If his last album 2019’s Occulting Disk seemed designed to alienate, Compositions for all its formality and repetition has a far more human aspect. Lugubrious yes, sometimes harsh but its granular beauty has a mesmeric effect that lingers.

It seems that with HaHa Sound, Broadcast is subtly developing a personal aesthetic, assimilating all that comes across their path but rarely allowing the elements to overwhelm their on ideas.

For those of us who love music, in whatever genre, that distorts and mutilates its own conventions, Legacy! is undoubtedly one of the releases of the year, with an infectious, yet challenging groove that startles even as it enchants.

Mountaintops certainly isn't radically different from Mates of States' other albums, but when the band has this kind of rapport, there's no need to deviate.

You could say that not much happens in Shone a Rainbow Light On, that it moves slowly and doesn’t progress in any linear way, but that would be missing out on the blessed stillness and calm that lives in these tracks.

The best of the songs heard on LP3 are those where the more traditional rock elements compliment Restorations’ more relentless tendencies.

It’s beautiful and playful and spiritual and full of soul, like their earlier work was. If you miss the aughts-era AC’s handcrafted, bitter-sweet-sour jamborees at all, you’ll want to check Eucalyptus out.

Barwick continues to refine and expand her particularly gorgeous and idiosyncratic sound.

It's dark, lovely and slow to blossom, but leaves an impression once it does.

Fantastic Planet is a world unto itself, just as carefully crafted but breathing its own breath, living its own life.

Throughout Boy, the action recedes into a murky distance from which disembodied details reach out like the tiny malevolent creatures that hide under the staircase in your nightmares.

A glorious and preposterous journey.

From listening to both of the intended follow-ups to his first album, though, you wouldn't know any better, as both records capitalize on the musical maturity of Harlan County in different but equally satisfying directions.

The abrasiveness that seems to have jumped out of Serpent Music for many seems to me to have a higher purpose of providing a counterpoint to Yves Tumor’s overarching thoughts on love, loss and meaning. For all its quirks, this is a really beautiful album.

The songs are more cohesive now and Walker’s focus has narrowed, honed to a sharper edge on shorter time and the steel of SunnO)))’s contributions, but some of the posts, beams and plumbing still show through its exterior. Those little gaps in the facade help Soused sound more approachable.

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.

The music’s depth, and it is deeper than any other Q/C/Kluster album, encompasses myth and poetry while eschewing assumption and pretense. It walks a fine line between accessibility and the intrigue of novelty while never allowing timbre self-satisfying supremacy.

Alcoholic ne’er-do-wells or not, New Bums has allowed the duo to ditch old genre entrapments and celebrate new life as troubadours of enrapturing darkness.

The songs on Crab Day are more vivid in memory than when they’re playing. There’s distress at the edges that’s hard to source, but as they spin apart in performance, they lodge in the brain.

The musical backing is radiantly raw, splintering guitars, hard thwacked drums, riffs that saw up from the bottom, break the surface and resubmerge. Barnett’s band — Dan Luscombe on guitar, Bones Sloane on bass and Dave Mudie on drum--is quite good, in a raucous, Replacements-into-Thermals way.

Haw is, likewise, bristly, indelicate, often beautiful but never precious. It bursts with life.

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

It’s such a blessed relief that I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face is not just extremely good, but that it is so in the way that Prolapse has always been great. Steelyard and Derrick are in classic form.

It’s incredibly inexplicable, and inexplicably incredible.

at you have here is the exact opposite of a period piece: it's new but it feels old, it's here but it's nowhere, it's now but it's forever. Whatever, wherever, and whenever it is, though, it's lovely.

There's nothing of substance lacking in the least compelling moments of Queen Mary, and the mix of rousing wildness and reckless wisdom in its brightest points is at once inspiring, promising, and terrifically entertaining.

Six Cups is a busy, urgent and joyous trip that sidesteps categorization, a feat unto itself in field where new micro-genres are described every few months.

It's powerful, it's supremely accessible, and, in a kinder, more playful world, it could be NPR button music--or at least a life-changing stocking-stuffer for scores of Panda Bear fans.

It’s a formidable return to his more familiar post-’04 pop form, a better album by any assessment than YATQ.

The album gains strength as it goes on, getting harder and more abrasive in its second half. And yet even as it rages, it has an elegiac tone.

Most importantly, Imitation of War feels more like an evolved, full-band recording, rather than a solo, singer-songwriter record embellished by the contributions of other musicians. Though Cohen strips back to just voice and her formidable guitar chops on songs such as “Under Gates of Cobalt Blue” and “Olympia,” it’s the full-band songs that really shine.

If you can get past the non-audiophile recording, there’s some great music here.

If you like your punk rock distilled to purity, every idea boiled down to staccato essence, then pony up for Sweeping Promises. It’s bright and nervy, nodding towards funk but with all the grime scrubbed out of the seams.

