The album is a tad long, but the diversity in sounds and use of ambient noise make it clear this is to be listened to from beginning to end. There are plenty of single-worthy songs for casual listeners, while offering dedicated fans a more fulfilling experience by pacing the record's heavy moments.

Apple's most ingenious collection of songs to date.

They embrace vulnerability, taking time to address modern issues (read: symptoms of capitalism), while also imbuing a real sense of fun, artistic merit and instrumental democracy in the record's 11 tracks.

David's voice still sounds boyish after all these years, but All Hell noticeably showcases his increased range. Call it getting older, but it makes these songs that much more dynamic.

On All Born Screaming, Clark sounds more at home than she has in a while, but all planets inevitably die — perhaps the next one she lands on will finally be her own.

This is no elementary Valentine's card; it's a treacherous and wonderfully unreliable encyclopedia of romance.

Women in Music Pt. III flips between the band's least and most processed work to date. Both sides yield highlights. ... It's as multifaceted as the music it encapsulates and the women who made it.

What makes We're New Again so fascinating lies in the fact that Makaya McCraven benevolently and sonically recognizes Gil Scott-Heron's grief, joy, and legacy, making sure these vital expressions remain the album's true focus.

Swift is still unquestionably a pop artist, and folklore is unquestionably a pop album, albeit a quiet one — and as is the case with most recent pop albums, it's about four songs too long. It's hard not to wish that Swift would apply her written concision to her tracklisting, to do away with the stream-grabbing bloat and deliver something more thoughtfully tailored. Still, it's hard to complain about too much of a good thing.

They have both found, on their eleventh album (and best since the early 2000s), a renewed purpose and direction in this time of existential crisis for America.

Russian Circles' fifth studio album has a bolder, more polarizing sound than previous efforts.

Song for Our Daughter is a touching recording, and it demonstrates that, no matter the sonic style she chooses to play with, Marling remains at the top of her game.

These songs proudly flaunt Lipa's affinity for all things pop, disco, and funk, spanning multiple decades.

It's the sound of an artist operating at the peak of her powers, employing all her greatest strengths at once to create an assured, moving work that corroborates what Have One On Me already suggested: that Joanna Newsom is one of the finest songwriters of this generation.

Adele has deepened the niches that made her preceding songs so powerful. But instead of playing it safe with only those established tricks, her bold exploration of new terrain on "Cry Your Heart Out" and "Oh My God" help Adele not only become the world's top hitmaker, but also a pop music visionary.

Most vividly, Loud City Song evokes the easy, tingling drift of early Robert Wyatt.

That lack of tension and urgency throughout stops A Moon Shaped Pool from being a classic on par with Radiohead's best work, but then, perhaps that's the wrong standard to reasonably hold an album that trades the band's trademark anxiety for acceptance, their experimentalism for elegance.

Dream Weapon is a transportive odyssey that casts humanity's end as an inevitable reality with an opportunity for renewal, and offers a space where listeners can reflect on what that might mean to them, or just lay back and enjoy the ride.

Despite electric amplifiers and a plethora of pedals, BIG|BRAVE have created an album that sounds like it's existed since the dawn of time. Tears will be shed and embraces are encouraged.

These are decidedly intimate songs approached from remarkably wide angles, woodsy tapestries penetrated with modernist psychedelic touches (whirly tubes, piano strings struck with metal spoons), artfully woven into grand, sprawling arrangements that will reward repeated private listening perhaps even more than Portishead has.

Clark promised us "sex and drugs and sadness" on MASSEDUCTION, and while that sounds like a recipe for clichéd disaster, she kept her word and managed to fashion a totally refreshing take in the process.

Saint Cloud is a refreshing listen from an exceptional singer-songwriter that shatters the myth of hard-living artists and proves that great artists can make great art without a drink.

Her experiments with cross-stitching sometimes unravel, but even the loose ends make for powerful listens.

"Waterproof Mascara" is surely one of the most harrowing rap tracks in recent memory. .... Full of horror and self-described Afro-pessimism, GOLLIWOG is frequently grim. And yet, it's not a difficult listen, since woods is simply too clever of a writer for him not to tickle my sense of humour.

