While there are some standout cuts--most notably the Avalanches' Afro remake of "I'm a Cuckoo"--much of The Third Eye Centre should have remained on the cutting room floor.

Call It Love is an enticing work, but despite its many pleasing qualities, it doesn't quite stand out from the oversaturated electronic dream-pop scene.

In•ter A•li•a feels like a band trying to recapture the sound of their youth.

Remember Us to Life is one of Spektor's strongest records, and one that really requires repeat listens to appreciate every detail and effort.

In large part, this compilation is underwhelming--there are exceptions, but the creativity is lacking and, to some degree, that's surprising, considering some of the talent on the roster.

Though some may find the metal might tiresome over Periphery III's hour-plus runtime, the drive to keep exploring outside of their stylistic box continues to be crucial to their success.

A mysterious, sprawling listen that will baffle the masses, but reward patient listeners longing for an LP that is immersive, quirky and gently haunting.

The North isn't Stars burning their brightest, but they're a long ways away from flickering out.

King Gizzard's offerings, by their experimental nature, are a disjointed product. Rather than fight this, Chunky Shrapnel thunders headlong into it. ... While this jarring approach may not give you the best sense of a King Gizzard show, it certainly captures what makes them so appealing.

It’s a fittingly adult album from a pair who’ve long seemed stuck in a loop of playful immaturity — midlife sounds good on them.

Although his lyrics are as benign as ever, much of the music here doesn't just rehash what was good about the band's salad days, but bravely presents Corgan as an artist trying to stage one of the most unexpected comebacks in recent history.

As is, it's a great outing by Anthrax, if slightly frustrating in its lack of ability to keep the great momentum going consistently.

The instrumental cuts are warm and warped, hazy and slow-burning, all buzzing with bass and landing loudly in the realm of beat making.

This is an album that throws everything at the wall, and most of it sticks. Best enjoyed in the present.

This Is Not a Safe Place is a fine album with some songs that, with time, could become Ride staples. However, there are times where the band crumble under the pressure of bringing both a progression in sound, as well as a catering to their older audiences.

The Mobb aren't exactly reinventing the wheel here, but on album highlight "Timeless," the effect is beguilingly hypnotic.

TOPS like to keep listeners on their toes. Their music is undeniably beautiful and, for all its subtleties, often immediately rewarding.

The musical depth of the band's quieter writing is what draws the ear; electronics remain subtle, between Tompkins' falsetto and interplay between piano and clean electric guitars. That isn't to say TesseracT abandoned aggression entirely.

Though some of MG comes off unfinished and thematically skeletal, Gore does a fine job at utilizing a multitude of sounds on experimental-leaning tracks like "Creeper" and "Trysting."

The album's greatest strength lies in its cinematic quality. Every song feels like a scene in the bigger dream The Ridge represents as a whole.

Moving, emotional and richly textured, Earth is an impressive solo debut from O'Brien, and delivers one of this year's more fully-formed albums.

For now, the band seem content to maintain the status quo and refine the elements that made them so appealing in the first place.

Hidden Orchestra occasionally skirt the borderline of cheese, but thankfully manage to stay on the right side of it, for the most part.

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.

Providing a counterpoint to the dark rumble of the remainder of the release, dBridge has crafted a record that traverses the emotional spectrum in its three tracks better than any other drum & bass release has in the last few years.

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.

A lack of variation in tempos and tones gives a sense of redundancy, yet the pace of the album, with all of its gosh-darn hooks, carries it through to the end.

Overall, Lantern's a beguiling collection of songs from an artist whose road to success is made better by the number of detours he takes along the way.

This is a minimalist masterpiece.

Know-It-All is clearly the end result of Cara's vision by way of major label collaboration. So while it's a tad formulaic, it's terrifically executed and solidly produced.

Something Like a War feels ambitious and searching, navigating the complex experiences of Bainbridge and their collaborators.

It's an odd album, but a good one, which will make you smile at its slightly off-kilter weirdness while soothing your weary bones.

It is a transformative synthpop journey exploring how our worst moments shape us as individuals for when we are at our best.

While the album showcases the band's equilibrium and by now unquestioned versatility, it does mean that amidst the intended dissonance and vocal cameos, Black Thought's verses are not as prominent.

It's that intoxicating blend of late night, tripped-out electronics and melodic psych that is featured prominently on Shine Your Light, and it's a notable improvement.

The best way to enjoy Damage and Joy is to leave their past out of it. Psychocandy was 32 years ago, and the Reids are now pushing 60. The fact that they've come back at all is a remarkable thing. But doing so with an album that lives up to expectations is all we could have asked from the Reids.

