The first side is GospelbeacH at their best and the flip is, while admittedly not vital, still a lot of fun. Certainly anyone who liked the first two albums, and especially Another Summer of Love, needs to seriously consider adding this set to their collection.

Each of the songs are immediately reprised by dub versions, and these indulge in all of the spacy echo and delay effects one would expect, often improving on the originals. Overall, though, the music just doesn't seem quite as pushed to the outer limits as Back on the Controls. The Black Album isn't a major disappointment, but it isn't exceptional, either.

Much more forceful and revolutionary than Doomsquad's previous efforts, Let Yourself Be Seen is easily the band's most engaging and focused work.

If you got to know METZ from 2015's II or 2017's Strange Peace, Automat will amaze you as you ponder how long they've been this good, and if you haven't been introduced to their work, starting at the beginning isn't a bad idea at all. Either way, you need this music.

Wilderness shows Jade Jackson taking on a more demanding musical and emotional range than on her first LP, and the finished product finds her carrying the added weight with flying colors.

Another State of Grace isn't as immediately satisfying as its predecessor, but like all things built with care, it attains a golden patina over time.

III moves at a deliberate, nearly dreary pace that forces a listener to pay attention, and while it can take some effort to meet the Lumineers on their own terms, it's nevertheless easy to admire the ambition behind the project.

Logically, Blossoms doesn't have the sort of strangely human touch of Emptyset's 2017 releases, but it's still a compelling, somewhat frightening hybrid of organic and synthetic processes.

MacKay and Kleijn have performed and recorded with a large number of musicians in their careers, but STIR reveals they push one another to especially imaginative and expressive work, and this collaboration hardly appears to have made use of all their inspiration just yet.

A sleepier song like "Blue Spring," which features pedal steel and sparse, strummed guitar, only provides contrast within a very narrow range of expression here, like when eyes adjust to dim nocturnal lighting, then notice the shadow of a stray moth.

If you're looking for music that will suit a quiet night with intelligence and style, you should certainly give HARMONY a listen.

Despite some stylistic diversity, Little Common Twist still feels largely consistent. The songs here offer a deeper view into both Rumback and Walker's individual talents as players and their profound chemistry as a unit.

The LP's tone feels deliberately grandiose and it doesn't always land, but there are plenty of highlights to be found like the excellent "Change" and "Friend at First," which reveal what a sharp songwriter Gonzalez is.

Energy peaks early. The loping and gleaming "Lavender," a meeting with brash Channel Tres, and the atmospheric garage scuttler "Who Knew?," featuring Mick Jenkins in wholehearted singer mode, have enough homing power to illuminate Club Lonely.

With this collection of poems, Lana Del Rey offers an alternate view of the sun-dazzled California dreaming that fuels her songs. Her spoken word pieces reveal a more immediate lyrical sophistication, but they maintain the strange and powerful magic Del Rey has been cultivating her entire career.

The unrelenting Dealing with Demons bears all of the hallmarks of its predecessors, including cover art that belongs on the side of the world's most sinister boogie van, but it aims for catharsis instead of apoplexy.

It's a long album but stays on full power for its entirety, with the endlessly catchy songs of alien worlds standing as some of the brightest and strangest material the Rentals have ever delivered.

Hitting the same highs as her triumphant 2000s stretch -- namely Light Years, Fever, X, and Aphrodite -- this glittery, feel-good set is nothing short of euphoric, a dozen near-perfect gems that pay respect to the album's namesake era while updating the production with thrilling results

His cadence and phrasing often recall those of Petty, so initially it's not hard to imagine these tunes as a collection of writing demos for his departed friends, but spend more time with Wreckless Abandon, and it becomes clear how Campbell's taste and aesthetic meshed with Petty so thoroughly, he can write a pretty good Heartbreakers record on his own.

The melodies go exactly where you want them to, as do the emotional beats, resulting in a lovely travelogue that avoids steering down any seasonal roads, and in doing so quickly fades from memory.

Shirushi is as promising and satisfying a debut as any North American group has presented in quite a while.

Minus the two guest appearances, this is a one-woman show, from composition and instrumentation to mixing and mastering. The low end on this sucker is immense.

Considering how quickly the album came together, it feels like a spontaneous rush to translate the emotions of being away from dance clubs for a year into music, with hope and anticipation winning in the end.

It's a colorful, wide-ranging romp of an album -- and an airy liberation for its titular figure.

How Beautiful Life Can Be is not a particularly great or even good album, but there is something in its bright tone and positive messaging that feels undeniably nurturing, especially in the climate of late 2021.

The result of these tweaks to both production and attitude is something more mature and approachable yet still impassioned, and it's Slothrust's most cohesive record to date.

The few '70s selections -- from Sumiko Yamagata, Hiroshi Sato, and Makoto Iwabuchi -- all take easy, pleasant strolls down the middle of the road. Among other more fascinating curiosities are Mizuki Koyama's vivacious pop-R&B hybrid "Oh! Daddy" (with all-English lyrics), Kumi Nakamura's capering "Kimagure" (somewhere between Michael Franks and Seawind), and Haruo Chikada & Vibra-Tones' Kid Creole-indebted "Sofa Bed Blues," the only one that whoops it up (if politely so).

Vertigo of Flaws is Trees Speak's most colossal work yet, demonstrating that the group's ambitions are even greater than their previous work indicated.