Glory spotlights Hadreas as he mines this incarnation, its abundant beauty and messiness. He’s left a window to that alt-life open, however, and the winds from that realm gust through these songs.

While actually even shorter than her last album’s nearly-28 minutes, Here in the Pitch feels heavier, more substantial, and more robust than almost anything she’s done before.

woods has transcended the line of being a great artist and entered the realm of genius. With Kenny Segal’s help, he has conjured a work that is wholly its own, both in the artist’s discography and in the rap genre.

Grӕ is so rich in content and so vast in musicality it would be impossible to unpack everything in a single review. It is complex yet universal – comforting yet unsettling. It lives in an incorporeal realm of its own, and somehow, Sumney has gained complete and utter command over it.

The vast majority of Ware’s fifth LP serves as a masterclass in following up a beloved previous album – taking What’s Your Pleasure’s core elements and stretching them into wilder and weirder directions. Now, that feels good.

It’s a seamless and natural progression from when the band released squeaky-clean interpretations of their beloved 2020 album Brave Faces Everyone, just last year on Brave Faces Etc. But they’ve buckled down, tightened things up, and now observe sheen and a bit of grit with an impressive balance.

This is a band operating at their highest, most infectious potency, and the end result is riveting.

Opener “Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow’s Dawn” foreshadows what is to come: rites of passage, intense spells of grief and acceptance, and stretches of mystical visions that seem so familiar yet so strange. It is during these epic tracks where the sounds from instruments you have never heard all combine to create something that feels perennial, enormous, and truly unique.

There is certainly potential here, but this first Bloodmoon record definitely feels like a testing ground. There is an uncertainty in tone, and a clashing of sensibilities that is thrilling at times, awkward at others.

RTJ4 is every bit as explosive as one would have hoped, and whatever it lacks in diversity it makes up for with strong writing. It’s a record born out of generations of racial tension and almost four years of near-dictatorship in the USA.

One of those rare, near-flawless works of art that only grows finer with age.

While there are some tracks that could have been expended, that just wouldn’t be Rina’s style. She’s here to express her excessive, melodramatic, fun-loving, pain-harbouring persona in every single different way she can, without holding anything back – and SAWAYAMA should be celebrated for that.

The result is a project that frequently sweeps the listener into a trance, ruptures that trance, and then reestablishes it.

They round out the subtle complexities in the seemingly simple story of longing; a tip-toeing toybox melody reflecting the delicacy of the situation, digital glitches suggesting the distance between them, sighs that relay the inner conflict. This precision features throughout Jennifer B, and it’s thanks to these careful touches that each song connects on a deeper level, despite their structurelessness and unpredictability.

Florist’s latest project stands as the culmination of previous collaborative and solo work, featuring the band as a whole at their most minimally precise; and Sprague, in terms of songwriting, vocal performances, and composition, at her most versatile and visionary.

The wicked atmosphere that they’ve crafted across Heart Under is worthy of celebration alone.

The result is a testament to what can be achieved by committing yourself to your dreams and desires, and it should see Nourished By Time handsomely rewarded with growing notoriety and admiration.

Whether or not Dabice believes things inside her have changed, it’s undoubted that I Got Heaven is taking Mannequin Pussy to new levels, and things on her exterior are only going to get bigger and brighter.

Parks has made her most undeniable statement yet, an album full of uplifting and mesmerizing neo-classics that will fit right in the hearts and minds of the thousands it will touch.

Shortly After Takeoff is a powerful collection made by someone who’s had to endure more than his fair share of turbulence.

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.

Simpson’s voice is more resonant than ever, his melodic sensibilities on full display. Over eight songs and 41 minutes, he forges sublime and heartfelt work, evoking the epic poles of experience: loneliness and belonging, forlornness and gratitude, faith and doubt.

Instrumentally, Ignorance transcends the traditional folk that The Weather Station tirelessly perfected over the previous four albums. With an ever-expanding palette of sonics at her disposal, Lindeman weaves these tales of turmoil and regret through the usage of everything possible – horns, strings, several subtle non-acoustic guitars, and most prominently the piano. To reach the levels of awareness she sought required another level of sound, and it crackles throughout Ignorance.

By using her clear mind to acknowledge all that has made up who she is, she has put together the puzzle of her past through the lens of today to create something that transcends its personal nature to truly resonate with her widening audience.

“Whiskey” comes to terms with what turns out to be an album-long treatise on love. The emotional and theoretical aspects out of the way, she assesses a flawed, drink-loving co-human and decides she can work with imperfection. The moment is captured in bright, awakening tones where dawn is first noticed by the ears. Dawn in New York, where she lives. Spectacularly, among us.

Handsome almost in spite of itself, The Idler Wheel is poignant, nuanced and quietly unforgettable.

Squid’s music is full of: humanity and the inherent hope within it. It’s what makes Bright Green Field a joy to return to time and again.

On In Lieu Of Flowers, COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantine provide a suitably bleak backdrop to their narrator’s tails of spiralling alcoholism and isolation. .... Despite this, the music rises with an undeniable air of victory as driving drums and guitars crescendo alongside horn flourishes. Like on much of In Lieu of Flowers, West can’t help but be awestruck by the unlikely triumph of still being alive amidst the wreckage.