Vince is at ease here, intertwining his personality into his somber celebration of Long Beach like never before. He’s rapping his ass off, and hooks are mostly an afterthought. He dips in and out of inventive flows.

Electronic Dream is pretty, but it's pretty like the morning sun twinkling off of a dangling machete blade--you don't want to fuck with it.

From the first shudder of the keyboard and crack of drums to that last, celebratory walk through the village of the virgins, Iyer, Crump and Gilmore keep things spellbinding.

The record feels wholly substantial and satisfying in its own right, and even those with no prior knowledge of YT//ST's history and elaborate intentions can just enjoy it for what it is: volcanic prog-rock colored with equal parts post-punk urgency, stoner-metal heft, and psychedelic pop whimsy.

Hit Parade is the kind of highly original pop assemblage that the Irish singer has seemingly always wanted to make, a record of peerless highs whose best and worst quality is how alienating it just so happens to be.

Alternately atmospheric and gut-punching, Demilitarize embodies these contradictions for a record even more searing—but also touching—than its civil war-inspired predecessor.

A flawed, overlong, hypocritical, egotistical, and altogether terrific album.

Instead of reclaiming the past, they've pooled their resources to create a new present.

Hidden is a strikingly inventive and original rock record. Granted, nothing is ever completely new in pop music, but the album freshly synthesizes older ideas (post-rock textures, no-wave skronk, Steve Reich-influenced phasing) and current trends (dubstep's delay, chart pop's stentorian synth lines, global beats).

If Right was about the evil that men do, Intellect goes one bigger and asks why they do it. The answer, again and again, is rooted in hurt, pain, neglect, and disappointment. Intellect draws its energy from the panic of mortality.

Rather than protest the state of the world, Staples is toasting human endurance-- hers as well as ours.

If you aren't already in the know, though, let this serve as some sort of wakeup call to the Oakland band's best collection to date.

The soul of Shabazz Palaces is pairing next-gen sounds with classic brass-tacks show-and-prove emceeing, and Lese Majesty tugs those extremes as far as they've ever been pulled; that it never shows signs of wear speaks to the strength of the bond.

While Mudboy is a strong and holistic statement from an upstart rapper, with the early-album run from “Live Sheck Wes” through “Chippi Chippi” being particularly stunning, these songs feel like underscores for the colossal “Mo Bamba.”

New Moon follows through on that promise but inevitably discovers that, when you do open your heart, blood gets spilled.

Through the Green can scan as simple or nostalgic, but either misses the point (and neither is the album a "modern take" on disco). It's an album of execution, of Tiger & Woods sharing sounds that aren't elusive and chasing feelings that are.

Echoboy slakes our thirst for accessible but quirky pop.

Spirit If… offers jams that don't really jam, acoustic ballads about fights and lies, and lushly orchestrated songs that come together effortlessly while cracking up hopelessly.

In form and in practice, Pramuk’s debut album generously looks inward to illuminate the multiplicity of the self. Fountain is too rich in scope and meaning to be reduced to just a salve, but there’s no doubt it’s an oh-so-timely reminder that the body is a site of infinite possibility.

Fans of Stott's labelmates Demdike Stare, and all the other goth-n-screw artists out there at the moment, will be happy to gnaw on these bones.

The Trip feels like an expansion into new territory. Without Gane and his spacey-cool affectations, Sadier is free to revel in warm, rich balladry.

Herndon and her ensemble displace the human voice from its usual setting just enough that it startles the ear. But that displacement allows you to hear voices as if for the very first time, listening ravenously for proof that out there in the unknown, someone besides yourself exists and is singing.

Are We There may be her most present-tense album to date, her most immediate and urgent--the peak of a steady upward trajectory.

Snaith’s principal strength remains his skill as a musician and producer. He’s got hooks for days, and you could heat a single-family home by the warmth of his chord progressions. Virtually every song has some little detail that makes you lean in closer.

WOR$T GIRL is most successful as an argument for Slayyyter’s abrasive style, but the record also contains some of her most painfully and finely rendered human emotion to date.

As immersive and deep as the lake around which it revolves, Meshes of Voice adds a new dimension to the output of both its makers.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

Write About Love is a grower -- the sort of record you need to play repeatedly, listening to how it fits together, before it can really ingratiate itself.

Kylesa's lyrics lean towards the abstract and personal. They avoid grand gestures or obvious themes that allow for easy grasp. This time, though, grasp is almost moot. The band has etched light, dark, sky, and earth so deftly onto wax that it vibrates the very soul.

History and transformation are, understandably, recurring themes in the new lyrics on Change Becomes Us, and it's a treat to have this missing link in the Wire story repaired, even if it's as much an anomaly in the present moment as Document and Eyewitness was in its time.

Out of Breach is less suited for a fucked-up dance party than just for being fucked up.