Tyler has delivered a project that yet again pushes the boundaries of his music while simultaneously being a culmination of everything that he's done so far. It's yet another impressive outing for an artist whose reign doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon.

If "bloody," "urgent," "enraged" and "heartening" were enough description to sum up El-P and Killer Mike's latest Run the Jewels album, this review could end here. But they aren't; this late 2016 LP, along with the duo's various collaborative tracks with several DJs and rappers all year, have officially placed RTJ high on the shelf of the "hard to describe" category.

As the album comes to a close, "Rest" and "Hidden" begin to work off of fuzzy, pulsating beats and slow, trancelike synth passages, proving that Rival Consoles certainly holds a blueprint to the dreamworld contained within Persona.

Paas has said that her music explores themes of non-romantic love, and while her operatic delivery tends to highlight emotion over enunciation, Anything Can't Happen is peppered with these moments of startling melancholy.

In constructing such an ornate snarl of emotion and eloquence, Le Bon has effectively created in Michelangelo Dying a bummer album that doesn't actually require any wallowing to digest.

This album melds its many ideas into some larger parts, with just nine songs clocking in at roughly 40 minutes. But true to form, POST- is still all sorts of bonkers in mostly the right ways.

It's the sound of all of pop history cast into the void of space and sent careening back, transmuted by some unknown force. The ghosts of lost icons hurtle through these songs — passing by in molecular form are the sparkling ethers of Prince and Bowie, the curdled spectre of Genesis P-orridge.

The current king of rap manages, yet again, to offer a searing insight into his life, past and present. The songs on Alfredo are fun even when the themes aren't.

Summing up an entire musical movement in a single reissue is no easy feat--even if it is three records long. But as a package, Kankyō Ongaku gets incredibly close, shining a brilliant light on one of Japan's most fascinating--yet hidden--musical periods.

It's an impeccable compilation.

Lyrically, the album is poignant and clever, though it does occasionally falter, as on the grungy nu-metal number "Happy Song."

Cohesive and eclectic, Ancestral Recall is a sonic expedition to remember.

Black America Again isn't an album meant for casual listening, but rather a socio-politically charged album meant to be absorbed so that everyone can truly recognize the "Bigger Picture Called Freedom."

Harding continues to keep listeners on their toes with Designer which, overall, is a unique, luminous record that's about whatever you need it to be about.

The intent, execution and expression is pure. But the ominous feel of the entire project overwhelms, in parts, with a forlorn sense of distance and dread — which appears to be the point — yet its subsuming sense of femininity, sexuality, free will and determinism paradoxically draws us in.

On Letter to You, Springsteen is at his rawest and most reflective. ... Letter to You may well be Springsteen addressing his most significant bandmates and his audience with love, but it may as well be something he wrote and sent ahead to 2020.

Each track is a confined attempt at gaiety, a succinct story in service of this greater mission of uninhibited emotion — which is ultimately, hopefully joy.

SAULT carry on commenting about those still-relevant issues with vivid lyrics about injustice wrapped in captivating rhythms.

There are no more ghosts in these guitar solos, and the wiry licks and riffs are as sure-footed and confident as the tightly crafted structure of each song. It's easy listening, yet fiercely complex.

Vampire Weekend have lost the carefree immediacy of some of their best-loved work; there's nothing on Only God as viscerally addictive as "A-Punk" or "This Life," and there's a prog-like complexity to these performances that's geared more toward the head than the heart. But there's also just enough stripped-down beauty — like the balladic "Capricorn," or the swooning brass outro of "The Surfer" — that Only God Was Above Us remains emotional as well as academic.

There are few out there above what he has achieved with Lonerism.

Full of complicated emotions and sombre nostalgia, it confronts the darkness and the details, the granular and grandeur, the trivialities and the everything. That's just life, and that's just Wednesday: an exercise in horrible, wonderful contradiction.

Jaime, Howard's first solo album, complements her distinctive croon with R&B, hip-hop and funk sounds, marking an adventurous departure that reveals unseen depths to the vocalist. With some of the most emotive, direct lyrics of her career to date, the dynamic range of her new collaborators — including jazz maestro Robert Glasper — informs the flavour of each track for an eclectic collection stockpiled with loose grooves.

