There's a sense of well-earned intimacy throughout Local Honey, with songs that speak plainly and from the heart about deepening relationships and the life-sustaining love that comes from them. This record is warm, instantly inviting and crackling with life.

Illusion of Time is at its best on the tracks whose titles imply clear pictures of light and dark. It feels less focused on the penultimate "Water," which is also the longest track at 8 minutes — a virtuosic experiment that regrettably dispels some of the dramatic oomph and coherence of the album as a whole.

It's Bulat's fullest-sounding record to date, and really excels in its loudest and most playful moments.

New Me, Same Us is an apt title for this introspective and revitalizing work.

The Chats say they don't try too hard while writing lyrics, but in this case, the simpler and less ambiguous the better. High Risk Behaviour is a slam to the skull with each stomp of the kick drum.

Calling Gigaton a return to form is a matter of expectations: diehards will claim they never faltered, while fans who checked out 20 years ago, when things got weird, will find lots to like but little to love. Perhaps the most notable group likely to be inspired are Pearl Jam themselves; too long in the rock hinterlands, the band finally seem reacquainted with their creative powers.

Aporia is foremost an exercise in collaboration — a meeting between two perpetually entangled personalities, an ode to their decades-long father-son relationship and a fitting conclusion to their musically enriched partnership.

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.

With its often bright, and chill nature, the album is a fitting soundtrack for the transition from spring into summer. It saunters by delicately, evoking floral scents and pastel colours.

Even though the subjects may not be sung about with as much grit as they once were, they are certainly darker than the pop genre that's entrapped the artist in recent years.

It's an important record because it does dig so deeply into the tradition of folk music, as many records in black metal are tending to do. It digs into the sounds celebrated in days of old, and is the perfect addition to your collection.

Sixteen Oceans is a sign of Hebden settling into his well-trodden niche. Occasionally, one can wish for the unbridled eclecticism of his earlier days, but that doesn't seem to be of any concern for an artist who is in complete contentment of his place in the musical world.

Blandly vapid songs.

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.

The more I listen to it, the more that Infinity of Now sounds like the album I wish Portishead would finally get around to making. Given how much the Heliocentrics continue to advance with each album, it's possible the general public may end up forgetting Portishead entirely. They may not be pioneering a movement, but the Heliocentrics do something no one else can, and it is worthy of the loftiest praise.

While the narrative correctly serves to examine our relationship with machines, and the execution feels as precise as something purely from the world of artificial intelligence, A Separation of Being struggles to find a sonic identity, which might make this a polarizing listen.

Mixing Colours shows Roger and Brian Eno at their most casual and unguarded, but there's simply not enough variety, curiosity or sense of adventure here to dub it as a must-listen.

As their most viscerally intense release thus far, Kiss My Super Bowl Ring has the Garden screaming as much as they are singing, and transitioning between the two within a matter of seconds. Somehow, the Shears brothers are able to make it work.

Toronto deep-funk messengers the Soul Motivators deepen their groove and expand both their sonic palette and social consciousness on their sophomore full-length, Do the Damn Thing.

Waxing Moon presents a kind of transition in Foon's career, possessing full helpings of the despair and hope that is baked into the DNA of her earlier work, but with a further articulation of those emotions, becoming a visible and dimly spotlighted person standing in front of the monolith.

The Districts leave their comfort zone on You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere but yield results that are almost always fun and engaging. As a project with transition and discovery at its core, You Know I'm Not Going Anywhere nonetheless feels rooted in authenticity.

His puns about denial v. the Nile river, or his boasts about being like Mother Goose, land with laughable thuds (though perhaps that's this fun-loving MC's intent?). But Uzi nimbly switches from relatedly lovelorn speak-singing on "Bust Me" to rugged, speedy punch line powerhouse on the very next track, "Prices." That transition is merely one of the energetic and unpredictable performative tricks Uzi pulls off on this stadium sized LP.

Ricky Music shows a different side to Porches as an artist that we haven't seen before; it may be more produced and heavily Auto-Tuned, which takes away from his strong vocals, but it's refreshing to hear a new side to Porches.

Code Orange usher in a new era with Underneath that will alienate sections of their audience, and bring their us-against-you might to places no Pittsburgh band have gone before. They've become masters of numbingly heavy and world-expanding metalcore, but operate within rock music more than they probably ever intended to.

Raspberry Bulbs paint a seductively dystopian image through Before the Age of Mirrors, but its aesthetic cannot fully carry the weight of its musical shortcomings. There is both too much runtime and too little substance here.

Stetson does an admirable job finding ways to maintain a tone of persistent unease, but his compositional skills are tested by the film's reliance on abstract horror with occasional visceral shocks over any kind of concrete story or consistent character beats. Detached from the visuals it makes for a pretty bumpy ride.

It's not a perfect album — at times it seems only a taste of the power that Porridge Radio will eventually wield — but it's an important album, a statement of purpose from a group with everything before them.

Ceremony is one of Phantogram's weakest records, one that struggles to set itself apart in the sea of electro-pop still stuck in the aesthetics of the late 2010s.