Zeus avoid indulgent jamming, filler material or ill-advised experiments. Just 14 blissful tunes, rich with influences.

The constant vitriol is made scarier by his choice to rap in a stuporous, incantatory monotone. The music here--forbidding snares, honking staccato keyboards--is same-y but effective.

The self-proclaimed "Genius, idiot" succeeds for the most part in moving out of his sonic comfort zone while toeing the lyrical line between enlightenment and ignorance.

This record would be great background music for a party or movie scene, but it does little to hold the listener's attention on its own.

This melodic emphasis, combined with a clearer compositional vision, is a welcome return to the style that made their earlier work so captivating.

Despite this influx of collaborative talent, things sound largely the same on this album, but with a project as reliable as the Go! Team, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Joe, Joell, Crooked I and Royce trade quality rhymes over a varied catalogue of original productions that allow the four-piece ample room to spit their different brands of venom.

Apparat's foray into ethereal compositions is a powerful, vivid work of art. Krieg und Frieden deserves a standing ovation.

This brilliant light on the country's folk music scene has never sounded better.

In Technicolor keeps this young duo striving to sound youthful and adventurous.

There's no doubt that, technically speaking, Swollen Members are better now than they've ever been, but a decade-and-a-half in, they need to find new material.

Fantasy is Lightning Dust's most consistent and cohesive effort to date, and is dreamy enough to live up to its otherworldly title.

This project is as close to inside Yow's twisted mind as fans have gotten, And it's a compelling, nightmarish realm for certain.

Leery fans will find the uninspired drumming to be the least of their problems, as it fits perfectly with a far more glaring issue: uninspired songwriting.

Sleigh Bells should be applauded for their attempts to move beyond their simplistic formula, but the growing pains are evident and awkward to listen to.

Last Patrol is an incredible display of mature stoner metal from dudes that view aging as more than just graying beards.

On her sophomore effort, The Golden Echo, Kimbra hasn't reined in her sonic exploration (where else would you find ex-Silverchair singer Daniel Johns and bassist Thundercat as primary contributors on the same album?), yet there's a more cohesive feel to the project.

Approaching this project as a commissioned artist would, Jon Hopkins' Late Night Tales feels more like a narrative than it does a simple mixtape.

Hurt & the Merciless is another strong outing for one of the most unique rock bands around, full of the groove, soul and big shiny instrumentation that defines the Heavy.

Aquilo captivate most when they vary the tempo and instrumentation within their songs, and they do it often enough to make Silhouettes a strong debut overall.

Drank is an interesting take for fans to indulge in, but not an album you're likely to take any inspiration from, given its lack of real exploration.

Apollonia works through numerous styles that easily complement each other, while being distinct enough to stand apart. With 18 tracks to wend through, the effortlessly experimental affair speaks for itself.

The result doesn't sound bad; at worst, a few of the tracks are forgettable. But beneath the carefully roughed-up veneer, there's some depth and nuance missing.

On Egowerk, the Faint seem to have accepted their place in questioning the perpetual struggle.

The partnership of Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy) and Jace Lasek (Besnard Lakes) offers up five songs in tectonic waves, their instrumentation carefully modulating into a slow-burn intensity.

Overall, the Pixies' seventh album is palatable — the songs are generally likeable — but it lacks excitement.

There isn't anything innovative about their music, but every note of this album feels honest and considered.

Anything in Return functions as an all-in-one summary of Bundick's talents, giving the impression of a maturing songwriter who has found his wheelhouse.

It's a leaner, grittier iteration of Arbouretum that slowly lopes out of the starting blocks on this fifth full-length.

Sonically, the album is a time capsule of the greatest moments in black music history. Lyrically, it's hard-hitting reality about the present day, the good, the bad and the horrific — but it's also a captivating tale about using love as a weapon to overcome, as well as the reality that sometimes love also fails, whether it be romantic, platonic or social.

They're disorienting, at times disturbing and very abstract, which basically makes it the perfect visual representation of the album. The record feels like it's falling apart at times, but there's beauty in its disarray--like its accompanying videos, it's hard to look away.

Teaspoon To The Ocean's all-encompassing aura takes you through Craig's master class of dream exploration fairly quickly, but even in the midst of all the trippy goodness, his thoughtful testaments manage to shine through track to track, giving poignant, detailed expression to the anxiety that plagues his deepest thoughts.

Having few tonal shifts and being practically devoid of contrast, LAHS is the perfect atmospheric soundtrack for a backyard party with boozy beverages and adult tokeables.

