The spontaneity they carve sounds scattershot at times, sometimes veering into ludicrous artiness for no reason whatsoever, the dragged-out seven minute instrumental Victoria a fitting example, though they always consolidate their full efforts in a way that’s fun and endlessly listenable.

For whatever faults lie within the grooves of Hexadic, the cards were at least interestingly dealt.

Deeper plunges headlong into its nightmarish source material with feverish petulance, insisting on the authenticity of its own sorrow.

It’s precisely those confrontational lyrics that make To Pimp A Butterfly an unforgettable album.

While Fantasy Empire is definitely still more of a tweak than a departure, when you’re still producing albums as monstrously savage and bewildering as this over 15 years into your career, those tweaks can still sound pretty damn significant on their own terms.

Kintsugi is unfortunately as bland as they come, and no good amount of mourning, sonorous guitars can excuse the fact it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a relatable common ground in Gibbard’s repressed impulses.

The storytelling in Carrie & Lowell is as vivid as its always been, only that the focus is his.

While not everything here is awful, the good is often streaked throughout each song like marbled fat in a rubber steak.

Although Sometimes I Sit and Think is musically straightforward, Barnett doesn’t need anything more to tell great stories.

With such masterful creativity and an ability to connect with listeners emotionally, no matter what language they are singing in, Ibeyi may have already released the debut album of the year.

There are times in which The Ark Work sounds aimless in spite of its slight technical achievements, yielding a sensory overload of strobing compositions channeled with unrestrained imagination.

You, Whom I Have Always Hated is a beautifully punishing listen.

All We Are has potential, but it's squandered on their debut in an attempt to make a spacey, moody soundtrack.

The result is the sun-drenched sister of an opiate-subverted Sonic Nurse, the musical equivalent of Coleridge in the afterglow of an acid trip.

It sounds like this would all blow over like a weird, twitchy blur, but Quarterbacks’ hooks and songwriting chops are so incredibly tight and catchy that each moment feels like its own accomplished statement, despite typically only having a few seconds to prove this.

The “that's life” solemnity that throbs in Vestiges quickly fizzles into a series of narrative incoherent niceties, and becomes a far more rewarding listen when lyrical fragments are taken out of context.

Restarter is still quite a strong sludge-metal album that can stand strong with many of their peers, but it’s sad to see them sacrifice much of what made them stand out so strongly from them in the process to merely become one of them.

Somehow, because Uptown Funk is so, so good, Uptown Special is even more disappointing.

Everything Ever Written even ends with a pleasant curveball, the gorgeous Utopia, an illuminating reverie that poignantly illustrates the measures people take to adapt to their surroundings in spite of the final outcome.

Ratworld wears its influences brazenly on its sleeves, but its execution is impressive, presenting an odd bird view of a world that is ostensibly its own.

On Your Own Love Again is a record about that struggle with transmuting feeling into expression. The grand themes of the album are heavily understated but, well, that’s kind of the point.

Always professional, but rarely memorable, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, much like its fudge of a title, ultimately balances out as a fairly middling work.

The artistry on Shadows In The Night is as sharp as ever, which is a welcome reminder of how Dylan’s songwriting is only half the story. The emotional electricity of his albums stems from his composed and ardent delivery and the sonic poetry of the arrangements surrounding this delivery.

Tillman becomes one of the great diarists of our generation in Honeybear, possessing a keen, merciless intelligence within a sophisticated melodic sensibility.

Aside from a few tracks that feel tossed off, too self-aware in their own weirdness, Hawkline does manage to justify his odd behavior with heaps of whimsical charm.

Many of Sauna’s strongest moments result from Elverum sticking to what he knows best, as well as being the most closely akin to his last two albums.

While the tracks rarely challenge the listener with bold experimentation or chord progressions that range much beyond major-and-minor resolves, Natalie Prass provides a concise amalgamation of R&B, funk, baroque pop, and soul with a consistent through-line.

While Individ is marked with the frantic momentum of an inspired studio creation, it ultimately suffers under the weight of its boldness and reckless abandon.

Range Anxiety is a deeply considered listen, one that relinquishes the audacious idiosyncrasies of Underlay EP in favor of a more scrupulous and intrinsic approach.

Clocking in at a mere 32 minutes, the album is conceptually and sonically tight.

What they do rhythmically and spatially sounds great: the expanse, the air, the solid bass rhythms and percussive malleability.

What Nights possesses in skillful precision and tight musicianship it lacks in songwriting polish, though it’s easy to dismiss when it hits you with its triumphant highs.

Everything Else Matters is a strong and accomplished debut by a band that, whilst clearly taking a lot of their cues from the past, are still looking to push sonic boundaries and create intelligent mood pieces.

