Eyes on the Lines is unmistakably a guitarist's album, yet luckily for most, Gunn's song writing is also remarkably accessible. The listener may not find themselves with catchy vocal hooks stuck in their head after a first listen, but they'll definitely be humming riffs and guitar lines for several hours afterward.

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.

It's a delicate, cautious demonstration, but Mechanics of Dominion is a bold, gripping and brilliantly nuanced addition to Esmerine's gorgeous catalogue, swelling with hope and brimming with energy.

Pharmakon's devouring is whole and ugly, but it carries a rewarding narrative about the importance of suffering — we're eating ourselves alive, but we're also becoming stronger for it, each act of self-cannibalization and each listen to this album more like a single coil in an upward spiral of transcendence than a snake eating its own tail.

At times Clouds risks being dragged down by its bleak outlook, but ultimately it's a moving portrait of a band on the brink of its own breakthrough.

It's an impressive compilation of provocatively disparate ideas, but taken in in its intended order, there's a mesmerizing continuity to it all.

For all its fear and itching paranoia, PAINLESS is a buzzing thrill.

NYC's Roc Marciano follows up his 2010 critically celebrated solo debut, Marcberg, with a sequel nonpareil in its originality and craftsmanship.

Juxtaposing the escape provided by club culture's immediacy with the harsh realities confronted in the lab, Significant Changes sets a reality check to something danceable, but its success is wholly reliant on Jayda G's balanced presentation and steadfast commitment to both missions, tonal shifts like "Orca's Reprise" providing chill-out wind-downs for the party while the club anthems provide some sorely needed release.

Burning Love add a dark edge to credible rock bands like Queens of the Stone Age and in doing so, have crafted one of the catchiest hardcore albums, or heaviest rock albums, of the year.

Moody moves away the deep soulful grooves that made his name and instead focuses on creating a new sound that, while retaining the breaks and drum machines that are his trademark, is now coloured with live instrumentation and Kenny's delightfully sleazy croon.

As their name suggests, they have all the control over the music, and how they channel that is through wonderful anarchy.

Around the World and Back is far from the final destination for these champions of New York pop punk/rock, but it's a definite step forward on their journey to take the world, and their genre, by storm.

Where the original Something About April was a show a prove lesson in sample creation, part II is a dirt-off-the-shoulder proclamation of songcraft.

While the album is a drone-based record, Mountains never stagnate, unafraid of abrasive movement, and their sometimes intense palette never feels out of place or unpleasant.

She stated that the album's title refers to the laurel bushes that grow in the Southern Appalachians in the US, where they're just as beautiful as they are isolated. She shows us these qualities of beauty and isolation are often two sides of the same coin, and can be married to uncover the intricate corners of a person's full truth.

McBryde stretches musically and melodically to incorporate country, pop and alternative rock sounds, while her lyrics are brazen, badass and unexpectedly beautiful.

"Not Running" and the aforementioned "Little Death" have especially great arrangements, but it's a highlight throughout Future Me Hates Me, and anyone who loves British indie punks Martha for this reason should be laser-focused on this debut from the Beths. Future you will definitely not hate this album.

On The Narrows, Phillips hasn't so much reinvented his craft, he just reinvented his perspective.

Though it's not quite perfect--some songs wear out their welcome before they finish--this album is written and arranged in a sonically and lyrically engaging way, and will surely excite the faithful, even if it fails to convert fence-sitters.

The music — a mix of digital sound with electric and acoustic guitars and live (or at least live sounding) drums — complements their newfound humanist approach to songwriting. 2022's Glitch Princess shattered pop music into a million little pieces. Here Ćmiel has glued things back together, but the cracks are still visible in the way they pair genre tropes.

On What's Your Sign?, Oneida and Rhys Chatham show that sometimes the most obvious collaborations are the ones that end up surprising you the most.