Bandana also stands on its own as one of the very best rap albums of 2019, or any other year in recent memory.

Compiled by Sofrito's Hugo Mendez, Haiti Direct is an amazing collection from Haiti's illustrious but sadly unsung musical history.

An effort that is even more emotionally ambitious an undertaking, and all the more wounding for its beauty.

Converge have managed to once again best their only competition: themselves.

IDLES turn trauma and anger into affirming lessons on Joy As an Act of Resistance, crafting a cathartic masterpiece that wears its heart--broken, but still beating--on its sleeve.

Grimes has given us a complete record that's everything pop should be in 2015: utterly uncompromising, imaginative and, somehow, universally accessible.

It's a brilliant new benchmark in his already stellar discography, showcasing just how much of an artistic powerhouse he has become and a clear shift from the darkness that his music, even at its poppiest, once embodied.

This is a release worth snapping up on vinyl when it finally comes out.

That Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You's vast ecosystem can support this multitude of sounds and voices is astonishing. Even more so is the way its greens seem to become greener — its skies more full of stars, its waters clearer — the more time you spend with it. It's a universe all its own, clarified a bit more with every listen.

This is DIY revolution groove and as such, is an inspiration to those who wish to express outside the norms.

It's obvious for his fans he's making the music he's set out to create and when he's taken strategic measures to please the mainstream. But luckily for his avid listeners, K.R.I.T. almost entirely does the former here, upholding the funky, southern-psychedelic rap that his fans turn to him for.

Excitingly new yet classically evocative, You're Dead! is contemplative but never boring, an example of genre cross-pollination that transcends novelty and, occasionally, time and space as well.

Science Fiction is a flawed yet beguiling record that keeps you hooked without offering the emotional payoff that we've come to expect.

A flurry of emotion — joyful and pointed — and clattering noise blending into haunting sparseness, this is the record the Sadies have been working on capturing for their entire existence. Thankfully, and with bittersweet timing, they got it done when we most needed them to, making the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.

Through songs now considered longtime favourites, and ones that will now find wider audiences, Homegrown is now free to stand as a more organic, lovelorn harvest of the personal turmoil that influenced Young's revered mid-'70s output.

A gorgeous double album. ... Full of love and appreciation for life, which makes more sense to him now than it maybe ever did, Callahan inimitably presents us with philosophical jokes and thoughtful observations on a record that is an adventurous stocktaking of his own life, set to tastefully arranged folk and an open spirit that welcomes us in.

It doesn’t just sound like wild west Americana — it feels that way, drawn from a life’s worth of experience and adoration of the genre. It’s the album that Segarra’s been building toward since they first picked up a guitar.

Have You In My Wilderness finds Holter narrowing her focus a little. In doing so, she gets the best of both worlds, showing off her ability to write warm and breezy pop music while maintaining the complexity, and perplexity, that made her so intriguing to begin with.

An LP so irresistibly danceable and irrefutably topical that it'll also leave generations of up-and-comers clamouring to team up with Janelle Monáe.

The Moritz Von Oswald Trio deliver their most impressive and spatially alluring album to date with Fetch.

A Hairshirt of Purpose is a remarkable, disorienting and rewarding listen that captures a band in their mature, creative prime.

In a discography as impressive as Lamar's, GNX stands as a major highlight, sitting comfortably in the upper echelon of a rarefied body of work.

The age-old saying goes if something isn't broken, don't fix it, but the re-release of Twin Fantasy shows that, seven years later, Car Seat Headrest are capable of re-contextualizing their work in ways that cement the faith that we have in them as revolutionary musicians.

It works wonderfully camping on a relaxed beach or in the most ostentatious concert venue, worthy of rigorous intellectual inspection yet just as easy to get high and chill to. ... It gives something wholly original to the culture in a way similar to what Will 'Quantic' Holland did when he launched the Quantic Soul Orchestra in 2003.

What's impressive is how well integrated these Agee-inspired tunes are with their more modern cousins.

With Blackstar, Bowie has made a record that fits comfortably within that legacy while reasserting himself as an artist that continuously makes challenging and rewarding music.

Still walking the high wire, with Something More Than Free, Jason Isbell continues his streak of genre-defining masterworks.

