's the sum total that makes this a career-defining work.

It captures the best aspects of their past, while sounding like dream pop perfection in the present and promising more good things for the future.

The succession of guest artists is so long that it becomes disruptive. Jeremih nonetheless delivers enough slightly quavering, somewhat vulnerable sounding NC-17 and X-rated lines to keep ears perked.

A record that exists out of time but feels fresh in how it evokes portions of our collective past.

If Turin Brakes' world-view has changed little over the years, their embrace of the craft of record-making has only improved, and Lost Property is an impressive document of their skills in the recording studio.

The overwhelming stillness of Promise demands attention but ultimately rewards it: it's an album that comforts the unease that arrives in moments of solitude, whether they arrive in the dead of night or in the chill of the morning.

While Mitchell has his stamp on both this album and the Ricked Wicky material, Of Course You Are is also one of the most musically ambitious albums Pollard has released under his various monikers in quite some time.

There's plenty here to enjoy at a high volume, and at twice the length of their debut, Bloodsweat practically comes off as a double album.

On his volume of !K7's DJ-Kicks series, Damon Riddick, aka Dām-Funk, affably replicates the spirit of his weekly Funkmosphere club night.

U is quite an accomplished full-length debut from a talented producer.

Several shorter, fragmentary cuts provide glimpses of indescribable studio happenings that can't be replicated. Titles like "Copy of Crazy" and "The Monkey in the Machine" hint at the playful, slightly chaotic nature of these sessions.

Rhyton sound like they could easily play for hours on end and not get tired, and possibly not even come close to reaching their peak, but they rein in their impulses in order to keep things focused and explore more ideas in the album format, and it works pretty well.

From start to finish, Trick is arresting, with enough sonic surprises to excite and perplex listeners freed from the restrictions of genre boundaries.

As its title suggests, there's an eldritch purity to Older Terrors' combination of post-rock, shoegaze, and metal that makes it some of Esben & the Witch's most ambitious and captivating music.

Ruins is an undeniably heavy bit of business, and if given time to work its magic, it will both infect and inspire.

There's a palpable sense of real listening, of generously shared creativity. Ultimately, it's that synergistic spark that makes Thile and Mehldau's collaboration sound less like a one-off experiment and more like the start of a lasting partnership.

As impressionistic as the smeary sounds can be, it's an album that rests on its sturdy songs and Lane's powerful performance, two elements that keep Highway Queen as engaging on repeated listens as it is on its first.

Occasionally, Genders' musical adaptations verge on becoming overly fussy, but for the most part, the contributions of each partner are pleasantly transformed by this strange affair.

Produced by Guy Picciotto of Fugazi in tandem with engineer Greg Norman, Cost of Living is a tougher and leaner effort than Full Communism, with the group's abundant energy even more tightly focused.

With a couple more killer songs and rougher production, it will all come together eventually. Until then, this is a fine place to mark Leo's welcome comeback.

20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo's glimpses at life's unknowability are disturbing, affecting, and always fascinating--and prove that Pere Ubu are as vital as ever in the 2010s.

It dispenses cautionary maxims through passages of heavy guitar distortion and sleeker moments of acoustic guitar and synths. Taken together, his typical existential outlook combined with a heavier presence of New Order-like industrial timbres make this a somewhat darker album, but still delightfully Destroyer.

Full of heart, courage, and passion, Widdershins finds Grant-Lee Phillips going from strength to strength after The Narrows, and it ranks with his best solo efforts.

The band purportedly balance their compositional process between writing songs on their instruments and utilizing electronic production programs that they then translate to live instrumentation. As a result, these songs have the wave-like flow of electronic dance tracks but with the expansive, acoustic atmosphere of classic ECM recordings.