Much of this record is quietly beautiful, and its laments gather weight with repeated listens.

Islet have lovingly crafted their own kaleidoscopic little world. It’s easy to step inside and get lost there for a while among the colorful flora and fauna.

The n’goni and Cheick Diallo’s flute indicate that Touré is going for a more pan-Malian sound; whether that matters to you or not, they give Alafia a more varied sound that its predecessor without sacrificing the propulsive, calabash-driven feel of its predecessor of its immediate predecessor Koïma.

Less encumbered by the colonial detritus of Konono's overdriven drums-meet-junkyard sound, the Allstars let the rhythm section breathe and get funky with indigenous instrumentation. No distortion necessary.

What unites the songs, if anything, is a breezy insouciance that belies careful construction. You get the sense that, like Yeats’ women, this is an album that must “labor to be beautiful.” It hides the work very well behind a sunny façade, but you don’t get movie-perfect string swells and luminous vintage keyboard lines and cheerful blurts of all-hands brass without a certain amount of forethought. Consider Collins the impresario, taking what his collaborators give him and polishing it to a high gloss.

A whole range of influences are apparent at essentially any point in the album, yet it never feels like a cumbersome effort made of separate parts pasted together. Room from the Moon is involved and fluid, it’s the work of an artist channeling parts larger than herself.

All four members of Black Midi are extremely young, wildly competent, knowledgeable about all sorts of music (classical, jazz, free improv, etc.) and willing to go way out on a limb. Schlagenheim is a really exciting start, which could lead in any number of directions.

I’ll be listening to Through the Devil Softly for years to come.

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.

With Eno Axis, McEntire again connects to her very particular world, without retreading where she’s been, flourishing in rootedness even as she expands her scope.

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.

Amiable adaptability is a constant across the three concerts. Fidelity is conversely variable, but improved bootleg editions of the material and always listenable.

Maybe people with better audio equipment or a more jaded approach to electronic music have been enjoying him this much all along, but the remaining 47 percent are in for a surprise.

Though the album is closed out well enough by the droning “Atomkerne,” it’s “Be a Pattern for the World” that leaves a lasting impression.

The music is something to behold.

It is, in short, the sound of a group confidently, and unassumingly, re-defining its own universe.

O’Rourke sails these turbulent seas deftly, making small gestures laden with significance. It’s agonising and hypnotic, the kind of art that demands commitment to spend time with. Yet, while you’re immersed in it, it feels inescapable.

The music, befitting the subject matter, is at turns somber and hopeful, developing slowly and deliberately and captivating from start to finish.

That’s Realistic IX in a nutshell: it brings both the burn and the balm.

No posthumous album can be heard without a sense of loss and absence. No matter how much you enjoy these tracks, you must also acknowledge as you listen that the world will go on without this singular talent.

Keeping Secrets feels like, itself, a bit of a hidden gem, murmured at you rather than shouted, a quiet one but a grower.

Even the soccer dads and middle-management types might find themselves nodding along to lyrics like, “It’s losers all the way down, stay undefeated.” That’s from the album’s flat-out banger, “Wage Wars, Get Rich, Die Handsome,” a sing-along celebration of nihilism that pounds and punches and exults in itself.

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.

It’s an interesting artifact. Better, though, it’s another strong album from the young singer. Wall’s voice alone would carry these songs, but they’re each well crafted for the coherence of the larger picture.

Welshpool Frillies digs right back into the basics. It slaps in the most elemental way, on clanging power chords and thumping rhythms and Pollard’s bright absurdities cranked to top volume.

Turns out, the news is that Roberts has made the most unabashedly gorgeous record of his career.

FACS knows how and when to apply the exact amount of pressure to engage pain points and pleasure centers.

As far as 2008 sleepers go, this album’s near the top of the pile. Don’t Be A Stranger is good advice, indeed.