Much like his longtime collaborator Four Tet, Snaith has fully entered his festival dance era, making some of his most outwardly expressive music by injecting his own personality and emotions into superbly crafted club tracks.

Even setting sequencing, production, and stylistic reference points aside, EELS is simply chock-full of great songs.

The album is certain to satisfy Richter's fans from all around the classical-to-pop spectrum.

More or less what fans would expect from a Fred again.. album at this point, Ten Days is a diaristic emotional whirlwind with a handful of highlights.

Dance, No One's Watching is an ambitious step forward from Where I'm Meant to Be, and a musical extension of its creativity. In all, it proves Ezra Collective's prize-winning debut was no fluke.

Throughout, Eisenberg defies the concept of following a single path, instead finding a way to arrange it all so deftly that every disparate sound and conflicting idea becomes a passenger on the same vessel.

Also involving contributions from PJ, Jennifer Hudson, J Rocc, and Tuamie, the album is an inspired extension of hip-hop's 50th anniversary celebrations.

He's as present and raw beneath the computer voice as he's ever been, but with these darkroom synth tracks, Sparhawk makes his audience work a little harder to locate him.

Moody it is. Having said that, it's singer and songwriter Anouska Sokolow's engaging, spoke-sung recitations that are the focus and defining component of Real Deal, which gets off to a proggy start with "Hide."

Just because it's fun doesn't make it a divertissement, as Ishibashi brings complex feelings to the table alongside some virtuosic genre exercises.

By the time the finer details of closing track "The Diver" sink in (subsonic noise synth frequencies, muted and hypnotic drums, underwater guitar harmonics, and controlled muttering vocals), it's time to play the entire record over again and sit for another cycle in the beautiful, otherworldly loneliness it creates.

143 rings the death knell for Perry for no other reason than it commits pop music’s ultimate sin: it’s boring.

It seems this was collected from material recorded over the space of several years. But Wynn was right to hold on to this stuff, as these ten tracks cohere into a very pleasing album.

The format [just over 20 minutes long] proves again to be well-suited for the singer, providing another highly concentrated shot of material that shows her moving with ease -- sometimes blurring the line -- between sensual slow jams and pop-flavored dance tracks.

Champion's affecting, thoughtful, occasionally hyperactive songs open up new possibilities for the band and celebrate being true to yourself -- no matter what your age.

Caws and Nada Surf hone in so eloquently on the essential, bittersweet ideas at the core of Moon Mirror that their honesty and sweetness can hit unexpectedly hard in the way the best rock albums often do.

Rack is living, breathing, sweaty proof the Jesus Lizard can write songs and give them shape in the studio just as well as they ever did, and it honestly stands beside the best of their Touch & Go catalog in both spirit and execution. And they still hit like a crescent wrench to the face. Which is a compliment.

Throughout their career, Ed Schrader has retained energy and spirit, even as their direction has shifted from noisy, primal blues-punk shouting to dramatic, new romantic-style crooning. Orchestra Hits reflects the sophistication of aging, and relating to the past while continuing to artistically evolve.

The result is near prefect psychedelic pop that puts the half baked efforts of most of their contemporaries to shame.

The later discs reflect the relative comfort Dylan and the Band performed with, leading to a more polished joint effort. That said, there's plenty of rawness here, but the chaos on the early discs is missed. The 1974 Live Recordings will only appeal to Dylan completists and historians. The music is entirely (and wonderfully) remixed.

Oberst's storytelling songwriting remains despairing and maudlin, but he seems more self-aware of this than ever before, injecting some triumph and levity into these songs that suggest he's not just smiling through the pain, but laughing at how ridiculous life can be, and maybe even secretly a little bit grateful for being able to experience it all.

In Waves sounds like the music Jamie xx needed to make at this point in his career -- its love letter to the communal healing power of dance music is often more purposeful, and more satisfying, than his instant-classic debut.

Odyssey isn't a next step for the artist, but a giant leap into unbridled inspiration, focus, and creativity. Like Source before it, this arrives at a captivating juncture in Great Britain's wildly diverse jazz scene, and will no doubt influence it.

The overall effect of the album's variability is less vibey but more emotionally resonant than the debut -- perhaps an even tradeoff given that they both have the quality of feeling like records the band had to make.

It establishes Pearson as an artist who's eager to experiment but in command of her musical identity.

The highlights are many, but "Black Flag Freestyle" with That Mexican OT sounds like a direct homage to Memphis greats Three 6ix Mafia.

Fujita clearly listens to nature as intently as he listens to music, and Migratory is a wondrous reflection of our environment.

At turns incisive and deeply felt, Ensoulment is more than a welcome return for Johnson and The The.