Haliechuk and co. have developed a layered universe and score that creates a unique and immersive experience for those wise enough to carve out ninety minutes of their time to read along with the story as they listen. It's an album that requires listeners to invest their time and attention, but surely those listeners will be happy they did so.

Meshuggah haven't returned to impress anyone but themselves. This is the music they like playing. It just happens to sound unlike anything else in metal. After 30-plus years in the game, Meshuggah have neither quelled their thirst for tectonic frenzy nor dried their well of dexterous musicality.

Bird's Eye is tinged with her signature futuristic nostalgia, but her sonic and personal growth is clear, creating a vibrant kaleidoscope of sound and feeling.

Hopelessness is her first album under her new name, and with that comes a new clarity and purpose to her songwriting, an ownership and authority over her artistic voice that we've not yet seen before.

How Ill Thy World Is Ordered is a thoughtfully orchestrated masterpiece that reveals something neat and new the longer you stare at it. Lyrically, musically, and critically, Daniel Romano is a soothsaying sorcerer operating in plain sight.

She's tough and confrontational, and on her 11th studio album, Down Where The Spirit Meets the Bone, that toughness initially comes across as even more deeply entrenched. It takes a little while to discover the tenderness that goes along with it.

It may be a bit platitudinous, but Temple's delicate voice and songwriting make it an enjoyable listening experience.

At the end of the day Tony Molina is just a guy who loves making music, and this is clear in every second of the layered, hard-hitting Songs from San Mateo County.

They aren't reinventing the wheel at this point in their career, but as young artists with explosive, disillusioned and wrathful emotions for the world and social conventions around them, there isn't a rock band more suited to the times.

Dying field or not, the Beths' third LP is a reaffirmation that the band are ready and willing to go down with the ship.

High On Fire have been on a hot streak with their records in recent years, but their latest is far and above the strongest release they've put out to date. Their blend of thrash, tribal-sounding sludge and doom metal has fully flourished, but to see the band still stepping up their game this far into their career is a testament to the lasting legacy they've left in their wake.

A Written Testimony is a solid effort that makes good on promises set by Electronica's earlier work: thumping, vintage beats; dense rhymes that shimmer with vivid imagery; clever references to the Nation of Islam.

With such a wealth of exposure in his musical upbringing, it's no surprise that this mix boasts the instrumental range that it does, not to mention such a precise and intuitively executed pace.

Amid soulful, R&B-indebted sounds married smoothly to the more country-leaning, Atkins has created her best and most resounding work yet.

Many of us are still absorbing last year's mighty Providence LP, along with the accompanying remix EPs, but Sunder adds even more water to the sponge, serving as yet another reminder that Fake never fails to amaze--even when he's recording on the fly.

While it lacks the political punch of 2015 album Ba Power, Miri stands on its own as a call for peace, mindfulness and reflection.

A Bath Full of Ecstasy provides hope within strife, encourages repeated listens as much for their danceability as the quality of the writing.

Old Star sounds as new as it does born of another epoch, reminding us that though genres and scenes may change, the riff is eternal.

Dig beneath all the sneering sarcasm and laissez faire projection, however, and you find a band stuck in strict formation with the subject matter of their songs. For much of its runtime, Dudu, the cheekily titled followup to 2017's Dada, operates as a series of short diatribes.

There's enough variety mixed in to keep the instrumentals fresh, with luxurious string passages, warm organ swells, overdriven guitar riffs, some harmonica and even a fuzzed-out synth tone.

The meshing of classically trained and self-taught players adds depth to the band's sound, creating a unique concoction of precise technical skill and raw, almost primal passion, leading to an unpredictable instrumental delight.

Outer Heaven is consistently enjoyable, but never too comfortable.

Arpo forges lush soundscapes by drawing on ASMR techniques, layering textures over the arpeggiated hooks that drive the record. A saxophone player himself, Call Super subtly peppers hazy woodwind tones throughout, elevating the record's otherwise eclectic collage of electronic soundscapes.

