Packaging quibbles aside, this is a great set.

With this encyclopedic set, Smith delivers yet another convincing musical document for his consideration as one of the most accomplished composers/bandleaders currently working in creative improvised music.

Phair mobilized and rearranged some tunes from her Girly-Sound tapes. Almost all of them improve with Guyville’s studio polish, but a couple are better in their original form ... Exile in Guyville remains her most visible and memorable record, but it’s more than a time capsule of early-nineties indie rock. Its most compelling songs (and there are a bunch of them) still generate tensions, among a voice and its bodily contours and the public’s articulations of femininity.

Against all expectations, Brian Wilson has achieved what should have been impossible, and has produced what may be the year's most thrilling album.

Rhino’s new Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky seems like it was put together as much to please Big Star fans as it was to introduce newcomers to the band.

Political protest was baked into her music, often in very explicit ways. Performing “prayer for amerikkka pt 1&2,” from 2019’s FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise in Switzerland, she reminded her audience, “it’s not always time to be neutral.” Speaking truth to power (or audiences, anyway) is one thing, but branch engaged in the arguably more difficult political project of community-building.

This album sounds vast and intimate at the same time, like keenly recorded sketches.

Some of the best songs that the Louvin Brothers ever wrote.

The early material is interesting, if only to hear how "Web in Front" and "Wrong" were fleshed out on Icky Mettle. But it's the album, and The Greatest of All Time, that are the real draw here.

Some of the finest, yet frustratingly overlooked folk rock of the era.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

It’s a majestic, often breathtaking collection of some of the most important electronic music of its time, where Voigt managed the seemingly impossible task of bringing the forest to the disco, or vice versa.

One of the most important anthologies to come along in quite a while.

The Cure emerged from the studio with a grand late-era statement, full of maturity and melancholy, but with an appropriate sort of wisdom.

If you like dub techno - and who among us with a taste for dissociated, repetitive, awesomely deep and gritty music wouldn't? - you're bound to like a lot of this stuff, and love some of it.

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

Jones and Taylor were only recent regulars in Monk’s orbit, but both align well with his designs and the drummer’s hard-driving sticks goose the music repeatedly. The leader plays with his usual marriage of advanced angularity and idiosyncratic energy, balancing the occasional ensemble uncertainties with a string of strong solo detours to which the band gladly defers. ... Nearly any Monk is Monk of note, but “new” Monk of this nature deserves the encomia it’s sure to engender.

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.

It's a fantastic body of work, as vital and fresh-sounding now as it was when first released.

Lamar has once more asserted a great and formidable talent, and good kid is triumphantly and unmistakably his, but the artists that stick around longest are the ones who let us make their art our own.

From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening.

It’s a lot of Gang of Four, and if you’re interested at all, you probably already have a good portion of it. Still, it’s a nicely packaged set from the best years of the career of one of post-punk’s best ever bands.

Given how inspired they sound here, it’s clear their musical chemistry is as instinctive as ever.

From Here We Go Sublime is fantastic all around, and it’s all the more effective for its restraint.

Someday the Smithsonian will file this sprawling musical celebration into their collection between Van Dyke Parks’ Discover America and Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers -- joyous, generous Americana filtered through a singular sensibility.

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

“The Song Before the Song Comes Out” seems to be Keenan sketching a possibility with her voice and whatever device she had at hand. This kind of intimacy is evident on a number of the collection’s tracks.

Looks Like Rain, 'Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help the Child--represent an outre high-water mark of sorts in the country singer-songwriter era.

A collection of past moments, which add up to a splendid memorial to a monumental moment in New York’s musical history.

Marred by indie-rock clichés and occasional over-effort, it remains frustrating.

Considering the host of absolutely killer tracks, London Zoo might just be Kevin Martin's finest album, which is astounding considering the man has been making music for two decades.

Instead of burning before an audience, here you have them working with other musicians and outboard effects to accomplish a vertical array of sounds that reward deep listening as much as full-body engagement.

Big Boi isn't an MC; he's a songwriter. That distinction is what separates him from other rappers, and it's what makes Sir Lucious--an album whose elan is instantaneously felt and whose spirit only becomes more invigorated with each listening--such a pleasure.

That emptiness tempts a listener in, and puts you in its place--you, in a sense, step into the record’s point of view. This invitation to intimacy is a powerful move that most club music is simply incapable of.

In these songs, to steal a line from the other Go-Between, “Love Goes On,” and he’s got the chops and faith to make me believe it.

Now, rather than trying to replay his roots and influences, he’s incorporating them as threads in the in the tapestry of his own rich, distinctly beautiful sound.

With Neon Golden, the Notwist have created a daring album full of different sounds and textures. While this might sound like a textbook post-rock album, it is without a doubt a record firmly anchored by its pop sensibilities.

One thing that’s allowed Napalm Death to keep punching through mirrors is that as its sound has sharpened, the band’s ability to capture high-resolution chaos has sharpened, too.

