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

This is a wonderful album keeps its tender heart up close and its ravaged noise at a remove, but both of them are beautiful.

This second Quade album is lovely and strange, fed by crystalline streams of rustic sound but not limited to them, and indeed, reaching into post-rock and symphonic art rock with its haunted melodies.

Hval is unafraid to experiment and let the chips fall where they may. The results on Iris Silver Mist are variable but always intriguing.

One of Deerhoof’s finest albums, something we should have been prepared for, even this far into the rockers’ career.

The spell is strong enough that you can’t help but follow.

Moor Mother and SUMAC are all adept improvisers, uncannily able to gather impulses and sounds that verge on chaos into aesthetic forms that feel saturated with meaning and intent.

You might flash back to 1990s Primal Scream or the Madchester grooves of a couple years prior, to certain Spiritualized cuts or even, in the flurry of woodwinds, a bit of Sun Ra. It’s quite good if you can get beyond wishing it were really Clinic. It’s maybe the next best thing.

Some feature Morteza Rezâei on dohool (cylinder drum). Heydarian’s playing is so full and out front in the mix that it is difficult to distinguish the two instruments, though sometimes, as on “Nishtemân,” their interplay is heard clearly and to great effect. The longish tracks, ranging from four to 11 minutes, give Heydarian ample space to develop his ideas.

There are still songs here with all the hallmarks of a classic Sandwell cut (“Self-Initiate” thumps mercilessly with its UFO synth pulses and “Restless” could slip right in the middle of a live set), but they are the exception rather than the rule.

These songs come on strong, and if you’re not in the mood may seem to push a bit too hard. But when was too much ever a bad thing? The best way to interact with Wasteland is to let its music roll in like a tidal surge and sweep you under, coming up gasping when it’s done.

While I liked it immediately, it took a long time to settle on favorite tracks; there are no obvious bangers. Still settle in, and it’s like having coffee with an old friend, familiar but occasionally surprising, kind but full of raucous humor and very, very real.

The album’s consistent tempo and tone end up making Jellywish feel strangely longer than its concise 34-minute runtime. But, when the band cuts loose a little, such as the lead guitar breaks on “This Was A Gift” and “All the Same Light,” it’s tantalizing to imagine where Jellywish may have ventured given more of a loose rein and a sense of adventure.

Holley finds the direct line between his own, relatively recent suffering and the longer narrative of black people in America. Funky, percussion driven “We Was Kings in the Jungle, Slaves in the Field,” is one of the album’s best cuts, rumbling forward on syncopated drumming, fired by blares of brass and winds, lit by ghostly patterns of marimba.

Stirring stuff.

Ishibashi arrives at points of repose on “Nothing As” and the closing title track, leaving behind the more challenging arrangements to focus on piano and a yearning vocal melody. It’s these moments of immediacy and unassuming beauty that leave the strongest impression.

The spareness of the arrangements give these cuts an astonishing emotional directness. .... It quiets the clatter and stills the swell around one of Africa’s most beautiful voices and allows us to experience the spectral essence of this extraordinary artist straight on.

It’s confident, focused, and consistently strong enough that it feels like the right place for newcomers to start paying attention.

The songs may not fit into pre-existing boxes, but they work very well on their own terms, whether in the pounding, galloping “Crying Game” (a Laughing Clowns tune), the loose-jointed but lyrical “Ruins” (which hails from Kuepper’s 2015 solo album Lost Cities) or the off-kilter anthemry of “Demolition” (from the 2013 solo record Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog).

The band, headed by guitarist and singer/songwriter Aaron Dowdy, has never sounded better, marshaling a wall of rustic sound built of three guitars (one pedal steel), a bass, fiddle, piano and drums. These are desolate tales set in dying communities, sung in a vibrato-tinged tenor with a little bit of cry in it. Yet the mood is never wholly dark, since the arrangements are triumphant and even the direst lyrical scenarios are buoyed by connection and community.

Doing retro soul without sounding redundant remains a challenge, but the Caldwells sound fresh, mainly because they sound so energized at every moment. Even when “Don’t You Hear Me Calling” drops the tempo way down, the group maintains its passion while locking into its message.

The quality of the songwriting hasn’t diminished, but the setting has changed.

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.

Ultimately, the songs have a provisional quality, provocatively lovely but elusive and unfinished. If you love shoegaze or the Drop Nineteens or both, though, this is well worth checking out.

Downstate is far more varied [than 2023's Upstate] and the songs make their point and get on with it — a definite improvement.

Universe Room may not be the best of recent recordings by the band, but it is certainly a wide reaching addition to their catalog.

Not groundbreaking, but it sounds great. And yet, these time-tested, still electrifying punk rock torch songs have been neutered somewhat here. The performances are professional, perfectly calibrated, even virtuosic.

The Purple Bird, recorded in Nashville, is one of his most committed forays into the genre — musically of a piece with the rich, twinkling chops of previous releases like Greatest Palace Music and The Best Troubadour.