One of the most important anthologies to come along in quite a while.

Bottle of Humans was an amazing album, immediately hailed as a classic. Selling Live Water improves upon that album in every identifiable category.

Ys is one of those rare sophomore albums that shatters exceedingly high expectations.

School of the Flower easily ranks as Ben Chasny's best work thus far.

A silky, bright, singing-in-the-shower masterstroke of joy and elation.

With Neon Golden, the Notwist have created a daring album full of different sounds and textures. While this might sound like a textbook post-rock album, it is without a doubt a record firmly anchored by its pop sensibilities.

On Chutes, Mercer’s voice is singing right next to you, and the change works wonders.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

Wonderful Rainbow is a brilliant record and has upped the ante tremendously for Lightning Bolt. They managed to take every single aspect that made Ride the Skies such a great record and intensify it severely, all the while showcasing incredibly tight and complex musicianship – knowing when to hold in the reins and when to set them on fire.

Against all expectations, Brian Wilson has achieved what should have been impossible, and has produced what may be the year's most thrilling album.

An instant classic. Few records contemplate such grandeur and fewer still achieve it.

Occasionally, it feels like there’s a manipulation going on somewhere, a cloud of hype that obscures both the band’s actual virtues and its shortcomings.

Summer Sun is a stunner, a subtle but substantial collection of non-sequiturs that displays the scope of Yo La Tengo’s tweaked-out serenity.

It is perhaps Oldham’s best work yet, and somewhat ironically, his most accessible as well.

As always, the beauty of Gendron’s music feels both hard fought and carefully wrought, something worth sharing and protecting.

Acoustic guitar, electric often played clean, and politely-tapped drums have never married pop beauty and frightening moodiness like they do when Supreme Dicks hit a stride.

Shaking The Habitual is quite simply a triumph, a bold and experimental statement.

This one of the best releases of 2024 and one of the best in Blackshaw’s uniformly excellent catalog. Truly, well worth the wait.

An ambitious, wrenching, majestic album.

The Suburbs is a really good record, but it's clear that indie rock is not in Kansas anymore.

It may be an unexpectedly traditional and conservative album, but it’s also an unexpectedly beautiful one.

The most surprising aspect of DNWMIBIY is that for a double album, the quality control is high and the sequencing is especially effective. ... In the meantime, DNWMIBIY is the first album to join my best of 2022 list.

Even more than their last record, the fine A New White, For Hero: For Fool is a wonderfully sprawling mess.

Three full studio albums into their reinvigorated latest phase, and Swans’ ability to surprise remains as potent as ever To Be Kind might just be the most startling and uncompromising of the trio, although these qualities take time to unveil themselves.

Malkmus has the same fractured pop sensibility, but his music is more expansive than it’s been before.

The spareness of the arrangements give these cuts an astonishing emotional directness. .... It quiets the clatter and stills the swell around one of Africa’s most beautiful voices and allows us to experience the spectral essence of this extraordinary artist straight on.

The trio skilfully carries the track ["Fyra"], and the record, towards a gentle dissolve into the clouds as the drums fade out entirely, leaving the dulcet bass and guitar tones to play off one another in the closing moments. Sublime.

Out of the Shadow's blissful indie-pop tunes are as affecting as they are catchy.