Familiar as aftermath, the sounds sit at the edge of memory, providing a different intoxication than the vivid hits of adolescence. It’s a specific perspective that often has the clearest view of a movement. This scrappy album finds yet another future for old futurism.

“Equivalents 5,” a four-note sequence shifts pitches and timbres amidst constantly changing atmospheres. The tune itself never changes, but it doesn’t have to keep the listener engaged. It’s the qualities of the sounds, such as the swelling bass and swirling high end of its predecessor, “Equivalents 6,” that count. Just as Stieglitz’s images of clouds became things in themselves, the tones cease to be means and become ends in themselves.

For this 15th solo album, the songwriter beefs up his arrangements a tad, though only compared to the last album, not the lush psychedelic swirl of his Richard Swift-abetted Mariqopa records. Yet the songs remain plain and beautiful, their clean lines unfettered by too much volume or density, delivered in a voice that creaks sometimes but doesn’t falter as it runs up effortlessly into near falsetto range.

The players are so good that even their sketches make for engaging listening. And two songs on the EP are quite good.

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.

Though they are spare and though there are a lot of these songs (17), the album doesn’t sag. A restless energy courses through them. Spike-y, unsentimental observations keep them engaging.

The players never lose touch with the paradox of these songs, which have long endured through their strength and frequent expressions of anger, but which also have much still to tell us about human weakness and vulnerability. By tuning into that paradox, the players have made a terrific, surprising and emotionally dramatic record.

The longest track on the recording, at 7’21”, is “Sadder than Water,” where the stasis of basslines found elsewhere are broken into an angular melody overlaid with oscillating chordal material. This, along with the outer two tracks, points to a promising way forward for Shenfeld, in which her skill at creating textures is matched by her ability to develop them.

Plastic Eternity is the rare dead serious, head-trippy album that is also a lot of fun. Here’s to Mudhoney for standing on the precipice and laughing.

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.

Some of the most likable “weird hip-hop” around.

It's the same songwriter we've seen in snapshots from various foreign lands, this time in front of buildings that may as well be down the road: same Seine-side accordion we heard on The Flying Club Cup, same mournfully stately horns he picked up in the Balkans for Gulag Orkestar.

Despite what appears to be a decided attempt to branch out musically, Prekop returns with a slight variation on the same theme that has seemed to follow him around since birth. Luckily, for fans of Prekop's work, progress and self-redefinition has hardly been the point.

In a world where electronic music is omnipresent, Laurel Halo succeeds on Chance of Rain in creating a distinctive voice, one that never allows the listener to settle into a sense of security.

The result is a sound that remains accessible, even sing-along worthy, as it wrestles with the most perplexing existential questions.

Come to Life feels fragmentary in places, still more mixtape than debut album. It can be amazingly disorienting.

Formulaic but thoroughly satisfying.

The Power Out may surprise and confuse listeners expecting Rock It redux, and the new album has a few rough patches and a general inconsistency due to Electrelane's willingness to experiment.

It’s worth your time to follow him through these grayer back alleys. Once you get your bearings, you’ll wonder where he’s going next.

Ultimately, Dreamt will reward those who spend time with it, and Sparklehorse fans won't be disappointed.

Lookout lacks the piercing insight of Berman’s best work––those Old Testament and American Gothic retellings laced with sarcasm and self-loathing. At the same time, there’s a casual quality to this set that trumps the belabored tangle of the last go-round.

Set ‘Em Wild, more so than many albums like this, at least has the quasi-coherence of forming out of the above-mentioned process, and if anything, that makes it more interesting than just a collection a songs.

Johnson only reveals so much. Fruit Bats excel in that sort of space. Johnson sounds less becoming when he lets too much irony in.

It's cool that he's trying to change things up, but there's no substitute for a strong result.

Emika's made a very personal album here that succeeds by its own exacting standards.

[The songs are] skeletal, bittersweet and exquisitely quiet--open enough to make the most of what her cohorts could offer, firm enough to have a semi-personal punch.

Habits & Contradictions is less like a label-released full-length and more like an amateurish mixtape, a work in progress.

In recognizing this missing piece [violinist Noel Sayre] straight on, Occasion for Song may finally have found a way forward.

It sounds, at times, less like a proper shoegaze act and more like a memory of one: the hooks as pronounced, but with an ineffable dreamlike quality thrown in, less something quantifiable than something to be experienced. Thankfully, this is an album that both satisfies and mystifies; both are welcome qualities.

At 20 songs deep, this is a long program, but there is really no fat to trim. All of the songs are patently fleshed out, and in spite of the laundry list of ideas, it never seems claustrophobic.

Comfort Of Strangers is the best thing Orton has recorded since her debut.

The main album is sharp and vitriolic and honest, with hardly a place to take a breath.

And indeed, kabong it does. Fun stuff.

Maybe they've been listening to The Byrds and Love, but detecting those influences in a band that doesn't have any vocal melodies makes it hard to say for sure.

