Whether it’s the jarring track-to-track juxtapositions or within the shape-shifting songs themselves, Ty Segall shows that, nearly a decade into the game, the only predictable thing about Segall is his ability to continually surprise.

Whatever caused DOOM to scale back his output and go off the grid, he's only come back from it sharper, stronger, and more powerful than before.

Where Malkmus’ solo work has sometimes walked the fine line between too detached or too self-satisfied, the record cartwheels over it with the assurance of an artist who’s correctly assumed that so long as he’s enjoying himself enough, others will too.

A fresh sense of discovery also suffuses I Am Not There Anymore’s more straightforward songs.

An album that’s intimate in mood no matter how expansive in sound. .... Generally, the alternate takes offer little more than subtle differences, such as the lack of Indian instrumentation during the middle section of “Living in the Material World,” but the pair of non-LP songs add a dose of good cheer that’s conspicuously lacking on the original album.

MAYHEM may have played better if its tracklist were whittled down from 14 to, say, 10. Still, it is among Gaga’s strongest ever full-length statements.

As appealing as it is challenging, Extended Vacation is the sort of album that might even make those Wilco fans who can sing only "Kingpin" believe it.

In his raps, Jay Rock can come off as a reclusive hard-liner with a remarkable storyteller’s acumen and an internal logic that always feels sound. Few gangsta rappers are better at illustrating just how limited their options were and how undaunted they had to be to overcome them.

The split between Perry and Gerrard's singing parts remains distinct not only vocally, but for the different subjects each explores. That could be a stumbling block in other hands, but always seems to bring out the best where these two are concerned.

It’s to her credit that it [final song, “Call on God”] doesn’t sound like a farewell. Instead, the song—the entire album, in fact--is a poignant statement of the determination that motivated her all along.

Impossible Truth is Tyler's second richly satisfying and absorbing record of solo guitar in three years.

async is more closely aligned with his 21st-century experimental side and his ongoing collaborations with the likes of Christian Fennesz, Alva Noto, and Christopher Willits. But there’s a warmth and fragility to the album here that makes it stand apart from these works.

Things We Lost in the Fire's high points are, without question, the best they've done.

Even in falling short of Jay's classics, Reasonable Doubt and 2001's The Blueprint, it manages to eclipse 1999's brilliant Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter as his third-best album-- which in itself still makes it one of the year's best.

Alongside a cast of musicians who help bring her kaleidoscopic world to life, NV emerges with a visionary avant-pop record that offers an escape from gloom.

On choke enough, that highly skilled performer comes into her own as an artist. The title track is easily Oklou’s best to date.

Her best and most cohesive work to date.

His pivot toward interiority gives his songs a new dimension. His bars are simple, straightforward, and can occasionally lean toward fortune-cookie wisdom (“Get the bread, avoid the drama/You can avoid the feds but not the karma,” he raps on “Fight For Your Right”), but throughout the album, he seems to be growing more secure in himself.

If a girl group’s main job is to supply harmonies for days and kick out songs that roll around your head like marble, their debut album, Access All Areas, achieves it all with a decidedly R&B edge.

These tracks are plenty muscular, but there’s no bulge, no bloat. They’re as sculpted as the six-pack on a plastic superhero costume.

For the most part, they remain a powerful trio with perfect chemistry, capable of embedding great hooks and marvels of rhythm section athleticism within riff-worshipping hits.

Short blasts of distortion leave their mark throughout the album, guitar tones evoking the image of exploding paint cans in a mid-size room, adding to the unruly spirit of the band's albums and live sets.

Tip of the Sphere again rejects easy definitions and expectations, growing and surprising with every listen.

Habits has little to apologize for, no serious blemishes or ill-advised shifts in direction.

The most striking improvement is her singing. She's a stronger vocalist, her almost-plain tone rising into higher registers, and her usual range has grown more earthily gorgeous. But more than anything, she demonstrates a new expressiveness.

