Overall, LAGEOS is an engaging listen that just might surprise you in the places it goes.

Dub Egg is an album for guitar heads.

Sadier's glorious voice could easily cover-up a multitude of sins, but it doesn't have to on Silencio because this is a great collection of songs.

In shedding the shackles of expectation, FIDLAR finally found their soul.

Overall though, it's a solid effort in a genre that's hard to nail. Worth repeating all season!

With Bent firmly fitting in his place as the band's drummer, the chemistry between the band members is better than ever. What the Dead Men Say is the second of two great albums, and confirms that The Sin and the Sentence wasn't a fluke.

Every song justifies its spot: the Allen Ritter-produced "Drippin'" serves as a standout, exhibiting a staccato delivery and manic yelling, both of which are new to his already vast sonic vocabulary.

A well-rounded and buoyant album, Down in Heaven is Twin Peaks' most mature work to date and a satisfying listen, even if it lacks some of the urgency that made their past work so thrilling.

While Her Loss houses no immediate street bangers or Billboard hits, it's the sum of it all that makes it Drake's best record this decade. From the comical fake promos during its rollout to the memorable one-liners and aggressive diss verses or the TikTok memes it will generate for months to come, Her Loss has a lot of meat on its bones.

With its rich sonic landscape and Georgas' confident lyrics, For Evelyn is a great record, but perhaps more importantly, it also shows that Georgas is getting better and better with each release.

Donna is eclectic, moving, emotive and true to Cassy's roots. Her vocals, which dominate the album, recall the same soulful edge of singer-songwriter Sade. The real triumph here, though, is the sense of creative freedom that pervades the album.

The overall vibe of the collection is likely to put a smile on your face (hell, even Townes sounds a mite less melancholy, thanks to the spirited accompaniment), making it a perfect fit for your next beer 'n bourbon patio party.

With On Dark Silent Off, Radian have created a piece of art that's stubbornly beautiful.

The more transparent mix dovetails nicely with the album's themes.

Maine's ability to draw out peculiar emotions and thoughtfully pairing them with euphoric sounds in a deliberate way makes The House a natural and more than satisfying sequel to Pool.

Rogers rises to the occasion, making herself and her mixture of emotions the anchor of songs whose music moves at an unending pace.

Progressing across a grid, Olson's explorative approach to loop-based production of music reveals an intuitive and refreshing approach to deriving emotive depth from a machine.

Everybody's Coming Down feels both focused and purposeful, something not all albums can lay claim to after a band's nearly decade-long absence.

Radical Romantics is as joyfully alive with sound as anything that Dreijer has created in their three decades of music making.

Everything about the album is deliberately simple, but with some inspired production choices added to the mix.

The arrival of Little Heater, only Irwin's second solo album, is therefore a notable event, and nothing about it disappoints.

Freedom's Goblin cuts open Segall's brain and lets it all ooze out. Serve yourself up a spoonful of all that melodic goo, and enjoy.

Earrings Off! is an album that demands multiple listens and gets better with each one.

From start to finish, Nobody Lives Here Anymore is a seamless expression of nostalgia, love and hope for brighter days to come.

What it is, frankly speaking, is one of the brightest R&B-flavoured projects to touch the mainstream in a long time.

With (watch my moves), Kurt Vile possibly creates indie rock's first ambient masterwork, a piece of art that is surprisingly and lovingly languid, even for the king of slack.

Carnage covers broader range than most of the Bad Seeds' recent records, cramming plenty of Cave's various stylings into a neat, eight-song package. For all of Cave's hunger and glee to return to the foreboding sounds of his past, it's when he opts for pure catharsis and bliss that he album achieves its full power.

No. 4 proves beyond measure that Christina Vantzou has as much talent and vision as most any of them. Hollywood, this is your wakeup call. Listen to her.

If The OF Tape Vol. 2 proves one thing it's that Odd Future aren't just a product of the Internet hype machine.

While listening to Phèdre, one can do nothing but feel helpless in the face of nearly perfect pop experimentalism.

While the French artist has introduced a new persona and perspective on Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue), his ability to produce truly unique moments of pop power remains.

Why Make Sense? is a consistently engaging album by a band that has successfully reinvigorated their sound.

Rich and vibrant musically while raw and emotive lyrically, Ultraviolet is Kylesa's highest achievement to date.

While it may be early to qualify his style or sound as timeless, it's managed to stand the test for the past 10 years and he's done nothing but hone his skills.

On instrumentals, Lenker settles down from songs' busier thoughts, indulging in the stoicism within to achieve moments of serenity, if only briefly. Deep breaths, everyone.

Engravings sees the artist employing fractured choral voices, militant drums, swirling guitars and the occasional harpsichord (notably on album standout "The Weight of Gold") to create a tapestry of sounds both experimental and organic.

