The long view is serene, but it boils with nattering subtext. Robert Forster makes lean, minimal, elliptical songs about the struggle against time and self. He makes it look easy, but buried contradictions suggest that it’s not.

Rave ‘Til You Cry is a welcome reminder of Raczynski’s skill, his lightness of touch and the sheer exuberance of his music. If it’s exhausting to dance to it’s great to hear and to reminisce about the Battles of Beatdom.

The players worked remotely, sent in files and Johnson and Kaufman fit them together. All of which makes it even more remarkable how effortless and streamlined this album sounds, how its sounds swirl around the listener like warm currents, and how carefully Johnson kept the balance between letting the songs speak for themselves and enveloping them in luminous arrangements.

Dreaming in the Non-Dream is different. To the best that mostly instrumental music can articulate non-musical experience, it sonically renders the business of hunkering down and figuring out who has your back.

There is no ideal on-ramp for the Sparks canon, but Exotic Creatures of the Deep once again re-energizes this weird little alternate universe.

In the end, it's the restraint, control, and unlikely expansiveness that make The Best of Gloucester County a strong and surreal step forward for Smith and his band.

It’s the first solo Sprout album that doesn’t seem to lack from Pollard’s input.

Eiko Ishibashi’s soundtrack skilfully and subtly complements the film’s themes, capturing stillness, beauty, sorrow and uncertainty in such a way that the album succeeds on its own terms as a nuanced listening experience.

Foothills further distills this soft-focus, rueful vision, purifies it and delivers exactly what you expect from this band, only a little prettier and more touching than the last time.

Here his final collection of songs is both grand and ghostly, sweeping and solitary, and you do not have to know how the story ends to sense a profound melancholy.

While the key tracks here could all hold up as singles, they're joined with interludes that make Ghost People an uninterrupted flow.

Holtkamp finds a beatific atmosphere somewhere between the first BEAST recordings and his earlier work.

Feelings does no damage, it exists to target pleasure centers and does so. The influences are the point and yes there’s the Gilberto voice, the Mendes smoothness, the Getz sophisticate sheen but also a lack of Stereolab’s knottiness and the kind of knowingness and look-at-me cleverness of some of the practitioners and fans of whatever round of lounge revivalism is going on now. There is nothing here to take offence at unless you want to split the hairs between anodyne and placebo.

It’s a richly rewarding album that offers a valuable snapshot of an evolving artist.

While everything is kept at a smoulder--the words unclear, the tempos slow--this new Om album is anything but boring.

A monolith and a kaleidoscope of detail, Der Lange Marsch is a hypnotic adventure in which to lose oneself.

Maybe it takes a band of Hot Chip’s experience and sonic skill to have both pain and love that are as hard-won and effecting as it is on A Bath Full of Ecstasy; expanding their palette or not, big stars or not, it’s a joy to have them back.

Rather than back down from the precipice of decline and confusion, Protomartyr has reported the situation as they see it in The Agent Intellect, an uncomfortable, honest and ultimately excellent record.

Rose Golden Doorways is an astonishing experience, uncompromising in its willingness to map extremes of ethereal quiet and the physicality of sound, played without fear by musicians drilling deep into an ugly core to extract beauty and return to share their findings with those who would care to listen.

Nothing overtakes Williamson’s singing and the basic keyboard and guitar accompanying elements. The songs themselves are artful creations.

The band is very good, good enough to pull off this edge-of-your-seat flirtation with breakdown.

The songs may not fit into pre-existing boxes, but they work very well on their own terms, whether in the pounding, galloping “Crying Game” (a Laughing Clowns tune), the loose-jointed but lyrical “Ruins” (which hails from Kuepper’s 2015 solo album Lost Cities) or the off-kilter anthemry of “Demolition” (from the 2013 solo record Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog).

