Shaking Hand demonstrate a cleverness with the reins, balancing looseness and restraint. This is typically found in long-tenured outfits; it’s hard to believe this is their first record.

Having the backstory on Walker’s path to sobriety isn’t necessary to appreciate Course In Fable. There’s enough allure in Walker and guitarist Bill MacKay’s elaborate latticework of glazed melodies and modal chords that call to mind McEntire’s other band The Sea and Cake, and how drummer Ryan Jewell floats through it all with loose, jazzy flourishes.

This two-disc set capture the duo in full-psyched out freak mode, 18 tracks of spiraling, tightly harmonized, punchily played guitar pop that the two brothers have been holding onto since COVID bollixed up a post-Beyond the Door tour in 2020.

At the end, S-M is still a silly tribute band, years away from hoeing a unique row. But when musicians crank out such a joyously chaotic mess of someone else’s forced nostalgia, it’s hard to be mad at them.

Here on this fourth Cairo Gang album, Kelley works in full-blooded, freak-beated 1960s garage mode--and damn if the change-up doesn’t suit him.

There’s a good deal of spoken word on this album, the sort of poetry that’s meant to inspire but seems a little overblown. It’s part of the genre, obviously, and it gets swallowed, soon enough, by groove. But you have to stick with it through the flute-scented rites of “First Peoples,” the downtempo intro to “Re-Memory” to get to the music. I could do without it, personally. The music, though, is pretty great.

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 music offered here constitutes the expected fluid mixture of rhetoric and instrumentation.

The wild humor and slash-and-burn methodology of Comets on Fire have outlived any pretense to trend; Blue Cathedral makes a strong case for the permanent re-emergence of undiluted psychedelic rock.

Keeping Secrets feels like, itself, a bit of a hidden gem, murmured at you rather than shouted, a quiet one but a grower.

The recording’s sessions were done in a few days, and the final product retains a fetching immediacy and intimacy. A fundamental lightness of affect pervades the recording, even when it delves into heavy or sad topics.

The most disarming thing El-P's got going for him is his ability to sound like he's broadcasting from an impossible future even while he's standing right next to you in the present.

The orchestra’s nearly perfect. Cline’s selections are non-traditional but trustworthy and intelligent. The album keeps a persistent mood even as it reflects on the mood. But 80 minutes of it requires patient listening, and there aren’t enough moments to really grab here.

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.

Razorwire-sharp and reflexive, Eton Alive sees Sleaford Mods knowingly take the existential dare once more, and mostly win.

With Forgotten Days, the band don’t so much extend the sprawling prog-laced epics of the previous album as blend them into tighter, more direct tunes that feel very appropriate for the moods of this long, fractious year: at times ornery, restless and deeply sorrowful.

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.

It feels like Bejar's comfortable with himself – relaxed even – and that feeling saturates the entire album. It's a confidence that makes Kaputt the best Destroyer album in ages.

A schizophrenic palate of honeyed soul, downbeat electrix, timeless hip hop and bare-knuckle beats, these 31 tracks (spread over 44 minutes) are packed with triple the hooks – and suffer from attention deficit disorder (to the listener’s benefit).

The result is a strong collection of the sort of rock songs at which No Age excels: swiftly paced, inventively layered and riffy, simultaneously caustic and gauzy.

The album is lovely. The band as currently constituted has chops, and mixes highly polished songwriting and arrangements with select extemporizations.

Here his final collection of songs is both grand and ghostly, sweeping and solitary, and you do not have to know how the story ends to sense a profound melancholy.

The Imperial [is] a pleasure to hear. Sonically, the dark, rich timbres of The Imperial are as wallow-worthy and voluptuous as bar-light or certain kinds of sadness. Like the assuredly crappy hotel from which it takes its name, The Imperial is too run through with exhaustion to want to spend a lot of time with, but it’s perfect for retreating into when you can’t feel right about anything.

An instant classic. Few records contemplate such grandeur and fewer still achieve it.

5 is Town and Country's most beautiful, flawless actualization of the goals they’ve been working towards since 1998, and paradoxically, a near-complete rethinking of them, as well.

On Our Endless Numbered Days Beam feels some pressure to subtly expand his repertoire, but the swampy blues of tracks like “Teeth In The Grass” and particularly “Free Until They Cut Me Down” interrupt the aforementioned mood like unwelcome hiccups.

The narrator’s desire for transformation reveals a hopeful, but tenuous ending to an emotionally fraught and musically ironclad journey. One wishes more concept albums were so authentic.

Not entirely dissimilar to their previous efforts, but it features the duo tweaking their sound in subtle ways that make for an affecting, if not drastic, tangent.