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.