The Stimulus Package finds him working the angles as sharply as ever. On this album, he swings like a trapeze artist between the extremes of solemn commentary and hardboiled boasting.

It's an encyclopedia of rhythmic assimilation, perfectly executed, nary a lovingly adopted concept out of place. Catchy as hell, too.

It’s entirely possible that the skillfully-made Odd Blood will find an entirely new bunch of listeners. Many of the old ones, like this writer, will probably just find themselves frustrated.

These songs blister and spiral and swirl in early 21st century guitar-centric, indie-fashion. ... In an album where Black Belt Eagle Scout celebrates their home, ["Spaces" is] the song where they finally let the listeners into the house.

The New Pornographers’’ songs have always been swift, busy little things for the most part, that’s a large part of their joy, and even if some of the more overt ebullience has been toned down here, the richly arpeggioed repetitions and steady melodic sense on display here means that, “bubblegum Krautrock” or no, this is still heady, catchy stuff.

The building of momentum from beautiful or ominous minimalism into cathartic, sweeping heaviness is remarkable.

Though it may be tempting to describe Radian merely as an instrumental post-rock group in the Chicago tradition – they are instrumental, and they’re signed to Thrill Jockey, after all – there aren’t any post-rock bands that are engaging with ideas from electronic and improvised music to the degree that Radian does.

Each album isn’t simply a solitary entry into the Destroyer oeuvre, but rather some tile in the mosaic or thread in the pattern.

"Third Mouth" is arrestingly pretty, with its delicate guitars and looming, swelling synth notes, but also unfathomable.

The Seduction of Kansas is, all things considered, a solid second album. It builds on the promise of Nothing Feels Natural, and while it occasionally fumbles its own goals, it’s hard to fault Priests for aiming high. One can only hope that the radical ambition and sense of purpose on display here carries them far into the future.

It is crowded with guest artists and jostling with stylistic adventures, but its eccentricities have been mostly sanded down to a glossy finish.

There is little time wasted in this record's nine songs, and that Mesirow packs so many wonderful sounds into it without really complicating the chord progressions or basic melodies is perhaps the truest testament to her talent.

The busted up and agonizing forms that result accumulate into a hell of a record. Put on your black boots and stomp around in it awhile.

It is not as raw as the first LP, not as musically belligerent or emotionally wrenching. Instead, it's got an elegance and symmetry to it, a sense of space and precision that was, if not entirely missing from Hammer of the Gods, at least not fully realized.

It feels like we are in the privileged position of witnessing a great guitarist running ideas out of his head and onto his fretboard.

With Carl Craig producing, Jaumet offers a fittingly stripped-down suite of tense, stomach-churning tracks. Dappled with oily synth slicks, frittered timbres and blacklight radiance, it can be a heavy listen.

Breakers is a gorgeous oddity, one of the year's most arresting albums of any kind, and "252" hints at the potential for even better material ahead.

Two side-long compositions make up this tranquil, contemplative album, each divided into three A, B, and C tracks. ... Consider it more a tribute to filling in the quiet spaces that have arisen unexpectedly out of chaos and disappointment, but which are, themselves, very peaceful and beautiful.

What makes Muhly’s work particularly interesting then is not only his use of this style--comprehending the four movements of the title track is particularly vexing as bits of voices mingle and move at different velocities--but the use of the style in a dynamic way itself, reminiscent of Nyman’s compositions.

Lovely as it is, Bloom makes no big departures and takes no risks. If you wanted Teen Dream all over again, and god knows there are plenty of people who do, this is your record.

Play It Strange covers plenty of ground and suggests that the folks in The Fresh & Onlys are far from out of compelling ideas, it also finds the band playing at a kind of strangeness that sounds suspiciously like work.

It feels like they’ve found a way to channel attitude into songs that are more powerful and compelling.

Hit to Hit has the same kind of variety and possibly the same sort of underlying cohesiveness [as Bee Thousand] that will reveal itself over lots of plays. I look forward, anyway, to trying. You couldn’t ask for a better summer record.

He drops his first studio acoustic disc, Several Shades of Why, and it's as lilting and boldly distinctive and profoundly sad as can be expected.

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.

The hooks are nearly endless, each catchier than the last, and each song features a Technicolor array of instruments that create a perfect sonic version of the mildly psychedelic album art that comes with every Danielson release.

The result is one of the most formally radical indie records in recent memory. It also happens to be Dirty Projectors’ all-around best, not least because it most closely recreates the kinetic force of their live performances.

While this is the most accessible Phosphorescent album, Houck's flair for musical surrealism is still very much on hand.

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

There's a sort of magic in the way this Portland threesome balances structure and chaos, pop and noise.

What this self-titled debut is, though, is two different albums (EPs, really): one of wavering delicacy, the other of focused riffage.

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.

