As fine as the instrumental playing is here, Crutchfield and Williamson singing together creates magic.

Tucker brings on an overload of tone, overtone and sonic sensation that swirls and eddies like a rough tide, at times nearly picking you up off your feet and tossing you over.

This is not your parents’ contradance music or your cool older brother’s free improvisation or even your cousin’s slightly over-ripe New Weird Americana, but something else entirely. Amidon learned the old tunes by heart so he could stretch and cut and distort and juxtapose the pieces to make music that resonates and expands.

Is it a sleek and assured Euro-pop stylist or a morose, sardonic realist, messy and desperate and unsatisfied with the way things are? It is both, sometimes simultaneously. The mix of poise and scruffiness fluctuates continually. .... The point is that there’s plenty of lounge-y, jazzy pop here, but it’s most affecting when it twists slightly off true.

Succinct. ... While Madness begins in a state of chaos, it reaches an uneasy resolution over its half-hour runtime, exploring some emotionally resonant territory along the way.

The record is energetic and often rollicking. Paternoster’s singing and intense guitar antics are center stage, but her longtime bandmates King Mike (bass) and Jarrett Dougherty (drums) are essential to the band’s potent combination of groove and snarl.

The simplistic, drone like beats of Borders numb the mind while freeing the body, so that each track is danceable and sedating. Furthermore, the brooding, deep tone of the beats, paired with an added static charge, are sonically rich and beautiful and draw the ear in.

Ultimately, it underscores everything that’s right with Supreme Balloon--in the absence of any larger narrative structure, the group’s latest album afford them the chance not to be modern theoreticians par excellence, but rather a couple of earnest music fans that convey their own passion through the sounds they create.

While this workmanship-like familiarity leaves little room for surprises, it also makes the hit-to-misstep ratio almost negligible. With this kind of success rate, we can only hope Cartwright has another 20 years of near-obscurity in him.

Slowed down, the only thing revealed is how seamless his stitching his, how clever his adjunctions are and how much musicianship it takes to create a good sample-based record.

The cool thing about Protean Threat is that he’s got the beast and the collar. He can let things run wild in complicated ways while also keeping it wholly and brilliantly under control. Let’s not mince words. This is one of the best rock albums of 2020.

No matter how smoothly the songwriting flows, nothing’s easy on Interstate Gospel. Lambert, Monroe, and Presley know that, yet they take on an array of hard topics and reel off one-liners and hooks as if that’s enough to get us through, which it just might be.

Going Down in History is a visceral, gut-thumping, pretty-close-to-live album one of whose main themes is astonishment at being alive, still, inexplicably.

They’ve found a way to wedge different sonic elements together, creating an assemblage of oft-quoted elements that feels fresh and vital even when its tone turns elegiac.

Clara demonstrates Morgan’s ability to make practically whatever he gets his hands on into loscil music. But when loscil music is this deeply immersive, richly textured, carefully calibrated, and ultimately viscerally satisfying (however one feels about the process), you just hope he keeps on doing it.

With The Alligator Bride, more than previous Howlin’ Rain albums, the breadth of the band’s scope shines in streaming color.

As a live recording, it’s severely impressive, and sounds far more like an obsessively premeditated studio creation than anything on Kinski’s last official album.

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.

Ultimately, Instrumentals 2015 is minor in everything but the quality of the music--and that seems a very FSA-like play indeed.

New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is an album of somber beauty, its flashes of color existing amidst a broad spectrum of grays.

It’s an eccentric mechanical universe that Kamikaze Palm Tree has constructed and well worth visiting.

Stirring stuff.

The potential guitar soup and airless drum patterns of death metal is helped along by Bogren’s crisp production. And with Twilight of the Thunder God, they’ve written a set that takes full advantage of experience and polish.

The Sound The Speed The Light is as good as "Obliterati."

It’s rich; despite the fact that the cuts are short and sweet, each represents any number of possibilities for repurposing and restyling.

Some of the songs work atmospherically; other take shape as more conventional songs. Yet it all proceeds like a pastel colored daydream, faint sounds swirling into mirage-ish structures then melting away into mist. The words are so buried in the mix that you’ll need a lyric sheet to parse them; like the music, they teeter on the boundary between pastoral calm and 21st century angst. They cling to subtle melodies like a fresh coat of dew.

“Tinde,” at the end, floats a woman’s ululating tones over bare, echoing percussion. But mostly, Amatssou sounds exactly like you expect Tinariwen to sound, like its drifting to you over acres of sand, like it’s moving your bare feet to dance, and that is a very good thing.

DOOM’s sounds as bold and battered as ever. You can almost hear the accumulation of Dutch Masters on his larynx.

Without being especially political, the album is resolutely female in the strongest, most self-asserting way.

