It's an album that draws its strengths from the simultaneous expression of sympathy toward the people in the songs and anger toward the shit they've gone through.

Y Dydd Olaf is a crucial minority language record, but Saunders' beguiling melodies and execution also make it one of the best British debuts of 2015.

What’s always set Clark apart is his eclecticism, dynamism, and flair for the dramatic, all of which is on fine display here. His tracks don’t drop as much as they slip or swerve, forever off-balance.

It’s been more than a half-decade wait for Chronology, but in a genre known for singles, Chronixx has produced a complete, solid album.

These songs capture a big part of PUP’s talent: making music that captures the sentiment of depression yet never succumbs to its lethargy or listlessness.

As lovely as they often are, the songs seem to drift and float, and Cruel Country plays less like a sculpted double album than a vividly detailed snapshot of a particular moment in time.

My Father is less about the Eno-esque sonic tapestries and more about Gira's love for apocalyptic country blues.

Live in Paris is the victory lap leaving us wanting more.

Beautiful Despair is a rough sketch, and its worth extends only as far as one’s interest in such a document.

It’s an album full of interstitial forms that flicker in between fixed states, and its magic lies in that liminal no-man’s-land.

He's brought all his skill to bear on Looping, as composer and arranger and texturologist, in order to build something this simultaneously sweeping and subtle, deep and immediate.

The Odds is, in every way, the product of scaling down operations rather than of giving up or throwing the fans a nostalgia trip. It's fair to say that the Evens have set their target low and close; you could also call that intimacy.

If any Screaming Females record has suggested they may someday become a group worthy of cataloging in a book like Azerrad's, Ugly is it, igniting a classic punk sound with a friction that falls somewhere between SST and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.

So what if Harry’s House isn’t especially bold; innovation is not a requirement of a solid pop album, and working too hard is out of fashion, anyway. Better to slip on your Gucci pajamas and just enjoy.

Where Fiasco misses classic status is his sonic approach.

Rosebudd’s Revenge isn’t as seamless as Marcberg or Reloaded, suffering from some fidelity issues and perhaps being a bit back-loaded, but it’s endlessly, almost impossibly entertaining.

For years, an emotional narrative like this one would have seemed superfluous for Tangents, a quintet devoted to technical dexterity and clarity. On New Bodies, they allow those sharpened skills to inhabit emerging human forms, a move that speaks as powerfully to the heart as it does to the brain.

As a collection of tunes, Look Now is a triumph for Costello, a showcase for how he can enliven a mastery of form with a dramatist’s eye. But as an album, Look Now is a success because of the Imposters.

Even with this shared billing, Van Etten remains the album’s undeniable highlight, though she explores a range of vocal approaches outside her trademark wail.

Her boozy, morning-after croon is still gorgeous, but now there’s elements of Puerto Rican bomba and salsa, son cubano, doo-wop, and even the spoken-word poetry of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe she haunted as a teen. Her band has gone through a variety of lineups, but this one feels like a clean slate.

Hopelessness has always been a throughline in Staples work but Prima Donna puts a finer point on that feeling, both in its songs and interstitial spoken word bits.

Despite Haliechuk and Falco’s bombastic concept, Dose Your Dreams functions similar to the recent hip-hop blockbusters that share its 82-minute length, best enjoyed in chunks or humming in the background between the singles.

It's the humblest and most powerful wish I've heard on a record all year.

It’s clear that the pleasure isn’t in the novelty of these two forces aligning. The pleasure is in the groove, in the quiet confidence of Liv.e and Riggins making such a curious record, in the way it sneaks up on you and commands your attention.

Thoughtful, quiet moments like that ["What Can We Do," "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo," and "Your Theme"] work but, this being Superchunk, the uptempo tracks still hit hardest.

Lifeforce is an album in the truest sense, with each song blending into the next for continuous listening. Mostly low- to mid-tempo, the band skillfully integrates bleak and radiant tones, leading to an impressive nine-track suite of ambient, spoken-word and grime-infused compositions.

Both might be more about its listener than its creator. If by the end we still don’t know exactly who Bill Nace is, we certainly have a better idea of how much he can do.

