It can sound almost laborious in its structural directness mixed with its lyrical opacity.

After isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly an album that sounds as strong and mysterious the first time and 10th time you listen to it.

It’s certainly one of the edgier twee recordings in recent years, almost an oxymoron in itself, one that falls short on its promise to channel its internal chaos with sprightly reminiscence.

The songwriting here isn’t just adding superficial layers to Matsson’s previous sound, it’s a step forward in style. So while that may make the album his most pleasing first listen, the dulling of the edges of his previous work keep it from being one of the more memorable.

The band begins to slog through the session--each song sounds like the sonic embodiment of utter indifference, only this time it’s accompanied by electric instruments.

Even with its faults, The Magic Whip is remarkably cohesive; not a single track is superfluous, flippant, or jarring.

While California Nights doesn’t offer a more sophisticated version of Best Coast so much as a blander one, the heightened ambition of the songwriting and production could be an important step forward for the band.

The album frequently descends into seemingly chaotic feedback and amp fuzz but the dirt is very much artfully, deliberately applied.

These are songs that mostly get to the heart of the matter with open-hearted directness, and in balancing the coarse with the refined there’s a clearer sense of what Scott wants to find even if she struggles to understand the conditions that affect her most deeply.

Kindred’s arrangements are a heap of disjointed sound fragments glued into a form that exists solely to support the glossy veneer.

II follows its predecessor’s footsteps to the T, acting less as an evolution and more as a sharp, acute continuation of what made that album such a force to be reckoned with.

Their idea of a party anthem may be quick to please, but their unpretentious honesty and just sheer enjoyment makes a lasting impression.

Her wordplay ducks and weaves among the braided guitar melodies and idiosyncratic rhythm section with a razor-sharp cutting edge, with varying levels of daintiness, allowing the dangerously catchy melodies and thicker-bodied hooks to amass into a fantastically fluid LP.

Look past the pastel surface-level familiarity of Escape From Evil and you’ll find that no matter what tool-kit a band is equipped with, superb songwriting and refined attention to detail and aesthetics always prevail.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is an incredible addition to Wilson's body of work. Drawing from the simple and the complicated, progressive and pop, light and darkness, it proves that no force can erase his talent and standing as one of the best and most underrated musicians of today.

Untethered Moon is truly the work of a veteran musician who continues to tweak the same kind of song with the adventurousness of a curious young man.

When he does adapt a more modern trap-orientated sound on the final two tracks it doesn’t really work, and this brings down the EP as an entire listen. Crown thrives when he stays close to his classic sound and the flourishes he adds, which today's stripped and skeletal approach to beatmaking actively avoid.

All in all, this isn't a bad direction to go after fifteen studio albums and countless other releases (600 songs!) into a career, as Darnielle again proves that his excessive specificity as a storyteller doesn't mean he can't tell us something about our own lives.

Most of Short Movie lingers over energetic yet contemplative sounds, which Marling then pairs with her voice, an instrument as soothing as it is commanding, and every lyric is delivered with a kind of conversational cadence that hints at a slight curl in the corners of Marling’s lips.

What For? is an ultimately perplexing collection of songs--a mishmash of Bundick’s best and worst musical ideas, but nevertheless a glimpse into an artist who is unafraid to shift into new sonic territory.

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.