The decision to work these songs out while camped out next to a mobile recording truck shifts the instrumental balance; the bass is less mobile, handclaps and choppy rhythm guitar set the cadence and overall things move a little slower. And Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who sings over half the songs, has never sounded more world-weary. ... But deep blue sentiments touch deeply, and Tinariwen’s music still has that reach.

Tense and uncertain, The Weather Station will keep you tuning in.

Rather than just a haphazard collection, the eight cathartic pieces that make up Infinite Worlds work as a genuinely affecting singular statement--its idiosyncrasies stitched together by a strong lyrical narrative, improbably forming a cohesive whole.

It’s hard to overstate just how much fun this record is, how playful its complex rhythms are, how brightly colored its tonal variations. Plastic can be a lot of things, but here it is an utter joy.

While it’s unmistakably a Mascis solo album, What Do We Do Now just stands apart from anything he’s done to date.

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.

Inland See is the kind of record that offers multiple layers of riches: the rich sound of the analog synthesizers, the mellifluous wind instruments, the subtle use of evolving rhythmic elements. It’s an addictive listen that rivals Totality for its elegance and depth.

The songs are reliably mid-tempo and catchy, although they certainly lack the heedless rush that made the first Superchunk albums such models of indie rock.

Sleater-Kinney is back in all its spiky, brainy, let-a-bunch-of-ideas-fight-it-out glory.

It has a warm, uncertain humanity that its predecessors, for all their depth and beauty, did not: it scans as genuine, music made from necessity rather than from the impulse of an extraordinary showman.

Van Etten’s born-loser character could have been a bore were it not for her disciplined musicianship (her early years included classical music and multiple instruments) and her painful but enduring singing. It never stops sounding like real hurt.

Everything here is marked with a hint of familiarity, but it's surprisingly hard to mind.

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

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

Even after several weeks of listening to this thing, I still don’t feel like I’ve truly got a handle on it. Prepare to immerse yourself in order to tap into its mysteries. Thankfully there are abundant rewards to be found amid the surges of widescreen sound.

A Trip to Bolatanga is on strong ground. The combination of nyabinghi hand drumming, booming kick drum, funky guitar, house-ready piano accents and bobbing clarinet on “Accra Electronica” sounding simultaneously of this time and timeless, and there’s no denying the beats’ substantial bang, which both demands and rewards volume deals.

Even more than Luminol, No Depression in Heaven builds up such a heady and consistent ambience that you can relax into it like a warm bath.

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 album varies between affecting and emotionally resonant straightforward pieces, and at times moments that increase the level of abstraction and repetition into minimalism. ... Sun Piano is a meditative and elegiac set, yet points towards the possibilities of endless variation and reflection.

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.

Perhaps the best thing about The Lemon of Pink is that it possesses a cohesion that its predecessor, even at its frequent best, still somehow lacked.

Elements jostle together with the pitch and roll of the walk home after last call, the songs themselves are beautifully put together, with striking images that fit the melody exactly, shine for instant and then are tossed away.

This is world weary pop, but it’s completely uncynical. Reserved and melodramatic at the same time, it doesn’t worry about the incongruities, satisfied to be both wilted and very alive.

On It’s Up to Emma, her sixth album, songs like “My Man” and “What Can I Do” are a bit of a shock--lusher, denser, subtler, their gut-punching intensity smoothed with sustained sounds.

As the music comes full circle, Vertigo Days forms a satisfying whole. On subsequent spins, more and more subtle threads and parallels become apparent, highlighting the craftsmanship The Notwist have invested in what may prove to be their finest album to date.

The song selection, from two very distinct periods in Oldham’s discography, makes for a cohesive album, and it exemplifies how strong his songwriting has been from the beginning.

It's a difficult accomplishment, encompassing pop and the avant-garde while also featuring a particularly striking element (in this case, Hegarty's voice); all three are well-represented here.

There are spoken words buried in these machine-like architectures, only the tone, not the sense of them coming through the music. It is a rather lovely space that Hopkins creates, lyrical but inhabited, precise and well-lighted and buoyant.

It succeeds, unequivocally, as usual.

A number of the record’s best songs sizzle and churn on Miracle Year. The atmospherics of the live setting suit the combination of incisive melody and the chaotic fuzz-and-feedback issuing from Bob Mold’s guitar; check out “If I Told You,” “Powerline” and especially New Day Rising’s title track. .... 1985: The Miracle Year includes another four LP sides of live Hüsker Dü, from various gigs in ’85, and you can hear some serious hard psych: “Chartered Trips” from a show in Switzerland, “Eiffel Tower High” from Salt Lake City, “Sunshine Superman” from Hoboken.

The hooks are strong, and the harmonies sweetly hypnotic, but in between the choruses, you can still catch a firehose blast of pure guitar that will knock you back flat if you’re not braced properly.

You can hear both elements jostling for precedence, the celebratory euphoria of live performance filtering through the doubts and uncertainties and complications of extended time in one’s own head. It’s the combination that’s so thrilling here, in a sound that swirls and envelopes and jitters but remains just out of reach, like the dream of a dream of a dream of life before.

