Tangents’ post-everything mode of working is embracing rather than exclusionary; they don’t seem to be trying to shut off their music from all precedents and influences so much as creating such a rich blend (and with such talented performers) that the result creates something intoxicatingly new.

It affords Van Etten the space to really lean into the role of frontwoman, at times reaching into an almost operatic register. It’s a dramatic and unexpected new chapter for an artist who is rarely less than compelling.

The wide variation in music and the uneven results (all of it, perhaps, evidence of the record’s conceptual ambitions and smarts) prevent Dose Your Dreams from being a uniformly pleasurable record. But, man, is it full of ideas and aesthetic vitality.

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.

Game Theory turns out to be The Roots’ finest record to date.

While providing an exciting document of this stage of the band, We Rose From Your Bed… offers a tantalizing hint at what's to come.

It certainly makes for a more expansive work, but loses some of the immediacy that defined Stott’s music as recently as on Drop the Vowels.

Van Etten’s born-loser character could have been a bore were it not for her disciplined musicianship (her early years included classical music and multiple instruments) and her painful but enduring singing. It never stops sounding like real hurt.

Cotton Crown is built from the same raw materials as their debut but feels more fleet-footed and robustly constructed. The band have refined all the qualities of their addictive sound, and these nine songs fly by in half an hour, nary a moment wasted.

True to its title, Playing Favorites is still, despite the varied palette, obviously a Sheer Mag album and not without its share of more or less straightforward, beat-up-leather-jacket rockers. More or less, because even these often push the band’s sonic parameters.

Comradely Objects, is the band flexing at the peak of their powers.

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.

It's not as gratifyingly raw as 1983 or as paradigm-shifting as Los Angeles or as self-important as Cosmogramma, but it's more expansive and refined taken in one sitting.

While the overall sound here isn't exactly unrecognizable from the band on Leave Home, there's definitely way more going on in terms of range and risk-taking.

This is what jamming econo means to kids whose horizon isn't classic rock and hardcore, but grunge and post-hardcore. It sounds really good.

Their nearly ten-year core pivots rhythmic and tonal ideas athletically, and their ability to pull elements from anywhere and everywhere is seemingly more fluid with each record. With The Common Task, Horse Lords simultaneously stay within their own signature pocket and poach outside elements, expanding how large that pocket seems.

It’s austere, minimal, and starkly beautiful, but incorporates some of Hidden’s pounding rhythmic heft on “A Season in Hell” and “Wild Fields.”

The songs, hard and soft, fast and slow, seem better than ever. Lanegan may sound like he’s done everything there is to do, but he’s clearly not done pushing into new territories and getting better.

In forgoing the lifeblood of dynamic and passion, the creative minds behind the project fall to maximize its potential, however agreeable their compositions may be.

When the Mekons are operating at full strength, their music’s undeniable vitality is somehow in tune with the struggle and suffering they sing about. Not every song on Deserted achieves that level of intense commitment to an emotion or an idea. But most of the songs do, to menacing or to magisterial effects.

Like the last two Damien Jurado albums, this one takes a while to sink in, and it’s backloaded, so you have to get all the way through for the payoff. And yet, if you’ve taken the other two Maraqopa journeys, it is remarkable how this third installment augments and complements them.

With this revised version of the band, that role has evolved. There are more reflective pieces characterized by subdued piano accompaniment, and occasional touches that make the rock music distinctive.

Anderson is a skilled, idiosyncratic guitar player, but what sets Cloud Corner apart from the records of her skilled, idiosyncratic peers is that she hasn’t lost sight of the power of music to speak to the individual, not just about them. With their modest run times, understated playing, and emotional honesty, the pieces on Cloud Corner feel like they’re inviting you to share in, not just observe, their joy and grief.

Though he’s not in any hurry, he’s also showing no signs of slowing down. There are 11 songs on The Time of the Foxgloves, some jokily lighthearted (“Blondes and Redheads”), others hauntingly spare and beautiful (“Se Fue En Noche,” “Jacob’s Ladder”).

Callahan’s set may have erred on the heavy side of recent material (as much of this tour did), but he was even-handed in what he cut and ruthless in how he ordered what was left; only opener “First Bird” is left untouched in its original place. He would’ve been fine leaving the sequence as he played it, frankly, but Resuscitate! sharpens Callahan’s considerate cowboy demeanor even whilst songs expand in length and narrative moments stretch out in relatively small spaces, extending into stories that meander, convoluted and beautiful as any bedtime story.

Revelator is an exhausting listen in the best sense of the term. Skip at your own risk: Far from hip-hop homework, Elucid’s Revelator is a port of call in this storm, a howling document from the edge, muons in which we are all tomographers.

Orange is another worthy and replayable stack of oddball tunefulness.

This isn’t a case of trying to reinvent the wheel so much as it is reveling in just how very good you’ve gotten a making wheels in the first place.