The Ascension ranks with Carrie & Lowell as his most personal and affecting work to date.

As a collection, Shore emits a sense of coming through something and arriving anew with the welcome bruises that foster greater understanding and compassion.

Napalm Death remain pugilists to the core, and it's in the crucible of that apoplexy that they unearthed the sordidly splendid Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism.

The easy melodies and subtle singing of the title track is something new and very welcome; much of the rest of the album hits this same note of familiarity and growth, and it makes for a very satisfying listen. If Berry continues to progress and impress at this level, he might soon be known as a musician who does some acting instead of the other way around.

It's not the sound of a group resting on their laurels, it's the sound of a band summoning their strengths with a hint of sentiment to figure out how to deal with a world gone mad.

While the busy sonics and intricate wordplay of Haunted Painting mean there's a lot going on, Dupuis juggles it all with flair and heart.

While Versions of the Truth's second half is more subtle and laid-back, it is also more adventurous; it adds dimension and balance to an already deeply resonant outing.

There is no other album in Motorpsycho's vast catalog -- including its two companions -- that reaches these exploratory heights. For all of their ambition and excess, Motorpsycho never surrender their focus, their musicality, nor their powerful emotive directness.

Despite the prominent guest stars and radical musical changes, Shiver's focus is always on Jónsi and his innate gift for expressing pure feeling. As he reinvents what is essential to his music, he delivers some previously unimagined thrills.

All of his pleasantly confusing sounds align, creating an atmosphere that perfectly communicates the themes of openness and quiet excitement for the entirety of the album.

Free Humans is a dense album, with sounds stuffed into every available space and fields of ideas painstakingly arranged on each song. Both precisely calculated and boundlessly imaginative, Free Humans creates an expansive world in which Hen Ogledd can continue to sculpt their bizarre brand of pop music.

The resulting follow-up, Midnight Manor, finds the six-piece still cranking out riff-fueled, freewheeling rock jams about booze and women (and the music industry). ... Filler-free album.

Since so much of the album's power resides in its stunning production, this set might be slightly less revelatory than some of Harvey's other demo albums. Nevertheless, die-hard fans will savor the glimpse into her creative process that To Bring You My Love: The Demos provides.

Overflowing with confidence, Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa conquer each track on The Album with their vocal ability (both singing and rapping) and effortless charm, switching up styles to offer something for every type of fan.

True to form, Shamir continues to push boundaries as the album comes to a close with the dramatic vocals and strings of "In This Hole." Moments like this make it clear that this album isn't a simple return to pop for Shamir; it's a wide embrace of everything he can do with his music -- at this point in his career, anyway.

Good Luck with Whatever is dad rock at its finest, unapologetically classicist in tone and full of a hard-won gratitude. But the way that it's also struck through with a wry sense of existential dread speaks to the group's decidedly un-dad-like ability to perfectly capture the climate of the present moment.

Despite its overtly metaphysical esthetic, Holy Smokes Future Jokes goes down fairly easy, as the band conjure up melodies that swaddle Earley's heady yet homespun lyrics in the golden hues of breezy west coast pop and country-folk.

Produced and recorded with a skill that's all the more effective for its unwillingness to intrude on the band, Atlas Vending is a dazzling display of form and content that shows listeners how math rock can be effectively weaponized.

Folks who were expecting Lydia Loveless to be the next savior of country music may be thrown for a loop by Daughter, but anyone who wants to hear one of America's best and boldest songwriters working at the top of her game owes it to themselves to give it a careful listen.

After 2016's robust but scattered Everything at Once, the focused 10 Songs is a welcome return to their early style and one of the strongest statements in their catalog.

With Sad Hunk, Jurvanen has crafted an album about reaching the age where you don't care about being cool anymore, yet he somehow manages to find ever more nuanced and inspired levels of cool musical insight in the process.

The New OK sometimes feels uneven and precarious, which in this context is an asset rather than a failing; as a snapshot of America in October 2020, it's unnervingly accurate and devastatingly relatable, as well as a powerful set of work from a great American band.

Long in the Tooth is easily the most complex album in the Budos Band's catalog. It succeeds because they refuse to graft on too many extras into their sonic and stylistic approach. The music here retains the band's core strength -- they incessantly rely on deep, hard-swinging, intensely delivered grooves, no matter the material.

The album is a strong reaffirmation of Francis' stylistic elasticity. It covers even more territory than AlunaGeorge's preceding second album, I Remember, while coming across as more unified. Francis also challenges herself as a vocalist.

This gift for distilling complex emotions into relatable songs is just as vital to Beabadoobee's music as her rapidly evolving sound, and both shine on Fake It Flowers.

Regardless of the thematic angle, Ivey approaches his music with intelligence and heart, serving up concise views of both the inner and outer worlds on this very likeable sophomore set.

Album No. 8 is an intensely personal album that feels like Melua made it for herself first and foremost.

Nightcap at Wits' End is the most complete articulation of their wide-reaching creative range, and stands as the their most focused and engaging work to date.