A graceful, thoughtful, utterly modest triumph, wrapping its twisty modal melodies in layers of fuzz and convening a junk shop orchestra of synths, drums, keyboards and, occasionally, harpsichord to fill out their fragile contours. Like all good pop, the songs have an emotional ambiguity.

It's the unexpected emotions that Canta Lechuza can unearth that stand as its greatest achievement. Lange's most complex compositions here make fascinating art from contrasting moods, and it's that complexity that, ultimately, make this album worthy of return.

For a collaboration that could've easily become a Cocoon of styles and persons past, The Orbserver in the Star House plays surprisingly spry.

The album certainly leaves you with a sense of dislocation and déjà vu, as if hearing musical avenues open, meander deliciously, then abruptly slam shut. It’s disorientating, surprising, at times deeply funky, and often very beautiful.

In a world where electronic music is omnipresent, Laurel Halo succeeds on Chance of Rain in creating a distinctive voice, one that never allows the listener to settle into a sense of security.

On Sleepwalking Sailors, Helms Alee finally feels bigger than the sum of its parts.

Thematically, with three songs inspired by a graphic novel, one inspired by a tv show, one re-recorded deep cut and two covers, What Heaven Is Like is a bit scattered. Sonically, however, What Heaven Is Like is Wussy’s most cohesive, best sounding album to date.

The version of Low that helped define a subgenre remains recognizable throughout, but their sound has expanded.

An intriguing and often lovely album.

The songs often seem made up of sharp, conflicting parts, that come together at angles, fitting into the spaces left by one another.

The result is deep, it's broadly imaginative, it's tightly focused, and it's utterly essential.

SUMAC’s evocative and powerful playing hits you in the gut, as a physical experience, even as it motivates an intensely meditative mode. This is terrific music, in all relevant senses of that term.

Using simple piano motifs and minor key strings augmented with electronics and voice, some kind of peace is an album of delicate beauty. It is beguiling in the way it shifts focus between the general and specific.

By keeping everything in proportion, she's made the most easily approached record of her career.

It's not as gratifyingly raw as 1983 or as paradigm-shifting as Los Angeles or as self-important as Cosmogramma, but it's more expansive and refined taken in one sitting.

In some ways The Waiting Room is remarkable for hitting a number of classic Tindersticks checkmarks without ever feeling like it’s, well, going down a list checking them off.

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.

Mark Sultan breathes fire into genres that, in most hands, only gather dust.

The album isn’t easily chewed or digested, but certainly worth the taste.

While Lenker included a couple of songs on abysskiss that were later reworked as full-band songs on the masterful U.F.O.F. (“Terminal Paradise” and “From”), here the acoustic version sounds like a step backward and doesn’t feel like it belongs, especially given this album’s 45-minute runtime. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of gorgeous material here, offering further evidence of Lenker’s subtle and surprising songwriting.

At 20 songs deep, this is a long program, but there is really no fat to trim. All of the songs are patently fleshed out, and in spite of the laundry list of ideas, it never seems claustrophobic.

To anyone enamored with the effortless elegance of Loma’s debut, some of Don’t Shy Away’s more adventurous and synth-heavy production may feel a little jarring. However, surrender to the album’s luscious sound design, emotive vocal performances and smart narrative arc and it can be just as intoxicating. As far as front-to-back album listening experiences go, it’s among the year’s best.

With Forgotten Days, the band don’t so much extend the sprawling prog-laced epics of the previous album as blend them into tighter, more direct tunes that feel very appropriate for the moods of this long, fractious year: at times ornery, restless and deeply sorrowful.

Whatever we think of Jung’s psychoanalysis, it’s interesting to hear a hardcore record driven by such relatively hifalutin concepts. And it’s excellent to have more music from Gel, a band that continues to grow and make some of the best punk of the decade thus far.

Brickbat is a worthy addition to the growing canon of bands and performers addressing the powers that be.

A record that’s wonderfully represents Clark as the songwriter he was without turning the focus to Earle and the Dukes.

It’s a fitting near-farewell for this disarmingly tender and enjoyable album.

And in the Darkness Hearts Aglow is already a formidable amalgam. It will be interesting to see where the third volume of the trilogy takes Weyes Blood.