Singles is risky, but the strength of the songwriting carries it over.

If you're not inclined toward acoustic improvisation or unstructured abstraction, Orcutt won't change your mind. But anyone can admire the raw soul of his playing and the way he shoots out ideas in real-time, reacting so quickly it's as if he's creating a new language as he speaks it.

Her skipping cadence and ability to dance around words while establishing that each one is equally important are poet's skills, making you listen to every word without ever seeming overdetermined or obvious.

On When I See the Sun, they seem to want to prove they also recognize great songwriting, and it turns out they not only have impeccable taste, they also have an instinctive understanding of the type of songs that tend to increase in mystery and intimacy when swaddled in an impenetrable fog of guitars.

The record demonstrates something Kamaru senses more easily than the rest of us, which is the richness and drama of everyday sounds. Natur helps us hear what he hears.

As much as it can sound like it stands alone, Bish Bosch is part of a tradition of music that tried to find new ways to articulate that same old misery.

Darnielle's characters are back where they know best.

For all the credit given to Luger-- who, in fairness, has upped the bar for rap producers competing with the post-Tunnel nightclub gangster aesthetic-- it's Waka who gives this record its frenetic intensity.

Gordon’s most impassioned singing on the album helps here, too, but it’s the pair’s frame accuracy that makes the track so dramatic. The results are far from predictable, but they serve as further proof that Body/Head are fully in control.

Forgoing their usual evocative song titles in favor of a suite of numbered pieces that often flow into and out of one another, Dirty Three have made not only their most absorbing album but also the one that’s most open to interpretation.

For all the ideological intent fuelling the Wild Flag mission, the band rarely sacrifices the rock'n'roll fun-- they no doubt deliver that elusive black-and-blue, but it's a hit that feels like a kiss.

Baroness convince their disparate influences to gel beautifully without lapsing into the homogeneity (or self-indulgent drudgery) that remains a common defect of long, proggy albums. The second half is noticeably quieter and spookier than the more bombastic first half, easing down gently into more melodic and even acoustic fare.

The core tension between Tamborello's complex, almost impossibly dense production and Gibbard's cutting voice makes Give Up a pretty damned strong record, and one with enough transcendent moments to forgive it its few substandard tracks and some ungodly lyrical blunders.

Pyroclasts feels about as close to that completeness as a metal album by a druid-robed group named after their amplifiers can get.

Pimienta has ably realized her potential and silenced those who doubted her deservingness.

The highest highs of Icky can't quite reach the altitude of the band's breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group's more robust sound.

The whole 12-part suite unfurls like a gorgeous symphony, as if the entire Space Program only served as preparation for translating a work of cosmic complexity into a language we humans could understand.

The songs sound great, but the easy on-stage banter and joyful communion with the audience sounds even better. Shut-ins of the world, unite and take over.

Murder of the Universe may be built from the band’s now-familiar krautpunk battle plan, but their ability to execute outsized architectural complexity at manic, warp-speed velocity is no less astonishing.

Getting forcibly pinned down in her personal cycle of attack and retreat is a dark, visceral, utterly compelling thrill.

Pound for pound, The Louder I Call is Wye Oak’s brightest, most straightforward effort

Invisible Cities serves as something of a breath-catching moment for a band that's taken a giant leap on each of its albums, bringing some of the thunder back while further elaborating on the progress made on Ghost Rock.

Although the outgoing sonics of Endless Now represent a considerable leap in sound, it's those same qualities that could very well repel those drawn in by the burnt-ends glory of Nothing Hurts-- not because that previous record is necessarily better, though.

The ensemble’s playing and the leader's compositions make Junun an easy stretch--though, crucially, not a condescending one--for listeners otherwise unfamiliar with the great variety of methods often obscured by "world music" market-speak.

Ghost's new album may not uncover many of the verteran MC's still-hidden darts but, even 11 years after his solo debut, there's no denying that one of hip-hop's most vibrant voices in its comfort zone.