There’s enough here to please die-hard fans.

There’s a brittle vulnerability present in Viet Cong that triggers an innate sense of curiosity and optimism despite the downtrodden tone it adopts.

It’s largely inoffensive and bland, with a few above average moments, and has a tendency to fade into the background.

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper can be a particularly infuriating listen since it wanders between moments of greatness and utter tedium.

Sucker is a one-two punch of wit and grit, as irreverently bratty as the lollipop Charli holds on the cover yet never impersonal, perfunctory, or insincere.

Not only is Seeds the most direct and optimistic album, but in some ways, it's their poppiest.

Grohl and Co. have celebrated the veins of American rock music from coast to coast, but their fear of over-administering each city’s sonic roots into their own blueprint has hindered the progression of Sonic Highways into a cohesive unit, and instead resulted in a challenging listen.

He deconstructs pop conventions within the first five seconds in pom pom with a devilish grin, setting the tone for an uncompromising mélange of hissed art rock that ups the ante even further than the disarmingly twisted Mature Themes.

In spite of the apparent minimalism, Hookworms deliver a sonic feast for the ears that knows how to capture an all-encompassing whole rather than a moment in time. It wants to be everything at once, brightly exposed even if some of its color is lost.

What we find with Tough Love is an album just as conceptually focused as Devotion, yet too willing to waste Ware’s sophisticated emotionality on tracks with no depth or purpose to them.

Soused, with its impenetrable construct and heavy ambition, delivers on many fronts, most notable of which is in its thoughtfully composed immensity.

There’s no use putting The Twilight Sad out of their misery if they continue to deliver such a delightfully morose tapestry of color and vitality.

Taiga is a more mainstream album than people may be used to from Zola Jesus. But that is not a bad thing.

It isn't perfect, its sheer restlessness prevents it from being so, but it will undoubtedly come to be remembered as another masterpiece from possibly the greatest electronic composer to walk the earth.

Weirdon is a melodic and enjoyable rock album.

Heartleap is a treasure to withhold, and though it's proclaimed as a departure, it feels both complete and satisfyingly open-ended.

As a title, Wonder Where We Land couldn’t be more appropriate. The answer is somewhere safe, both viable and habitable, but lacking in exhilaration and wonder.

Few artists in this day in age take self-expression through art to heart like Hadreas does as Perfume Genius, and with the sensitive confidence that radiates from Too Bright, he’s mastered in a way few artists never do.

Shellac delivers a very spare and assaultive listen, 33 minutes that fly by and demand repeated listens.

It’s an evocative listen, though they can’t quite break the compulsion to play around with passing fads.

Given that these songs mostly clock in under two minutes, that should be enough to carry the flat arrangements and melodies, but it's not.

What it loses in irreverence it gains in solemnity and seriousness, but this is still the Zahner-Isenberg of before, ruminating on his past with a conflicted conscience that threatens his every thought.

After you shake off the initial conceptual strangeness, Brill Bruisers builds up to a breathtaking whole.

A lot has happened in 10 years, but DFA’s approach to making ferocious music certainly hasn’t.

13 songs in 36 minutes is a constrictive ratio for a record with so many proposed ideas, and its brevity makes Rustie’s ideas sound especially half-hearted. It’s bad enough that he doesn’t give the more physical tracks enough time to flex their muscles, but the tracks which suffer most are the briefer, more innocuous pieces.

Listen is set to force you into either accepting the band’s new identity or hitting upon the realisation that the band you originally fell in love with have moved on.

El Pintor isn’t a rekindling of old fires, more so a chilled, mutual acceptance from a band that is letting things roll as smoothly as can be.

Manipulator stands as Segall’s most intricately woven and patiently developed work.

While doom metal is typically considered too droll and meandering for most non-metal fans to penetrate, Foundations of Burden transcends the genre so well that submerging oneself in the album’s striking melodies and crushing riffs feels almost effortless.

It’s an incredibly well-observed, poignant look at what it means to be Jenny Lewis right now, yet lacks the indefinable quality to make it a classic.

After The End is a self-proclaimed pop record with lofty ambitions, after all, and their commitment to a broader aesthetic feels earned and vital.

This album is a grower.

All those flinching sounds can surely give some fatigue after a while, but does it matter when it’s so good at instant gratification.

It needs a more tangible emotional charge. What it most sorely lacks is spontaneity.

The album hones a clear message about how society is marred with malicious leeches and false prophets, but it’s just one side of many--most of all, this is Spoon mostly letting loose their perennial white funk, kinda square but almost always rhythmically enticing.

Underwhelming ending aside, it’s fair to say that Del Rey (and her collaborators) have more than risen to the challenge of keeping her a part of the pop culture conversation, for all the right reasons.