Like the queen of the night, it fans wide and confident; its petals may fall back to earth quickly before dawn, but its essence lingers. The same flower, transformed but unmistakably familiar, will greet eyes, though briefly, once again.

tUnE-yArDs' bright and playful exterior might deter some, but Garbus and Brenner bask in quirk without it ever clouding the tracks' overall purposes.

It's not a stretch to preemptively label Poetry 2024's record of the summer for the alternative crowd. It's fun, fresh and doesn't take itself too seriously.

Wall of Eyes is an album of background music, a cinematic compilation that feels like a collection of songs that just weren’t good enough to be on its predecessor. It’s too jammy, too undercooked, too unedited — an overextended comedown without the requisite high.

Soused is a powerful and arresting album that will appeal to fans of Scott Walker's later work.

Easy on the ears, heavy on the heart and definitely worth the wait, High will leave you feeling as such.

Age Of is both a sonic treat, and potentially a precursor to how the future of pop music may sound. Fortunately, we need not imagine, because Daniel Lopatin is already there.

It's their willingness to fall flat on their face while swinging for the fences that separates them from the focus-grouped inoffensiveness of their pop peers. The messiness of the whole thing seems to be the point, part of its audacity. In most artists' hands, that would be a recipe for creative bloat. Yet more than ever before the 1975 prove themselves masters of the form.

While Farm to Table isn't quite the classic that he surely has in him, we should consider ourselves fortunate that Bartees is in it for the long haul.

The Toronto, ON four-piece deliver their structurally intricate tunes with unhinged ferocity, the raw arrangements never deviating from the outfit's basic live setup of bass, pummelling drums and twin distorted guitars.

abysskiss continues to keep Lenker's songwriting hot streak going--more than enough to tide us over until the next Big Thief record.

Anyone who can get past the timid first impression will find plenty of fascinating layers and beautiful music to love on Loom.

Sequencing issues aside, the strength of Paris' production is the biggest standout aspect of the project. If the years spent between releases had anything to do with making sure the beats were adequately rendered, those were years well spent.

While the stories told within Few Good Things are definitely the focal point of the record, the musicianship that accompanies it matches and at times even exceeds it.

Thirty years deep into their career, Superchunk throw yet another left turn into a career full of them, offering up a protest record about the people for the people. What a time to be alive, indeed.

The first half of Spare Ribs is actually quite slowed down and weird, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't complement Williamson's vocals as well. ... The title track and "Thick Ear" absolutely steal the show. Sleaford Mods have shown they can do it slow, but they're still much better when they floor it.

The former enfant terribles seem to have arrived at their final destination and sound more assured than ever before with Seek Shelter — a stunning achievement that will restore even the most lapsed practitioner's faith in rock music.

Produced by Garm of Ulver, the textures of M are even more finely hewn and interwoven than its predecessor, resulting in a record that is at once profoundly tactile and deeply sensual.

He has the knack for cramming hooks into the unlikeliest places and ending up with unforgettable songs. If this is what he made with nothing, the potential for his music when he has everything at his disposal seems limitless.

Clarity, her debut album, falls short of capturing the breadth of Petras's rarity, excluding a few crystalline moments.

As intriguing as Strange's music already is, Live Forever demonstrates that there's still tremendous potential left to unlock.

Throughout Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, Dixon continues to show off his acrobatic way with words and parades his affecting precision of imagery.

Lianne La Havas is boldly authentic and infused with passion.

True Widow's newest album, Circumambulation, does a brilliant job of expressing the network of confused and sometimes dark emotions that make us human.

Devouring Radiant Light is like the James Bond of metal albums--it's mature and well-composed, yet lethal enough to be badass. It is an aggressive middle finger to anyone who doubted that Skeletonwitch could make it with another frontman.

