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

The fact that Untouchable gets in and gets out in a little over a half hour adds to its classic rock ’n’ roll charms--the accomplished playing, engaging production and dizzying variety of mid-tempo reveries, adolescent rushes and inconsolable ballads boosting its overall appeal.

Seems like an uninspired continuation of last year’s Tomorrow Right Now.

Though much of Dilla’s later works were quick jots, Jay Stay Paid sounds too much like the unrevised pages of a journal.

Logos opens a portal through which its artist tells us something about who he is, and though this is not everything, it is enough.

Far from being liabilities, such disparate moments help define If… for the better: as a work that frolics in different directions without losing control or coherence.

Matmos have created a digital manifestation of their own personality, one that would be done more justice through psychoanalysis than musical description.

The result is a record is suffused with grief without ever drowning in it (or, for the most part, addressing it directly in the lyrics even when you can parse them out).

The roughness, the edgy vocals, the cacophonous guitars won’t be for everyone, but this set is a welcome window back through over 20 years of avant-rock.

The result is a melding of energies that is both fragilely beautiful and extraordinarily resilient.

He doesn’t always push far enough; the album’s best when we feel the tightwire of this experience rather than when we suspect an agnostic at play. Religious language and transcendent experience (secular or sacred, if we divide them) come loaded with danger. The more Morby pushes into that space and the more he asks of the listener, the deeper the experience.

Ethos is a different and a more complex matter. If you put out your own records and sing about leftist issues, does that make you punk? Maybe they’re trying to do something more essential, to find a version of rock that’s conscious of its History at that same time that it grounds us in the Now. Sheer Mag’s songs do that, again and again. And you’ll want to listen to them, again and again.

Out of Range is serene and difficult, trippy and literate, loosely countrified and footnote-ably dense and referential, a zone-out record with a library card. Not many albums simultaneously slow down your pulse rate and rev up your brain, but this one does.

At 44 minutes, Life, and Another is lengthy compared to many new albums, but its 16 diverse tracks all earn their inclusion, each piece of the tapestry finely crafted and lovingly stitched into place. Few albums released so far this year have felt quite so magical and transportive, carried along by a mischievous dream-like narrative.

It isn’t always as loud or as exultant as her band’s output, but it is rivetingly intense, whether at full rock strength, in dance-ish, trance-ish electronic mode or at a whisper backed by a small orchestra. ... The album is simply what it is, take it or leave it, but take it. It’s magnificent.

The soundtrack is a continual blurring of boundaries. It is semi-static throughout, like much of Faure’s Requiem, severely troubled even beneath seemingly placid surfaces. This renders those points of eruption and cataclysm exponentially more powerful.

“Fences” is a fine arrangement, with layered backing vocals and keyboards. While Houck often hews close to indie-rock, one of the best songs on Revelator is “All the Same,” a traditional sounding country ballad with pedal steel and a beery vocal. “Impossible House” also channels country of a more recent sort, and Houck’s often understated singing takes on a sense of urgency.

The second disc, the one with the covers, is a revelation of sorts. ... Not all of the covers add as much to the material, but there’s lots to admire in Courtney Barnett and Vagabond’s raw-boned “Don’t Do It,” and Big Red Machine’s rushing, blues-twanging, falsetto’d version of “A Crime.” One of the best, though, for its sheer audacity and difference from the source, is IDLES’ take on “Peace Signs.”

With Be Still Please... McCaughan weaves threads from all past Portastatic incarnations into one happy-sad tapestry.

A monolith and a kaleidoscope of detail, Der Lange Marsch is a hypnotic adventure in which to lose oneself.

Snaith rips the rarefied sounds of modern pop from their established context and forms nonlinear compositions constantly in flux.

Fortunately, the huge elemental diversity on G&G is more spread out than on previous efforts, leaving breathing room and allowing each well-crafted sound to sink in.

On Dragonslayer, perhaps more so than any of their previous albums, Sunset Rubdown is able to create memorable, multi-part songs that stay engaging throughout and that don’t meander aimlessly.

To that end, the most interesting moments are the endings, and the most interesting song on a whole is the title-track that concludes the EP.

The layers of rhythm, voice and electronics here possess the ability to tell stories, just like the novel after which they're named, and out of their conjurings emerge atmospheres and melodies that will remain in your head.

The sections of ORO are turns utilitarian and incongruously beautiful.

At nearly two hours, these two discs are an embarrassment of riches for the 65daysofstatic devotee and most likely sufficient for anyone casually interested in the band behind No Man’s Sky.

The whole album feels like catharsis, as slow dirge-y openings give way to extended instrumental crescendo, as Zedek views from a position of calm, weathered experience, distance, the roil and mess and hurt of human existence.