In the end, there is nothing too paradigm-shifting to be found here, just a nice genre pastiche from two unique talents who won’t disappoint their fans.

He works in a middle ground, neither minimal or elaborate, making strong impressions by getting pushy. That’s what follows seduction.

Bright and Vivid gives little of itself immediately, but unfolds to a much larger extent over time.

Her voice, pure and high with a lemon-y sharp tang, is a mesmerizing thing, all on its own, and more than a conduit for the traditional and original songs she delivers here.

Their 20th album, an absolute hoot of a disc that shows no signs of age or frailty.

In the end, Giving is a more than satisfying swan song for this lineup.

At its best, it's both cathartic and transformative, harnessing the transformative power of empathy to politicize the personal and personalize the political.

Like Bellowing Sun,Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars uses contemporary human tools and voices that refuse to be confined to words to enact sonic ceremonies that celebrate the natural world.

It’s a magnificent mix, of course, and a great summation of everything we came to accept about this group and "encapsulating an era and putting it to rest.” That’s what makes it feel like such a hollow gesture, a pat on the back they deliberately rejected for years.

12 Reasons doesn’t find Coles in poor form, but he’s nowhere near his Fishscale peak, in terms of lyrical depth or the intensity of his delivery.

Maybe it's less dangerous, stoopid and contagious in moments. But for this newest gift, I do feel blessed nonetheless. In the end, I guess this largesse just makes me smile.

There is a lot to like on Sympathy For Life despite its unevenness. Savage A and Brown are acute observers, Savage M and Yeaton a really excellent and versatile rhythm section, the band’s willingness to swing outweighs its misses and when they hit Parquet Courts drop into those dive-y, sweaty clubs we’ve all missed.

High Anxiety is the record that some of us have been waiting for Oozing Wound to make.

Raum shows that they can still make it happen, vast swatches of sound, space and symbol coalescing along paths toward those points in time when Tangerine Dream sounds like no one else.

It is another well-made and executed Califone album, and it stays completely true to their concept. Consistency is underrated.

Carried to Dust represents a refreshing return to eccentricity.

If you're bored with what they do, this won't change your mind, but if you're ready for another round, it's reliably strong stuff.

For the most part, Cannibal Sea differs little from The Long Goodbye: the elements that made that album successful – tight songwriting, precise arrangements and elegant performances – are once again employed with aplomb.

Its mix of absurdist humor, lonely stoner confusion and detached sadness could not be more miserably, cathartically timely (albeit in its own, unboxable way). Smart money says this one only gets better.

Bergsman's new set pieces offer no more lasting sustenance than the harder to resist but hardly nutritious candies from The Concretes' confectionery.

While Pythagorean Dream serves the practical end of giving Chatham something that he can tour from town to town without having to school a new set of musicians for each performance, it’s not a compromise or even a reduction. It’s just one more chance to let him show what’s inside a sound.

In short, they pay the best kind of respect to material they love, finding a way to live inside it and change it and make it breathe.

Little Eden pulls off one of Saloman’s best tricks: the record is unerringly faithful to the Bevis Frond aesthetic, a stable sonic construct for some 35 years, and it’s also cleverly responsive to our collective cultural moment.

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.

Despite the less-successful entries, Saint Dymphna is commendable. There's substantially less chaos and abstractness and more pop quantization, but Gang Gang Dance are still overflowing with ideas.

There’s a calmness, a baroque beauty perhaps, to this mode of singing, but on Paperwork, it’s enmeshed within swiftly moving song structures.

Dead Rider has created a vivid, weird, deeply compelling world on this album, but the band isn’t going to come to you; you have to get on its level.

You get a very empowered, very confident album. Super fun, too.