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.