Your lost loves will not come back, but the morbid and exquisite plummet of losing them will, and rare is the artist that can make such a prospect as starkly comforting as it is here.

If Fisher and co feel wrung out at times it’s not through lack of commitment or creativity. No one said fighting the good fight would be easy and There Is No Year lands enough punches to win at least a TKO decision.

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

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.

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.

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

If that all sounds a bit lofty and conceptual, well, BBF is just that, but it’s also fun. Some tracks plod a little, and will sound pretentious to some ears, but each one contains a wealth of detail, and its best moments are miniature triumphs.

There’s a light-footed joyfulness in these tracks that’s far from insubstantial, and in fact, borders on the profound.

The Innocence Mission delivers its tunes with an uncalculated freshness, still innocent, even now.

He works in a middle ground, neither minimal or elaborate, making strong impressions by getting pushy. That’s what follows seduction.

An album that can be assertive as it is reflective, and as troubled as it is engaged.

Whether it’s the soaring psychedelia of “Paper Fog” and “Pigs,” the more straightforwardly folky “Bird of Paradise” and “Vegas Knights,” or even the delayed fuzz-guitar squall of “Another Story From the Center of the Earth,” the pedal steel is there, and so is a songwriting sensibility that does feel very personal and emotionally powerful even though there’s not a lot of comprehensible narrative.

Recorded mostly solo, with Segall on guitar and drums, it pushes classic guitar rock into complicated corners, with choral motets sidling up to blistering guitar solos, noodle electric keyboard textures glittering atop blasts of pared down percussion.

Having established the hypnotic power of loud, dense guitar marches long ago, Pelican sound free enough at last to explore melodic intricacy and inventive theme-and-variation play without hewing to the old layer of protective gloom.

The patient deployment of new resources is one of Rotations’ greatest strengths.

With Shattered, he isn’t just showing today’s garage-rock young guns he’s still got it. He’s showing them how it’s done.

Danilova takes the peaks higher than ever and manages to avoid both the pitfalls of monotony and excessive experimentation.

The second disc, the one with the covers, is a revelation of sorts. ... Not all of the covers add as much to the material, but there’s lots to admire in Courtney Barnett and Vagabond’s raw-boned “Don’t Do It,” and Big Red Machine’s rushing, blues-twanging, falsetto’d version of “A Crime.” One of the best, though, for its sheer audacity and difference from the source, is IDLES’ take on “Peace Signs.”

It might not be indie (whatever that means these days), and it’s certainly not rock, but The Flying Club Cup is consistent in its idyllic, perhaps idealistic charms.

If the first half of Chiaroscuro is tragedy you can vogue to, then the ending is just tragedy--pure, simple and affecting.

What’s more effective is that the band have become more skilled at writing for chord changes rather than just riffs. They don’t exactly back down from the effect of the latter when they go there, but the attention to harmony gives the whole much more heft than it otherwise might have. The heft is certainly in the physicality the music achieves in its peak moments. But it’s also in the fractured beauty of this music, its emotional catharsis, the beauty of something lost perhaps.

It’s elegantly expressive music where warm tones from cold machines cut to the quick of human emotion.

It's a beautiful collection of 'water music' that also serves as a reminder that experimentation often works best when smuggled in, sidereal style, under the canvas cover of pop songs.

The third of the record that’s truly Molina & Johnson shines the brightest, when their discreet identities fall away to create Burroughs’ and Gysin’s third mind.

The soundtrack is a continual blurring of boundaries. It is semi-static throughout, like much of Faure’s Requiem, severely troubled even beneath seemingly placid surfaces. This renders those points of eruption and cataclysm exponentially more powerful.

At their best, the New Pornographers effortlessly dress down emotional defenses and bestow, for at least a moment, simple joy.

Vertigo is another compelling chapter in their evolution.

The music sometimes meanders as perspectives shift and but Barbieri’s juxtapositions of church and club in which transcendence through music can be both a public and intensely personal experience is never less than transporting.

Each song seems a logical move from the song that preceded it, and no track stands out particularly from the rest. As a distinctive sound, though, as a warm, pulsing vibe, they succeed.

No question that Fohr and her cohorts genuinely like and appreciate the thumpy, cheesy Eurodisco that shimmers through these songs, but they put an unusual spin on it. There’s a warmth in these plastic grooves, an experimental inquiry in these hands-in-the-air raves, a spiritual striving amid hip-jutting, butt-swaying ecstasies.

Get beyond the Phil Collins-into-Peter Gabriel style clarity, and the songs start to take hold.

Sonic Nurse is the happy medium they've been craving. The songs, despite being mostly over five minutes long, are all to the point without feeling meandering.... The balance between noise and melody is right, with each emerging and vanishing at just the right point.

With Asleep On the Floodplain, Chasny returns not just to his personal roots, but also to the roots of popular music itself.