Even though it does occasionally dip into overly-saccharine territory--like in the largely plodding End of the Summer--it more often makes for a good match with the band's more heavily melodic--though still energetic--approach.

Trouble in Paradise is at once sleek and solid, every track pulsing with a kind of confidence that invites closer listening but is equally pleasant as a collection of mood-heightening jams.

There are at least five tracks here which are a class apart from anything else they’ve written, and hint at a dexterity and professionalism that hadn’t really been previously evident. On the other hand, it’s probably the least consistent of Slow Club’s three albums so far.

Alvvays takes a decidedly more shambolic direction as it reaches its final half, which is worrisome considering its brief runtime, thereby overstaying its welcome by lacking some much needed punch. But it shouldn’t in any way discourage Rankin’s efforts as the band’s core member, whose astute, lovesick descriptions are more than just a pleasant diversion.

It’s hard not to admire anything PS I Love You puts out simply because it’s done with such a sense of sincerity and craftsmanship.

Less a statement on White Lung’s potential than its ability to rush through an album, through its attempts at relentlessness, Deep Fantasy underwhelms.

True, most of the themes on 1000 Forms of Fear are pretty generic, but Sia’s lyrics are bold and visceral, and the production is dynamic without being gimmicky.

Weird Little Birthday is a superb debut, beautifully recorded, with everything in its right place.

It’s all meticulously crafted, but thanks to an easygoing dynamic, each track sounds somehow breezy and nonchalant.

The record lacks vision, direction, clarity.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow have shown that no sea is big enough to slow unabashed creativity--in fact, the sea seems less absent and quite fruitful in their case.

Careers can be perceived as a step backwards, or as an opportunity for Citron to find her voice, even though it may not make that much of a difference considering there’s very few variations in the tradition they dutifully follow.

Though charmingly lo-fi and sure to satisfy any enamoured female fan, most of these tracks drag on too long without any payoff.

Their free form approach is certainly amusing, perhaps too cerebral at times, but that’s just another way of reinforcing they want us to figure out what they’re aiming for.

In Conflict is either one of those records which invite thoughtful criticism, with the repeated phrasings and imagery occurring throughout the record (not to mention the swooningly lush orchestrations) suggesting vast rabbit warrens in Pallett’s psyche worth considering, or render it entirely pointless, given that it seems set on creating something immaculate, and then mercilessly deconstructing its creator.

With the exception of the very syrupy Taiyo No Baka, (an apparently "dark" song despite its relatively chipper demeanor), Noise fuses the best aspects of every genre Boris tackles, perpetuating their evolution with the promise of aggressiveness, distortion and all things wonderfully “loud.”

What a pleasure that Familiars is familiar primarily for its quality rather than its qualities.

The songs that make up Lazaretto are the most diverse on a White album since Get Behind Me Satan, and even more impressively, the songs themselves could stand alongside those on Icky Thump and Consolers of the Lonely thanks to the wonderful arrangements.... Of course, Lazaretto, for all the growth it shows from Blunderbuss, could never be as good as the work that White rattled off from roughly 2000’s De Stijl to 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan.

Glass Boys is a more than worthy accomplishment from a band that has been too busy playing by their own rules and constantly rewriting what it means to be punk to care about others expectations.

The many highlights on Heartstrings suggest that the band are back on track with a bang, reminding us all of the captivating, sultry qualities that they can generate musically, something that is personified by their singer.

It reveals yet another side to this musician, who has continued to pull back layer after layer since she first appeared on the scene.

It achieves a good and meticulously contrived balance that will continue to satisfy the Brooklyn insomniacs, but rarely does it risk doing more.

It’s a bit of stretch to call Parquet Courts the next trailblazers of off-center indie rock, but they sure got the rock n’ roll part down pat.

There have definitely been many bold and exciting extreme metal releases as of recent, but As The Stars is not just daring--it’s incredibly listenable, too.

One or two irritations apart, Teleman have created something on a shoestring budget that intrigues enough to demand attention; there’s a way to go before they explode but Breakfast certainly represents a solid start.

It’s difficult to avoid making repeated comparisons to Antipodes, but despite the differences in the sounds between the two LPs, the quality and strength of them is the same.

It’s an album focused on a very limited range of moods, and inhabits that tone very well, but ultimately does little to justify sticking around.

While few tracks rise to the level of aggression promised by its introduction, Ultima II Massage contains enough wild ideas to maintain an engaging level of oddity.

Despite the uncontrollable urge Hundred Waters have to cram in too much of their creative energy, they surely have the prowess to write an ornate pop record that puzzles out through well-crafted scrutiny.