As a pure entertainment piece, Twelve Reasons To Die appeals directly to the brain’s pleasure center.

Given her focus on the internal world she’s created, Night CRIÚ arrives feeling something like an emergence. Indeed, the emotions on display are still furtive and inscrutably personal, yet the music here is the most tangible Woods has offered to date, the most vivid.

Though it may be a bit brief or spare for some, Roxanne’s hand on her sound is tighter than ever. While it’s on, Because of a Flower gives us a glimpse into a very specific world of sound — aquatic, earthen, and airborne, all at once — and it is a treat to get lost in.

What Silberman’s managed to accomplish with Green to Gold is admirable. Instead of quitting music he’s pushed forward and accepted his limitations in pursuit of his passion.

Sympathy for Life‘s strongest moments come in the songs that sound least like the Parquet Courts we’ve known before.

Hand Habits’ music is the kind where there are no certainties; it’s all searching with the occasional discovery, but the detail of the journey is the beauty.

The songs reverberate stronger than those on the group’s more recent albums. Yet at the same time, Stiletto isn’t as epic as Girl with Basket of Fruit or Ignore Grief, and it’s not as varied as Fabulous Muscles. It feels at times like an experiment to imagine a different Xiu Xiu; one that find themselves on the top of year end lists, that are played in rock clubs, that reside in New York and wear shades. In this gesture, they’ve become more approachable, but also more distant.

Maturity and perspective are offered up at every moment of Which Way To Happy.

Still does try new things, as it finds her working with new people while simultaneously showing more of herself. Sensational yielded a remix album, but Still is de Casier’s first album with features, and the artists appearing here do a good job fitting themselves into the mold of her musical world.

It may have taken him a few tries but through Mary's Voice, Koster has finally found his own.

As it is, The Lion's Roar is a quality release, but due to the stand out tracks being placed at the front and the end, the middle section feels weaker than it is, making the overall impression of the album suffer.

Benny and the rest of Griselda are a force so reliable and prolific that they should be boring by now. But The Plugs I Met 2 suggests that we’re just getting to know them.

The whole EP feels weightless and aloft as if we have a clear view of the blinding blue gap between its heights and depths.

It's too bad it couldn't find release on a major, but still a victory. Yet, that doesn't make this album, as Saigon once declared it, the best record of the last 20 years. It makes it a good one.

Although it seems Jehnny Beth has decided to go solo to express more of her vulnerabilities, by the end of To Love is To Live it’s hard to say whether we actually feel any closer to her. However, it also shows her chameleonic abilities as a vocalist, as she’s working with different styles and productions yet still sounding urgent.

What an enormous room strikes as a means for Scott to prove to no one but herself that she can build her temple from scratch, embracing her inner non-conformist with steadfast spirit. Even within the sound of settling, Torres has plenty of charming things to say.

Brun has such control of her craft, and that is made brightly plain across these two albums [After The Great Storm & How Beauty Holds The Hand Of Sorrow]. Which one you prefer will likely depend on which genre or style you have deeper inclination for, but taken together, they’re both excellent representations of an artist honing her tested and true style while also venturing out into new waters, easily proving just how capable she is along the way.

No Taste basically checks all the boxes of what makes punk rock still a righteous, thrilling starting point for any young artist. It’s a record that frantically claws at the walls with concisely aimed fits of desperation, anger, scathing humor and gusto.

Where I was expecting a great album, I've instead encountered one that's merely very good.

The Ohio trio's fifth LP and first for Merge, sees Times New Viking maturing to an even cleaner sound, though never completely forfeiting the kill-yr-speakers aesthetic that made them standouts in the lo-fi community.

It's their breakthrough album and shows that with focus and confidence, the future could be pretty exciting for The Maccabees.

It possesses an innate ability to provide complex tapestries of sound and universal narratives of despair and triumph – though it is possible for audiences to get lost in the world they’ve captured without paying attention to the lyrics and still feel something ache within their chest.

God's Father is nearly two hours long, and it's actually good.

It’s the document of two beloved alt-metal worlds colliding to head-shuddering effect; a record of skull crushing intensity in places, with merciless riffs conjured up from the deepest abyss, which are counterpoised with quiet, ethereal dark-folk introspection – a mix that shouldn’t really work but absolutely does.

