At times, it sounds as though the band was still working through exactly how they wanted all of the various elements to work together, such that there are some immediate, hook-filled songs ("White Winter Hymnal," "Your Protector," "He Doesn't Know Why") and other songs whose more complex structures require more from the listener.

Last year, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio sounded like they were headed for space. This year, I'd say the mothership has come back home.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an overarching concept. It doesn’t matter one way or another. It’s a gallop from start to finish. Blue Record is going to be hard to top.

The album seems like a simple, straightforward work, yet every song carries fitting surprises within its construction. ... It’s the singer’s own version of reality, but it probably isn’t that far from whatever’s actually out there. If it’s a little bent and a little brighter at the same time, it somehow only feels truer.

In a year that will feature not just a new long-player from Lennox's Animal Collective but also a box set's worth of rare material, it may be hard to surpass the haunting, blissful pageantry of Person Pitch.

Shackleton, if there was any doubt, can do big picture and tight focus equally well; he can lead us into the future musically while digging in his heels against the one that's actually in store.

Responses to Tyler’s previous release, Stratosphere (Merge, 2023), were mixed (more accurately, pretty much everyone liked it but me), but Time Indefinite is so deeply engaging and flat-out beautiful that pretty much anyone with even a mildly adventurous taste in music will be playing it all summer.

[This] is the first time Bowie’s been interesting since 2002’s overlooked Heathen, and if you prefer his avant-garde side, this is the first sustained material of its kind in far longer; both of these are certainly things to celebrate.

m b v is an impressive work, one in which adventurous and nostalgic listeners alike will find something to appreciate.

Whatever ensemble he employs, and in whatever style he plays, unpredictability is a major component of his M.O. Silent Movies is no exception, and his formidable technique services music that continually thwarts expectation.

A New Way... didn't need reinforcements, and taking in all 14 tracks in succession can be tough going, but a little bit of overkill doesn't dull the bracing energy of Orcutt's kinetic, four-string idioglossia.

While the bossa nova drum machine on “All the Things You Do” and the scratchy funk guitars on “Pyramid Schemes” introduce a bit of welcome variety, both songs wear out their welcome over the course of their combined 10-minute runtime. Thankfully, “Solarised” takes the album out on a high with its swooshing synth pads underpinned by a hard-grooving bassline and soaring vocal melody. It’s a fitting close to a vibrant collection of tunes.

For Mahalia, with Love, like Jesup Wagon and Lewis’s “Molecular” releases, is fairly high-concept, but the music is spunky and easy to enjoy, with plenty of groove and intensity.

The spareness of the arrangements give these cuts an astonishing emotional directness. .... It quiets the clatter and stills the swell around one of Africa’s most beautiful voices and allows us to experience the spectral essence of this extraordinary artist straight on.

Showtime’s length dilutes the bursts of exotic spice and flavor laced throughout.

Agriculture comes closer earlier on the record, when “Micah (5:15 am)” commences its final run through the song’s compelling set of tremolo chords and then the massive riff of “The Weight” crashes down. It’s the best part of a good record, excepting perhaps the middle portion of “The Weight,” when the band’s playing reaches an acutely feverish pitch.

He sacrifices none of his newfound momentum on the fantastic Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, his sharpest, wittiest, most resolute album in over a decade.

Her soundscapes are transportive and evocative, but they also contain detail and texture that plays with a sense of natural versus unnatural soundscapes, the real versus the imagined. Left in the between space, this is fascinating stuff.

If you don’t already have this material and you have any interest in either Miles or Coltrane, you will not be bummed if you unwrap this set at your next birthday. But that first if is a big one. Between outright bootlegs and Scandinavian labels that have had no problems getting their wares into American record stores during decades where there were a lot more of them around, the bulk of this set has been heard before.

Henki is an extremely entertaining tightrope walk between restraint and free rein, its well-earned moments of excess and exuberance genuinely joyful. It’s a ridiculous and brilliant record and makes an extravagant last-minute bid to sit among the best albums of the year.

This is a wonderful album keeps its tender heart up close and its ravaged noise at a remove, but both of them are beautiful.

The looping phrases of Reward are carefully considered and joined with the precision of mortise and tenon. Her songs have always been like small rooms, though they are no longer drafty and rustic. This is a record of tidy natural sounds. They are not immediately inviting, yet spending time in these well-mannered spaces becomes a pleasure.