Play What They Want is his densest, most elaborately arranged Man Forever album yet. But even so, the rhythm forms a spine, winding and punching and scatter-shooting in continuous, fascinating Rube Goldberg-machine motion, as meditative layers of vocals, keyboards, harps, brass and guitar billow fog over the intricate, interlocking works.

Polymer is a summation of everything that puts Plaid rightfully on the same level of their innovative peers like Autechre, Boards of Canada and Two Lone Swordsmen. Creating worlds at once hermetic and immersive, Plaid’s music ticks along at a human level and envelops you in a protective, provocative cocoon.

It’s lovely, in an effortless, frictionless way that wafts on warm currents and soothes as it passes.

Ufomammut has a compositional focus and restraint that frames the sonic elements well. An excellent continuation of their recent work.

The songs are good, full of fetching turns of melody and surrealist images, but they sound especially excellent bashed out with clanging chords and pounding rhythms and intuitive rock-and-roll energy.

That such disparate musicians with such massive amounts of tape from the field could put something together this tastefully gives hope that whatever and wherever Albarn decides to operate next, he conducts proceedings in the same considered fashion as he has here.

The music on Burning the Threshold is simply good--easy and reassuring, maybe, but masterful and in many places downright gorgeous, too.

One Bedroom is the LP on which The Sea And Cake jettisons most of its jazzbo pretensions long enough to finish the pure, catchy, consistent pop-funk record it's always been capable of.

Not entirely dissimilar to their previous efforts, but it features the duo tweaking their sound in subtle ways that make for an affecting, if not drastic, tangent.

These songs make no concessions to your serenity. They are prickly and aggressive and a-melodic. In a world geared towards bland, uneventful spotify-core, Mating Surfaces grabs you by the short hairs and shakes you. It will not be entirely pleasant, but it is absolutely necessary.

John McCauley's transformation from singer of a rock band to something a good bit deeper, is on display within the running order of The Black Dirt Sessions, the band's third and finest album to date.

Even as the album’s often joyful, always human stories unfold and crackle with inspiration, intoxication or love, the haunting sense of irreparable change lingers.

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.

In 27 short tracks, Flamagra creates a vivid, memorable collage of L.A. life circa 2019, speaking to both the complicated present and the imaginative future of the city Flying Lotus calls home.

Mascis’ songs are still simple, clever, and catchy.

Striking, tenderly bruising. ... The six songs here certainly constitute some kind of hybrid, an illuminating substance that sometimes seems to float in the air, sometimes leaving you gasping.

Stir ends in relative quiet and serenity with “Path to the Peak,” little flares of guitar anarchy quickly sluiced over pensive bowing. The dialogue here, as elsewhere, is fluid and intuitive, as each player hears, contemplates and reacts to what the other proposes, not in synchrony but in understanding. They move gracefully over a landscape that is always shifting under them.

Not quite folk songs or noise experiments or vocal soundscapes or really anything you can pin down by category, they are nonetheless very beautiful and as quietly striking as any music you’ll hear this year.

It seems trivial for album length to be the crux of what makes Signal Morning work, but with one’s attention less spread out, less diluted, Hart’s musical strategy becomes that much more powerful. It’s the old showbiz adage: always leave ‘em wanting more.

On the whole, this is the best album yet from Ty Segall, as joy-ride thrilling as the debut, as clearly delivered as Lemons, but with stronger, more varied writing.

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

It’s not an indulgent album. There’s a discipline to every song. No note sounds wasted or out of place. It so perfectly captures the spirit of those gritty 1980’s psychosexual thrillers, at once lush and foreboding.

These songs come on strong, and if you’re not in the mood may seem to push a bit too hard. But when was too much ever a bad thing? The best way to interact with Wasteland is to let its music roll in like a tidal surge and sweep you under, coming up gasping when it’s done.

You can feel him, almost, willing the elements of words, drums and bass to come together in a music that is more than the sum of its parts.