This is rager music, the fun and frantic rock anthems that the weirdos and the geeks who have grown into successful entrepreneurs and innovators can dance to while the quarterback from their high school bags their groceries.

It sounds like fun; precisely what the Odd Future discography has been lacking lately.

Gone are the old voices of the city, the tales of the Wu-Tang and the sense that there is real struggle or strife. Instead it's a heterogeneous mix of international talent devoted less to teaching lessons or passing down wisdom as it is to making twenty-somethings dance.

This album finishes right when it needs to. Any longer and there might be a genuine risk of someone having a hernia from all the physical carousing. As it is, we leave this magical island fully refreshed and filled with self satisfaction.

Shields is both well-mannered and demanding, subdued but always bubbling under the surface.

Throughout Showtunes, Wagner demonstrates that theatricality and showmanship can manifest in many different and sometimes subtle forms. He may not draw in many new fans from this one-act performance, but it’s still one of the band’s most intriguing and well-executed productions nonetheless.

This is them coming to grips with their heritage and their age, although it’s no swan song. But American Head does what its predecessors haven’t been able to do – it shows the Flaming Lips still know how to write thoughtful and sincere songs that also tap into the psychedelics their fans have come to expect.

While Peaking Lights came into this album lurking largely in the hazy fringes of the consciousness of music fans, with Lucifer they've made an album that more clearly demands the active attention of those who might happen upon it.

Without any stylistic or conceptual thread tying these songs together (other than the generic tag of lo-fi pop) this album leaves just a bit wanting. It's a great album, but it's kept from being one for the ages based on that disjointedness.

Mumps takes a little while to sink in in a different way to previous albums.

Be Up a Hello can be a lot to take in at times, a rambunctious and restless effort from a man comfortable in his ability to make the dancefloor obsolete. But there’s more here than simply speed and density – there are strange currents working their way through the songs, hints are something deeper and more relatable than its superficial excess might suggest.

Balancing stately pop ornamentation with more bombastically orchestrated moments, the album allows Meiburg to both indulge and scale back his dramaturgical impulses.

In Sickness & In Flames is one of The Front Bottoms’ most interesting records to date; it’s completely them – and obviously so – yet they change just enough to keep you guessing without alienation.

Yeah, some of the electronic and percussive flourishes might be a little tired in 2011, but Givers sell it with such wide-eyed abandon and indulgent wonder that it's hard not to give in to the cacophonous stew of bursting pop euphoria.

In its cohesive yet creative sound, maturity and vulnerability, what we hear is the potential of a 22-year-old musician who hopefully still has many years of artistic growth and classic songs ahead of her.

The balance between these sounds is what makes it such a three-dimensional listen, as the percussion never overwhelms; despite building up torrential speed and power, this force is made beautiful by the spare-but-carefully-adorned melodic elements. ... The only moments on Contact that don’t open up a world of sensory exploration are the three title-track-come-interludes; “Contact (sukha & somanassa)”, “Contact (dukkha & domanassa)”, and the closing “Contact (upekkhā)”.

Breathy vocals, immensely hooky songwriting and a brilliantly defined technicolor aesthetic established from the very beginning. Such description could have been thrown at Stereolab in the early '90s and at Broadcast in the early 2000s.

Taken as a whole, it’s the sound of a band reinvented, shrouded in autumnal atmosphere and containing depths that reveal themselves on repeat listens – whatever the truth may be, on their long-awaited fourth album, I LIKE TRAINS remain true to themselves.

Sweat’s new album, All My Love In Half Light, follows from her debut, Mantic, utilizing the same setup albeit this time she sounds clearer, grander, and more in control of herself and the world she’s creating.

Every track on The Universal Want has a warmth to it that is absent on most reunion albums.

It's one of the most back-to-front solid and uncompromising Berlin techno full-lengths this year.

The Defamation of Strickland Banks is most certainly a success.

Be Strong is a rather exhaustive album when consumed in one sitting, but if you've got the fortitude to reach the closing track "The Church" during that listen, it can be a very euphoric climax.

The recycling of sounds from past eras of music has become a huge trend over the past few years, but when those sounds are successfully appropriated in new ways, like they are here, the result proves to be very worthwhile.

Sling may not offer many universal rallying cries or rousing choruses from artists that break through in similar fashion as Clairo. But it does compel you to lean in and listen a bit more closely to what Claire Cottrill has orbiting around her inquisitive mind. Sling is an intimate, tender heart-to-heart where muted confessions finally have their day.