Casey, having already plumbed the depths of sorrow, still has room to go deeper as Protomartyr’s sound continues to become much richer and more rewarding.

Distortion isn't a return to form so much as a return to content.

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.

Dunn’s approach has remained so consistent across his career that the difference between this album and its predecessors is one of degree, not type, but it’s safe to say that From Here to Eternity plumbs newfound depths: There is a coppery burnish that was not there before, a tendency to float just beyond the bounds of our usual limits of musical perception.

WORRY. is stuffed with so with many sugarcoated melodies it’s almost headache-inducing. Yet there isn’t a single insubstantial lyric here.

Songs for Judy now feels like a concept album whose concept is just as far out as prog rock, if less flashy and more soothing. It’s a high fantasy of meadows and moons and canyons, of shows that start after midnight, of possessing or creating enough space to let Neil Young play some quiet songs for you.

The album as a whole feels warmer, more spacious. The songs on Painted Shut were doled out like 10 fist-shaped car door dents, but Bark Your Head Off, Dog moves at an agitated hum.

Energetic, lush, and measured, Three Dimensions Deep is a cohesive debut from Mark that doesn’t lose sight of the bespoke sound that she’s developed over the years.

There is vintage new wave rawness and goth-inflected bounce all over this thing, and it manages to leave this band in fresh-sounding territory that's somehow miles away from most everything today's "new wave revivalists" and/or "electro-punks" have even thought about trying.

Róisín Murphy aims her tracks at the stars. With Róisín Machine, she’s become one.

That Lodestar exists at all feels like a minor miracle. That it is so exquisitely done is a small blessing on top.

The album’s final stretch encapsulates its elaborate brilliance.

Goths is Darnielle’s most evocative work since the occultist All Eternals Deck and even though it remains loosely conceptual like Beat the Champ, it’s all tethered to this palpable, too-casual melancholy, the kind that comes with telling a cautionary tale one too many times.

Earnest without being sentimental, and authentic without sounding contrived, The Hold Steady are one of the most convincing rock bands to emerge in recent years, a can-crushing throwdown of unadulterated aggression and ear-splitting amps.

Screen Memories strikes a chord in a way that most blatantly political albums never quite manage. As society crumbles, John Maus’ commitment to being John Maus is inspiring, tapping an unexpected synchronicity with our doomed world.

Pusha’s released a fair amount of music since joining Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music army three years ago, but My Name Is My Name is really the first release that delivers on the excitement initially engendered by the pairing.

At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People--the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime--confirms its maker's own thesis.

Her music is bold and fully formed.

The album is less concerned with asserting a specific worldview than examining the difficulties of keeping one’s moral compass steady in a society that’s becoming ever-more indifferent to the things you value--and how one must remain all the more resolute once kids enter the picture.

It can feel indulgent. Yes, they have expressed some of these thoughts more succinctly in the past; and yes, the tracklist could be condensed so that you don’t have to clear your schedule to get through it. But when everything clicks, their work has never sounded so patient, so personal.

Acoustic Recordings stockpiles a great American songbook that can endure even after we’re all forced to live off the grid.

That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud.

He made an album as bleak—and funny—as anything he’s ever done, digging deep into his sense of self with the same sardonic wit that made his breakout LP Dark Comedy so impressive. It helps that he’s not entirely alone.

It's hard to get out of Suckfish once it's on.

Consider Midwinter Swimmers, then, an invitation to reclaim the assured and commonplace language of awe. This is what “beautiful” was meant to describe.

It's impressive and frankly unusual to see a band five albums into their career experiment with new sounds and actually make it work, but Junior Boys have pulled it off. Career longevity looks good on them.

As impressive and uniformly gorgeous a record as Rook is, the band's best work is likely still to come.