Wild! Wild! Wild! was a spontaneous, live-off-the-floor recording, with some enthusiastic chatter left in after "It Came From the South" that points to the relaxed, fun vibe. But while it's tempting to say it's a rock'n'roll album about continuing to rebel as you get older, it's also a love letter to all the music Lewis grew up with.

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.

With the release of their 16th album, All That Reckoning, the Toronto group craft something simple, passionate and visceral.

Boniface is youth music, both in its vibrant shimmer and its wide-eyed, confessional storytelling, verging on embarrassing but typically landing somewhere raw and urgent.

While the songs of Something in the Room She Moves seem to exist in two modes — one buoyant, playful and adventurous, and the other weighty, contemplative and measured — a deeply somatic sense of sound design binds those halves together beautifully.

As the ninth addition to the Wilco canon, Star Wars is a vessel for a few impressive tunes, another respectable--if just a little uninspired--step for a band that continues to unapologetically evolve

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

Indistinct Conversations doesn't so much pare back as it does reveal depths: Powell's putting their inner life on display, and giving it the full range of space and volume it deserves.

The LP is both amusing and poignant, full of strange imagery and punch lines that are characteristic of Mountain Goats.

They have a warmth and earnestness that permeates their complex emotional movements. Their soundscapes seamlessly blend the organic and rustic infrastructures of urban life.

Through fragmentation, each track finds cohesion, making deconstruction — the silences, gaps, twisted repetitions, abrupt cuts, looped production, harried noise--the story itself.

Island represents a tender, more melancholic chapter in Pallett's repertoire, but one that offers a refined perspective.

The project hits a bit of a rut with "Rachel's Song" — an anachronistic cover of a Vangelis composition for Blade Runner — and the subsequent "Stardust," whose droning synth line and latent drum pattern ironically also give the impression of the film score for a sci-fi thriller, albeit an underbaked one. Fortunately, Tragic Magic rediscovers its rhythm on closing track "Melted Moon," a song written in response to the tragic wildfires that consumed much of Los Angeles last January.

With each piece of childhood minutiae recollected, the divide shrinks, and there's a triumphant sense of something starting anew. Sparks flying.

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

On V, the Budos Band give fans a new, granite dimension to their craft, while keeping things head-bobbingly and anthemically familiar.

If Soft Landing doesn't make you feel good inside, all the drugs in the world won't help you.

These tracks point toward a more compelling musical direction that would allow Parks to stand out as a singular pop artist, but the overwhelmingly simple bedroom pop stylings that decorate the majority of the album struggle to leave a mark. ... Nevertheless, Parks' wise words are indeed the album's saving grace.

Cheat Codes stands as Black Thought's most fully fleshed-out and accessible non-Roots project to date. Despite not veering too far outside his comfort zone or breaking any new ground, it holds the perfect blend of accessibility and complexity, supported by an energetic cast of guests.

Likewise checks all the boxes of a "good" album, but it's also a bit boring. It's too much a showcase of Quinlan's lyrical acumen, which is incisive, but the record doesn't strike a visceral chord.

Ensemble sections expand and contract into brilliant solos by his musicians, and while this will be a difficult listen for some, it contains some amazing moments.

On Hubris, Oren Ambarchi displays the confidence to allow a jumble of musicians and sounds to come off like a beautifully orchestrated, high-concept piece.

Heaven Is A Junkyard will make you feel its spiritual tone and tenor, a superpower that has laid dormant with Youth Lagoon, now awakened by Powers finally finding his voice."

Life Will See You Now tackles life's most drastic ups and downs with good-natured empathy, making it both complex and comforting.

Infinite Dissolution is full of haunted love songs between a fallen city and the ghosts that inhabit it; it fills a void that I never knew existed until this unsettling, aching sound poured in.

Although GUMBO'! does move with some inconsistency, Siifu nevertheless delivers a dynamic approach to his craft.

The Window finds Ratboys deservedly taking a confident step into a space they carved out for themselves.