With Shaw’s vocals as the pivot, Dowse, Maynard and Buxton flex, weave and dance around her, resulting in a nuanced listen that extends the band way beyond their pigeonhole of “post-punk.” Hard to pinpoint where Dry Cleaning belong now, which can only be a good thing.

Hell-On is Case’s most idiosyncratic album, but it’s also her most generous and grounded. It is her strongest--as in it projects strength, the kind that comes with vulnerability.

Ys is one of those rare sophomore albums that shatters exceedingly high expectations.

The personal songs, about Choi’s dissatisfactory early education and immigrant family, have a whiff of mythic American meta-story, while the historical ones are deeply felt and eccentric.

“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.

This is a memory album that is touched with love but almost entirely free of cheap nostalgia. It comes from a long way away, using everything Dacus has learned since to capture her experiences clearly, with art but without too much ornamentation.

The Comeback Kid, is full of shimmering, ultra fanciful castles of guitar-based sound, but it’s also kind of an experimental pop gem, like Deerhoof after a month of Guitar Hero or like OOIOO any time, really.

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.

Now, 17 years removed from the original stateside release of the band’s music, this expanded reissue (buttressed with an additional disc of decent live tracks and a few cool demos) gives an entirely new generation of pop fans an excuse to dive into the group’s music.

Clattering drum machines and gorgeous washes of tone are topped off by a standout vocal turn that carries the album off into the clouds, a searingly emotional purge and soothing balm all rolled in one.

The more Clark edits, the more she refines, the stronger St. Vincent becomes. At this point, it's just a matter of consistency.

One Beat joins the likes of Fugazi's In On the Killtaker and Bikini Kill's Reject All American for its impassioned new-world resistance, and could very well be the greatest triumph of punk independence since Black Flag.

Even if it fails to meet impossibly high expectations, The Harrow & The Harvest offers a handful of keepers while moving Welch and Rawlings (hopefully) past their writers' block.

Thoroughly satisfying in sum, Hart and crew still succeed in leaving the listener desirous of more.

It’s the wholeness of his style that is so arresting.

These songs make no concessions to your serenity. They are prickly and aggressive and a-melodic. In a world geared towards bland, uneventful spotify-core, Mating Surfaces grabs you by the short hairs and shakes you. It will not be entirely pleasant, but it is absolutely necessary.

Fireraiser Forever! is an often galvanizing collection. Feck and Evans cast an acerbic but humane look at contemporary life and the band is in fine form. Their indie garage sound is nothing new but fans of this kind of scrappy raw sound will find plenty to like.

Overall, High Violet feels more like a protecting-the-franchise record than a new phase in the National's sound. And yet, even so, a handful of its songs rank with the band's very best.

That Vashti Bunyan had the courage to step out of seclusion and follow up her classic debut is admirable. That she was able to do so with an excellent batch of songs is a joy to behold, pure and simple.

You’ll never hear the same thing twice in listening to Levon Vincent. Akin to the highlights of his past discography, something in the mixes of these songs jumps out to grab you by the throat, then gradually retreats as other elements subtly work their way to the fore of your consciousness.

Before Today accomplishes exactly the same thing all his other good records do, so I’m not sure it does much for me that, say, House Arrest didn’t. Nonetheless, it’s still one of his better records--there are some excellent pop songs here, and it’s a good place to start for listeners who are unfamiliar with Pink’s bizarre schtick.

This is wonderful stuff, both as pure entertainment and a document of a vanished era.

Occasionally, it feels like there’s a manipulation going on somewhere, a cloud of hype that obscures both the band’s actual virtues and its shortcomings.

The attraction that already existed between Xasthur’s music and Mount Eerie’s exerted a strong enough force on Elverum that it became incorporated into him.

Fantasy Empire’s production values keep some of this internal resistance in check, and the album’s relatively linear songwriting does the rest, with much of the record proceeding at a pretty steady gallop, without too many wrinkles or games of musical tug of war.

The trio skilfully carries the track ["Fyra"], and the record, towards a gentle dissolve into the clouds as the drums fade out entirely, leaving the dulcet bass and guitar tones to play off one another in the closing moments. Sublime.

Arab Strap chronicle all the joys we seek and the catastrophes we make on what could well be their finest and most complete record. As Days Get Dark is a sordid, mordant, tender triumph.

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.