Never in recorded history has there been an album of such audible variety, distinctive fidelity and lyrical intensity.

August By Cake gets interesting when tracks like "Warm Up to Religion" and "What Begins on New Year's Day" tap into the melancholy that's occasionally haunted Pollard's melodies. Aside from those tracks, though, he shows little interest in the tinkering that made his earlier work so interesting.

While new beginnings aren't without their flaws, Big Boi's lyrical prowess and effortless delivery provide the thread that link the old Big Boi universe to this, the Boomiverse.

Couple the simultaneously sparse and noisy production with the overall scant running time, and the album unfortunately fails to leave an impression, especially in an area of music that has become more and more saturated since the band's 2018 breakthrough.

This sophomore effort builds off her debut, but loses the plot in a mass of electronic blackness and vague grievances.

It's possible that hyperpop purists and longtime Harle fans will wince at the sanded-down edges and softened tones that make up this album — go listen to "Boing Beat" or "Interlocked" for an ungentle reminder of how bonkers Harlecore remains a half-decade a later. And yet, Cerulean is undeniably fun, and cements Harle's standing as a singular artist in the world of progressive pop.

A brooding, groovy, muscular album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is a more mature and thoughtful application of Alice In Chains' undeniably powerful aesthetic.

At its best, Mechanical Bull is standard, paint-by-numbers fare that attempts to sprint to the finish line. However, it runs out of gas and you have to wonder if Kings of Leon have as well.

Pretty much the only complaint is that, similar to all of his releases since the infamous EVOL, it delivers and lives up to the hype, but it doesn't build and surpass his previous work. It remains to be seen whether he will ever create an album that is better than everything he's done so far, but this is still an extremely solid release.

There are songs here that could quite easily become part of anyone's perfect summer soundtrack, which was likely Kisses' plan all along.

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.

Be Myself is hardly a classic, but it's another solid, light-hearted sounding collection with some clear standouts on it.

Although the album may carry a serious and meaningful message, Rostron has enough hard-won maturity as an artist to know that vinegar only attracts flies, and All Love's Legal is a perfect marriage of thought-provoking and hip-shaking.

The Hyperdub resident dabbles in funk, grime, experimental, R&B and soul, a mélange of styles that effortlessly coexist.

Windy City isn't a revolutionary album, or even the most adventurous release in Krauss's deep, rich catalogue, but it's a welcome reminder that Krauss remains a song interpreter with few--if any--peers in Nashville.

Masana Temples is a comparatively accessible release from Kikagaku Moyo, despite rooting itself in a reality outside of our own. The ease with which these tracks can be entered leaves one wondering whether this utopian vision--for all its gestures at peace--could be closer to us than we thought.

Ultimately, Something to Tell You rests uncomfortably between the retro California pop sound HAIM pulled off so perfectly on album number one and experimentation that reaches a little too far into a cartoonish computerized concept of the future.

Ultimately, Thank You for Today finds the Death Cab for Cutie of 2018 taking stock of their band, choosing to forge ahead by using the foundation of their back catalogue to harness their core identity and build upon it. The band's shared vision is clear, encapsulated in this collection of songs.

They've got the speed, the outfits and the record collection, but Cerebral Ballzy's interpretation of hardcore punk never comes off as more than cartoony.

The album benefits from its fluid, improvisatory feel, not quantized to death like so much electronic music these days.

From those raw, candid lyrics, to ScHoolboy's increasing pop acumen, CrasH Talk reveals many sides of an increasingly (and compellingly) unpredictable MC.

The Olympians don't break the mould here, but they deliver robust soul with tight compositions, florid instrumentation and that trademark Daptone sound that feels authentic and earned.

Need Your Light is certainly a step up from Beta Love, but Ra Ra Riot are missing the orchestral edge that originally set them apart from other groups in their genre, making it feel inessential despite being quite likeable.

Having more songs available to stream results in more royalties, though it doesn't equate to a flawless full-length.

With this album, Superheaven have outdone themselves, writing a tight set of perfectly balanced songs that create a refreshing, unified whole.

Full Circle as a whole feels anti-climactic. It's a rough start for Haelos, aren't exactly short on potential--here's hoping they branch out and find themselves on future releases.

There isn't much here for serious followers of modern electronic music. It will bore you mostly, which--not to be dismissive here--appears to be the point entirely.

Above all, Cynic's New Year sounds incredible; its production quality alone is worth several listens.

Golden Grrrls is an entertaining enough way to spend 30 minutes, although there's little below the surface.