The songs’ stoner shoegaze impact can be appreciated even if you miss the line that tells you our narrator is an asteroid miner. But if you do lean into meditating on its themes, the phantasmagorical desolation that is Dissolution Wave’s intended setting makes the songs hit even harder.

Bish Bosch really is his beautiful, dark and twisted fantasy made manifest.

It’s almost as if they didn’t need the help from guest luminaries such as Angel Olsen, Jeb Bishop, pedal steel player Allyn Love and superstar engineer Brian Paulson (who mixed the album with Miller), but perhaps it’s those additions which make How to Dance such a consistently strong and clean record of a band with a unique southern voice.

It's not that Scott has nothing to say. Instead, he suffers a fate much worse--he's boring.

These two groups disappear into each other as naturally as vapor disappears into the air, and the general atmosphere favors an industrial interpretation rather than a drone or doom-metal one.

With Ones and Sixes they’ve pulled together many of their disparate sides in a masterful survey of what makes them one of the great rock bands of their era.

There's no denying Lynn's skill at reconciling disparate sounds, even if the brightest moments fail to paper over all the cracks.

With Special Moves, Mogwai have released a "greatest hits" collection in a sense, but it's indeed more special than that. Dramatic, at turns gentle, majestic and harsh, both old and new songs blend so well that there's no feeling of weak recent material sagging amidst earlier favorites.

The music is simple, but not easy, adorned with intricate picking that cascades over itself like a waterfall. The lyrics feel like really good haiku, pithy, made of small words, but evoking wonderfully precise natural images. It’s a good album for being alone somewhere calm and beautiful, not engaged with the world but not cut off either and enjoying the quiet.

Maybe Xiu Xiu are sometimes ridiculous, but human beings are ridiculous creatures; that’s why these songs feel so real.

There’s no question that when they get it right, the Walkmen are captivating. But with songs like 'Long Time Ahead of Us' and 'New Country,' the only thing keeping your attention is Hamilton Leithauser’s slurred laments.

Cornershop and the Double-O Groove Of finds the band's east/west fusion developed far past the experimental stage into deft and heartfelt songcraft.

They’re almost what you expect, but not exactly, and that disconnect takes you into a strange and lovely little world.

Sure, you can hear that they're awed and distressed about the state of things, but the emotion in Friel and Warshaw's singing seems undercut by the lyrics.

It’s a fitting near-farewell for this disarmingly tender and enjoyable album.

To the extent that it falls prey to unnecessary pseudo-sophistication, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers comes off weak; to the extent that it maintains its own musical niche within the shattered-lover trope, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers makes the shopworn surprisingly compelling.

We are Him is more varied in texture, more resolute in execution and, to the probable amusement of Gira’s long-term coterie, an altogether darker disc.

There’s a playful tilt to even the most serious songs, an arms-thrown-up celebration embedded in lacerating criticism. The revolution will not only be televised, but tracked in every conceivable and intrusive way…but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.

If you come to this record for the title, expecting rueful literacy and songwriterly self-deprecation, you might be pleasantly surprised by how hard it rocks and what an undemanding good time it can be.

Their sound--two guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, vox--is basic and elemental, drawing on rock, country and sometimes soul, though Among the Ghosts has less of the Memphis horn sound than previous albums. Still the force and authenticity of these tunes is undeniable.

Once the album’s 50 minutes have elapsed, one feels a sense of satisfied exhaustion in having traversed a musical landscape both desolate and majestic.

Yet as disjointed as Nap Eyes’ free-associations can be, they capture a vivid part of life, the drifting area where you’ve acquired adult freedoms but adult focus still dangles out of reach.

Her most self-assured release yet, instantly inviting and comfortable, brimming with a confidence that breeds fast familiarity.

The album in hand makes a taut, succinct statement, bristling with angst and melting into melancholy. It is rather good in the mysterious way of rock records; hard to say what it does better than the other records, but it does it all the same.

Have You Considered Punk Music deconstructs punk music so thoroughly that it seems like something else again; it sounds more like the abstracted post-punk of the early aughts band Wilderness than anything you’d hear right now.

Cross imbues largely electronic textures with vulnerability and emotion in a very effective way, reminding me of Mia Doi Todd’s work with Dntel. In eerie settings that seem not quite real, she conveys something grounded and human, viewed indistinctly through thick banks of fog.

Throughout, Moore’s light touch and heavy sustain and Gunn’s fingerpicking complement each other perfectly. ... Let’s also hope that Gunn and Moore release more music soon.

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).

Kozelek plays beautifully, but without orchestration, his songs (which tend to run upwards of six minutes) start to seem directionless.

Jamming is an intrinsic part of Nap Eyes’ aesthetic, but the songs that are tightened up provide welcome contrast. Neon Gate is a varied and satisfying recording.

A dozen listens later, I'm still not sure if there's a beautiful core here that's half-obscured by the wrapping or whether it's the wrapping itself that's beautiful. Either way, it's a remarkable finish to a very promising album.