With the Freaking Out EP, Bundick moves from vaguely funky 1980s-tinged makeout jams to more explicitly funky 80s-tinged dancefloor jams-- think Chromeo. The change isn't as successful as his best work, but it still makes for a plenty rewarding between-albums EP.

The integrity of Richard's voice provides the through line, which is often caught in ghostly tangles of itself or locking into prismatic harmonies, similar to how Prince or D’Angelo treated their voices.

As it is, Bird Songs makes for lovely twilight listening, the kind of reflective and soothing album you play when nestled into a blanket on a porch with the people you love.

If these Goats Heads Soup rarities betray the album’s indecisive, scatterbrained origins, the reissue’s third disc—an oft-bootlegged but greatly enhanced recording of a Brussels show from October ’73—finds the Stones still very much at the top of their game as a live act. ... Ultimately, Goats Head Soup remains fascinating for how it makes the Stones seem a little less mythical and a lot more real.

The softer turns on Black Rainbows feel nearest to Rae’s earlier material, but those, too, subvert expectations.

And yet, that Emeritus often seems more righteous than cynical or hopeless (the latter two are a bit soft) is a testament to Scarface strengthening his flow in age.

With Four Tet’s ninth album, New Energy, Hebden does something unexpected: He revisits previous sounds. There’s the low-key warmth of 2003’s Rounds, the free jazz at the heart of 2005’s Everything Ecstatic, the friendly thump of 2012’s Pink, the sprawl of 2015’s Morning/Evening. Downtempo nodders, beatless passages that flow into big bangers—he synthesizes all this into his most accessible listen since There is Love in You.

Mirror Reaper simulates that totality of grief, but it also transcends its own function as a eulogy.

Segal comes from underground hip-hop and Booker from retro-leaning rock’n’roll, but LOWER doesn’t sound like any of those genres’ past collisions. Instead, it takes the basic textures of rap rock—boom-bap beats, Deftones’ icy ambiance, the corroded shredding of “She Watch Channel Zero?!”—and fashions them into a new strain of beat-centric grunge.

The original Superwolf was the product of two loners delighting in how easily those solitudes intertwined. Superwolves’ success, then, is unimaginable without the 16-year hiatus between albums. Both artists needed to wander, to lose themselves, to become strangers again—even if only in their artistic partnership—so they could come back together and find that the rearranged pieces somehow still fit.

SGP's ability to create a quarantined universe explains why Mysterious is often absorbing rather than oppressive.

On Windswept Adan, Aoba expands her repertoire of sound and brings collaborators into her vision, yet she still holds on to the wistful imagination that allows her to dream up private universes.

His record’s name is meant to suggest a certain sense of incompleteness, but it’s one of the most well-edited, coherent debuts to emerge in recent memory.

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.

What makes it work so well is that this anarchy is not an anything-goes anarchy: These songs are so carefully composed, so intentional, that every cyborgian burp and steel snare fits perfectly. Everything and nothing tramples each other.

On Queen of Golden Dogs, he slashes the ropes and soars into the stratosphere, pulling off an extraordinary fusion of chamber music, choral quintets, poetry, surrealism, mysticism, and, not least, rubble-making electronic epics.

The self-produced Teeth Marks is a sharp and thoughtful distillation of these modern American small-town complexities. Religious hypocrisy, financial ruin, systemic addiction, ruinous love, devotion so intense it begins to burn like hatred: Goodman finds space for it all in these 11 tracks, which glide between breathtaking a cappella eulogies and dive-bar R&B, between gnarled rock and plaintive ballads.

Its genesis, development, and creation are extensively chronicled in Who’s Next | Life House, an 11-CD box set that beautifully communicates the spirit of the original project by opening up the vaults and inviting everybody inside.

Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks gets a sparkling remaster and almost an album’s worth of okay-to-pretty-good new tracks.

Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.

When measured against Four Tet's prior output, this latest effort does come as something of a disappointment; but by most other yardsticks, it's downright brilliant.