While Lenker included a couple of songs on abysskiss that were later reworked as full-band songs on the masterful U.F.O.F. (“Terminal Paradise” and “From”), here the acoustic version sounds like a step backward and doesn’t feel like it belongs, especially given this album’s 45-minute runtime. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of gorgeous material here, offering further evidence of Lenker’s subtle and surprising songwriting.

These songs are like aloe vera and St. John’s wort, all natural and healing. Though none of them are exactly happy, you find yourself relaxing into them, letting things go, breathing deeper and feeling measurably more able to go on with whatever’s next. ... It’s going to be one of the best records of 2021.

Another essential album in Dry Cleaning’s discography, and the first great album of this young year.

As with many works that get tagged as major breaks from an artist’s established work, truthfully much of Too Bright still feels very much like the work of the Perfume Genius, and anyone looking for more of what they got from past albums will be very satisfied.

Hey Panda is a rich, meaty stew combining all of O’Hagan’s influences and several sides of his persona: it’s witty, wise, humorous, quirky and adventurous. Often, it’s all these things at the same time.

Fans will consider the show essential for its historical significance and the quality of the setlist, but the album’s energy pushes it beyond a completist live album, making Live in Brooklyn 2011 a wonderful cap to one of experimental rock’s greatest discographies.

And in the Darkness Hearts Aglow is already a formidable amalgam. It will be interesting to see where the third volume of the trilogy takes Weyes Blood.

If he's not making his most important works of his career, it may well be his best.

The mix of autobiographical honesty and imaginative construction elevates Purple Mountains to something more than just Berman’s breakup album or musical therapy session. It relieves the emotions it develops, making the album a stunning achievement even more than a welcome return for Berman.

Despite a 100% turnover in accompanists and recording locations from his William Tyler-produced debut, he doesn’t sound terribly different here. His big, distinctive voice can hold you via sheer volume and timbre even if you don’t listen to a word he says, and his robustly picked electric guitar is a band by itself.

Even the wordless tracks on Arca are among the producer’s most powerful vignettes.

A pleasantly lush album that may be his finest work yet.

Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline is a return to the same blissful twilight as before, virtually unpaused.

However great the merits of their debut might be, one can’t help but feel that there’s something just a little too perfect about Franz Ferdinand, as though they had planned out hipster world-domination around a scientifically constructed chart of "what’s hot and what’s not."

Her performance reinforces the thrust towards freedom that shows up in the other songs. She isn’t just playing with the women and men in the band; she’s rising above them, flying high and alone in the blue.

As good as its individual songs and moments are, Summer at Land’s End is even better experienced as a whole, where it takes on a world-of-its-own feel, thanks, in part, to a pair of hypnotic instrumentals.

It's a gorgeous and dreamy feeling, and one that's easy to spend a lot of time in.

At just 37 minutes, World Music is wisely edited--most of the songs hover around the 3-minute mark, so they speak their piece and move on before you get tempted to start peeling apart the layers to see what they're really made of.

Neon Bible is so successful because it showcases big ambition without ignoring the small things.

Almost classically psychedelic at times, with the overdriven saturation of too much light, motion and volume applied to every aspect of the music, this ensemble... represents the best of gritty, pre-funk groove music, Day-Glo popcorn cooking in gasoline, rattling like a machine gun.

She hasn’t lost anything, just slipped her message into an unusually sleek, attractive covering where we might not have been looking for it.

Turns out, the news is that Roberts has made the most unabashedly gorgeous record of his career.

The Suburbs is a really good record, but it's clear that indie rock is not in Kansas anymore.

Its 42 minutes are comparatively modest, sure, but there’s no question that the man behind the boards here has his finger on the pulse of what may be missing most in electronic music right now--a central reference point. In Colour is that star, the record to hold everyone else’s narratives together.

[A] seemingly out-of-nowhere collection of quiet masterpieces.

A little older and a little more experienced, the sound of Claro here is slower in BPM but more graceful as a result.

It’s an arresting record that doesn’t pull strings or elide with gimmicks, nor does it preach or try to persuade. You needn’t believe in a higher order to realize that Seven Swans is an expression of something stirring, something beautiful.

Inconclusive. Kala plays as mixed media pastiche, a barely restrained amalgam of ideas that are hardly exhausted by beats or flow and double and triple as political references.