The sweetness of their gaze only makes the melodies on case/lang/veirs seem more familiar, resonating deep within some distant memory while still sounding fresh. The hooks are mostly vocal-led, but producer Tucker Martine and the small band of players (including Glenn Kotche on percussion) color them perfectly.

Will may at first seem small, private, and modestly appointed--just a room with a piano, a synthesizer, and a looping pedal--but once you settle in, it feels as vast as the universe in there.

While Pink should not be conflated with a proper follow-up to There Is Love in You, even as a singles comp it suggests that the undergrad producer circa Rounds is now post-doctorate, and Four Tet is capable of going deeper and expanding higher than almost anyone else out there.

Zoo Psychology's refrains are faster, shorter, and more efficient than ever.

It’s just a meticulous document of a band whose hedonism kept them from restraining their absurd level of mastery. So here: have Zep as they both wanted to be and eventually were.

Post-War isn't perfect, but it's all the more listenable for that fact.

These beats are bespoke. The rapping has never been better either, with the music tailored to wring maximum tension out of each bar.

Sky Burial will likely land as one of the year’s great breakthroughs for a heavy act.

For the second time in one year, both on a large label and on their own, they've released a record ruthless and rewarding enough to animate that image.

The Secret Machines create songs that are just as spacey and concept-heavy, if not quite as quirky, as those on Yoshimi and The Sophtware Slump.

What at first seems rather silly actually proves to be quite purposeful.

Think of Sports, then, as a freshly taken Polaroid with a lit cigarette stuck straight in the middle of it-- a burning hole bridging the distance between then and right now.

A formula ain't necessarily a bad thing: Think of it as a carefully considered training technique, designed to flex and strengthen certain sonic muscles in aid of achieving ever more impressive results.

What’s astonishing here is the way they manage to forge a sound nearly as rich and original as that of America’s most blunted.

While Elwan may not herald any grand stylistic breakthrough, it does manage to synthesize some of the group’s most recent experiments in a way that helps distinguish it within their overall catalog.

Feels like music I've been subconsciously craving without even knowing it exists.

Eternal Turn of the Wheel is as captivating as most any stretch of black metal you'll hear this year, even if it possesses a lifetime of questions that deserve to be asked.

Dust is a dense and heady record, and from certain angles can seem intimidating, even impenetrable. But between the clever track sequencing and a handful of irresistible outcrops of groove and melody, Halo provides plenty of footholds to cling onto while you acclimatise to her lawless universe.

What at first blush might sound like unhealthy entrenchment turns out to be a brilliant study in duality, as Cooley and Hood--seemingly in conversation with one another--weigh the respective pulls of decadence and dependability.

Thematically it's as strong an instrumental record as I've heard in a while, this weird glimpse at a stranger's photo album that in the end is surprisingly quite touching.

Artistically speaking, Demon City represents a leap forward in terms of Crampton’s musical growth. American Drift was like a sumptuous glass overflowing, but Demon City is a wonder of concision, with songs that mostly fall under four minutes.

Pretty Toney far surpasses 2001's Bulletproof Wallets, finally finding the missing link between street cred and commercial respect.

This is grand, unapologetic doom metal that should also fit fans of symphonies, post-rock bands, and alt-rock radio. And this is writing so rich that it raises deep, pressing questions about our very existence with richly written scenes and sharply posed worries.

He is as detail-oriented with his beats as he is with his raps, providing the right mood at every occasion. Some of them are busy and swarming, while others are pleasantly simple.

It’s the clearest, most detailed record in their vast catalogue.

Kurupt seems so committed to the idea of saying not that much in a very complicated way that it's utterly compelling. Quik, on the other hand, is consistently literal, dealing in the concrete with memorable, loosely connected run-on raps.

Imikuzushi feels like the work of artists looking down from a mountain rather than laboring to climb it.

The music is breathtakingly simple but also sneakily and refreshingly adventurous. Listening to the carefully wrought songs on Suddenly, I wished that Snaith had given freer rein to his experimental instincts. On Cherry, he cuts loose.

Now she has an album that ups the stakes and nuance of her artistry. Not just in telling a story over the course of 12 songs, or by making a record that interacts with more modern musical ideas, or in how she’s using her voice with newfound multitudes, but by being bold enough to share it all so vulnerably, with the entire world listening.

This is one of those albums that creates its own little sound world, and a lot of its appeal has to do with qualities like texture and atmosphere.

Belong is a bigger, bolder, and brighter follow-up that adds new dimensions to the Pains' sound while nearly equaling the songwriting of their debut.

Her pop fun is a bit knowing-- she's 26 after all. But trust the Swedes. They know what they're doing with this sort of thing.

This 1998 set, recorded in its entirety with minimal interaction with the audience, melds the finer points of their best work into a potent display.... this succinct live recording stands as their most direct and effective release to date.

Any Hanna-related project is prone to vanishing beneath her mighty specter, but the deeper collaborative process that went into Hit Reset shines through.

