Friko’s songs are real, true and felt. Songs like “Where We Been” and “Crashing Through” build from small beginnings, voice, guitar, piano into huge anthemic refrains and breakdowns.

Recorded mostly solo, with Segall on guitar and drums, it pushes classic guitar rock into complicated corners, with choral motets sidling up to blistering guitar solos, noodle electric keyboard textures glittering atop blasts of pared down percussion.

Most importantly, Imitation of War feels more like an evolved, full-band recording, rather than a solo, singer-songwriter record embellished by the contributions of other musicians. Though Cohen strips back to just voice and her formidable guitar chops on songs such as “Under Gates of Cobalt Blue” and “Olympia,” it’s the full-band songs that really shine.

“Nonaah” is the perfect vehicle for the trio of Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey and a stunningly vibrant distillation of what sets the group, and this album, apart from so many others. .... There is no one composing with Iyer’s blend of sonority sequences, those harmonic exhortations and rebuttals that slide in and out of focus with the veteran’s complete grasp and easy grace.

Listening to Souvenir, I can’t help but think of Stuck, the Chicago post-punk-into-no-wave outfits that sometimes refers to itself as “evil Omni.” .... Comparing the two, you might begin to wonder if there’s anything solid behind Omni’s detached cleverness, it’s super clean, super manicured attack. Maybe regular Omni could benefit from a touch of evil.

The narrator’s desire for transformation reveals a hopeful, but tenuous ending to an emotionally fraught and musically ironclad journey. One wishes more concept albums were so authentic.

From free jazz to contemporary modern ensemble music, Halvorson has made thoughtful arrangements for Amaryllis. It’s great to hear her rock out too, playing with an abandon that has been simmering all along.

Harm’s Way is sharper and more exhilarating than its predecessor; it’s the same aesthetic but more clearly, exuberantly realized.

While it’s unmistakably a Mascis solo album, What Do We Do Now just stands apart from anything he’s done to date.

The Umbrellas have always offered bashed up, joyriding sweetness, but here they reach at—and intermittently attain—a Spector-esque wall of rock ‘n roll sound. Even better, that larger scale doesn’t undermine the vulnerability of their songs, but instead amplifies and clarifies it.

Compared to its predecessor, Wall of Eyes can’t help but come across as transitional. While there are some undeniably great moments, the overall experience feels a little low-stakes and disappointing.

These tunes are constructed around static, meditational sonic atmospheres that fluctuate in volume and timbre but do not fundamentally change. There’s a sense of the eternal in them, even when as in “Scarper” they twitch into propulsion with percolating electronic rhythms.

It’s a very good set of songs, sleek and wrenching at the same time.

Bertucci’s work continues to develop. Of Shadow and Substance presents two facets of “drone, dissonance, and dynamics” that speak with eloquence, treading lightly but palpably on extra-musical concerns.

I DES is an ambitious, moving work.

The album is vigorous in its grooves and leaves a powerful, unifying impression with its words.

This is, in other words, still serious music, yet it is not necessarily somber. Probably not coincidentally, When the Roses Come Again provides the perfect soundtrack for a drive through a land of woods, farms, and small towns dotted with Dollar General stores and cell towers.

It’s not an indulgent album. There’s a discipline to every song. No note sounds wasted or out of place. It so perfectly captures the spirit of those gritty 1980’s psychosexual thrillers, at once lush and foreboding.

Mostly, though, these cuts take songs that you probably already know and deliver them slightly transformed by time and personnel and the live setting. They’re old friends, a little older, a little shaggier, but still magic: “Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog),” “About a Bruise” and “Dearest Forsaken.” If you ever loved them, you should hear them like this, too.

The balance of spoken word and music is well-conceived. .... Less than halfway through, the Coin Coin series is engaging and ever new.

Over the course of Spike Field’s 50 minutes, the songs’ prevalent mood can prove hypnotic if you’re receptive to its atmosphere. MBC is certainly adept at conjuring and sustaining a melancholy, nocturnal scene.

We worship “cool” in rock and punk. We love the bands that stay unaffected behind their dark shades, from the Velvets on down. But what’s so great about this second Bar Italia album is that it shows how hard that is, and what a cost it exacts.

The Comeback Kid, is full of shimmering, ultra fanciful castles of guitar-based sound, but it’s also kind of an experimental pop gem, like Deerhoof after a month of Guitar Hero or like OOIOO any time, really.

While Jenny from Thebes is a self-proclaimed rock opera, it defies the expectations of that genre inasmuch as it’s not a sprawling, self-indulgent double album. Moreover, it stands on its own.

It is way over the top in the way that Roxy Music was, all sheen and sigh and gorgeous inertia. Romantic Music, yes, no irony there.

What makes Nothing Lasts Forever especially rewarding for fans is the emotional throughline that connects their work, album to album.

She swoops and swoons and growls like Kristin Hersh but more country, and it’s worth a listen just to hear what she’ll do next.

Irreversible Entanglements are looking forward, stepping up from the shoulders of the giants to shape a body of work that demands attention.