Where Wiki’s last album Oofie jumped around in styles with different beatmakers, Half God feels like one complete vision. With the marriage of a producer on a hot streak and a rapper who sounds revitalized, it’s a welcome addition to both artists’ catalogs.

Ca$ino doesn’t mark the moment Baby Keem becomes easier to categorize, but the moment he stops needing to be. Baby Keem has arrived, no less fun but clearer to his audience.

He [Chasney] may have made a misstep by not allowing the album to have that singularly defining moment but after his last few records, Ascent is a step up in terms of direction and execution.

One Track Mind aims for the feel of a great dusty road-trip album, and only through its staggering consistency does it slightly fall short of such heights. But when it hits its highs, as if often does, the collection is a transcendent experience.

The triumph of Heady Fwends lies the way it sands off the rough edges off 2011's excess and whittles an honest, enjoyable set out of the mire while coaxing a wealth of unexpected voices into the fray without losing its way.

The music itself feels intentionally designed to juxtapose her own search for belonging, lending it an organic duality.

So while the year 2020 mourns the loss of good live music, Ohmme swoop in with a refined and immersive dose of chaotic pop rock, and it’s very satisfying.

The growth in Austra from Feel It Break to Olympia is palpable throughout.

More often than not, this album is deeply enthralling, providing interesting textures, head-swaying grooves, tight rhythms, and an awesome display of synchronicity amongst the bandmates at almost any turn.

Engine of Hell underscores her gifts as a songwriter and for minimalistic arrangement, also illustrating her talent for unadorned performance.

It’s a stunning and properly weird ending to a weird album, and though it may be one of their most succinct albums, Sun Racket still showcases what the Muses are up to so long into their career, and why they should keep doing exactly what they’re doing.

“Separate Ways” is a sweet beginning, reminiscent of “Out On The Weekend” with a slightly more bitter détour, which immediately reminds us that Homegrown should have followed Harvest. Emmylou Harris’ haunting voice in the background of “Try” sounds simultaneously evocative and familiar — a trait resulting from her frequent collaborations with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons, and Bob Dylan.

Free I.H. may have been Tudzin’s war cry, but Let Me Do One More is a comfort record. It shows resilience and passion from one of indie music’s most intriguing risk takers.

Cheat Codes captures the glory of rap’s classic era and brings it to the present through thick mesmerizing samples and the rapper’s incredible vernacular.

Although he's using sounds and influences from many of the musical hubs on the Earth, from Africa to America and plenty in between, with them he has created aural scenery that is so serene and heavenly that it couldn't possibly exist on our busy and frantic planet.

Heart’s Ease captures the Shirley Collins of the present day, and is in no way an attempt to recreate times passed. And yet the continuity is crystal clear: Collins’ devotion to the folk tradition is as strong as ever. She continues to bring new life to the musical artefact that is the folk song, and the fact that she brings so many years of her own to these interpretations makes them feel all the more authentic.

It's not a bad effort at all, showing their ability to craft songs that are consistently solid.

While Artist Proof never quite lives up to the expectations of being a masterpiece, it is a great example of how the country rock genre developed in tandem with the folk scene.

Everything here sounds tighter than before, with an emphasis on riffs and melody, allowing the experimental tendencies of Liars to take a step back for a moment. As a result, The Apple Drop will likely be labeled their ‘pop’ album, and that’ll be a justified assessment.

Yes, Romanticism isn’t quite as nuanced and colourful as the work of Vu’s younger self – it’s more physical, more withered and broken. But in that, it’s also an honest and genuine reflection of growing up, as in: facing trauma, grief, frustration and self-hatred.

Nothing here quite reaches the fizzy highs of something like “Come Together” or “Hey Jane”, and he can’t quite recapture the slow, sad, and syrupy balladry of past tracks like “Broken Heart”. But he can still kick up quite a storm when he wants to, and though perhaps a bit too streamlined for some fans, this is another fine album in Pierce’s and Spiritualized’s repertoire.

Therein lies Gush’s greatest strength. An album pulling in opposite directions musically and thematically could easily have proven misguided, trying and obtuse, yet under Smith’s guidance, it proves an intriguing, tantalizing, and surprising natural fit.

The songs on Jump Rope Gazers aren’t as immediately addictive as what came before, but The Beths’ natural intuition for emotive and melodic writing is still intact.

