This is a record you could play on the car stereo whilst burning up the miles on the Tennessee interstate, and it’d never sound wrong.

Black and Miller aren’t as bluntly exposed as on their earliest records, but they still keep Diamond’s production bracingly in check for a sound that preserves a pervading visceral punch.

Unfidelity never feels derivative or retro, Edwards displaying an alchemist’s touch as he drags all these influences into a potent melting pot.

Lost in the Dream continues Slave Ambient’s trajectory, threading wispy, half-spoken melodies through emerald forests of tone, ducking conventions like riff and hook in favor of edgeless, shapeless sensuality. These are songs that drive off into dune-like landscapes, always in motion, never arriving.

These two tracks ["Feels Real" and "Do It (Right)"] read a bit corny on paper, but Lambkin’s knowledge of genre, song form and structure and how to make music evolve (i.e. filters, not just slapping in new sounds when something gets boring) bundle up the awkwardness with cool to present fresh ink amidst the droves of novice DJ nostalgists.

Though the harmonic material isn’t always major keys, everything (mix, production, sonic universe) is pleasant, resolves nicely; the song structures are divided into equal measurements; much peace and congruence are present.

These are exceptional bar-band songs, sure, but they’re still bar band songs. Where Tomorrow’s Hits suffers, though, is in its wholesale familiarity.

After years of sluggish BPMs and charts run by screw-influenced beats, the people may be ready for something with the uptempo beats of Presents James Grieve. The question now is whether Addison Groove wants to be the man for that job.

If the first half feels a little like a warm-up, they deliver the payoff in fine style and by the end you may feel as worn out as the band must be.

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

Emmaar’s reassuring familiarity in the face of the forces of war and commerce is at once reassuring and a bit concerning. On the one hand, it’s great to see that the group remains incorruptible and in touch with its essence; on the other, a bit of buffing and shining aside, if you know the band’s sound, you already know this record.

Its greatest strengths are more memorable: the songwriting is strong, even if the album is a little top heavy, and it’s a lot of fun to watch Aaron Funk go way out on a limb without a safety net in sight.

Alcoholic ne’er-do-wells or not, New Bums has allowed the duo to ditch old genre entrapments and celebrate new life as troubadours of enrapturing darkness.

There are so many things here that shouldn’t mix, but the brute force of Cherry’s personality smooths them.

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

Get beyond the Phil Collins-into-Peter Gabriel style clarity, and the songs start to take hold.

On this album, she both reminds the listener of her strengths as a songwriter and subtly redefines the ground on which her music rests.

Burn Your Fire is a minefield in the best possible way, studded even in its quietest moments with subterranean threat.

The now-well-established ensemble pulls off a notable twofer with Give the People What They Want. It’s made a full-length album that hangs together as a distinct whole, and it’s also written a collection of unique songs that stands tall as an example of what still makes the genre vital.

It’s the steady pacing of Trouble, the band’s commitment to the thoughtful lyrics and the permission given to influences and early passions that guide Hospitality towards a sound that is recognizable, only richer, deeper and closer what they were aiming for all along.

Nothin’ But Blood is a wild, discontinuous kind of ride, rattling from tradition to mayhem, from salvation to specific descriptions of sex acts, in a flow of songs that are no more like each other than if you’d pulled them from a pile of tapes. What unites them? A bristling electric guitar. A laceratingly unsentimental view of life. A coruscating energy that burns right through whatever you were expecting and reveals the hard true life-force at the bottom of Biram’s songs.

With Held in Splendor, this group discovers their influences, then surrounds and deconstructs them. At its best, the album achieves bliss and demands attention.

The songs here have lost none of the lonely strength of their earlier material, and the band’s performances are no less gorgeous; but the new strength of Gem Club is that their music is capable of being just as joyous as it is devastated, and the result is powerful.

From All Purity will never have the impact of Earth’s second album, Khanate’s self-titled debut, Take As Needed For Pain by Eyehategod or Sleep’s drone doom bible Dopesmoker, but it contains all the important ingredients that made those records so essential.

Ghettoville is a purposefully secretive record, a vision quest, a Cassavetes lens--at times challenging to sit through, but the more you look into it, the more you might discover.

Morgan Delt is too academically rooted in the past to really disconnect from it. Still, as a debut, it shows some promise.

If the first half of Chiaroscuro is tragedy you can vogue to, then the ending is just tragedy--pure, simple and affecting.

[The songs are] skeletal, bittersweet and exquisitely quiet--open enough to make the most of what her cohorts could offer, firm enough to have a semi-personal punch.