Hospice answers silliness with solemnity, jitters with nerve. Their band name simply describes their music: a delicately branching instrument of force.

From start to finish, she leads these songs of resilience and long-term redemption with a minister’s conviction. The dozen-plus musicians around her—including her sister Yvonne and Helm’s daughter, Amy—became her de facto choir. Carry Me Home is a jubilant lesson in living history.

Mostly, Like the River Loves the Sea succeeds in elevating Shelley’s ruminations on “the ground I am bound to” and “the tender things around me” to matters of universal resonance.

A streamlined product that die-hards can justly revel in.

Loud, mean, and complicated, this six-piece is an articulate goliath, capable of drowning out Gira in waves before disappearing into pools of silence without warning. Each piece of this unit deserves mention.

At its best, 3.15.20 Trojan horses some of that terror into happy surroundings. ... Glover is not always successful at adding dimension to these songs.

A Color of the Sky wears its derivative textures as a superhero might don a form-fitting costume, transforming tales of creative defeat into high-definition triumphs.

If the results of Lifetime’s solo writing process are mixed, de Casier’s work behind the boards is wall-to-wall dazzling, from the extraterrestrial rave stabs that pan across the stereo field on “Seasons” to the mournful cyborg whose voice echoes her own on “December.”

Konnichiwa is as nakedly vulnerable Skepta has ever been, and it represents a tantalizingly wide-open door for grime. It’ll be our job as listeners to step through and discover what we’ve been missing.

The intended arc from invitation toward aggression occssionally scans more as zigs and zags between a few distinct suites. Still, the separate moments are astounding, evidence of a musician who has managed to remain inquisitive even as he’s established his signature.

A solid, riff-driven rock record that may disappoint those still awaiting Bee Thousand II, though it offers plenty of treats to those who are willing to approach it with open ears.

Tthese four songs (plus a live rendition of "Tell Me", from the Tramp era) are messier things that fit the unclean nature of long-term severance.

This is instrumental music that embraces its undying capacity for uplift, that shakes off distinctions between bathos and pathos, between mawkish and grave, as it blasts upward.

Even in this scattershot form, what’s remarkable about this edition of Switched On is how Stereolab was able to maintain such consistency even as they kept cranking out albums and EPs, enduring the death of singer Mary Hansen in 2002 and the dissolution of Gane and Sadier’s romantic partnership.

The band’s daring pays off when vocalist Julian Cashwan Pratt breaks his voice wide open on tracks that dig into sounds that are firsts for the band, and consummate what were previously flirtations with dance music.

The album’s improbable feat is that, even with its inherent tragedy, Cotton Crown is somehow an even breezier, more agreeable listen. It’s not often that sorrow goes down so easily.

on Tempest, his latest album, Bob Dylan mostly sounds insane. That volatility can yield tremendous rewards-- on the ferocious "Pay in Blood", it clarifies his nihilism, his cruelty-- but it can also be distractingly unruly, inching toward self-mockery, all wild undulation and hairball-retch. Which would be okay-- embraced, even!-- if the rest of Tempest didn't feel so rote.

As usual, the feeling of her vocals is more compelling than its literal meaning. These opening songs are strong enough. .... However, by the time we get to these songs towards the end of the album, the fatigue of listening to familiar riffs and howls starts to set in. Playing Favorites is at its best right in the middle.

What Press Color does is distill our collective excitement and unceasing wonder at a scene that’s almost four decades old.

What distinguishes this record from any number of other nostalgic indie-pop ruminations on suburban teenhood is the sparkling optimism Hovvdy carry with them.

Sincerely plays better as a whole rather than as tracks excerpted for a playlist, which is fine, though “Sugar! Honey! Love!” and “Daggers!” rank among Uchis’ most lived-in tracks.

Whole New Mess has a singular power. The songs are spare but still feel electric, and despite their lower volume compared to All Mirrors, you couldn’t necessarily call them quiet. Their slow-strummed chords and finger-picked patterns are at times deliberately brittle and blown-out. Whole New Mess amplifies a different source of loudness.

This cerebral/visceral friction is one of the most satisfying elements of Black Hippy, and Ab-Soul arguably carries it the furthest of the group.

