What’s Your 20? is for the neophytes--it’s a very reasonable place to start for future generations facing down Wilco’s full catalog on Spotify.

The guitars are buzzy and loud, the rhythms are quick, the drums crash, the lyrics are densely packed into a short span of time, and Boyer spits them out with punk rock confidence

Hinton has an ability, not unlike the Books when they first hit the scene 14 years ago, of making shopworn techniques in sound manipulations seem strangely fresh, and Potential is the kind of music that makes you think about what your own part in a seemingly passive musical transaction of music might mean.

A shockingly insightful and resonant look at the workings of a musician generally more given to hiding behind absurdly twisted turns of musical phrase than letting us in on the inner-workings of his mind.

The Same but by Different Means is surprisingly seamless for a 22-track record. Like a Ouija board session, each track here feels part of a collective effort to access a realm outside our own. Sometimes, it leads to sustained moments of connection, like the radiant tropicalia sunshower of “Curtain of Rain.” At others, it yields sudden, surprising moments of rapture, like the beautiful melancholic chorus of “Hard to Say Bye.”

The Age of Immunology better highlights the individual personalities and nationalities that inform the group’s unique alchemy.

Despite the boundlessness of their instrumentation, Akron/Family maintain remarkable warmth... playing at restrained volumes that invite close listening.

The tracks feel like true collaborations rather than features. The energy exchange feels mutual. Sebenza feels like the future, now.

The Waiting Room might be Tindersticks’ most subdued effort to date, but it still flashes the irreverence that enlivened efforts like The Something Rain and Falling Down a Mountain.

That Eyehategod exists at all is a miracle in and of itself, but the fact that it is so damn great is simply extraordinary.

Dilly Dally always sound like they're being crushed throughout Sore, in a good way: They inhabit the dank space beneath dead weight, the place where the good stuff festers.

With Work of Art, Asake understands that his winning formula needs no adjustments.

Infinite Light is solid. And its overall quality owes more than a small debt to the fact that Webber and Wells have the good taste and modesty to keep it at 10 songs.

Never merely meager, this project delivers, both when you're waving your orgy-snorkel all blotto on-the-town, and for a soundtrack to serious rumination at your midday desk of harsh reality.

Like all albums birthed out of a particular music fascination, the influences on I Walked With You a Ways are widespread and a joy to uncover with each listen.

Coming Home is full of delectable singles that prove Usher is still the king of pop-R&B—he’s simply reminding his fans what he can do, how many ways he can do it, and how nastily, too, if you’ll allow him.

Crash is Charli’s best full-length project since Pop 2, a canny embrace of modern and vintage pop styles by one of its most sincere students.

This is still quintessential Broken Social Scene—brokenhearted love songs, striking images set in dream logic, longing for connection while admitting the faults that prevent it—even if it necessitates a new level of patient listening.

Albums this unpretentious are increasingly rare, and I think that's what makes Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow so seductive.

Big Boi's Speakerboxxx coolly upstages its counterpart: though it, too, provides the world with one earthshaking single, it differs from The Love Below in that it also manages to maintain consistent brilliance and emotional complexity throughout.

Cohen is a genially commanding stage presence, falling on his knees at crucial moments and doffing his cap for his accompanists' solo turns. The Old Ideas songs, sprinkled throughout the set at just the right intervals, are naturally at home, capped with the wry God-speaking-to-a-man-named-Leonard "Going Home". Otherwise, the songs you know and plenty of songs you should know better are probably here.

In a way, Mastodon operates something like prime-era Metallica, unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning.

All eleven tracks on Bad Timing are gems that balance a knack for brain-lodging choruses with the grime and stylistic drift of Exile on Main Street, begging a record collection's worth of comparisons with nary an instance of outright thievery.

While the execution has at times wavered over the years, Allas Sak finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that it has staked out over the past decade--performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever.

Whether it’s tapping our feet on the wet curb to gritty, unstable British realism, or gazing from a height over the glossy cross-pollination of world music, making sense of this outrageously talented pioneer is a challenging but deeply rewarding task.

Keeping listeners on their toes while also mimicking the way this music was often heard by fans-- it's an odd but effective approach, especially considering the usual keep-the-party-going Fabriclive style.

We all know a little something about chasing that ideal version of ourselves, and Antony's persistence in the face of futility makes it a joy to run by his side.

Simply put, the playing is more ambitious and varied on Goodness than on Home, Like NoPlace Is There, an album where the narrative drama manifests into some of the rawest anthems of unhinged youth and crippling self-loathing recorded this decade.

Many slower outfits-- Low, American Music Club, Codeine, et al.-- are sometimes pinned with the theory that if you've heard one of their albums, you've heard them all. Such is no longer the case with the Red House Painters.

These songs store well more than a half-hour of reward and intrigue-- appropriate enough for a record that had to be made three times.

For all the complexity of Stadium, its true genius lies in understatement and how a thousand small sounds build into a larger vision.

Get Yr Blood Sucked Out is confident, psychedelic, hard-hitting, and the best noise they've made yet.

