Despite a few good moments, this isn’t a record where you feel rewarded by sitting down and sitting through the whole thing. Let’s hope that next time they exercise a little more discipline in putting together a finished record.

The result is an album that can stand easily with Slowdive’s other heights and that manages the extremely tricky feat of sounding like the band that fans love and missed while at the same time marking a new step forward. The

Jurado’s records are always slow burners, but this minimalist one takes an especially long time to catch fire. It sounds like less than it is for half a dozen spins and then suddenly rears up, fully-formed and out of hiding. It may not be as mesmerizing as the Richard Swift triad, but The Monster That Hated Pennsylvania is its own odd, quiet, disconcerting triumph.

Whatever a given listener’s quibbles or preferences around the two versions of the album, there’s another thing that points to a core truth about Terror Twilight: both versions still ultimately sound pretty damn good.

I Know I’m Funny Haha is not so very different from this last album from Webster, but it feels more assured and confident, and the subject matter is more upbeat.

Black Times succeeds on its own terms and not as an artifact.

Honeys, like Hope for Men, has some dead spots in the middle, but this time it doesn’t lessen the impact of the whole record, or the underlying fear of sinking back into office park anonymity.

An album of pristine folk-pop backed by whispery wall-of-sound back-up vocals, crisp guitar figures, and some of the best pop songwriting this side of the Shins.

at you have here is the exact opposite of a period piece: it's new but it feels old, it's here but it's nowhere, it's now but it's forever. Whatever, wherever, and whenever it is, though, it's lovely.

Nothing terribly exciting here, but as it comes from a guy who made his bones as one of the most genuinely fucked-up-sounding people in music, it may be a welcome relief to hear him act like an adult.

There are innovative and fresh beats and voices, and the record rarely falters.

The patient deployment of new resources is one of Rotations’ greatest strengths.

The result is a collection that transports you to place and time you’d probably never get to otherwise, rocks your body, feeds your curiosity and makes you feel at home. Well done, I’d say.

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.

Raspberry Moon is continuing evidence that instead of Swervedriver, we should be thinking of Semisonic. And as any good karaoke night out can confirm decades on from a release, there’s no shame in embracing the earworm. Right now, few rock bands are better equipped to offer one.

Grey Tickles and Black Pressure is furiously funny, intelligent and confrontational even as it heads to an upbeat ending.

Michael Chapman’s songs are gorgeous, dark-tone places, full of the work of musical collaboration, but also haunted and spare. Lovely stuff.

It’s an eminently listenable album, but there’s no need for unchecked evangelism. Just enjoy the damn thing.

If metal evokes power, and punk evokes weakness, this record is a dive down a well of powerlessness, sinking deeper than they’ve gone before. It goes down swinging blades.

For those, like me, who previously dismissed Aloe Blacc, Good Things warrants our reconsideration. Blacc's changed his tune. We probably should, too

As pleasant as Gunn is a guitarist, he’s an equally low-key vocalist, his flat delivery and barbiturate baritone unobtrusive and lackadaisical — just kind of there, often, buried slightly beneath Trucinski’s and well below his own gently spiraling guitar in the mix. It’s kind of a shame, actually, as Gunn’s Impressionist vignettes are quite interesting on close listen, showcasing Gunn’s marked maturity as a songwriter.

Callahan can give us no answers. But some of us find the struggle, the ride, much more interesting when the answers are lacking.

Xe is a refreshing glimpse of a band captured in its most primordial state, and for all their clinical musical intellectualism, the album also offers snippets of Zs’ odd sense of humour, not to mention each player’s unique talents and virtuosity.

Sylva might be Snarky Puppy’s most conceptually complicated album, but it’s easily penetrable as a listen. The album could make more demands and it isn’t as stunning in its individual moments as previous recordings, but those ideas would resist League’s compositional intent.

Piteous Gate is an absorbing listen front to back.

It’s the earnest balance Morris strikes between brokenness and openness--his willingness to savor the condition of being broken open--that makes the experience of this music so deeply sustaining.

The tunes tend to unfold at mid-tempo and with the logic of a short story as, once more, Jones composes and performs, with seeming effortlessness, a set of memorable melodies that reward repeated listening.

A Trip to Bolatanga is on strong ground. The combination of nyabinghi hand drumming, booming kick drum, funky guitar, house-ready piano accents and bobbing clarinet on “Accra Electronica” sounding simultaneously of this time and timeless, and there’s no denying the beats’ substantial bang, which both demands and rewards volume deals.