Fussell is still a captivating figure singing by himself with a guitar; I wouldn’t want to see his front porch abandoned. However, this album’s changes in approach and material invariably work. These and the talents of his collaborators help When I’m Called to be one of Fussell’s strongest recordings to date.

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.

Situated between his production for Common’s Electric Circus and Champion Sound with Madlib, the record scripts Dilla’s now triumphant escape from the majors and represents the more mercurial facet of his vision.

The real measure of Knoxville's success is that it always feels it has ended too soon.

Kowton’s clarity of vision after eight songs and 41 minutes leaves no doubt at the intent of its creator. You’d be a fool to argue with the results.

There’s something very moving about Pupul’s attempt to understand his mother by vacuuming up the sights and sounds of Hong Kong and fitting them carefully into his Western-style DJ art. It works on a human level — we can all relate to losing people that we love — but also as music. Letter to Yu is poignant and powerful.

The songwriting and production are sharper and the scope is decidedly larger, capturing the band’s conflicting urge to play the introspective balladeer and the pub-crawling mod-rocker.

On Shook, Franklin James Fisher, Lee Tesche, Ryan Mahan and Matt Tong sound refreshed, energized by collaboration and completely confident in their identity.

A series of alternate takes, compilation tracks and previously unreleased songs that hail, aesthetically, from the Burn Your Fire and before era. Which is to say, they are pared back, emotionally lacerating and carried by Olsen’s eerie country soprano, which wobbles and flutters in a high lonesome style somewhere between Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison.

All in all, Metalmania is a lovely little album.

Suffice to say Impossible Spaces itself is a journey, and one of the more all-encompassing ones I've had the pleasure of taking this year.

Keys isn’t a flashy album. Its songs tend towards the quiet end of things, and they make their impact in an unassuming way that never shakes you by the shoulder. It’s just two people playing two instruments, alike but different, listening to the way they align and contrast with one another and taking the tune to another place.

For the people who love this band, their sound, and Hitchcock's songwriting, this album will definitely not disappoint.

Here Hayes gives every instrument space to breathe, while creating a beautiful group sound that moves with all the lithe grace of ‘70s soul sides.

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

The Beths are bigger, better and more complicated than they’ve ever been. This is the record to beat from now on.

The title of nature morte might reference death, but this music is frightfully, joyfully and overwhelmingly alive.

Third Time to Harm is a visceral pleasure, celebrating brawn over brains and shout-along choruses (“What pretty parasites!”) over songwriting complexity.

While some may scoff at the gentler side of the Animal Collective (especially when contrasted with the fully electric assault of last year's studio release), Sung Tongs easily stands alone as a crowning achievement in their eclectic discography, one that finds the group fully in control of their musical prowess and all the better for it.

Little about the album feels predictable, neither the musical texture nor the oblique and sometimes imagistic lyrics. Gordon can be startling at times, and she does it all with a cool (a non-commercial, unreproducible cool, that is) that, as much as anything, makes No Home Record so particular to Gordon.

Oneida have never sounded more ambitious, yet they’ve kept their proggy impulses on a short leash; the flourishes serve the music, not vice versa.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky distills everything Gira has ever done. It's a shockingly dense record, the Gira experience in 45 minutes or less. All killer, no filler, for real.

Their nearly ten-year core pivots rhythmic and tonal ideas athletically, and their ability to pull elements from anywhere and everywhere is seemingly more fluid with each record. With The Common Task, Horse Lords simultaneously stay within their own signature pocket and poach outside elements, expanding how large that pocket seems.

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.

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

Each artist, individually, brings something impressive to the collaboration. The intersection of these gifts reveals something bigger, an art that embraces experience and vulnerability, but that also relies on studied craft. Whatever confessional comes through does so in an artful but not showy manner that makes this latest album more than just a likeable reunion.

What’s more notable, and important, though, are the continuities present here. Not just in instrumentation and mood, but also in those things’ presence in Cooper’s newest weapon: words.

Though there are no weak links in the 10-song, 30-minute track list, Cohen tucks the album’s finest moment midway into the second half. “Night or Day” is such a catchy, perfectly executed song that it deftly snaps everything into focus, prompting the realization of just how odd and sneakily exploratory Paint a Room can be.

This is Frog Eye’s most elegantly structured, premeditated, composed album ever. It is also miraculously, unexpectedly the band’s best to date.

On Help, bits of digital noise have worked their way into the sound, like the band is absorbing the textures of Dwyer’s more avant projects. Or maybe it’s just a crunchy topping to contrast with the creamy icing, because this is one cake of a record, as approachable as Dwyer has ever been.

Where "Arm’s Way" was mostly excess without limit, Vapours is tightly-controlled, yet still roiling beneath the surface.

Front to back, it’s classic Jack Rose, and while the themes and tones may still be the same, his playing is more assured than ever, summoning a power and immediacy heretofore unseen in his previous work.