His is an askew version of experimental electronic music that is as engaging a vision as it is singular.

Despite the often abrasive experimental flourishes, the album retains a joyous sense of melody and pulse that makes it undeniably fun at its core.

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.

For fans that saw the culmination of his artistic prowess in Gliss Riffer, Mystic Familiar will fulfill many of the same needs, but with even greater balance in execution.

Combining the uncontaminated brawn of 2004's The Woods with the hip indie sensibilities of their early LPs, Sleater-Kinney have finally relieved their all-encompassing crowd-pleaser with the sonically pleasing Path of Wellness.

The album-closing title track gets synthier, but also heavier, hitting listeners with a wave of doom. It's the best of what the two can do, both together and apart. If Mrs. Piss's first release is any indication, we can't wait to see what's next.

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.

Good To Be Home lives up to its title and is easily his best and most consistent release since Below The Heavens.

Wherever Thundercat plans to go from here, this EP builds the robust case that one probably should follow.

This is a solid album more than capable of holding fans over until a second release.

American Dream does exactly what a new LCD Soundsystem album should do: it brings back the rush that listening to the band always has, and adds a compelling new dimension to the band's sound--a mature, realist darkness that they'd only hinted at previously--that suggests Murphy might have been temporarily out of motivation, but he was never out of ideas.

Condon is at the heart of each song, so while a hopeful tone is central to both the music and lyrics, No No No is a portrait of a man putting on a brave face while piecing his life back together, and it's all the more engaging for it.

With their latest release, Depeche Mode prove they have both the musical depth and strength of conviction to outlast us all.

Royal Thunder borrow elements from many different sounds, but they've found a way to emphasize the parts that make them unique. In an industry full of cookie-cutter sentiment, it's refreshing to find a band with the courage to wear their heart on their sleeve as boldly as they do on Wick.

Levy's writing is both insular — her lyrics are dense and singular, her references specific and sometimes unknowable — and insulating, sketching her surroundings so vividly, so minutely, that a city can feel as familiar and often-unpredictable as the inside of your own head.

Eucalyptus finds Portner going back-to-basics, taking listeners on a psychedelic but steady trip over 15 tracks with atmospheric and shifting samples ("Lunch Out of Order" Pt. 1 and 2), Sung Tongs-style guitar work ("Jackson 5," "PJ" and opener "Season High") and spaced-out instrumentation (the twisted "Boat Race" and lo-fi drone of "Dr aw one").

While the days of heavily sampled music seemed dead and gone forever, the Avalanches have somehow managed to pull off an album that's as much a mastery of red tape as it is of musical prowess.

The takeaway from Takeoff is that good art is deliberate, enjoyable and actually takes effort. It's good to see he's capable of all these, can't wait to see what he gives us next.

No Blues is precisely the grimly euphoric lift-up it purports to be, validating Los Campesinos! on their own terms as connoisseurs of perversely thrilling, desperately mundane misery.

With a total of 17 songs and a runtime of over an hour, Salutations is Oberst's most ambitious album since his 2002 Bright Eyes masterpiece Lifted, and the best instalment in his solo discography.

Weiss long ago found his own voice, and on Standards he finally captures it on tape for the world to see and hear.

Although somewhat less accessible than Hairless Toys, Take Her Up to Monto sees Murphy coming in to her own as a solo artist.

Written, performed, and produced solely by the artist, Barnes' debut is a percussive gem saturated with guttural synths. It's a distinct piece of electro-pop that deserves close listening.

On his terrific sophomore record, Wall paints a portrait of a mythic Canadiana, a western region of lonesome plains and grizzled frontiersmen, of rodeos and gunfighters, of hardscrabble existences and unlucky bounces.

Through For Their Love, Tabish and Other Lives as a whole re-engage with the outside world and analyze their sense of self worth. The inevitable vulnerability is morphed into a sense of strength and confidence, which adds another purposeful layer to the band's repertoire.

Down to the Lowest Terms: The Soul Sessions is a triumphant return from a funk dominator.

A compelling album that will more than reward your attention.

The 45 songs, presented chronologically, exhibit a somewhat expected musical maturing--from the raw piano attack of 1984's "From Her to Eternity" through to 2013's contemplative mantra "Push the Sky Away." ... It's the DVD, which jumps around in time, and includes both professionally shot official concert footage and fuzzy bootleg gems, that's the prize here.

Over the course of a full album, the duo's strict adherence to their limited sonic template starts to get just a little tiring, but the Milk Carton Kids' mastery of their chosen form is never in doubt.

Across its 10 songs, Don't Forget Me is as concise as it is exciting. Not a note is wasted, not a second under-utilized. What truly sets it apart is how comfortable Rogers seems embodying her full potential.

