On paper, the inclusion of saxophones, bass clarinet, flute and cello should make Ultimate Success Today expansive. In practice, the auxiliary musicians often add the sonic equivalent of extra seasoning to an already good dish; it's often unclear whether Protomartyr needs the addition.

Ada Lea's workmanship is striking on what we say in private, as she delicately showcases both the chaos and beauty of change.

Cave World is thoroughly conceived and smartly realized. It balances high-energy ragers with mellower, introspective numbers while the interludes keep things progressing smoothly, adding some cohesion to Viagra Boys' signature chaos.

Necrocracy is as perfect as we're all hoping Carcass will be when they bring their good ship back for another gruesome go at it.

The album starts off relatively strong, with hard-hitting choruses in "Narrow Mouth" and upbeat, catchy verse lines in "Magnolia," but lose momentum quickly thereafter.

On What If, Hauschka delivers an unbuttoned works that's just as revitalizing for the listener as it sounds for the artist.

The Pool feels a tad disconnected to qualify as one of the year's major releases. There's a kind of connective tissue missing; the groove is there, but it lacks flow.

Short on hooks and obviously memorable moments, Songs You Make At Night is an album that excels in texture and dynamics instead, each thoughtfully composed song an intricate clockwork of whirring percussion and interlocking guitar and synth work.

While Marked For Death felt more cathartic and Some Heavy Ocean felt more plaintive, there's no denying the emotional heft of On Dark Horses. This is another confident step forward by an artist who continues to dazzle us with new sides of herself.

At 70, Melnyk is producing some of the most physically demanding work of his career. And he's doing so in front of a bigger audience than he's ever enjoyed. This is a recording of a composer/performer very much at the top of his game.

Aside from a few less-than-strong features, Rap or Go to the League allows 2 Chainz, a veteran rapper, to use his powers to acknowledge a picture much larger than him--it's one that's rooted in his past, but is planting the seeds for the feature.

Amnioverse does still err, at times, on the side of industrial and abstraction, but is anchored in a softness rich in texture and weighty with emotion.

Mid Air champions feeling and shared connection. You'll remember it for a long while.

You can't help but wish he'd leaned into the dive bar clatter and freewheeling wildness that always feels just at the periphery of his music. As it is, And the Wind acts as a solid addition to your deep-summer-backyard-beer-drinking soundtrack — sometimes that's all you need.

Vile could have chopped most of these songs in half and they would have worked just fine, but the overall effect wouldn't have been so blissfully druggy.

Real, Loveless's confident and poppy fourth album, builds on what Loveless and her band were doing on 2014's grittier Somewhere Else.

It's Foxing in a new shape, a first-hand witness of the evolution of a band that were really good just the way they were. While these changes may not be welcome with open arms, the thoughtfulness and artistry deserves a round of applause.

La Dispute are more or less doing what they've always done. They're just continuing the refining process, whatever that is, for better or worse.

They've managed to create an album that feels fresh while also being the closest they've come to recreating the magic of earlier records. This is a band that has finally found a way to evolve without eliminating what it was that made them so special in the first place.

Diggs finds all of the quicksilver tales of sex, drugs and violence that '90s gangsta rap used to trade in — except here, they're wired together yet dislocated, provocative yet impersonal. Hutson and Snipes gleefully resurrect the adrenalized club beats of that same era, with occasional breathers that flirt with the ambience of Massive Attack or Tricky when darkness starts to suffer the threat of dawn, all tied together with the static pulse of electricity and the flow of information.

Dig in Deep treads familiar territory both musically and lyrically, but it bristles with energy and feels like an expertly paced live set by a singer and a band having an especially great night.

Lanza zooms between feelings and situations so nimbly that every time you revisit All the Time and the accompanying artwork, it's just as easy to imagine a freewheeling Lanza doing gleeful donuts in that parking lot as it is to envision her having a breakdown behind the wheel.

There is a simmering sense of joy and positivity throughout, even while the lyrical content often remains affectingly bittersweet. Lay's voice is soft and lovely, and her vocals are more meandering than melodic. But her voice also carries an unpretentious gravitas that helps to ground the album.

Hopefully ASDIG will never give in completely to conventional songwriting, because it's the little idiosyncrasies that make their expansive music so breathtaking--which, incidentally, really is the best word to describe Sea When Absent.

Joe Strummer 001 is bursting with endearing, heartbreakingly excellent stories and songs about and by a guy with an endless passion to create and affect change. Here's hoping this series continues.

You don't just feel unburdened of "progress" dysphoria, you feel like you've emerged from the paradigm equipped with a new language to help you navigate the next one.

It's an intricate record, one filled with peaks and valleys, high points and low. It gets a little messy at times, but it finds beauty in it all.

It does little to dispel any of the mystery that surrounds the band, even while proving them worthy of the praise they've received across the pond.