It’s another strange and alluring outing. On the surface it may be Harding’s most accessible record to date, warm and approachable, with plenty of major-key tunefulness and a welcoming glow. However, it’s still liable to wrongfoot the unwary listener with its bizarre yet artful twists and turns.

The odd acoustic folk songs are somewhat more of an acquired taste, but Damaged Bug does justice to them as well.

Salvant shows off a sharp wit in the talk-sung, “Obligation,” a fluid sophistication on “If I Lost My Mind,” and a little bit of swagger on the brief, piano-pounding “Trail Mix.” Her original songs are as varied as the covers.

It’s difficult to imagine the record being more fully-realized and immersive than it is, and it stands as a towering achievement in Toral’s formidable body of work.

If she wanted to move or enlighten, Let England Shake falls short.

Make no mistake – the beats are still rigid, dabbling in taut funk and squelching electro as much as snotty punk moves and glorious polyrhtyhms. These nine songs, however, ring with a clarity of purpose and a true intent that was previously altogether lacking, presenting a far more cohesive image of Murphy and his many strengths.

This record is a wonderful accomplishment – instead of relying on tricks and methods explored on earlier records, Herren expands via reflection, tracing sounds back to their roots in hopes of finding a new path.

Just thrill to how rock music this relentlessly complex and irregular (“No Condition”), this shamelessly, gloriously over-the-top (“Do the Method,” a distant cousin to the speedier version of “Radio Free Europe” and the fellas’ own would’ve-been dance craze), this stylistically reckless (“Bleeding,” which almost sounds like a completely derailed club cut) and this gleefully repetitive and obnoxious (“Rang-a-Tang”) can still sound so anthemic and galvanizing.

There's a freedom in her voice and a joy that is apparent.

There are really only a couple of tracks mid-album that strike me as too conventionally pop, and they’re the singles, so you have to assume that Van Etten likes them just fine. Plenty else is shadowy, moody and lit by sudden crystalline flights of melody, and a few of the tracks combine eerie beauty with the pulse of four-on-the-floor.

Regardless of the frames built around them by producers or the press, Amadou and Mariam make great pop music, and their new album gives us more of it.

There’s nothing here that’ll shock experimental music acolytes, but it might be a bit much for those expecting only brawny post-rock. Like Goldilocks, I find it just right.

The first four songs on Are We There don’t work as well as the later ones. Ultimately this doesn’t hurt, because the later ones are among her very best.

“Nonaah” is the perfect vehicle for the trio of Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey and a stunningly vibrant distillation of what sets the group, and this album, apart from so many others. .... There is no one composing with Iyer’s blend of sonority sequences, those harmonic exhortations and rebuttals that slide in and out of focus with the veteran’s complete grasp and easy grace.

Sure the whole Southern Rock Opera concept is a bit over-the-top, and a two-disc set will always contain its fair share of duds, but the Drive-By Truckers have succeeded in making an album that is as good a historical reference as it is for air-guitar.

As a whole Book Burner may be as focused and relentless as anything they've yet released.

Backed by a chorus of backing singers clearly having the time of their lives and giving her further wings, Sangaré is poet and storyteller, moral guide and denouncer of injustice all wrapped up in one singular, beautiful voice.

If some albums make you lean in, strain to hear, fill in the negative space with your own silent ponderings, this one flattens you like a road roller. Its nightmarish sonic textures reach up out of the disc much as the figures painted in Netflix art-horror disaster Velvet Buzzsaw did, but without the comic relief.

Brave Faces Everyone doesn’t have a bunch of easy answers either — it’s more a record of solidarity and mutual support than it is anything more prescriptive.

The Hypnogogue is anything but minimalist. It starts with a big concept, adds dramatic, room-filling rock arrangements and extends for over an hour. And yet, there are very few intervals where you wonder if things might have been better if they were shorter or more pared back. The Church is going out with a bang, not a whimper, and we’re lucky to be here to hear it.

Hercules and Love Affair is a sincere and sumptuous stab at the mirrorball splendor of the 1970s.

10 unassuming but gem-like songs that live up to their past work.

Life is People sounds familiar, but never tired. It's a difficult line to tread, but Fay and his guests largely pull it off.

If Craig can manage to maintain his unique delicacy of sound, while pushing his melodic capabilities, he could achieve something special. Yet, if he allows pop elements to take over, instead of remaining as hints and references, he risks becoming simply another producer penning groovy, soulless hits for electro-pop scenesters. In order to remain distinctive, Craig will need to keep the balance he’s struck here firmly in mind.

