"Jarvis"... is essentially a patchwork drawing from low and high points of his career - a quilt meant as a cover as well as an ornament.

The most pressing problem is that Venice is rarely a challenging release.

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.

Yes, this is a heavy album, but luxuriously so. It’s music that stares death in the face and instead of running, hunkers down and gets comfortable.

To make so many overt references to his musical heroes while never losing sight of himself speaks to Iyer's own command. His improvisations have such clarity and vision, and it's rare that he stretches things any longer than necessary.

The sound is open and uncluttered, rare for a genre that relishes tangles. There’s lots of liquid synths, and were they gracing a 4/4 thump, they’d have an Ibiza glow to them.

It’s a nice rest, listening to Other You. It’s hard to remember what you heard, but very, very pleasant while it’s happening.

It’s awful and overwhelmingly loud — but there’s also a soaring quality to the melody that establishes itself amid the clangor and noise. That’s the curious, nearly undecidable quality in The Crying Out of Things. It’s full of ugly volume and rage. But there is a terrible beauty in many of the tracks, an affect that expands underneath the ugliness.

If False Readings On proves anything, it’s that Matthew Cooper has again shown just how good he is at making music that’s too engrossing to be just ambient, too pretty to be just noise, too eventful to be just drone (as worthy as those all are as forms) and too individual to be the work of anyone else.

Honor Found in Decay, the band's 11th or so studio album, is an organic, humanizing refinement of said retooling, one that is very subtle yet undoubtedly informed by guitarist Steve Von Till and bassist Scott Kelly's forays into the fandom and unadorned tribute exercises regarding the late Townes Van Zandt.

With his debut album on Shady Records, Conway the Machine shows that he remains a gifted lyricist and a good storyteller, yet hardly offers anything original.

It is clearly intended to connect with people who aren’t allergic to a straight beat or a straightforward tune. But it’s still, in its own way, surprising.

While the album is beautifully recorded, there's a certain sterility throughout, something approaching caution.

A gorgeous, fully realized expression of her potential.

Nosdam is most similar to the New Jersey trio Dälek, although Nosdam's beats tend to be a bit bulkier and he seems to approach his music with a psychedelic sense of wonder rather than with Dälek's anger.

It's a rarity, though, when kids successfully switch from absorbing listlessness totransmitting it themselves. That's the case for Mikal Cronin, who takes these circumstances and makes something of it that is big and varied and hyperactive.

The n’goni and Cheick Diallo’s flute indicate that Touré is going for a more pan-Malian sound; whether that matters to you or not, they give Alafia a more varied sound that its predecessor without sacrificing the propulsive, calabash-driven feel of its predecessor of its immediate predecessor Koïma.

When drums and fiddle swagger, it feels like a Krautrock hoedown. Still, the harmonium exerts enough of a presence to give the music a devotional quality. In combination with the chanting, this music invites you to surrender to reverence without telling you what to believe.

Goulden sublimely aw-fuck-it delivery makes nearly everything sound sardonic, but there’s a bottom note of pure yearning here. The song [“Southern Rock”] smolders most of the way, and then bursts into flame in a rollicking chorus.

A tremendously satisfying and thunderous effort, and their finest work to date.

It’s a nice way to spend three-quarters of an hour, even if you don’t have much to say about it afterwards.

Despite the confrontational title, Broken Politics caresses like a lost Sade album. Cherry has done a most unexpected thing: soundtracked the Trump era in quiet storm soul.

Orcutt builds musical structures layer by layer, part by part. These compositions are sometimes jaggedly ecstatic – “Or head on” for one, leaps and lurches with joy. As in any congregation, sometimes a delighted, discordant, untrained voice rises in volume above the rest.

R.I.P is Actress continually shifting and exploring, growing and rippling, being himself in the only Statement-less way he knows how. Its 15 songs aren't for everyone and with few overt melodies, it's definitely not for everyone.

Wonderful Rainbow is a brilliant record and has upped the ante tremendously for Lightning Bolt. They managed to take every single aspect that made Ride the Skies such a great record and intensify it severely, all the while showcasing incredibly tight and complex musicianship – knowing when to hold in the reins and when to set them on fire.

Young Enough is a big pop influenced record that rings authentic and hits every mark both lyrically and musically--an album to dance the pain away.

Touch is a surprisingly coherent album, demonstrating the band’s strengths of agile melodic sensibility, nuanced performances, and immersive production.

It’s head-nodding, melody-following joy, which maybe shouldn’t work for a bleak album. But it does.

Tizita, like Lala Belu as a whole, feels like both a victory lap and the beginning of something new. It will be exciting to see what, at 71 years young, Mergia does next.