Messy, expansive, full of contradictions, sharp turns, and a joie de vivre that wants to experience and express everything at once. They are also endlessly inventive and engaging, their effortless melding of styles held together by glorious harmony and complete assurance.

It’s dark and brooding, fiercely sparse at times and blindingly dense at others. Footwork is no longer an appropriate descriptor for this music. With Black Origami, Jlin has transcended her roots to build a language all of her own. And simply put, it’s brilliant.

For Those I Love is a wonderfully open-hearted portrayal of young Ireland akin to contemporaries Fontaines D.C. or the Murder Capital.

Ignorance is a serious album about serious things, wrapped up in lush music that doesn’t mask the urgency Lindeman feels. Earlier Weather Station records had a tendency to slip into the background. This one forces you to pay attention.

Ingenuity and sincerity (two things in which Hayes excels) are priceless, and the sum of the parts is quite a masterpiece indeed.

The sound blooms; Tiger’s Blood is the most polished of Crutchfield’s albums to date.

Last Exit is a truly excellent album, one of the best of 2004 so far. But what is truly exciting is the promise Last Exit holds for the future – for that of the Junior Boys themselves and the countless others it is sure to inspire.

It's not a return to form so much as a complete reinvention, this is an album that highlights a particularly buoyant Animal Collective, one that’s managed to expand their sound in surprising ways while still retaining the same basic creative impulses that made them such a joy to watch develop over the past decade

A balls-out, hateful, heavy, and catchy piece of work that rocks like it was 1994 all over again.

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

Five years on, We Are Monster finds Raijko Muller so confident and articulate that Rest comes off in comparison like a set of hastily scrawled clutch notes.

To put it simply, Ali and Toumani is a quiet, intimate, timeless record; a transcendent expression of cultural pride, deep friendship, and above all, breath-taking musical colloquy.

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

You can really feel that extra decade-plus in the structures, songwriting, and sonics of All Hell, but the polish and compositional sophistication here don’t belie a lack of fire.

Even after listening to this album on repeat for the past month or so, it still feels like there’s plenty of corners to explore and riches to uncover.

The Metallica-aping opening riff and punching electronics-assisted kick of the title-track tell of new territory setting you up for something much larger-sounding than any of the previous three records, but that’s aided by a refined, popcentric approach.

Heavy stuff, but the music is often not. Cuts like “Erghad Afewo” keen and wail ecstatically, the eerie vocals taking you to other, more triumphant places, the insistent rhythms urging your feet and butt to move. A Tinariwen concert is always a celebration, and since we won’t have access to that, the transporting joys of Hoggar will have to do for now.

There’s a Dream I’ve Been Saving is an engrossing 107 song compilation of weird artistry that panders to all the trends of its era, that being 1966-1971.

McCraven lays down a lush musical backdrop that allows Scott-Heron’s words to have emotional impact.

So when I say that Yours, Mine & Ours sounds too good to be true, I'm resolved after much deliberation that this is an entirely positive thing: it is impeccably conceived, executed, and produced.

On Chutes, Mercer’s voice is singing right next to you, and the change works wonders.

The band, headed by guitarist and singer/songwriter Aaron Dowdy, has never sounded better, marshaling a wall of rustic sound built of three guitars (one pedal steel), a bass, fiddle, piano and drums. These are desolate tales set in dying communities, sung in a vibrato-tinged tenor with a little bit of cry in it. Yet the mood is never wholly dark, since the arrangements are triumphant and even the direst lyrical scenarios are buoyed by connection and community.

Three full studio albums into their reinvigorated latest phase, and Swans’ ability to surprise remains as potent as ever To Be Kind might just be the most startling and uncompromising of the trio, although these qualities take time to unveil themselves.

Essentially, the Brians don't really need to innovate that much anymore and instead are just fine-tuning their craft in glorious ways.

Working almost like a glorified mixtape, many of the tracks bleed together or start mid-scene with field recordings of corner action. It adds to the feeling that you’ve dropped in on something important.

Newsom is, obviously, not the first musician to get technically better at what she does while we’re looking on, and not the first, either, to elicit a twinge of regret from listeners who liked the rawer, wilder beginnings.... Divers hides its sting not in an unusual voice, but in its lyrical and musical complexity, and it’s a good trade after all.

While it is undeniably a good record, reaching into the stratosphere of excellence at points, Ejstes' overall modus operandi seems more akin to outright homage at times than any sort of exploration of the means and methods of vintage '70s rock and its application in a modern context.

Magnificently noisy in some places, forebodingly quiet in others and at all times distended from full cognizance, Dream Weapon is a balanced, well executed step firmly away from Genghis Tron’s former selves. Call it their Year Zero.

Though there’s no question that this is a wrenching record, Gibbons and co-producer James Ford have rendered a three-dimensional listening experience that is as immersive as it is forbidding.

He may not voice things like Ellington would have, but it doesn't matter. It could never stop, as far as I'm concerned.

