Virginia Wing pack a lot into their pop songs. Glowing hooks and nagging phrases continually draw you in.

They have earned, through the force of their creativity and sweat, access to new places and social spaces. But even as some of their songs explore what’s newly possible in those spaces, the Mods remain deeply interested in the places from which they came.

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.

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.

Once The Blue of Distance recedes into silence, there’s a distinct sense of time having been gently bent to Saxl’s will. The album feels simultaneously long and short, fast and slow — it’s all of these things at once, forming elegant waves that wash over you.

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.

There may be an idea at the center of the record, but it’s overwhelmed by the sheer visceral quality of the songs. You listen and your guts shake. The whole room seems to shake. One is reminded of a clause the Body have quoted from Hrabal’s foreboding writing: “my whole room hurts.” If that’s akin to the affect the Body are seeking, they have succeeded.

Yorkston’s collaboration with the Second Hand Orchestra seems especially fruitful, giving him a jolt, shake them out of his usual tricks and proclivities and opening up new possibilities. If the stories don’t quite scan, the musical more than makes up for it, carrying you past the sense of this music into a restless, moving, non-verbal understanding of what the artists are going for.

It is fractious and difficult and thorny, as always, the rhythms knocked sideways, the parts jutting out at each other in angular, assertive ways. But the singing soothes the rough edges and complicates the punk narrative, weaving a buzzing radiance over minimalist grooves.

The players are so good that even their sketches make for engaging listening. And two songs on the EP are quite good.

The back and forth between playful, pogo-friendly post-punk (“March Day,” “Great Dog”) and more sober and sonically adventurous indie/noise-rock (“Human, for a Minute,” “6/1”) carries Drunk Tank Pink forward with a sense of abandon, while also taking a reflective look back at the carnage such abandon has wrought.

Martin and Chen create a world of liminal spaces on In Blue, the invitation to share them is persuasive and rewards are many. The Bug is a mercurial but known entity, his work always impressive, his choice of collaborators telling and Dis Fig shines in this setting. Hers is a voice and a vision you’ll want to hear more from.

The results are as you might expect from the album title: playful, wide-eyed and occasionally chaotic explorations of intense forces that reach above and beyond human dimensions.

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

For a songwriter who packs so much into his creations, it’s no surprise that Mercer makes it hard to get a full measure of 5 Dreams’ narrative gist, even after multiple listens. Approach these songs however you choose, and they’re sure to shift evasively, compelling you to follow.

Throughout all of this, Nace’s innate instincts as an improviser couple effectively with Crain’s production mastery resulting in a release that stands apart, while fitting in perfectly with the guitarist’s broad body of work.

Foothills further distills this soft-focus, rueful vision, purifies it and delivers exactly what you expect from this band, only a little prettier and more touching than the last time.

What To Look For In Summer is a terrific career spanning selection of some of their most loved songs the performances of which give lie to the common wisdom about a bunch of fey, romantically challenged, wallflowers. If anoraks just wanna have fun we could do far worse than spending 100 minutes with Stuart Murdoch and company.

Amiable adaptability is a constant across the three concerts. Fidelity is conversely variable, but improved bootleg editions of the material and always listenable.

Despite the intricacy, the provocative joining of primitive and futuristic, you’re left with both too much and too little. The tracks run on for over an hour in their skeletal, restrained way. There’s not so much to think about, and a long time to do it in.

2020 is an album that is always making and unmaking itself, dissolving its constituent parts into radiant pools of slush, then rallying them into tangible structures, then letting them collapse again. Being, becoming, nothingness, it’s all in there.

Dorji’s playing exudes a confidence that doesn’t rely solely upon volume or muscularity. Years of pitching himself headlong into musical situations have cultivated his ability to develop a piece of music on the fly, using rhythmic variations to make the listener feel like they had better hang on tight, and spinning intricate elaborations upon an idea until nothing seems to exist besides the shudder and vibration of steel strings and wood.

The songs are fine, the lyrics are striking, but there’s nothing to break your heart.

In short, they pay the best kind of respect to material they love, finding a way to live inside it and change it and make it breathe.

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.

Using simple piano motifs and minor key strings augmented with electronics and voice, some kind of peace is an album of delicate beauty. It is beguiling in the way it shifts focus between the general and specific.

The track [“A Study in Vastness”] initiates a string of four pretty flawless songs at the heart of this album that do very little very well. Single ideas unfurl across five, six, seven minutes at a time, never feeling like they need to go anywhere other than patiently exploring exactly where they are.

The music is simple, but not easy, adorned with intricate picking that cascades over itself like a waterfall. The lyrics feel like really good haiku, pithy, made of small words, but evoking wonderfully precise natural images. It’s a good album for being alone somewhere calm and beautiful, not engaged with the world but not cut off either and enjoying the quiet.