With their documentarian dispatches from the meanest streets, Crack Cloud could never be accused of faking it. But the strange beauty of Pain Olympics is that it fills your heart even as it’s kicking you in the kidneys.

There are plenty of bands that mapped inspired paths to greatness, but Big Star's story, as seen on film and heard on these songs, is a potent reminder of just how beautiful failure can be.

So even if the songwriting guides the band toward the most impressive, experimental reaches of their sound, it also becomes their record most tethered to the lyric sheet and Kinsella’s role as a frontman. It’s a dizzying effect, as the polish of his surroundings never distracts from the rawness at its core.

Ringleader of the Tormentors is, rather than the now-anticipated letdown, another fitting heir to [his] legacy.

The new compilation Assembly adroitly selects high-water marks from Strummer’s solo career while never quite ameliorating the ”what if” questions that haunt the Clash’s legacy.

Ring is electic, beat-heavy, and easy to like. A sneakily confident debut that should please listeners at almost every turn.

On Blu Wav, Grandaddy’s first album in seven years, Lytle leans into bittersweet Americana twang, a natural fit for his fatally flawed, cautiously optimistic cast of characters.

His debut album, Knockin' Boots, could actually be the best LP-length statement to come out of house's reawakening.

In many ways, Adore Life feels more alive than Silence Yourself--in part because it feels more human, in part because it's telling you to be as loud as possible.

Tyler, the Creator’s sixth album is impressionistic and emotionally charged, the result of an auteur refining his style and bearing more of his soul than ever before.

Occulting Disk is somehow mesmerizing and terrifying—motivational for those who need it, a nuisance to those who don’t want it.

Broke With Expensive Taste glides through all of these, just like the faithful 1 train sampled on "Desperado". Both album and the artist revel in the freedom of a New York City where divisions between these sounds and scenes have ever so slowly ceased to exist.

The whole album works something like an expansion on the last three fuzzed-out tracks from Dig Your Own Hole. The Chems aren't in the same do-no-wrong zone they were when they recorded that stuff, but Further brings them closer than anyone could've reasonably expected.

His first solo release in nearly 13 years, his most adventurous and surprising, and his best.

Regifted Light doesn't seem built to shock or cajole, but to connect with all sorts of people, and to last.

Their most understated, surprisingly sweetest album to date.

Hello Sadness is their fourth straight great album.

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.

MIKE’s rhythmic passion manifests in a firm self-awareness absent from his earlier work. He hasn’t exactly outrun his demons, but his place in the vanguard of New York’s underground rap scene has invigorated him.

It helps to show Pains not as period fetishists, but instead a group of indie-pop aesthetes who seem to be able to operate comfortably within several different subdivisions of the genre.

Cohen's towering presence and deft songwriting breathe life into the lite-jazz arrangements.

BADBADNOTGOOD are known for turning tradition inside out, but Talk Memory is not just their finest album—it’s evidence of the historic appreciation that roots their reverence.

These eight songs grapple candidly with [family loss], but, like the music itself, the words don’t wallow. Instead, Pallbearer use these tragedies to revel in being alive, or to answer the “gnawing doubts that I ever learned to live.”

This music is so bluntly fatalistic—in idea and execution—that it feels life-affirming to experience, as cleansing as scalding water. The Body have embraced that sensation since finding it on their 2010 breakthrough, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood. On I’ve Seen All I Need to See, it is mercilessly distilled and efficient, reminding us there’s no time to waste.

White Pepper lacks the cohesiveness of earlier works, but it also demonstrates how a band can undergo some serious genre-bending, while still retaining a sound that is uniquely theirs.

While Coates favors simple, stately toplines, the record’s underbelly suggests fathomless depths; instead of sprawling outward, like Shelley’s on Zenn-La, the songs pirouette before plunging into the abyss. The album’s splicing of beauty and horror invokes the morbid logic of Greek mythology, where stirrings of triumph tend to foreshadow nasty surprises.

In a world where artists have been reduced to brands and data points, Aesop Rock asserts his multiplicity. The record boasts some of his most fully realized songs.

Drawing on a sumptuous palette of classic synth pop and leftfield electronic music, Pupul imbues his songs with personality and soul, unearthing complicated truths about his relationship to his heritage while finding welcome release on the dancefloor.

This sense of tragedy seeps through nearly every song. It’s what unites the vast material and makes Workin’ on a World feel pivotal in her catalog. These high points also help recontextualize DeMent’s continuing evolution as an observer of American life.

Perhaps most enjoyable of all is that there's something remarkably personable about this album, as though Anni Rossi is right there in the room with you, singing her heart out about beekeeping in the Himalayas, her love for freezer units, and the troubles of driving to the west coast with no air conditioning.

This is the Weeknd’s most ambitious project in sound and scope, and the most effective record he’s put out in years. Part of the thrill comes from hearing him take himself a little less seriously

She has prepared her whole life for the opportunity to challenge the coastal elites for a seat at rap’s table, and Fever is her folding chair.

Where others in this vein opt for a hazy, nebulous cloud of half-remembered dreams, Manitoba's music is direct and unassuming while still remaining evocative.

