Not that Tennessee Pusher is a huge fall off from "Big Iron World," it's just not a great leap forward and upward, although there are plenty of striking tracks.

It's a light stop-gap to hold fans over until Rae's third album.

While it isn't all great, most of it is, and while this isn't the best way for newcomers to acquaint themselves with Fela Kuti's music, it is an essential document for fans.

Long in the Tooth features ten new Shaver songs, and if his voice by now (the album was released in his 75th year) has worn to a deep, rough rasp, the songs are as strong and as vital and world-weary wise as ever.

Dey's music clearly isn't going to resonate with everyone, but it's unquestionable that she has a unique vision, and Flood Network is a restlessly inventive album.

Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl is not Astral Weeks, but it's brilliant and emotionally intense; it's honest and spiritually revealing.

While Let the Poison Out cleans up their sound a bit, it doesn't sacrifice the laid-back, chirpy, quirkiness that listeners have grown to love.

While fans of Royal Trux's inventiveness might find more of that in Hagerty's and Herrema's solo work, White Stuff is still another entertaining part of a reunion that once seemed impossible.

These tracks are balanced by a few sparer intimate ones steeped in nostalgia and an uncertain hope. Throughout Two Saviors, Meek's uniquely kindly tenor conveys evocative phrases and settings that likewise stand apart from the crowd.

Her Brit-pop soul treacle is still miles better than some of her contemporaries' top-tier offerings, and when the album connects it moves right in and starts to redecorate, but when it falters, it's akin to a chatty party guest failing to realize that everyone else has gone home.

A lifelong troubadour whose wandering ways have seemingly found some respite as a Los Angeles family man, the native Chicagoan cracks open the door and reveals himself in a way that manages to strike an elegant balance with his more cryptic tendencies.

With Pony, Orville Peck could probably get over on sheer audacity, but his talent is as impressive as his ideas are smart and unexpected, and this is one of the best and most fascinating debuts from an alt-country adjacent artist in a very long time.

A quietly remarkable debut, The Year of Hibernation is equally suited to hiding underneath the covers and throwing them off to face the day.

New is one of the best of McCartney's latter-day records: it is aware of his legacy but not beholden to it even as it builds upon it.

Sometimes it's electronic music you can rock to, sometimes it's neo-disco tech-house you can sing with, but it's always the fringe of dance-pop at its peak put together in a razor-sharp package.

Meanwhile, David Bottrill's dynamic production (his credits include King Crimson and Dream Theater) is perfectly suited, and only enhances the band's ever-intensifying talents.

Every melody is blanketed in psychedelic sounds, giving a unified feel to the record, even if the music isn't always easily containable.

A danceable memento mori, Dumb Flesh is mischievous, poignant, and quite likely Sacred Bones' most accessible release of 2015.

As You Please can sometimes come across as overly dour, but Citizen are masters of uneasiness and wield that power like a sword.

This music shows that Buck is a very good friend to have in the studio; he knows how give a song the setting it needs, and this is a dark but richly entertaining delight.

While undoubtedly more developed and ambitious than the first Jackie Lynn record, Jacqueline still sounds like the work of an experimental side project, but it's clear that Fohr and her friends are having an awful lot of fun with this, and it's easy to get swept up in their immersive dream world.

It's dramatic, it's grand, and it proves yet again that Martin Phillipps hasn't lost a step and will hopefully go on for a long time making records as good as Scatterbrain.

Darker and more assured than its predecessors, Land of Sleeper parses the outrage and catastrophizing of the social media age with gravitas, yet it does so with a watchful and curious eye.

As on Anniemal, Don't Stop contains some of the catchiest, most clever dance-pop in circulation....The collaborations with Xenomania (five songs), Timo Kaukolampi (three), and Richard X (one) aren’t as powerful, however, with a good handful of their songs no match for Anniemal’s weaker moments.

In short, without seeing Atlas's film, Turning is simply a live recording of Antony and the Johnsons on-stage in London, but thankfully, given their talent and their commitment to their craft, that's more than enough to make this a remarkable experience.

There are certainly some strong tracks here and it will be interesting to see how Mr. Little Jeans develops, but as a whole, Pocketknife is an uneven debut.

His music seems a slight bit more danceable and accessible than before, but not to the point of pandering to a hedonistic club audience.

Riddles is easily his grandest work yet.