Really, these songs are dance tunes, and the proper place for them is in a club at high volume. Listening to them at home is, to be honest, somewhat disappointing and perhaps does the tracks a disfavor, because they're not that detailed.

Now two albums on, she’s found a way to transcend and expand upon it and open her solitary music to include us all.

There are no singers here or elsewhere, but Gunn has nonetheless found a distinctive voice.

The record is better when the music does the talking, as it usually does for Divide and Dissolve.

Now You Are One Of Us is worth checking out for its amazing production alone.

Halo on the Inside may be yet another temporary expedition or truly be a metamorphosis of Circuit des Yeux’s aesthetic. Either way, Fohr’s songwriting is as strong as ever and her singing voice is singular. Recommended.

For an artist working with such a recognizable palette, Sadier manages to keep painting in bold and striking colors. In terms of the production, this is decidedly Sadier’s best-sounding solo album to date.

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.

She’s at her best when sticking to a palette of steel, indigo and black.

Like Paul's Boutique, The Mouse and the Mask is at times frustrating in its top-heaviness. Thank god it's got Doom.

Over its eight tracks, the album never fails to find a musical pleasure center of one sort or another.

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.

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.

The band comes together neatly, covering a range that encompasses stripped-down recordings and wider-canvas anthems. Avi Buffalo make songs that, at their best, remain lodged in one's head for days.

She writes amazing, heartfelt songs, interesting in tone and composition.

It's furious and raging and exhausting, and the end result is exhilarating.

Functional Arrhythmias moves briskly through these terse, but usually quite rich pieces.

Everything is sharp and lucid and full of impact.

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.

New Rain Duets teems with ideas that float and drift together. It works because McCaughan and Lattimore use their shared vocabulary to tease out the beauty in the murky haze.

Given DePlume’s voice is such a strong flavor, Gold’s appeal will no doubt hinge on whether it’s to your taste. I find it fine in small doses, but domineering over the course of a double album. There’s some great music here if you have the patience to cherry-pick the best bits.

The interaction between machines and the power and tone of branch’s trumpet is the core here and the duo play off each other with unerring control and infectious joy.

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

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.

Barely a moment passes without her voice proudly standing front and center, leading the listener through bittersweet songs that surrender to the ebb and flow of how it feels to be a twenty-something woman in twenty-first-century America.

The slow buildup provides a sense of valediction, with distorted layers reminding us of Mogwai’s love of volume, only to have a slow fade cap things off. The Bad Fire is a satisfying listen from disc to double disc.

Researching the Blues may be one of the most pleasant surprises of 2012.

Over rudimentary, skiffle-derived hooks, a kitchen-sink orchestra creates an aura of portent. Then in steps Meloy, doping up the whole affair with empty melancholy until it has to breathe through a tube, wailing big words in a forced accent that conveys despair but fails to signify its cause, fails to signify anything.

Though this is far from an easy listen, and can be frustratingly wordy and repetitive at times, it’s a rich, admirable and thorny work of art. Invest the necessary attention in this record and it’ll reward in spades.

The only times Deep Politics doesn't work is when it goes for that sun-scorched, ex-cokehead AOR sheen. Perhaps when you cast your nets this wide, a little brim is inevitable.

Women's last record had poppier, brighter aspects than Public Strain, and it's hard to imagine what they might add to this sound beyond an amp'd up production that would wreck their very deliberate effect.

UK Grim waxes artfully dyspeptic, its words a palimpsest of layered, complicated reference to current events and contemporary culture. ... Still at it, still hitting hard, all hail the Sleaford Mods.

Welcoming and unique, this is one of the best debuts in recent memory.

Like grief and its ghostly aftermath, Konoyo is enveloping, disorienting, even voluptuous, resistant to narrative and rich in sensation, and is one of 2018’s most vital records.

From free jazz to contemporary modern ensemble music, Halvorson has made thoughtful arrangements for Amaryllis. It’s great to hear her rock out too, playing with an abandon that has been simmering all along.

Cheers to the second installment of this beautiful friendship.

On Civilian, the band shows that it can be serious without being overbearing, evocative without being histrionic, and accessible without being derivative.

Their most accomplished and astounding album to date.

Holly Herndon is far too conceptual to ever really merit banal classification as a techno or electronic producer, and with a bigger platform (intentional), she shows that her vision opens a multitude of possibilities that go beyond genre. Platform isn’t the album to realize that potential, so obvious since Movement, but it’s a tantalizing taste of the future.

This record clears a spot. And in some temporary way, wins against the ever mounting pile of post-punk consumer artifacts.

The results are truly thrilling, mechanized dance for a post-industrial age.

