The songwriting [on 2019's Weeping Choir] found increasingly complex ways to channel the band’s inexhaustible energy and potent sonic outrage. Garden of Burning Apparitions forges further along that general trajectory, but this new record also bares the band’s turbulent, tumultuous teeth with renewed ferocity. It’s pretty great.

Minor quibble aside, Warm Chris is a fantastic record full of color, humor and wonder.

Watson captures (or enhances) sounds in three dimensions, and the way he arranges them invites both immersion and reflection.

Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is neither an easy, nor comforting listening, and absorbing the entire album can occasionally leave the listener gasping for air. However, as a portrait of a dystopian 21st century musical landscape, there is little better than this brand of pure British blackness.

If Oh Me Oh My is Banhart’s most fantastic record and Rejoicing In The Hands his most focused, Nino Rojo is the singer at his most inclusive.

Whether it’s the soaring psychedelia of “Paper Fog” and “Pigs,” the more straightforwardly folky “Bird of Paradise” and “Vegas Knights,” or even the delayed fuzz-guitar squall of “Another Story From the Center of the Earth,” the pedal steel is there, and so is a songwriting sensibility that does feel very personal and emotionally powerful even though there’s not a lot of comprehensible narrative.

If you’re seeking a dose of danceable, retro futurist fun, Vanishing Twin are a good bet. Though far from original, Ookii Gekkou offers plenty of upbeat, colorful and likeable tunes.

While Carlson and company continue to explore new influences (much has been made over the band's recent declaration of affection for Pentangle and Fairport Convention), Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 sounds to me like a different manifestation of the same sound they've been exploring for some time now.

Regardless of the art-school pretentions offered up-front, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan deliver the goods.

It's full of complexity and contradictions, and trying to grasp it is impossible. But what a joy to attempt.

The music on Burning the Threshold is simply good--easy and reassuring, maybe, but masterful and in many places downright gorgeous, too.

Companion Rises is straight-down-the-middle Six Organs, not as loud and abrasive as the first Hexadic disc, not as reticently wisp-y as the older folk-derived records. It tucks its wilder, more distorted guitar forays into the interstices of verses, so that the steady jangle of acoustic guitar runs into tempestuous squalls of sound.

Parts of Litany were pretty but kind of dull, and The Glass Bead Game is similarly afflicted. Blackshaw’s easy development seems to have reached a plateau.

While Teenage Hate sits squarely in the flamey-shirt scene of the '90s, even the greaser version of Jay knew how to bust up cliches.

You can’t hear Signals without hearing modern London.

And this one, too, is as sardonic and soulful, as hilariously outraged and superbly tuneful as any rock-pop record you’ll hear in 2018.

Success is a fine example of Oneida’s willingness to fly in the face of fashion and once again reinvent themselves.

Thee Oh Sees continue to mutate in fascinating ways.

Now Only is a messy record, brimming with musical ideas that often drop out before resolving, and with lyrics so factual as to sometimes verge on dull. But in the name of progress, this messiness feels hard-won. You can learn from death, and Elverum proves again that you can make art from it.

The album certainly leaves you with a sense of dislocation and déjà vu, as if hearing musical avenues open, meander deliciously, then abruptly slam shut. It’s disorientating, surprising, at times deeply funky, and often very beautiful.

Parquet Courts needs an extra injection of grandiosity (as 2014’s towering “Instant Disassembly”) when they slow things down, and they don’t always provide it on the songs that need it the most.

Even incoherent and excessively long, Frozen Niagara Falls shows that, like John Wiese with his recent--and more rewarding--masterpiece Deviate From Balance, Fernow is pulling apart the clichés of noise and looking at where it goes from here.

To anyone enamored with the effortless elegance of Loma’s debut, some of Don’t Shy Away’s more adventurous and synth-heavy production may feel a little jarring. However, surrender to the album’s luscious sound design, emotive vocal performances and smart narrative arc and it can be just as intoxicating. As far as front-to-back album listening experiences go, it’s among the year’s best.

It doesn’t hurt that they’ve made their most pleasing record yet. It’s slick but not stupid, the results of a traditional rock band working closely with a producer of electronic music, one which merges the clean lines of dance music with the grandeur of a crack studio band well-heeled in ’70s pop and ’90s indie rock.

8,000,000 Stories provides ample room for the duo to connect and shine, and showcase Blueprint in his brilliant role as narrator.

You Are Free almost has two disparate styles, and that would be the criticism here. Yet that's the result of her particular mania: stand up, shout then quickly retreat to your seat and hide your face.

Arkhon is a distinctive and consistently winning album. It is a departure, but one that still manages to be an addition to Danilova’s catalogue that complements her other releases. Some of the best singles of 2022 reside here.

It’s a record by a mature band, setting itself to a serious task. The fact that it’s so effective--that Our Raw Heart can move you from one mood to another, and leave you feeling larger--is testament to the earnestness of their art.