The “new” material on Piano & a Microphone has already circulated as bootlegs, but this album clarifies its details, rescues it from indistinct hiss.

It's got some of his best pure songwriting yet, but no earth-cracking riffs. Still, as a treatise on loss and its schizophrenic aftermath, Blunderbuss is a purposeful success.

Listeners who have struggled to appreciate previous releases will hear more of the same in Comradely Objects. Those who are attuned, who find that the band’s smallest pivots can induce a feeling approaching euphoria, will encounter the album as a carnival of delights.

On paper this all could sound average, but Wolf Parade's true talent is transforming the everyday into the unprecedented.

Whitney might not reinvent anything, but they sound perfect right now, and it’s hard to argue with being in the right place at the right time.

Love is turning everyone into an audiophile, then, which means it's making younger people a little older. And it's also a mashup remix, which means it's making older people a little younger. They were just a pop band, yes, but if anyone can bring all these music fans together under one tent, it's the Beatles. Which is what Love is ultimately all about.

The surface is a gorgeous invitation to return and see if you can figure out what it all means.

Its visionary ambition recalls the fertile sprawl of Villalobos’ 2003 debut Alcachofa; baroque techno blessed with the carefree spirit of lounge music and Quiet Storm, dressed up in tie-dye, the music on Amygdala glows with an easy confidence.

Taken as a suite of music on its own merits, Volume One flows rather seamlessly—no small achievement. The canvas they paint on is remarkably spare and restrained.

Even sharing a track with current it-man Ty Dolla $ign on the mellow celebration of “Hey Up There,” he’s able to hold his own. Conversely, when he leans into rapping, he achieves an emotive style of delivery that injects his words with extra resonance. Still, Buddy is at his best when he lets himself be carefree.

Remembering the Rockets is everything one might expect from an ambitious, reverent band moving to the epicenter of American indie rock: It’s sharper and more purposeful, forged by the pressure of real expectations. The best album of their deep and underappreciated catalog, it also imagines a life after indie rock.

On Universal Credit, he proffers downbeat tales that invite empathy, and they deserve, more than anything, to be heard.

Perspective is the sound of an artist stretching herself and succeeding—not because of any embrace of the Western classical tradition, but because she challenges its norms so effectively.

As the band continues to evolve around and with her, Speedy Ortiz’s music finally sounds as complex as its leader dares to be.

Open Your Heart is smartly sequenced to metabolize genre and morph like a masterful DJ mix, subtly rationing out its true peaks even while seemingly going full-throttle throughout.

As an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo (as defined by Dischord, Deep Elm, and especially Jade Tree), Attack on Memory feels above all necessary, a corrective for indie rock making allowances for everything except music that actually rocks.

What’s fascinating about SORCS 80 is that it feels vaguely rootless—some sounds are familiar but the form is not. That isn’t to say Dwyer has chucked out hooks or melodies the way he did his guitar. SORCS 80 contains some of his sharpest recent songwriting—the tunes just happen to get transformed by the Osees’ execution.

The Violent Sleep of Reason galvanizes most when Meshuggah rise to the challenge of writing music that matches the urgency and global scope of its subjects. All too often, though, even as they’re captured playing together in a room for the first time in ages, Meshuggah sound a tad more comfortable than agitated.

It is not the singularly engrossing experience that Die a Legend is, but it argues for him as an adaptable and unmissable talent, an unlikely star in a new major-label system.

Nothing on Words and Music redefines or amplifies Reed’s legend. Instead, what we get is a photograph, stark and charming. For an artist known for cool and cruel observations, for cutting remarks and misdirections, these recordings show him completely free from guile. Lewis Reed, unguarded.

Chapter I, the stronger of the two releases, features one of Crockett’s most personal and well-executed ballads to date, “Good at Losing,” a solemn ride-along through the years he spent traveling aimlessly. The title track, “$10 Cowboy,” is another highlight.

Dan’s Boogie is not a facsimile of its predecessors. It is funnier, wiser, though the stakes are perhaps a little lower. .... It all feels effortless, like he’s been doing this for his whole life, which he basically has.