Toledo’s first full band record, his first record with a producer, with a sound that is ragged but clean, emotionally raw but cleverly structured. It’s a record that engages heart and mind and viscera all at once, and if some of the songs go on longer than pop usually does, it’s because they have more to say.

Perez, Pattitucci and Blade are about as blue chip as they come, and they easily outclass their somewhat calcified counterparts on the Rollins outings, but there are still sections in the collection that don’t feel on par with Shorter’s storied brilliance.

Quicksand / Cradlesnakes is a fine display of what they're capable of, and should please anyone in the mood for roots music that's a bit unrooted for a change.

Simultaneously complex and unassuming, You Forgot It In People has punch that will stimulate even the cagiest listener, curious quirks and all.

Tru is a juggernaut, wreaking Mascis-style mayhem with a bubblegum heart.

Now we have Mount Eerie’s 26-track, 81-minute Night Palace, which unites the many facets of Phil Elverum’s musical preoccupations into a raw, artful, sprawling double album. Unwieldy as it is, there are so many wonderful moments across the track list that it pays dividends to invest the time.

Friko’s songs are real, true and felt. Songs like “Where We Been” and “Crashing Through” build from small beginnings, voice, guitar, piano into huge anthemic refrains and breakdowns.

They cram in so many styles it could easily come across too clever, like a band that claims to be equally inspired by Wu Tang, Cheap Trick and Cher. It doesn't happen. The tracks have a life apart from the name-that-tune layering that drives their sound.

There are no failures, but the back half of Kidjo’s Remain in Light feels too safe. Kidjo’s Remain in Light doesn’t surpass its predecessor, but at its best, it’s an equally thrilling examination of the still relevant questions that drove Byrne and company almost 40 years ago.

As an accidental, definitive document of time and place, Vee Vee is up there with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, No Pocky For Kitty and the Polvo records, strong enough even to offset the hideous cover art.

There’s the sparklingly Beatles-esque “Daddy’s Gone,” the bright, Mellotron-laced “Evening Star Supercharger,” and “The Scull of Lucia” is reminiscent of Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” with a naïve, music-box feel to its melodies. It’s in Bird Machine’s heavier moments, though, where the album really hits home — and the loss of a unique artist is most keenly felt.

Deerhunter has come into its own, and the halcyon result is not to be missed.

It’s a fascinating, detailed and absorbing album, and one of the best electronic/dance albums I’ve heard in many months.

As much as the songs with the band click, “Earthsong,” which features just voice and acoustic guitar, is moving. While I hope that she continues to make vibrant music with others, Jennifer Castle can reveal vulnerability, eloquence and imagination all by herself.

For post-apocalyptic strains of electronic music, there's no one better at the moment than Andy Stott. Luxury Problems makes for one hell of a calling card.

The shorter songs that compose the remainder of American Standard are just as uncompromising, and they also foreground the band’s gift for coupling a caustic, aggro sensibility with compelling melodic structures. Rarely has noise rock been so tuneful, and then also so awfully punishing.

Jaar attempted something ambitious with this album--it stands apart, even if it never risks a whole lot. Space Is Only Noise is unique, but also a work of modesty and, for an album that samples French poetry and is rarely danceable, it's unpretentious.

Here the whole sum is less than its individual parts: individual tracks display real quality, but the album fails to cohere.

Bakesale's consistency allows it to work tremendously well as a beginning-to-end album.

Higher-end production values and a handful of famous rock guests have little impact upon their fundamental sound, which is a swirl of unfurling guitar lines, massed voices, and clip-clopping percussion. Elwan is not a soundtrack for defeat, but perseverance.

The result is that rarest of prizes for a band that’s hit 25 years old: a record that stands not only as a genuine step forward in their body of work but also as one of their very best, an album as harrowing and transportive as anything else they’ve done.

The second-hand Buzzcocks reference hints at this bomb-throwing ensemble’s secret strength: the tunes. Even at its most abrasive and agitated, Delivery punches with hooks.

Sheff’s delivery, however, is the Black Sheep Boy’s biggest flaw.

Deeper than Sky is just as much a thrill ride [as Disfear’s Live the Storm], coming from the opposite angle--confident that the growling will balance the ornate structures, it hits plainly no matter how intricately it jumps from measure to measure.