Wolfe’s act appears, from a distance, to dare that kind of cheap easy success without succumbing to its tastelessness or disposability. Abyss wins that bet across all of its 11 songs, steering close to the simple release of power chorded, full-throttle choruses but often withholding complete release.

The mix of instruments is fascinating, but the reason this music lingers is that it is just so beautiful. If you’ve enjoyed either artist in the past, prepare to love everything you loved before and add a little extra.

Creatures of an Hour is never less than pretty, and often a good deal more.

Pye Corner Audio's latest [is] the marquee example of Ghost Box at their most distilled, their most essential: reaching beyond by reaching within.

The quality of the songwriting hasn’t diminished, but the setting has changed.

Summer of Hate is fairly diverse, with bits of punk, pop, shoegaze and space-rock woven into nine distinct tracks. What unites all these elements is a fascination with tone, rather than song structure or lyrical content.

Love and Curses is a rock ‘n’ roll record with neither pretense nor manicure, a clean glimpse into rock’s exposed essence.

Soothing but subversive, Green Lanes is never quite as easy as it seems. You could hear it as the perfect summer record, but if you listen to it carefully, it’s a bit more than that.

At various points during the second half, the music threatens to take off into a more fiery, chaotic realm, only to recede into questioning placidity. Much like the rest of the music on this album, it goes nowhere and everywhere all at once, creating and re-creating a space that feels intimidatingly boundless.

It’s an odd concoction of fun and confrontation, at once rigorously disciplined and existentially silly. The Official Body is a hard one, toned and taut and not fucking around, except when it is.

Freedom’s Goblin is remarkably coherent. Ty Segall may never have to make another album, so definitively does this one capture his art and possibilities, but you know he will.

It's some of his best work, but it's done with the gimmick of relying solely on the ARP 2600 analog synthesizer.

I’ve not listened to any other album from 2009 quite so much, or quite so closely, a reflection not only of the exacting single-mindedness of O’Rourke’s vision, but also of The Visitor‘s loveliness.

The emotional excavation Jayda G has done with her sophomore album is admirable to witness and a joy to hear.

All of the transitions are perfectly timed, and the whole is a narrative through which minute but thrilling discoveries become regular events as each listen exposes them. This may not be the game changing statement The Ship was almost two years ago, but it demonstrates a fruitful inter-generational relationship in the making.

Faithful Fairy Harmonies often sounds like a song hunter’s discovery, a forgotten cache of preindustrial songs left behind on wax cylinders in someone’s dusty attic. Yet there’s something very modern about the idea of Josephine Foster being able to create this work almost entirely on her own and driven solely by her own artistic preferences. An old-fashioned voice singing exactly what it wants is not old fashioned at all.

An album that, without lyrics, tells its stories with many voices and in a poetry that feels tangible, even as it transforms in front of us, catching more light in its sound as it blooms.

Chemical Chords is more compact, true, but they’ve not lost their character through economy.

Rock that soothes and sears at once is a rare thing, and Heron Oblivion has made a whole album that makes the contradictions feel like an ancient tradition.

Taken as a whole, however, OH consists of more stellar stuff from a band that’s always taken the tortoise’s view of the race.

Despite its uneven presentation, Someday is Today is a beautiful, evocative record, whose charms invite and reward repeat listens.

Lesser artists might fall prey to pastiche, something Murcof artfully avoids. Instead he pulls off a remarkable feat--he makes the forgotten sound formidable, and the contemporaneous sound credible.

Full Upon Her Burning Lips isn’t Earth’s best record. ... However, it might be the definitive Earth record, the one that, in its mystery and directness, comes nearest to whatever it is Carlson has been seeking in the drone and riff for almost 30 years.

Exuberantly weird ... The opening songs feel a bit thin, returning to trippy terrain that GT Ultra had already adequately investigated. ... The album’s second half, however, is terrific. The mix thickens with idiosyncrasy, glimmering electronic flotsam and some assured singing from Carlson. She doesn’t have enormous range, but she conjures compelling presence.