Despite some good ideas and intriguing moments, tracks like “Inside World” feel unsatisfyingly aimless.

Push the Sky Away’s rewards are interspersed among plenty of frustrating moments, yet even at its worst, it’s a fascinating album.

For all the grunting and studio manipulation (the way the levels shift around, it's like there's a cat loose on the mixing board), this is as playful as the Fall has ever been, with long stretches of taking the piss.

The aesthetic is head-scratching; ideas are stunted and unreadable as themes unless you look at the music as an arc. But the duo is clever enough to generate an initial sonic mystique that makes you long to figure out exactly what you’re listening to. And that’s the mark of a lasting record.

It’s wonderful stuff, a model of restraint and subtlety that also has visceral pleasures.

No Keys again has no indelible riffs, but it doesn’t seem to be missing them anymore. Instead Dommengang goes deep into the abyss of buzz and croon and humming mystery and finds something beautiful, maybe what they were looking for the whole time.

[One track] is expansive enough to be its own album, indeed, perhaps its own universe. The other is just fine, and you will enjoy it if you like Garcia Peoples’ other new jack jammers like Wet Tuna, Chris Forsyth, Matt Valentine and Steve Gunn. ... One Step Behind takes a giant step forward, right off the edge and into the unknown.

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.

Both performances are lovely and odd (and they are rendered distinct by flourishes from other musicians recruited into the sessions: Zak Riles’ unobtrusive banjo picking in “Hear the Children Sing,” Ned Oldham’s gentle, pellucid electric guitar in “The Evidence”). But it’s Oldham’s singing and Higgs’ lyrics that make Hear the Children Sing the Evidence so memorably discomfiting.

FACS has been a monster band for a while. Wish Defense may be their best so far.

Wilderness has a few disposable songs: the second half in particular drags on a little bit as different tracks become pretty much indistinguishable. However, the downtime and background amidst moments of appeal channels the spirit of ’70s AM radio pretty accurately.

If you can get past the unintentionally risible title, this new collection of songs from the Austin-based dark hardcore band is quite good. The music is convincingly pissed.

The main issue with this Arbouretum album is that it sticks stubbornly in a mid-tempo calm. There are no big, ripping guitar solos and few instrumental crescendos. The one big exception comes late in the album with “Let It All In.”

Vertigo is another compelling chapter in their evolution.

On every LP, Harris creates an impression of something that is emerging but never quite there, and she’s done it again on The Man Who Died in His Boat.

As emotionally impenetrable as the instruments are, Kinsella’s own inner song remains even more obscured by uncharacteristically opaque lyrics.

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

That’s not to say that development is necessary, but I still found myself wishing for more of a sense of progress. While sometimes it is about the journey, not the destination, two hours of journey is still better off with some pit stops along the way.

The very real pleasure of this collection of songs comes in how the love of tradition collides with raucous rule-breaking energy. You’ve got your outlaw country, sure, but did any of those guys write a song called “Motherfucker” and carry it off? Shook does. Not every song stomps. Some are plaintive and yearning, like the lovely “Jane Doe,” others full of anthemic slow-rocking swirl like “Nightingale.” But all insist on direct emotional engagement and brutal honesty and acceptance of a very specific point of view.

When it works, like on “NYC” or “Roland” it’s a dizzying and beautiful thing that leaves you starving for more. And even when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t fail – it’s just that at times the band seems unable to live up to their own standards and expectations.

Bird’s intelligence – and obvious delight in the associations that words seem to make on their own – often places his lyrics in the precocious high-school poet camp.

The Books have always been both playful and serious, but their latest album moves between the two easily and without making the listener take note. It is so subtle that even when paying attention, it still feels natural.

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.

Going Places is a monolith, the cacophonous capstone to a career that never settled for less. It’s two guys arriving at their musical endpoint, culminating nearly a decade of work with one final refinement.

On the Tylers’ third and best album, The Ox and the Ax, there is no obscuring the harsh world conjured by these songs with elaborate instrumentation, overwrought singing or dance tempos. Recorded in crystalline clarity, the instrumental accompaniments are usually little more than guitar or banjo, and while they’re skillfully played, it is the Tylers’ voices, unadorned and rich, that are the center of this record.

The results are as you might expect from the album title: playful, wide-eyed and occasionally chaotic explorations of intense forces that reach above and beyond human dimensions.

FACS knows how and when to apply the exact amount of pressure to engage pain points and pleasure centers.

LUMP, a collaboration between Tunng founder Mike Lindsay and Laura Marling, is cool and enveloping, a mesh of luminous electronic textures and subtly placed instruments, all arranged around Marling’s silvery voice, often doubled or overlapping in harmony.