The album perfectly captures the abrasive and raw sound that Sleater-Kinney have only strengthened throughout the years.

The band only falters when they lean on stock symbols, as on the materialist-baiting "Pink White House." If those lyrics sound lazy, it's only because Nothing Feels Natural is so taut and particular otherwise.

Near to the Wild Heart of Life isn't the record fans waited five years for. But backed into a corner, Japandroids have penned a truly great record filled with all the guitar hooks, shout-along choruses about nights spent drinking, sweating and longing to be somewhere else that we've come to expect.

She's turned that feeling into an album as glittery as it is gut-wrenching, making Tourist in This Town a point on the musical map that's well worth a long, enriching stay.

Ty Segall is a mixture of boisterous and blissful, and certainly is a great place to start if you're looking to introduce someone to Segall's ever-fattening discography.

Tift Merritt and her wonderful band deliver big time with this record ... Despite it being very early in 2017, it's safe to say this album will be on many year-end lists come December.

Modern Ruin is a solid, well-balanced effort that showcases Frank Carter's versatility as an artist while pleasing fans of his previous work.

There's a lot of stuff there, and sure, not everything seems crucial. But when the ecosystem works as well as it does on Pas pire pop, it's worth taking the time to get lost in its dense flora of sounds.

Lonely Planet is a pleasing collection of well-crafted, often beautiful sketches, and while they may not always end up anywhere specific, you'll always enjoy the journey nonetheless.

Originally envisioned as the first in a series of efforts to help inspire artists (hence the title), this is the perfect album to sleep, cry or meditate to, an album for life on this planet from an artist usually obscured by the whirring of machines. Imagine that.

Though the production lags at times, Wiley's performance overall is still a fitting conclusion to his groundbreaking journey in music.

Embers could (and should) start over then, urging all software to "repeat all" and every DJ to throw side one back on the bed of coals.

He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands is a minor gem in the Joan of Arc discography, as Kinsella gives listeners more simply by pulling back.

Although it's an intertextual and oftentimes challenging listen, Future Politics is also a compelling call to action to collectively conceive of the future and its manifold possibilities.

As Foxygen continue with their disparate series of throwback experiments, Hang finds them closer than ever to striking a balance between their wild, ambitious ideas and innate strengths

It's hard to shake off singer Davey Havok's sterile lyrics, especially when many of the choruses lean heavily on his bold, operatic delivery yet are somewhat squandered on half-cocked one-liners.

With Forever, Code Orange have put together a record that few others in the genre would have the nerve to attempt making, and have found a number of ways to stay engaging across the set without losing any of their previous weight or momentum.

Diehard fans of the Brazilian band who rekindled their interest in the band with the return of Roots producer Ross Robinson will find Machine Messiah lacklustre, possibly even forgettable, when held up to Sepultura's better past work.

Although Romans is a collaborative effort between two dance floor heavyweights in their own right, the largely dark sound that has distinguished previous releases from Haslam emerges as this record's strongest aspect.

This album is yet another triumph in Bonobo's incredibly consistent career, and if the Black Sands and North Borders tours are anything to go by, the live rendition of Migration will be one of 2017's highlights.

The best moments here are either instrumental or wordless, when Coyne's voice--which, though never technically impressive, always fit perfectly with each album's sound, whether it was the ragged bombast of their Soft Bulletin-era epics or the hushed haunt of The Terror--becomes a whispering (or even whistling) texture. Lyrically, though, Coyne appears to have exhausted any last nuggets of profundity he once had.

For the first time on record, the xx sound happy. Lyrics about growing and taking a chance, especially, resonate throughout "Dangerous," "Say Something Loving" and "I Dare You," further substantiating the already-palpable sense of ambition here.

It comes in flashes, and then it's back to a sort of dull, flat affect.

With this fearlessly vulnerable, triumphantly anthemic album, Little Simz asserts herself among the queens of her genre--Janelle Monáe, Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott and Erykah Badu. Stillness in Wonderland is a wonder to behold.

Not only is Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' loaded with hits, but it also draws attention to Cudi's renewed sense of self. Cudi has finally slayed his demons, and he sounds all the better for it.

Rather than offering a bold new step in Reznor's long, winding career, Not the Actual Events feels more like tentative first steps towards something bigger.

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.

Ab-Soul is more successful when he mines his own sorrow.