Hearing Pearl reclaim her agency with an older, wiser, and hopefully more sustainable incarnation of Be Your Own Pet is a thrill for fans old and new.

More is classic Pulp, aged to near perfection.

A heavy album that doesn't pander to what's PC, what's on the radio, or what safe, suburban America believes.

On first glance, Gargoyle doesn't feel like an album full of surprises, but after the second or third spin, the fuller and bolder sound of the arrangements and production becomes clear, and it all serves Lanegan's talents in a way his last few Mark Lanegan Band albums have not.

By focusing on outsiders instead of trusting their crate-digging genius, the Avalanches shortchanged themselves and ended up making the best psychedelic Chemical Brothers album ever instead of making another classic Avalanches album.

The Remote Part captures a divinely aged five-piece.

Electronic elements balance out the harsh guitars with regularity, resulting in a handful of full-blown zingers.

Darker and more immersive than previous outings, Underoath treads familiar ground, though each step holds the promise of a land mine.

All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of The Hot Sauce Committee: that the Beasties could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record's quality.

Solid, purposeful, and crafted in a manner that betrays both Drew's age and the album's hurried road to release, Ill Manors makes heavy-hitter number three for the rapper, suggesting that Plan B doesn't issue albums, just milestones.

While the music on this self-titled offering is breathtaking in its intensity, beauty, and mystery, what's even more incomprehensible is that this quartet manages to challenge, realign, and perhaps even redefine the entire post-metal landscape in 28 short minutes. Given that, there is no excuse for every post-metal and black metal fan not to enjoy EX EYE's project.

Prodigal Son is yet another act of committed intention from one of American music's greatest guardians and purveyors. In its grain, aesthetic pleasure and the will for justice converse and ultimately convince the rest of us to act.

Longevity is one thing, but sticking around without going stale is a trickier matter, and Deserted demonstrates that more than four decades on, the Mekons are as fresh and challenging as ever.

Even when she's still working with high BPMs, James lets the tracks on this album breathe in a way that she doesn't on her other releases, making Whatever the Weather a standout in her rapidly growing catalog.

Filled with casually brilliant moments, Component System with the Auto Reverse is easily one of Open Mike Eagle's most enjoyable efforts.

While each of these EPs stand on their own in quality, they create a rhythm orgy that is wildly musical and presented as a near symbiotic whole when combined.

No musical ghetto here as White Men Are Black Men Too suggests Young Fathers are quintessentially ahead of their time, even when their music is tight, attractive, and vital enough to be enjoyed today.

It's an intense and trippy odyssey, one that should make fans old and new appreciative of Jurado's depth while mulling along.

The duo's playfulness here verges on hammy at times -- more often than on their solo recordings. The trade-off is that they push each other into new levels of showmanship without pandering to the audience. Besides, there's some genuinely witty stuff here.

It takes her music in a somewhat more accessible direction while retaining the creativity and fervor of the rest of her work. Considerably less noisy than previous Moor Mother releases like her 2016 breakthrough Fetish Bones, the album flows through slippery jazz rhythms, mellow R&B vibes, and meditative ambient textures, with Ayewa's lyrics remaining forceful even as she's delivering them in a softer register.

Like much of Fennesz's solo work from Endless Summer onward, Mosaic is a vast, immersive effort that bases its abstract soundscapes in raw emotions.

For any critics who complained that Hail to the Thief was just too long, bloated, and disjointed, this is the course correction that'll give that album the justice it has always deserved.

This is a deeply focused, wonderfully colorful, and deeply expressive work that showcases a collaboration between mother and son and displays depth, strength, creativity in spades, and intense beauty.

With No Answer, the band rises to the standards in anti-music set by its own discography.

She's made the most interesting album of her career to date.

Thanks to its wandering nature, Cloud Corner is the kind of album that benefits from repeat listens, unspooling, shifting, and then settling a little more with each meditative revolution.

Her combination of sweet melodies and bitter moods, her conversational flow, and her self-awareness are all skills many songwriters twice her age would love to call their own, and they make Sour a well-rounded emotional journey and strong debut album.

The result is a frantic, jarring, and unpredictable effort which darts from breakbeat-fueled mayhem to noisy droning, all framing Elucid's persistent lyrics about caring for his family, struggling for survival and success inside a racist system, and maintaining hope.