Tru is a juggernaut, wreaking Mascis-style mayhem with a bubblegum heart.

Anderson is a skilled, idiosyncratic guitar player, but what sets Cloud Corner apart from the records of her skilled, idiosyncratic peers is that she hasn’t lost sight of the power of music to speak to the individual, not just about them. With their modest run times, understated playing, and emotional honesty, the pieces on Cloud Corner feel like they’re inviting you to share in, not just observe, their joy and grief.

Lloyd, the Marvels, and Williams cover an array of emotions while remaining well focused in sound (with the exception of “Monk’s Mood,” pretty enough for inclusion anyhow). It’s an impressive take by a roster of stars given over to the bigger idea.

There are no failures, but the back half of Kidjo’s Remain in Light feels too safe. Kidjo’s Remain in Light doesn’t surpass its predecessor, but at its best, it’s an equally thrilling examination of the still relevant questions that drove Byrne and company almost 40 years ago.

The soundtrack is a continual blurring of boundaries. It is semi-static throughout, like much of Faure’s Requiem, severely troubled even beneath seemingly placid surfaces. This renders those points of eruption and cataclysm exponentially more powerful.

The point is that new stuff is added without compromise or dilution. And listening here, you realize that change is good and maybe even necessary, no matter how much you like how Protomartyr has always sounded.

It hops around from elliptical soundscapes to bright pop songs to surfy psychedelia to brashly incisive rock, just as its progenitor does, and it’s an engaging if discontinuous ride.

Tangents’ post-everything mode of working is embracing rather than exclusionary; they don’t seem to be trying to shut off their music from all precedents and influences so much as creating such a rich blend (and with such talented performers) that the result creates something intoxicatingly new.

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.

Venetian Snares x Daniel Lanois pits Lanois’ laconic style against Funk’s frenzy until the contradictions between them are heightened and collapse, resulting in a deeply weird and captivating album.

With The Alligator Bride, more than previous Howlin’ Rain albums, the breadth of the band’s scope shines in streaming color.

It’s a record by a mature band, setting itself to a serious task. The fact that it’s so effective--that Our Raw Heart can move you from one mood to another, and leave you feeling larger--is testament to the earnestness of their art.

Even as you nod indulgently to Jordan’s assertion (on “Pristine”) that she’ll never fall in love again (of course you will), even as you worry (in “Golden”) about her a little confronting an ex- by blurting out “I’m not wasted anymore” (are you sure?), there’s an integrity and authenticity to her perspective that commands respect.

Hundreds of Days is proof that Lattimore has come into her own as a composer and that her career is taking on the contours of one of her pieces: from stark beginnings something rich and wondrous has emerged.

LUMP, a collaboration between Tunng founder Mike Lindsay and Laura Marling, is cool and enveloping, a mesh of luminous electronic textures and subtly placed instruments, all arranged around Marling’s silvery voice, often doubled or overlapping in harmony.

Where on earlier releases Black Moth Super Rainbow seemed to be the gleeful expression of a twisted, sun-baked parallel world, the last two albums sound increasingly burned out on it. Panic Blooms, rather than reaching for the sticky pop highs of its predecessor, sounds like a purer expression of this emotional drift.

The album, produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, manages to be both weird and relevant, experimental and comfortable. Malkmus’s grounded surrealism makes for a series of songs that offer connection within a skewed take on life. The music, in any track’s given mode, encourages persistent resistance of the way things are without being heavy-handed. It bridges worlds wonderfully and shows Malkmus to be as vital as ever.

Parquet Courts needs an extra injection of grandiosity (as 2014’s towering “Instant Disassembly”) when they slow things down, and they don’t always provide it on the songs that need it the most.

Wooden Shjips’ pleasant but toothless music feels insubstantial, if not insipid, in relation to the demands of our unforgiving present.

If you don’t already have this material and you have any interest in either Miles or Coltrane, you will not be bummed if you unwrap this set at your next birthday. But that first if is a big one. Between outright bootlegs and Scandinavian labels that have had no problems getting their wares into American record stores during decades where there were a lot more of them around, the bulk of this set has been heard before.

Now two albums on, she’s found a way to transcend and expand upon it and open her solitary music to include us all.

Intricate and unpredictable, Deeper Woods isn’t primitive at all. It’s wild.

Though the length of each successive Grouper album wastes away, at only 22 minutes Grid of Points provides such compelling sketches that the lost minutes only manifest after the music has stopped. Harris’ sound has always been haunting, but by investigating absence on Grid of Points she haunts herself, capturing a restlessness that has returned to make sense of its ending.

With I Have Fought Against It, but I Can’t Any Longer, the Body have generated a record of power electronics, descending at times into harsh noise, punctuated at points by mournful passages of ambient beauty.

The Horizon Just Laughed is less showy than the Maraqopa trilogy, but in its quiet way just as visionary and odd.

[The National] turned a corner with 2005’s Alligator, fusing the moments of mania and quietude from their initial releases into a grandiose adult angst that resulted in at least two more great albums. With Beyondless, Iceage seems to have crossed a similar threshold.

The Tree of Forgiveness, ten breezy songs and thirty-three minutes long, is slight, but its brevity fits. The Tree of Forgiveness doesn’t rage against the dying of the light. Instead, it’s funny and it’s sad. It’s complicated. It’s over before you know it.

Phair mobilized and rearranged some tunes from her Girly-Sound tapes. Almost all of them improve with Guyville’s studio polish, but a couple are better in their original form ... Exile in Guyville remains her most visible and memorable record, but it’s more than a time capsule of early-nineties indie rock. Its most compelling songs (and there are a bunch of them) still generate tensions, among a voice and its bodily contours and the public’s articulations of femininity.