A bigger soundstage doesn't necessarily suit the BBC sessions, where the primitive production suits the raw performances--for proof, listen to the second disc in the deluxe set, which wasn't de-mixed--but it's ultimately a minor flaw in what's otherwise an essential set.

What's most important is that nearly everything here is brilliant. Highly recommended for anyone with the urge to plunge deeper into the Fall's tremendous body of work.

The Official Body is a frequently dazzling example of how resistance can be fortifying and even fun.

It's art with a beat, noise with hooks, and more proof that No Age are one of the great slept-on bands of their generation.

Accessible and friendly yet highly profound, Vision Songs is a truly uncommon work, and easily one of Laraaji's best.

While that's brief by 21st century standards, it's plenty and proper on a collection of songs framed in kinetic, inspired performances by one of the greatest soul bands to emerge in decades.

It stands with their best work--some songs would no doubt end up on a greatest-hits collection--and in that regard is some of the best pop music anyone could hope to hear in 2018 or any time after.

Rifles and Rosary Beads is unlike any other record. It edifies and empathizes with the experiences of its participants in delivering brutal yet tender truths; it confronts listeners to embrace without judgment the struggle of war survivors, while experientially relating the extended fact that over 7,400 veterans commit suicide each year. Gauthier and her collaborators look into the gaping maw of war, its trauma, isolation, rage, and loneliness, to reveal the human faces and hearts of its witnesses. Popular music can do no more than this.

Transangelic Exodus is a scrappy yet poignant rock & roll narrative of inner conflict and acceptance; its songs are a confessional and confrontational commentary on a historic period when so much is possible, even as fear, hate, and paranoia still hold the reins of power. Its energy, vulnerability, rage, and crafty poetics are awe-inspiring.

She radiates genuine personality, and her second full-length demonstrates just how well she can bend pop structures to her will and sound fantastic in the process.

It is desperate, important, and powerful music and it might just be the best album they've ever made.

Silver Dollar Moment is a stunning debut, and if it doesn't quite reinvent the wheel the way that The Stone Roses did, it does have a uniquely sweet spirit and lighthearted beauty all its own.

Keyboardist Cleo Sample and singer/songwriter Kendra Foster are among the variable cast that joins that trio, so the set unsurprisingly has the densely layered, spaced-out, and fiery qualities of D'Angelo's Black Messiah.

While it may be inspired by Sandy's fallout, Landfall's reach runs to a sea of loss, chaos, and confusion. It's an elemental mystery of quietly epic proportions made exceptional through clarity of thought and feeling.

It's a lovely and deeply creative record that came so late in his career that it appeared to have already been relegated to history.

This volume charts Jansch's development as a songwriter as well as an interpreter who remains devoted to his roots while restlessly expanding the reach of his oeuvre This music has aged exceptionally well.

With Violence, the Editors have crafted a big pop album on their own terms, rife with grand, operatic gestures and heat-seeking hooks that cut deep, just as they put salve on your wounds.

Previously, her cleverness was her strong suit, but on Golden Hour, she benefits from being direct, especially since this frankness anchors an album that sounds sweetly blissful, turning this record the best kind of comfort: it soothes but is also a source of sustenance.

The word "Akokán" means "from the heart," and the playing here underscores the translation. While the recording was meant as an homage, the innovations in both charts and performance make it simultaneously modern and timeless.

The tape sources are all official: The Copenhagen gig is remastered from a state radio broadcast and the other two concerts are from producers' archives, making this historic set among the most essential in the Bootleg Series.

The album feels open-hearted and mischievous, a combination that is disarming upon the first listen and nourishing upon subsequent plays.

This is essential and irresistible vintage American weirdness.

With its beautifully chosen material and unorthodox construction, What News has that rare timeless feeling to it, effortlessly placing the ancient within the present as only the right group of artists can manage to do.

Daphne & Celeste may not save the world, but a listen to this album is sure to make the world a better place for about 45 minutes or so, and sometimes that's enough.

The artists take risks, and they--and the songbook--come out sounding the better for it.

The album doesn't seek any big answers to make sense of a pointless death, but profoundly chronicles Saba's jagged path through the heartache as life continues.

Nothing here is particularly outside the wheelhouse of Old Crow Medicine Show, but the songs are finely etched and the performances vivid, elements that separate Volunteer from its predecessors. Here, Old Crow Medicine Show feel focused and fully realized, as if they're just hitting their stride after two decades in the business.

Sparrow is sharply constructed as an album, setting a mood with its first song and then finding variations on this lush, enveloping sound. It's a record designed for late nights, whether those nights are lonely or romantic.