A weird aura of nostalgia hangs over Jet Plane, the longing you might feel for a Buckeroo Banzai future that never quite happened. And yet, most of these tracks are very urgent, very present, very right now.

You end up thinking, well, of course, a band this ruthlessly observant and unflinching is going to be mad a lot of the time, but how great that they bring the same intensity to love.

It's many different things at once, but all of them are confident and powerful.

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 Umbrellas have always offered bashed up, joyriding sweetness, but here they reach at—and intermittently attain—a Spector-esque wall of rock ‘n roll sound. Even better, that larger scale doesn’t undermine the vulnerability of their songs, but instead amplifies and clarifies it.

There are a lot of good songs on here, to the point where the band's consistency can border on monotony.

Paper Dolls is a really delightful piece of work, tender and whimsical and, despite a certain amount of artifice, touchingly sincere.

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.

The whole thing takes only thirty-one minutes--but it’s a transportive half hour. The album cover’s crayon mountainscape suggests just the kind of escape the duo’s music provides: easy and innocent, a land somehow fuller of plenty and wonder than the reality it momentarily suspends.

The record called E, then, is not exactly what you’d expect from any of them, a volatile concoction of musical ideas and impulses that amplifies their distinctive gifts without sanding off any of the jutting edges.

The results are two fistfuls of noise-rock at least as potent lyrically as anything on God’s Country and arguably harder musically, for a few reasons.

This third Zomes album is far more static, yet the statis itself is arresting.

It’s strange to encounter an album that is so deeply weird and disjointed, and yet feels polished and made with the utmost craft. The result is otherworldly, and plays like a soundtrack to a moody and impressionistic film.

With its powerfully cohesive sonic topography and motley cast of rat smashers, ill-fated squires and cigarette eaters, Space Gun is a robust marriage between the band’s rugged past and more polished present. Further, it’s a reminder that, ultimately, Bob Pollard’s best character is himself.

It's compelling from the start, particularly insofar as they not only avoid genre clichés but also cheap drama. Instead, they play emotionally ambiguous stuff--shifting modes and dynamics, or rather simply smashing them together until the edges are indistinct.

The Lost Tapes doesn't feel like a barrel bottom being scraped; it's a scoop into a pond still teaming with life.

This album is loud, obnoxious, personal, and a hell of a lot of fun.

The atmosphere is lovely—it refracts the light like the last traces of fog in sunlight—but there are songs here underneath, good ones, and that makes all the difference.

There's a just-right roughness to the recording that has worked for bands as diverse as The Commandos and The Trashmen.

What’s left is distinctly Sunn O))) in scope and scale, as heavy and loud and intense as anything they’ve produced.

Today is the Day ranks as an outstanding album on its own merits, but its timing is also impeccable. Arriving at the end of this year, it will hopefully silence those who have accused Yo La Tengo of sliding into mid-career pleasantness.

There isn’t a singular, clear message of hope on The Great Bailout, but in documenting the rage and despair built into life under such a ugly and evil system, Moor Mother has provided something just as valuable — if not more so— in understanding the struggles of the present day.

His inventive and affective pairing of resonating melodies and noise is impossible to deconstruct--that is to say, narrow down to a specified meaning or reason behind each piece. We, the listener, get to apply each of Hecker's abstractions to whichever feeling we choose. That's definitely an ocean worth diving into.

It's good to hear a group continue to challenge themselves without kicking their strengths to the curb.

An album about finding meaning in the quiet, and even people who will never take psychedelic drugs or visit remote Ecuadorian caves, can get something out of that.

Almost all of II has a first-take rawness, well recorded, but without fuss.

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.

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

Its appeal is immediate, rather than slow burning, and you can see it gaining fans who are less transfixed by eccentricity, more interested in tightly constructed songs. Yet at the same time, the words and images in these songs are deeply personal and self-revealing in a way that, I think, the first two albums were not.

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

The whole midsection of the album is giddily enjoyable.

In short, the observations are sharp and the music cranks. Twenty-first century Brooklyn doesn’t sound like much fun, but Bodega does.

The songs won’t grab you or pull your hair. They’re barely touching you. They won’t even acknowledge that you’re there. And yet, they can sink deep into your cortex over time, haunting you like the nightmares you can’t remember and the words you wanted to write down but that fade completely as you open your eyes.

The result is still identifiably Benoît Pioulard, but richer, deeper, stranger.

The Guilty Office feels different; it sounds quite a bit like its predecessor (which in turn sounded quite similar to early ’90s efforts like Fear of God and Silverbeet), but like a new eyeglass prescription, it renders the familiar in sharper detail.

It’s as classy and unassumingly smart as you’d expect.

It feels like a genuine use of the source material; not even as something conscious, like a person that travels around hoping to find new sounds, but rather as an act of dialectical eruption--the past naturally coming back in a different form.