Oh No's beats run gritty, grainy and hard from start to finish, with tough rhythms and an expansive array of aggressive sonics darting in and out of each cut, adding much expressive flair to the beatsmith's heartbeat-raising, all-business attacks.

Do yourself a favour and cop this release. Rap is good nowadays, so indulge.

Finn was able to dial the swagger back for Faith In The Future and replace it with nuance, subtlety; sonically, it allows him room to breathe, to let new characters and stories thrive in softer moments.

Toronto deep-funk messengers the Soul Motivators deepen their groove and expand both their sonic palette and social consciousness on their sophomore full-length, Do the Damn Thing.

Wraetlic is a dark record, delicately assembled to provide the listener with an experience in humanistic truth, a subject in which Smoke has succeeded quite well in outlining.

For more than a decade, Lady Gaga has encouraged us to 'just dance' regardless of the pain hidden deep within ourselves. While she may have veered off from her own advice over the past few years, Chromatica proves that Gaga is back and better than ever.

With Life After Youth, Powell has gifted us a beautiful treatise on how to think about life, relationships and what's important.

More polished than 2012's Zeros, Deeper is fuller, fatter and puts more emphasis on its futuristic electronic elements than its nostalgic ones.

All the controversy gives elements of DAYTONA some delicious extra novelty, though thankfully its core ingredients are more than fulfilling on their own.

If it can be said that Griffin has been toiling in the shadow of Emmylou Harris, then American Kid is the long-overdue moment that puts the full range of her talent on display.

Unrepentant Geraldines is personal and political and refreshingly void of marketing gimmicks or befuddling collaborations. Rather, Tori just comes bearing songs straight from the heart/head/hands/Hell.

Without being overwhelmingly expressive or boringly subtle, Boris create layered atmospheres that are equal parts beautiful and menacing.

Much has been said about jazz in the new millennium, and alongside names like Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus and Robert Glasper, Yussef Kamaal should now be considered in that conversation.

Sit Down for Dinner proves the band is as compelling as ever, circling in and out of each other's vocals and rhythms with ease.

The Mosaic of Transformation is a generous record, a gift from Smith to those who need to lock into their body, to move quietly and deliberately.

Each of the five songs are fantastically paced, building up to massive payoff every time; it's something that's never been out of Terror's range of ability, but a collection of songs consistently of this calibre has been a long time coming.

Hazy slacker rock with catchy melodies and psych-y breakdowns, Melt the Honey is a warm, raw album that invites reflection without judgement.

While Tyler will almost certainly never outgrow life as a weird, hell-raising provocateur, Wolf shows that he's already growing into life as a smart, diverse artist.

At turns noisy, wistful and dark, The Terror is a beguiling record that's as beautiful as it is frightening.

This is highly listenable, but equally disturbing.

Mac Miller emphatically joins a higher tier of rap artists with Watching Movies, an effort that at once silences his detractors and rewards his faithful following.

The Dusk in Us is another step forward for Converge, pushing their sound to new levels in a way that is uniquely their own. Although it took five years to come to fruition, the record was well worth the wait, and stands as a testament to why the band have become so hugely influential.

Rather than slow down and chill out, he chooses to mirror our own sped-up reality in his music, with impressive results.

Besides one failed experiment of a song, You're Welcome's 11 other tracks are not only some of the best songs Williams has ever penned, but some of the freshest, most inventive tunes the genre has heard in years.

Victim of Love is meant to be taken literally; it's a rare and continued opportunity for a sexagenarian to finally get his chance in the soulful sun. Something the album proves that he's both appreciative of and not taking lightly.

Despite its heavy subject matter, Rispah remains an eminently listenable release; it's proof of that somewhat clichéd adage that pain fuels great art.

Every song on here is an absolute gem, and while it does sound like some of Aphex Twin's previous material, that's probably the best compliment it can get.

Craig Finn, Jason Isbell, Tim Easton and Caitlin Rose all show up to play, reminding us both that Branan can stand beside the best in the business, and that the best in the business want to stand beside him.

All said, untitled unmastered. is a brilliant mini-album that stands well on its own, but it works even better as a fascinating To Pimp a Butterfly appendix, expanding on and balancing the themes of that album both sonically and lyrically.

There's no denying the highly enjoyable nature of their raw, emotive debut; that they're so young only means there's potential for even better things to come.

By employing the occasional tapping lead or reverb-drenched tremolo section, the band add layers to each song, resulting in an overall sound that has enough variation to keep it from sounding tedious but maintains enough pop simplicity to keep it catchy and memorable.

There is something innate about Bernice's music, full of Dann's knack for honesty, observation, and language that reflects on the natural beauty around us. It is a joy to hear Bernice's musical identity coalesce.