On Storm Queen she’s an actor given complete creative freedom with a classic text; the voice of an avenging angel; a ballet dancer performing with a sharpened sabre in hand. Summoning thunderclouds and hurricanes with her inflections and rippling vocal cords, she is the Storm Queen through and through.

All that need really be said is that it is sublime; both in terms of execution and aesthetics.

Pilgrimage of the Soul feels like a statement of intent from a band now entering their third decade of existence, and this is a fine record that both acknowledges past victories and shows desire to develop and progress to new ground.

We have heard many albums about the pandemic and life within it, but this is more about about life after it; how to pick up the pieces of the lives we had before it and transform them into this new life that just relentlessly goes on. Vile’s music is attuned to the unrelenting progression of life.

Races' debut is a powerfully tenacious effort.

Yet another impressive and experimental addition to Dawn’s discography, Second Line proves that this prolific artist is not running out of steam or fresh ideas any time soon.

A final gorgeous, understated moment to close out a record full of them. Even without Powell’s signature voice, it sounds like Land of Talk and no one else.

Such is Krug’s way with words: deliberately or not, he’s weaving a huge tapestry that makes the author clearer to us. Julia With Blue Jeans On is another section in it and is a damned beautiful, it not great one at that.

Cloud Nothings, the eponymous debut from the project of Dylan Baldi, is the work of another young mind who seems gifted beyond his years.

Its fragmented nature is tied to its accessibility; each track stands alone on its own merits, albeit at the expense of the record as a whole. The more oblique lyricism allows for the possibility of wider interpretations here, where previously they have felt out of reach.

The King is full of voices, both his own and those of the ones he sings about and for, and that communion is one of the album’s biggest strengths. It does maintain some habits that threaten to curdle the gravity of his songs into preciousness or melodrama, like his quivering vibrato and theatrical mannerisms (at times, the songs almost sound like folky musical theatre numbers). But, overall, these nitpicked conflicts don’t negate the sheer power of what Anjimile has constructed here.

It’s an evocative thrill ride and a captivating rumination on mortality that also asks questions of life afterwards. It isn’t an easy listen but it’ll soon become something you’re drawn towards time and time again.

Push the Sky Away has the ability to move without raising its voice above a whisper.

He may not have superstar charisma on the mic, but his ability to create an enveloping, dungeon-like sphere of sound practically guarantees you'll be seeing his name pop up on plenty of great releases for years to come.

Maybe not every song here is as fully-realized as her best material, and maybe there are a few too many slow-moving ballads – but this doesn’t lessen just how delightful Planet Her ends up as a whole. It’s the type of pop album there should be more of: both playful and psychedelic, rich in intelligent production, and filled with charismatic and chameleonic performances.

It would be easy to say the album is carried by the collabs or FaltyDL, but that would be a lie. Mykki’s imprint is just as strong and powerful. Lyrics about spirituality or black queer politics add to the depth and joy of the record.

Many of the best rap records are monochromatically single-minded, but then the other half, embrace contradictions as a weapon, rage hiding insecurities, heartless satire shielding weakness, such as Earl’s hero, early period Slim Shady.

The "point," if there is such a thing with this kind of music, is that even during its most trepidatious or lonely nadirs, there is a beauty to experiencing love that overwhelms the heart. Windy & Carl seem to aim to replicate that overwhelming sensation through their music.

The 10 tracks that make up DÍA‘s streamlined 33 minutes and 47 seconds channel that volatile orientation honestly, not forcing itself into a deliberate linear sensibility.

Zoo is a well-produced record that captures a band on its way up the ladder.

To be fair, she's still in the process of resurfacing, rather successfully actually, and Body Talk is a fine dance-pop album.

It's not that Beams is a lighter listen than Black City, but it's certainly more honest.

If the album in its entirety feels open-ended, well, that's because it is, but by any measure Family Perfume is a pleasantly disarming ride, loaded with great, barely noticeable moments.

Her third album leaves no stone unturned, turning darkness into sheer catharsis. Sounds like something we all could use.

Undeniably their most vulnerable and exposed album to date, Tomorrow We Escape sees Ho99o9 infuse an ethereal, melancholy softness into a sound they’d already established and mastered.

There’s a constant fluidity, a continuum of becoming throughout IRE, and the band stubbornly, almost gleefully, refuse to return earthbound.