Twenty-two years later, My Bloody Valentine is still the band everyone's talking about, and although it may not necessarily build on Loveless, there's no audible reason m b v shouldn't be spoken of in the same hushed, venerating tones.

Big Thief are accepting the inherent beauty of life's invisible forces and their contemplation with the unknown has led them to a mindful state of raw, celestial power. U.F.O.F. is trembling with mystical energy and is truly one of the year's best records.

A fascinating, affecting statement from a musician firmly in control of her artistry.

Javelin finds Stevens at his most vulnerable, yes, but like Carrie & Lowell, he paradoxically hides behind a wall of references and metaphor (many of which I'm sure are biblical in nature, discreetly whizzing past my woefully secular ears). Now posited in plainer language than ever before, he makes its cipher even more challenging to crack. That's what makes these records so healing to their audiences, though: the universality.

By the end of Nothing's About to Happen to Me, it feels as though Mitski has reclaimed both her home and her mythos. No longer lingering on the edges of the album, she steps into her art as presently as she can, trusting that it will continue to speak for her long after she's gone.

The songs are more interesting and less formulaic, akin to the approaches of Q and Not U and No Knife.

Alcest strive for balance once more here, and for the most part, they achieve it.

More Scared of You is a booming, jumbled and explosive work that's the best kind of mess.

It's not only her best work, but the best amongst her peers, the sort of album that transcends the lane she was in beforehand, transcends whatever antiquated gender biases may still permeate the genre and puts her in the same category as your favourite rapper (who's now clamouring for a Rapsody feature).

The glowering strength of If I don't make it, I love u is in its commitment to both sides of the coin, an album both experimental and laid fully bare — The result is one of the best rock records of the year.

Vibrant, it colours outside the lines. Poignant, it's transparent with altering modes of bravado, vulnerability and desperation. It is, thoroughly, a Frank Ocean album, yearning for perfection, sating the audience's hunger for dynamism, yet with the persistent feeling that the artist feels it's all a failure.

Choose Your Weapon is a solid groove.

Artists that push themselves with every release are rare, and rarer still are the artists where each new frontier is a successful one. Objekt is one of those, and Cocoon Crush demands to be listened to intently and completely. The arrangements themselves are never predictable, twisting and turning with opportunistic glee, marrying the fluidity of his role as a sonic architect.

This indispensable and revelatory treatment is as loving and comprehensive as can be, giving us a sense of how Dylan and his various collaborators nailed down these spooky, funny, hard songs pondering loneliness, independence and the end of one's days.

The album isn't perfect; it is a little too slow in spaces, a little too quiet, and sometimes it is too serious. Fussell is capable of being goofy, but even the humour here never rises above a wry chuckle.

The result is a sound that is assured and ebullient, lively as a coiled spring releasing its kinetic energy until it's exhausted.

Reward is a lucid rush of avant-pop. Dreamy and sonic echoes, layered with Le Bon's sotto voce lyrics, make this her most compelling album.

By far their most dynamic offering, Daughters have pulled off one of the great comeback albums and further cemented themselves as a band with such singular creativity that they're nearly peerless. It may not sound like the album you thought you wanted, but the open-minded listener might find it's precisely what was needed.

Frustratingly, the record seems somewhat sleepily produced by her husband John Leventhal. One wishes for more flourish to distinguish these songs from one another.

Lenker’s writing is always in conversations with traditional songwriting modes, but her soft sense of self and fascination with the surreal makes her art compellingly and unmistakably individual.

The three long years since Get Disowned gifted Hop Along the chance to take their sonic sheet lightning and bottle it, giving Painted Shut a razor-sharp focus and economy that doesn't give an inch.

Jenkins' winding writing is cerebral and referential, nearly every song capable of opening a Wikipedia rabbit hole. However, much like Norwegian art-pop virtuoso Jenny Hval, she works wonders in the place between heart and mind; her intellectualism is never overbearing, instead revealing a dedication to explaining the unexplainable.

Perfume Genius has begun to spread his wings, delivering a breakout release that relies on much more than his manic/mopey persona.

Guppy is a hyper, loveable, endearing, gritty, catchy romp through early 20s confusion, love, lust, travel and therapy.