Entrench is the work of veterans who earned the rare second chance to make a first impression. They do not waste the opportunity.

The Grind Date brings together an unimaginable team of the underground's hottest producers and meshes their idiosyncrasies without dissidence.

Remotely self-recorded and produced across various Pittsburgh apartments, its 11 songs are oddball bursts of imagination, whimsy, and discord.

It's deeply satisfying, constantly rewarding, and I'm not entirely sure what I was doing before it came into my life.

There's not a lot of forward motion here; motifs and timbres repeat across the record, and while many tracks flow seamlessly from one to the next, his open-ended constructions give the album a rewardingly meandering feel.

Sleigh Bells pull off this more sophisticated and nuanced approach without calling attention to their improved craft or maturity.

Is Is may be their most instantly accessible release, which is not a critical dig but just a way of saying it finds a good balance between alienating and inviting, between song and performance.

The Go-Betweens' endless enthusiasm for their own work is what propelled them out of that Brisbane bedroom in the first place, and the richness of context that this box provides makes it a deeper pleasure than its component albums are on their own.

What comes up as a whole is this odd but endearing blend of plainspoken nonchalance and almost limitless musical eccentricity.

It’s a testament to how a complicated love survived through self-reflection, compromise, and ruthless honesty.

Stubbornly lo-fi and expectedly scrappy, the album is also tremendously listenable, a rhythmic, leg-flailing romp through vintage soul cool, glam boogie, classic rock thrash, and punk bravado.

It's a record that uses nastiness to cement the character "Rick Ross" as three-dimensional, and uses a barrage of bangers to cement the rapper Rick Ross as an undeniable force.

Voices From the Lake is a triumph of care and exactitude, the kind of well-executed work of art that feels effortless despite its obvious complexity.

Leave it to VHÖL to find another dimension to the ever-bountiful combination of hardcore and metal, where the cerebral and the primal stomp heads next to one another.

"Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.

Like Elaenia, Nothing Is Still invites the listener recalibrate their expectations of the artist behind it. Vynehall is more than a producer with a great ear for texture and a nostalgic streak--he’s a storyteller, one who demands and merits our full attention.

His gleeful love of words not only elevates some pretty heavy subject matter; it also helps distinguish XXX as one of the most compelling indie rap releases in an already strong year.

Somehow, The Worse Things Get is Case’s tightest record and also her strangest. With its off-kilter arrangements and eccentric turns of phrase, it’s a world unto itself.

Miss Anthropocene thrills when it reveals a refined, linear evolution of Grimes’ long-standing interest in rave nostalgia and alluring pop music from around the world.

It is primordial and juvenile, dumb and clever, arch and true, and captures a band at that rare time before any self-conscious tones creep into their music. All the while, black midi discover what has been pioneered by countless bands before, and still present it as something entirely new.

Now, More Than Ever is both hushed and sprawling, serene and agitated, jumpy and constant.

The new album stays focused on wringing as much feeling as possible out of narrower terrain. And No Home of the Mind is the earthiest Bing & Ruth record yet. You can smell the sweat that went into it.

Centres initially seems like a near-formless sea of sound and voice. But over time, it reveals patterns inside the swirl, and the more time you spend in it, the further you will to get lost in its wondrous confines.

Real intimacy is what you find on The Record, the melding of what’s yours and mine—a favorite Joan Didion quote, songs by Iron & Wine and the Cure, passages from Ecclesiastes—until what’s left is something greater than the sum.

On the sequel, Curren$y and Ski go even further with that central idea, pushing into sleepy, smooth funk territory that fits Curren$y's rap style perfectly.

Phil has moved well beyond the often formless experiments of the early Microphones releases--this is still by no means a record to be digested lightly. And thank goodness for that.

The result is a more accessible version of Dum Dum Girls, bolstered by terrific harmonies (three of the four girls contribute vocals) and a crisper rhythm section.

A Victim of Stars doesn't offer much to anyone already immersed in that world. For everyone else this is an engaging scratch at the surface of a wide-open mind.

Logos feels familiar and assuring, another affecting dispatch from a corner of indie music that is increasingly starting to seem like one Cox pretty much owns.

[Galaxy Garden is] a wonder, his most complete statement yet, both a refinement and an expansion of the genre-of-one he's been perfecting over the last few years.

In a year in need of centering and a sense of calm, Phantom Brickworks lives up to its name; it feels haunted while also offering up a hope to rebuild.

The Men's treatment of their well-curated influences is less akin to that of fan-boys playing in a tribute act and a lot more like an irreverent hip-hop producer's approach to breaks--key in on your sources' coolest moments, change the context, and ride that perfect sound forever.

Even if the fusion initially seems unorthodox, LIVELOVEA$AP is exactly the sort of record you'd expect to hear in 2011 from a New Yorker who was 13 when "Big Pimpin'" came out.