It's About Time feels full-blooded and alive, the work of a man who wants to make a little noise while he still can.

With Paradise, White Lung have ultimately crafted an album of hooky, infectious songs that still retain all the rage and D.I.Y. punk creativity of their previous work.

Muscular but graceful, The Westerner is as effective as anything Doe has released in his solo career. It confirms that at the age of 63, he hasn't run out of ideas and is not afraid to challenge himself.

An intentionally fragmented portrait of change, Will's cracks show the growth in Barwick's music, and its pieces are facets that allow different aspects of her talent to shine.

The result is an album of angular yet immediately memorable hooks bathed in a fizzy mix of rock guitars, candy-coated synths, and gigantic drumbeats.

Advancement ends up being an appropriate title, as this album largely dispenses with the cheesy elements that marred previous Solar Bears recordings, resulting in their most accomplished and enjoyable release to date.

A much different but just as powerful statement as their debut, the Magnetic North have once again crafted something that is wholly unique.

Lyrical prowess is never in doubt, and neither is the idea that the MC is an acquired taste, but this wordy, extroverted, and capricious effort is an alive whirlwind with more pride than usual. That last bit makes it one of the most persuasive Aesop efforts to date.

Established fans will be glad to know that Down in Heaven still carries the torch of garage rock, and anyone who misses the free-spirited, clattering style of those influences has a generous 13 new tracks to enjoy.

Earth into Aether is an opportune entrance point for those new to the artist, doubling as a well-curated playlist for established fans.

For Beans' nightmarish spoken narrative, Pritchard makes like a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with intensifying patterns of organ filigrees and electronics that blip and swarm.

Another Splash of Colour is a perfect jumping-off point that covers most of the important players--sadly, no Dukes of Stratosphear tracks were available--and does a great job capturing and defining an almost forgotten scene with the care it deserves.

Combined with beats seemingly tailored for each voice, the album could have resembled a disorderly production showcase, yet Celestin applies his experience as a deeply knowledgeable selector to stitch it all together with few obvious seams. He excels most at bold modern boogie with spring-loaded drums, zip-and-glide basslines, and radiant keyboards.

Radiohead is recognizably the same band that made that pioneering piece of electronica-rock but they're older and wiser on A Moon Shaped Pool, deciding not to push at the borders of their sound but rather settle into the territory they've marked as their own. This may not result in a radical shift in sound but rather a welcome change in tone: for the first time Radiohead feels comfortable in their own skin.

Strange Country is a mysteriously and profoundly pleasing piece of work.

Get Gone is a very special dose of rock and soul, and one of the most purely enjoyable debuts of 2016.

Lines aimed at authority, competition, and bottom feeders all shoot clean through.

This is an album full of vivid imagination, and executed with the skills to make those ideas stick.

Blau places himself completely in his producer's hands. He digs into these lyrics and charts for all he's worth, delivering a gem that is as timeless as its songs.

Everything sounds so precise, crisp, hard-hitting, and indomitable. For that exact reason, Bottomless Pit is an ideal effort for longtime fans and newcomers alike. Needless to say, whatever the type of listener, it won't be forgotten.

It's all spirited and lively. At their best, the wide-eyed folk-soul moments tend to evoke a contemporized version of fellow Englishwoman Linda Lewis.

It's as if this is a needy mixtape, but that minor complaint aside, Free Will finds Freeway's great mix of cold and clever on the upswing, and packaged in a near perfect blend of old and new beats.

Concrete Confessional can be borderline silly in its saltiness, but it's the best kind of comfort food, even if it breaks your jaw.

With three albums under his belt, Vance has settled into a nice groove, and on The Wild Swan, he's pulled off a neat trick. He dons some familiar hats, but never loses himself beneath the brim.

On the whole, Absolute Loser is dominated by an energetic wistfulness and sweet melodicism that characterize most of Johnson's work, whatever his instrument palette. While that should please fans, the solidly crafted song set also offers as good an entry point as any for potential admirers.

They stay true to the genre's penchant for loud/quiet/loud posturing, on-the-nose emotional cues, and strategically placed breakdowns throughout, but they do so while flexing some significant creative muscle.

The results are understated yet extraordinary, an idiosyncratic, romantic vision of 20th century America.

Rock history teaches us you can't will a masterpiece into existence, but with Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial, Will Toledo has created something like a novel after previously offering us short stories, and it's a piece of rough-hewn brilliance.