If you know Rancid and love Rancid, you will love this record like an old friend.

An utterly compelling, even riveting, selection of tunes that go from bright to opaque, to dark and back again by album's end.

Our Endless Numbered Days is very subdued, thoughtful, melodic, and downright beautiful album and the new sound is more of a progression than a sudden shift in values, production or otherwise.

Kids See Ghosts is everything Ye wasn't, delivering a worthwhile listen in spite of the extended PR disaster that preceded its release. With Cudi as the yang to West's yin, the pair inch closer to finding peace and a light in the darkness.

Balancing both his vulnerable and fiercely intense sides, he manages to reveal more of himself in 20 minutes than he has to date.

For better or for worse, they perfected their sound the last time around, so it’s hard to fault them for sticking so close to the fire, especially on such a snowy night.

As produced by her daughter and family friend, Lynn is in good, trusting hands who wish to present her at her best and, more or less, that's precisely what Full Circle offers.

While it's just as fun as the Ocean's Eleven soundtrack was, Ocean's Twelve manages to be subtler and more distinctive in its mix of old and new sounds.

Ultimately, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, with its irony, sincerity, seeming contradiction, and elliptical paradox, is the most expansive, complex record yet released by this always provocative artist.

Where The Outsiders was designed to dazzle, Mr. Misunderstood is built for the long haul: it settles into the soul, its pleasures immediate but also sustained.

Her productions have become far more ambitious, abandoning the straightforward house beats of much of her earlier material in favor of more expansive, detailed arrangements that incorporate trip-hop, electro, and drum'n'bass. Her lyrics are significantly more personal this time, and a far cry from the club-dwelling, cheekily hedonistic persona of earlier hits like "Raingurl" and "Drink I'm Sippin On."

Along the way, despite some familiar musical touchpoints, she establishes a personality that's all her own.

It may be her subtlest, most approachable album yet; though its ideas are just as complex and provocative as those of Blood Bitch or Apocalypse, Girl, there's something welcoming about it that engages the hearts and minds of her listeners fully.

Floating between the interior world and the external one with ephemeral ease, PHASOR is a pleasure to experience -- and another fine example of Lange's receptive, responsive artistry.

It's a fascinating work of words, for sure, but the weight of Carey's arrangements and the Tempest's surprisingly nimble touch as an emcee make for something distinctive and essential.

It can be inaccessible and terrifying all at once, but in a genre overly saturated with formulaic groups, Ire Works is a true standout.

Although all this could have resulted in Hiatus Kaiyote's wildest and most triumphant material, Mood Valiant is intimate and romantic more than anything else.

Decades into Melanie C's storied career, Sweat is one of her best.

Dust is very disorienting and not always easy to grasp hold of, but it never comes close to sounding like anything else, and its best moments are highly compelling.

On Forward Constant Motion, the duo make a leap forward and a little to the left, making for a rewarding, always interesting, and oddly emotionally satisfying album.

Smart and fun in equal measures, In Standard Definition's love letters to long-gone formats and feelings are similarly bewitching.

What they lack in showiness or branding, they make up for in honesty and slightly battered spirit.

For Zauner and Japanese Breakfast, the answer is always something in between and more complex and creatively assured than what has come before. With For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), Zauner invites us into the magic mirror of her life and pulls us through to the other side.

KEN mode have arrived to put on a clinic in muscular, unfiltered anger with their fifth album, Entrench.

These complicated combinations of sounds and feelings suggest that Reznor and Ross are nearly as skilled at emotional manipulation as the film's characters, and Gone Girl's ambiguity and dread make it their most haunting work yet.

The nine pieces on the album are tense and brooding in a way unheard on her previous solo recordings, occasionally peaking in thundering bursts of fury.

Blue Skies elevates Dehd's mysterious auras, thoughtful experimentation, and strong songwriting, but reaches its highest levels of beauty and intensity when the band shares more of their unobscured personalities.

It's always fascinating to hear Barnes take Forest Swords' distinctive musical vocabulary in different directions, especially when the results are as eloquent as Bolted.