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

It's all delivered with such fresh energy and so many original production ideas that it's honestly hard to gripe too much. If you've been vibing on Hannah Diamond's Cook-produced debut Reflections recently and were somewhat baffled by 7G, look no further than Apple, a bold and exciting album that boasts focus as well.

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.

Find the Sun is an uncompromising record from an artist intent on mining further depths, one that finds the beauty in unease — and a sense of purpose in the darkness.

Cantus, Descant is accessible without ever feeling thoughtless, plays to Davachi's sonic strengths, and provides just enough experimentation and variety to justify its daunting running time. It's a journey worth taking.

Even though Protean Threat proves to be an adventurous, quirky and downright strange album at times, Osees manage keep the whole thing sonically grounded and consumable, all while keeping Dwyer's winning streak impossibly alive.

Shame is not only hard to listen to, but also hard to swallow and hard to digest. It thought-provoking music which is guaranteed to make listeners feel uncomfortable in their own skin; what more could you want from a new Uniform album?

Listening to Conway's latest is hearing the sound of an underground king ascend to the status of the esteemed guest artists he attracts.

For a band that's spun fanciful yarns from the farthest reaches of time and space and the inner recesses of their own minds, this grounded perspective could be another interesting change of direction. But for now, it feels more like a retreat.

Medium Rarities isn't essential. A few tracks stand out, but the real excitement lies ahead. Mastodon's last few albums have crept up the top 10.

Whether she is quite literally questioning her own happiness in "Hannah Happiness" or dealing with the act of sharing feelings with others in "Stranger Sat by Me," Read awakens the overwhelming feeling of second-guessing choices or misremembering a specific experience.

Tricky has injected so much raw emotion into Fall to Pieces that it can't help but stand out as one of his most notable, memorable and authentic releases.

Georgas gives listeners the bittersweet beauty of recalling turning seasons and turning points on All That Emotion.

There are no head-turning licks or subtle details that take away from Callahan's ever-deepening purr. And when Callahan is at his most outlandish and personable, he's able to draw out the most emotion, made all the more powerful in spite of the album's limited sonic palette. If Callahan's finding himself increasingly unable to relate to other characters, he's using his music to forge a different path, inviting his audience to stand in his place.

Mirrored Aztec is also more tight and clean than February's Surrender Your Poppy Field – that Pollard still has this many hooks in him is mystifying.

King's Disease is a record that's occasionally swollen with too many ideas, backed up by lazy rhymes and unsavoury politics. Thankfully, with impeccable production overseen by executive producer Hit-Boy and bolstered by a slew of excellent guest features, Nas overcomes these pain points to pull together his most satisfying project in close to a decade.

Mama, You Can Bet! highlights Muldrow's encyclopedic knowledge of jazz, hip-hop, funk, R&B and soul, making for a stylistically eclectic album. The 15-song sequence, however, is eminently cohesive, each track building on or seemingly responding to the previous one.

Ulver doesn't do anything to push the synthpop sound they pursue out of its comfort zone and this keeps the album from greatness, but Flowers of Evil stands out as the band's most accessible album to date.

At 16 tracks, Dream Nails seems lengthy at first glance, but each track is punchy and goes by quickly.

The potency of Toots Hibbert's material is evidenced by the presence of his classic tune "Pressure Drop" in a current TV beer commercial. No single track on Got to Be Tough matches up to that song, but this is a solid offering from the 77-year-old.

No Joy have learned a lot in the five years since their last full-length, 2015's More Faithful and Motherhood is the perfect encapsulation of that.

Where All Mirrors pushed at the sky, Whole New Mess explores the vastness of the mind and peculiarities of the heart. It may take repeat listens to hear these roughly hewn songs as more than demos for their gilded twins, but once you've waded deep enough into the record's shifting, disintegrating twilight, it becomes something wholly new.

Owen's second album is nonetheless a triumph of soundscapes, an album not meant to analyze and decipher but to daydream, sleepwalk and stargaze through.

On In Sickness & in Flames, the Front Bottoms decided to let their stream of consciousness dictate the majority of the 12 songs on this album, it's harder to decipher what many of them even mean. It's infuriating, but that's what also why band has such a dedicated fanbase.

Girl Friday doesn't allow you to consume their music conveniently; you have to recognize the group of people who made it. They speak bluntly, demand respect, equity, and play a ton of enjoyable music.

Eva Moolchan reaches new heights in her career on Happy Birthday, but not without encountering a few bumps in the road. Even at its questionable points, though, there is something beautifully refreshing about a new Sneaks album — Moolchan is having fun, and she doesn't care what you think about it.

The Consuming Flame is Matmos at their finest. Daniel and Schmidt have taken the simplest of concepts and manipulated it into a gorgeous and grotesque beast of an album.

Throughout, D'Agostino's words are intricate and so tangled in detail that the stories are obscured; it's more like flipping through a photo album without footnotes — you're not told the story, but you feel the impression it leaves on you.