Unlike those records [Lemonade and 30], Allen’s album is too concerned with honoring moment-to-moment feelings of hurt and betrayal to really reach for a mature overview of the breakup. But what the songwriting lacks in conceptual development, it makes up for in raw emotion and narrative thrust.

Skeleton's flaws are few and often obscured by the album's mixing: Vidal's vocal adds an additional rhythmic layer, but his lyrical work is interesting enough to be more pronounced and less muddied.

All Hell is a subtly clever record that pits one type of music that strongly evokes one era--here, country music--against another, namely this decade's sample-heavy culture.

Värähtelijä is a weird, grotesque record, where genres are superimposed on one another and where eccentric choices are the rule and not the exception. Yes, Oranssi Pazuzu is out of the old black metal box and lost--wonderfully, strangely--somewhere between heaven and hell.

The uneven second half of Love’s Last Chance fails to match the charms of the first. But by trimming the guest list and writing lyrics inspired by personal experience, McFerrin has found a clearer sense of purpose.

The Common Task doesn’t scan as a political message. But even apart from its real-world context, the album succeeds as an abstraction. Given even a little bit of time, space, and intention, these compositions are an uncommonly rewarding experience.

Thirty years ago, indie rock was rife with records that sounded like Moot!, and the bands of that era inspired successive waves of followers. But today, an album like this, coming from a context like Moin’s, feels radical.

It’s a scattershot travelogue, idealized and hopeful, bright with giddy pleasures, welled tears, and some of her best-ever songwriting.

He’s finding new aural and emotional textures within a familiar genre. Those fresh sounds are married to the sturdiest set of songs Strings has written, with defined melodies distinguished by flashes of empathy and wit.

Implosion brings out the best in each artist by highlighting their differences: Martin’s music comes off heavier than ever, while Fiedler’s fidgety rhythms are all the more dynamic.

Lavender Networks is a step up on the “approachable” scale—even if it still has enough ideas for a dozen albums by a less adventurous artist. It’s a (relatively) digestible, catchy release that seems destined to invite more people into Marcloid’s digital dayglo world.

Crooked Wing promises to be a career highlight, then doesn’t quite deliver. Its first half is consistently astonishing, but its final third dips a little too far into the cryptic and lugubrious.

Nonagon Infinity is overstuffed with so many stomach-tossing thrills that you’ll actually be jonesing to ride the roller-coaster all over again.

Expect improvisation and Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1974 will disappoint. Novelty, though, it’s got—Ferry sounded like no singer in rock.

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.

More goes big and mature with lusher, sometimes even baroque arrangements to surround Cocker’s voice—a voice that’s huskier, more leaden by time and gravity.

Between Nao’s lush voice and the album’s glossy production, it’s easy to get lost in Saturn. A worthy successor to For All We Know, it homes in on a specific, if occasionally ham-fisted, conceit while expanding on her sound in clear, vibrant ways.

Still Brazy solidifies YG as a torch-bearer for west coast gangster rap.

Lanegan all too often prevents the audience from seeing the artist that lives behind his dour exterior. Gargoyle is most engaging when it invites glimpses, however fleeting.

The Avalanches are all about feel. And Wildflower, though it misses some of its predecessor’s thematic unity and from-nowhere sense of surprise, has that feel in spades.

The album starts to wear thin by the homestretch.

Faking the Books is a confident stride in the right direction, and proves that, even within the confines of a tired concept, a great hook still goes a long way.

So while this may not be a great album or even a top-tier Beastie Boys album -- I'd place it somewhere between Hello Nasty and the inferior 5 Boroughs, neither of which can touch those first four -- anyone who cares about these guys will be glad it exists.

Though many of the songs convey images of earthiness and of dirt, there's a beauty that helps the collection soar above the ground.

This is incredibly heavy music made light (joyful, even) by the zeal and power of its players. By plowing into, through, and ultimately out of the dark, Ex Eye is an ecstatic fusion--an exhilarating exclamation of defiance, no warning required.

Rarely do the Mekons get quite as loose as they do on Deserted, alternating between arid, nocturnal atmosphere that seems to emanate from Susie Honeyman’s fiddle and moments of near hysteria, as though their sun-baked brains have gone haywire. These songs take their time to wander about, even getting lost in the vast expanse--sometimes a little too lost.