Arguing Frisell’s stature as a national treasure is nearly effortless with albums like this one.

Irreversible Entanglements are looking forward, stepping up from the shoulders of the giants to shape a body of work that demands attention.

In the relentless, rampant pursuit and procurement of new musical product, it’s easy to lose sight that a return to and expansion of what’s worked previously can prove just satisfying for both artists and listeners.

“Is it making you feel something?” the band asks, in the song of the same name, and yes, yes, yes, all kinds of things. That’s what’s so great about it.

Listening to the album, the weirdness is never off-putting, and the pop elements don't feel like concessions to a wider audience.

Listen to the second album next to the first, and it’s like when the eye doctor finds the right lens strength and all the letters become legible.

This latest recording is assured and full of intent, seamlessly integrating acoustic guitar blues with a rushing undercurrent of electronic noise, backdropping stark self-revelation with sleek synthesizer arrangements.

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.

She swoops and swoons and growls like Kristin Hersh but more country, and it’s worth a listen just to hear what she’ll do next.

Unfidelity never feels derivative or retro, Edwards displaying an alchemist’s touch as he drags all these influences into a potent melting pot.

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.

The reason this album is such a remarkable feat is because they've willingly entered some of the most tired territory in rock over the last decade and still manage to make it sound as fresh and exciting and invigorating as the first time you or anyone else you know heard music like this.

Love & Desperation is one hell of a good time. A testament to both the cathartic, healing power of rock, as well the undeniable joy to be found in an arena-sized riff, Sweet Apples’s debut makes for excellent listening.

Jazzy horn breaks? Twinkling bar-room piano? Doo-wop backing vocals? All this and more crops up in ways both unusual and satisfying. Rutili is also in fine lyrical form. Many of the songs begin with strange and imaginative opening lines.

Skullsplitter is ultimately that: comforting, even more so than it is odd.

In combining antiquated influences with their own postmodern sensibilities, Broadcast and the Focus Group have together created an evocative and imaginative work that is in many ways more challenging and rewarding than the former’s own proper albums.

At 16 songs over 74 minutes, Interior Live Oak is surprisingly low on filler for an artist who seems to take mischievous glee in tripping up listeners.

Tooth, with its sharp title, minimalist drum attacks and hauntological synth textures, represents the antithesis of such plurality, reducing dance to its most antagonistic and unflinchingly bare-boned aesthetic and coming up with a new language from familiar idioms, sometimes from other genres.

Very few other bands are working at the level of aggression, precision, intensity and intelligence that Protomartyr musters. Relatives in Descent is yet another record from this outfit that you can’t afford to miss.

With this latest liveliness, Pollard and company continue that relentless growth. And remember, they’re leaving the breathing space for you: no one said they needed it.

Though there’s nothing here that’s particularly original or knock-you-flat outstanding, it’s all handled impeccably, recorded vividly, and sequenced smartly to make the album’s 38 minutes fly by.

Looping State of Mind is a bold attempt at fusing The Field's emotive tendencies with something more aggressive, and for the most part, Willner strikes the perfect balance.

None of this is so very different from Swervedriver’s catalog, or indeed from the guitar-crashing dream pop of Adam Franklin’s Bolts of Melody, but it is very fine anyway.

Tromatic Reflexxions is a great record for all of the reasons you might suspect – unless you don’t like MoM, or MES, or either.

[The National] turned a corner with 2005’s Alligator, fusing the moments of mania and quietude from their initial releases into a grandiose adult angst that resulted in at least two more great albums. With Beyondless, Iceage seems to have crossed a similar threshold.

It's a welcome venture, for sure, and just like all those previous Hot Chip records, In Our Heads won't go unmoved to.

It's an album that makes the most of its contradictions--the gulf between its most rhapsodic elements and its contemplative ones provides its share of thrilling moments along the way.

Don't Be A Stranger is very subtle album, soft in tone but twisted and eaten from the inside by corrosive intelligence.