Decidedly not for the faint-hearted, -io couches existential terror within ritualistic performance and orchestral musicality, and is often a challenging listen. With that in mind, approach -io with a brave heart and you’re in for a thrilling ride.

Throughout, Sylvian's songs retain their peculiar emotional coloration, of tension bubbling just under the surface.

We're on familiarly bleak and gloomy (although not entirely unironic) Tindersticks ground here and, in the case of this band, familiarity certainly doesn't breed contempt.

This is for certain, no time is wasted listening, likely again and again, to Rosali’s compelling emotional journey on Bite Down.

The wild humor and slash-and-burn methodology of Comets on Fire have outlived any pretense to trend; Blue Cathedral makes a strong case for the permanent re-emergence of undiluted psychedelic rock.

File this one alongside Fabulous Muscles, Angel Guts: Red Classroom and Forget as one of Xiu Xiu’s most gratifying albums.

It's easy to hear why Rubin swooped in to release this.

The album may not set the world on fire like "Ladies and Gentlemen," but it stands as the best Spiritualized album since that milestone, and a worthy successor.

Iceage cleans up its sound, slows down the tempos and adds instruments like strings and piano on this third full length, but none of this takes the rawness out.

The mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly is powerful. The writing is exceptionally good. You probably forgot about The The (I did), but it’s time to take notice again.

Cerulean Salt is a very strong album, frank and blunt and vulnerable.

Sound is bright and immediate, even on tracks extracted from less than optimal vinyl sources.

Though none of these eight songs are anything less than fun, dynamic, and intensely listenable, lead single “Housefly” is probably the pick of the bunch; it arrives early, hits hard, and is the most economically arranged of all the songs.

Like The Disintegration Loops, A Shadow in Time is not sentimental--it just is. Basinski’s music exists to make us feel, but won’t take the easy route in doing so.

Everything Was Beautiful isn’t some showy highlight reel, though; it’s an example of how keenly Pierce has honed his inner space rock and how much room it still has left to soar.

There’s a minute-to-minute emotional immediacy here that, even if you don’t understand completely, you can feel like the weather, always changing.

While Long in the Tooth offers more or less what you expect, it does so at a very high level. The band has never sounded tighter, more collaborative or more sure of itself.

Prog may still have its detractors, but This is BASIC is a case study in why it deserves another look.

The hooks are nearly endless, each catchier than the last, and each song features a Technicolor array of instruments that create a perfect sonic version of the mildly psychedelic album art that comes with every Danielson release.

he's made one of his strongest, and certainly his oddest, albums.

Despite all these potential distractions, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill remains, quite simply, a beautiful album, possibly because. Harris feels so comfortable in her own skin.

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.

These are rather beautiful ambient sound worlds, however she created them, full of dread, anticipation, joy and peace. Perhaps it’s best if you can’t see the wires and knobs and plugs that make them possible.

Laughing Matter is a Major Statement in the classic style, which might have been irksome if Wand hadn’t pulled it off. Successful gestures of this sort can serve the purpose of reminding us why those tropes were satisfying in the first place, and if this album doesn’t quite boast the succinct charms of past releases its makes its own, compelling argument to turn on, tune in, and just let it all wash over you.

Halo on the Inside may be yet another temporary expedition or truly be a metamorphosis of Circuit des Yeux’s aesthetic. Either way, Fohr’s songwriting is as strong as ever and her singing voice is singular. Recommended.

Even given all those evocations and tonal shifts, Old Star feels cohesive. That’s down to the assured musicianship and the precisely engineered sound the band has mastered.

When it comes to the spiritual, Bad Debt is a worthy addition to a lineage that preaches the complicated records resonate strongest.

His complexity comes through more clearly than ever on Alasdair Roberts, his most stripped-down solo side in years.