Much like BC,NR’s magnificent Ants From Up There, the album feels like several potential closers have been strung together during the album’s final stretch, which could have been trimmed a little to maximize the impact of what’s left. Nevertheless, this is an extremely colorful, fun and addictive record that showcases the enviable talents of a young band with a bright future.

My Light My Destroyer is a transformational record for Jenkins. However daunting the path forward may seem, she has a lot to say as she overcomes successive challenges.

There's a wider range of styles and sounds here, from dramatic shoegazer epics to the closest they've ever gotten to straight-ahead rock. Not everything gels solidly, and there are some awkward moments, but no real stumbles.

Easy on the ears, Film Music’s approachable offerings are compounded by the high recording quality, new transfers made from original half-inch tapes in the Tariverdiev family’s Moscow apartment.

Doing retro soul without sounding redundant remains a challenge, but the Caldwells sound fresh, mainly because they sound so energized at every moment. Even when “Don’t You Hear Me Calling” drops the tempo way down, the group maintains its passion while locking into its message.

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.

Le Bon’s production approach has shifted her musical universe far from the brittle, guitar-driven sounds of earlier, post-punk indebted records like Crab Day (2016) towards a distinctive sound that seems to reach backwards and forwards simultaneously. This feeling of being held in suspension characterizes many of Michelangelo Dying’s most affecting moments.

The result of this multi-layered synergy, and what helps separate it from its soulless similars, is a record that is all at once satisfyingly complex, but also invitingly warm.

It's tempting to spend hours excavating metaphors and translating references on a record this complex and interesting, but Destroyer's Rubies also works well as pop.

The most cohesive LP in at least five years and its darkest, most urgent, most intense work to date.

Granted, there will be some that cling to the lo-fi eccentricities of that debut, but while Oh Me Oh My... may have won him heaps of critical praise, Rejoicing in the Hands is the album that backs it all up.

On the whole Basement is noisy and rough, and often sounds more like the best record Heatmiser never made than the next Elliott Smith album.

This is a Red Bull of an album, a total kick in short bursts but likely a strain on your heart in larger doses.

The doomed romance, the ragged heartful-ness, the underlying shimmer of cleverness, that’s one element that makes Lenderman’s fourth full-length studio album so special. The other is the wrecking ball arrangements, that turn loose squalls of feedback addled electric guitar amid hazy swoons of strings. .... It never feels like Lenderman is trying to[o] hard. It’s like it’s all natural, all heartfelt, all direct from him to you, except it’s not. It’s more interesting than that.

I can sense that there's something pretty great going on and even briefly catch glimpses of it. But as an experience, it's a little bit maddening, and eventually I'll want to throw away the glasses and pick up a book.

A musical tour-de-force, and probably Sleater-Kinney’s best album to date.... If it lacks the immediate appeal and accessibility of One Beat or All Hands on the Bad One, it feels more mature and meaningful than either.

It’s that rare record that’s equal parts innovation and familiarity, or what one might refer to as a perfectly designed and executed experiment in indie aesthetics.

Monoliths and Dimensions is a bold step forward and bodes well for Sunn 0)))’s future relevance as not just musicians, but honest-to-god composers.

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.

Their pithy discography--a kind of ur-record of indie-pop, ripped off knowingly and unknowingly--is part of their magic.

The Bad Seeds have not made a record this ambitious, well, ever, and the results are rewarding, thoughtful and challenging.

You get the impression that the artist is truly a giving soul, even if his gift is in the form of an emotionally wrenching, uncomfortably confessional record.

I'd be surprised if anybody, in any field, drops something this potent in the next nine months.

If the first third of the record was maybe a modernized version of County Records, and the middle third was Windham Hill, the final third is decidedly ECM territory, fusion with a folk twist, because that fingerstyle mastery is omnipresent. Hearing Williams’ fuzzed out lead on “Dream Lake” will send chills down your spine, it is completely inspirational musicianship.

The most surprising aspect of DNWMIBIY is that for a double album, the quality control is high and the sequencing is especially effective. ... In the meantime, DNWMIBIY is the first album to join my best of 2022 list.

What's more remarkable than her fascinating biography is her bold music. Like her life story, there's hardly anything like it.

It’s heavy in concept but sprightly and reverential in its execution, its hallucinatory breadth reminiscent of the outre jazz of Sun Ra and the wily funk of Parliament, of mid-’70s Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock.

If the Sadies had set out to make a final statement—and let’s be clear, they did not—they could hardly have done better than Colder Streams, a swirling, trippy summation of their journey so far. ... The whole album is great.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a quiet album that will tell you about the succession of small, resonant moments that make up a day, a month, a life. Sit still for that, soak it in and let it breathe, and you start to see the glow behind the ordinary, not just in Callahan’s album, but in the world itself.

Not only is Ilana Moctar’s best record, it’s also one of the best Saharan records to reach Western ears, and an early contender for the most exhilarating rock record of 2019.