In Conflict might not be an autobiography the way you or I would write it, but make no mistake: the deeper you look into it, the deeper Pallett himself stares back at you.

Disrespectful sounds like the rap equivalent of a cartoon tornado, which is what makes it hard to dismiss them as a novelty act or an organically grown version of People Just Do Nothing’s hapless Kurupt FM crew.

The triumph of Life Will See You Now is how it suggests that the 36-year-old Lekman has never been more skilled at his craft, or had more stories to tell.

Even as its backdrop mutates from deep-house throbs to psych-rock guitar solos, Half Free always focuses your attention to where it should be: on Remy's radiant voice and vivid storytelling.

I'd assume Bay of Pigs' disco diversion to be just that in the long run, but after the relatively wagon-gathering summary of "Trouble in Dreams," this certainly feels like a break and, perhaps, the first blush of something new. Cheers to that.

Diminutive, but mom-tough, Hersh casually cusses her way through a baker's dozen songs that are as personal as ever, and far less cryptic than in the past. Her voice remains creaky and pregnant with emotion, matched against her signature bright-toned Collings guitars.

Listening to the 34 songs of Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and The Ghosts of Highway 20 in sequence feels less like a chore than a long trip led by an expert navigator with good stories to share.

Whether he’s falling in or out of love, going out, or reflecting on the night before, Sivan sounds more credible than ever, pairing a newfound swagger with a heady rush of emotion.

Thirty years in, the Chemical Brothers are still digging their own purely escapist sonic rabbit holes. At a time of great cultural and global insecurity, there's never been a more tempting time to get lost in their sensory overload.

Coral Fang impresses not just by some nebulous "punk" standards, but by the standards of just about anyone who wants to be rocked gently out of sleep by the dulcet tones of thrashing guitars, pogo-friendly love songs, and possibly the most compellingly forceful female punk vocals since Exene Cervenka wailed her way out of the nihilistic abyss that cartographers call "L.A."

Even with their most aesthetically orthodox track, Total Control's total message is radical.

The emotional complexity--or rather, saddled contradictory feelings--aren't all that set her apart from her peers: She also draws on influences from outside folk which, largely due to her finger-style treatment and accompaniment choices, wind up adhering to a folk template.

This guy is still on a very serious roll, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere near over.

Self-serious flaws and all, Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice.

Purgatory/Paradise really is unlike anything I’ve heard this year.

A collection of bratty rocker-chick anthems and soul-searching ballads that could slot into the soundtrack of any classic high school flick, from 10 Things I Hate About You to this year’s ludicrous queer sex comedy Bottoms.

As a portrait of this ageless artist as a truly young man, Sugar Mountain is an invaluable document--and a pretty compelling one, too.

Burned Mind, better than any recent album I can think of, betrays music's implied purpose of providing an enjoyable aural experience, while at the same time being psychologically compelling and richly imagistic enough to invite repeat listens.

The beauty of Death Lust lies in how Williams makes them all sound like part of the same continuum of disaffection, and how he approaches each mode with a pop songwriter’s ear for concision. Chastity's debut full-length is a brief album, with 10 songs clocking in at 31 minutes total, but the terrain it covers is vast.

Raw Silk Uncut Wood marks a departure from her usual mode of thorny, cerebral electronic compositions, but as her most ambient record to date, it also boasts some of her most unabashedly beautiful music.

It's a scary, difficult album, but one well suited for our times.

On Totale Nite, they manage to use small-scale elements--jangling guitars, cheapo drum machines, toy keyboards--to project the urgency of bands with louder screams and bigger amps.

The result is at once all-encompassing and strikingly intimate.

At first listen, Public Strain is impenetrably cold. But deep down, beneath the blizzard of noise and hiss, something's burning.

It is a record that is whimsical and sensual; weird and romantic.

The lion's share of the album--along with its excellent deluxe tracks--has one of the world's biggest stars exploring her talent in ways few could've predicted, which is always exciting.

For those new to his work, The Hex serves as a fully realized glimpse of the universe he spent his career mapping. But there’s also a sense he’s speaking directly to a select few.

There are a few moments when the concept's cooler than the result, but in general The Rose Has Teeth's experiments result in frenetic dance tracks doubling as reading lists.

Zs demonstrate an energy and urgency here that they’ve never before had, as these pieces leap off the page in exhilarating fashion.

Warm, engaging, and magnetically solicitous, the Carnegie Hall show is a fascinating pivot point, showcasing Young at his most engaging and vulnerable, nailing one door shut and prying open another: It’s a last look back at the old folkie days and a tentative first reckoning with the wooly neurosis of a new decade.

Pattern + Grid World sounds fully formed and precisely assembled. That shouldn't be surprising, considering Ellison's growing reputation as an album artist.

She occupies the space between the bouncing, full-bodied bassline and plaintive keyboards with a plainly stated want that would be unthinkable on her introverted early releases. Having come so fully into her own, PinkPantheress still aspires to reach out to you.

Manages never to get tired or annoying.