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

Never mind the retro-gazing moniker-- The Week That Was is a band you need to hear now.

Wire is continuing to make greatness look easy.

The album's not a step forward so much as a squirm in quicksand.

Blacklisted's accompaniment is roundly excellent and evocative, but Case's voice is what really sells the record.

The true beauty of Clinic is that they have, using a relatively standard rock vocabulary, constructed a truly distinctive, energetic, and magnetically appealing sound.

Whether you treat it as background music, incidental listening, or a two-hour magnum opus, Themes for an Imaginary Film is a well-rounded portrait of a key figure in the American electronic music landscape.

For all its lavish instrumentation and weighty subtext, however, Babelsberg never overwhelms Rhys’ preternatural gift for writing swoon-worthy melodies.

Even at her most damaged, Hauff’s take on noise is nothing short of opulent, and it’s that alternatingly grating and sparkling attention to detail that makes Qualm so exciting. What might at first sound retro turns out to be simply timeless.

One of Oldham’s most complicated albums. ... If you’re left confused or disoriented, that’s exactly Oldham’s point. Welcome, he seems to say, we’ve been waiting for you.

Camp Cope’s windswept punk feels both retro and right now, like Courtney Barnett covering Tigers Jaw covering Ani DiFranco. Their sound is jangly but unpolished, folky but not crunchy. Maq’s voice, decorated with Australian diphthongs, ably meanders from shouty to soft, conjuring an inexplicable mashup of Joe Strummer and Joni Mitchell

Here, as on previous albums, Arthur demonstrates his gift for emotionally direct songwriting, but the specifics often escape his attention.

t's a strangely affecting synthesis of sounds and marks Holy Other's short debut out as a darkly oppressive but ultimately rewarding piece of work.

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.

It's remarkably cohesive both in mood and style: energetic but never wanton, bittersweet but never wallowing.

There have been times in James’ career when his knowing smirk threatened to eclipse the music. But here he’s obviously having a genuine blast, and his joy is infectious.

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

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.

The album is more a warm remembrance than a full-blown celebration.

It might not meet the extremely high bar set by his best work, but it’s almost certainly him at his most emotionally vulnerable.

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.

Their 2010 self-titled debut [was] all hummable melodies, clap-along rhythms, and poignantly turned phrases. Europe maintains these qualities and improves upon its predecessor in almost every way.

These finely wrought songs introduce a fascinating and confidently subversive artist and offers a glimpse of the road she’s traveling.

What’s remarkable is how wide a net Holley and Lee cast. Maybe it’s a sign of his broad appeal or the importance of the work he’s creating, but there’s something like fellowship in these songs, a sense of remembering together.

While few really stand out on their own, together they lean on one another to impressive effect. As a result, it has the feeling of an album that really holds together. Now that's an anachronism.

While its ingredients are undeniably basic--all of the songs are built from a few period-appropriate keyboards and chugging drum machines, and that’s mostly it--what makes Cake Knife so consistently endearing is how effortless it all sounds.

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.

Smart but never intellectual, given more to the words we use over the words we know, Newman peppers these stories with little references to the Great Migration, climate change (the swells on Willie’s beach keep getting bigger), global politics, and American myth.

It is the most technically proficient and hard-hitting music in their discography, albeit at the cost of their unique intimacy and warmth.

Still, sparse as it may be, her music offers its own richness, and these songs often reach full-band conclusions that feel warm and inviting.

This exercise in excess makes the ambitious You Forgot It in People seem positively understated by comparison.

What binds the album is slowthai’s soul: his meticulously drawn characters, his affinity for left-behind outsiders like the glue sniffers sampled on “Doorman,” and his impatience with a profit-motivated world where, as he once put it, “You’re competing constantly without wanting to.”

Ultimately, Chasmata is slightly inferior to its predecessor due to a sequencing issue near the record's end.

ith “Sober Motel” especially, Dilly Dally subtly chip back at the ways music is exploited under capitalism. Its greatest element, as ever, is Monks’ rare voice--jagged, on fire, intoxicating itself.

“Gold Feet” feels as if it could have been pulled off a hard drive that had been neglected since 2018, all the way down to its JID feature. But more often, the album pushes through that illusory ease to deliver heavier tracks and a more animated Gibbs than we’ve seen for some time.

Its focus on the verities of songcraft suggests an artist confident enough to lean harder into tropes, formulas, and covers (including a spicy take on Waylon Jennings’ “Kissing You Goodbye”). It may feel like fiddling while Rome burns, but artistically it pays off.

In a couple of decades, when you're looking for an instant hit of what electronic pop felt like in 2011, you'll be able to throw on Glass Swords and get a dose of that feeling in its purest form.

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

Though Live at Montreux is an inviting survey for newcomers, it's also worth hearing if you’re already familiar with the source material. Some songs, like “Pomperipossa,” are reworked for maximum force, but the greatest rewards are subtler.

Written and recorded during an extended stay on Ireland’s windswept west coast, the follow-up to Land of No Junction reaps lucidity from family bonding and fleeing the city in search of peace. With it, Frances’ psych-folk soliloquies arrive like postcards from a friend who’s just beginning to open up.

Bain has crafted her share of evocative ballads, but the ones on In the End tend to zap the momentum. Bain is at her best when she’s embracing a sense of playfulness, winking as subtly as she cries, sashaying between humor and hurt.

An album that pushes Minus’ musical vision outward while burrowing deeper inward lyrically.

Woman King will provide eager Iron & Wine fans a welcome holdover between proper albums, but the EP also serves a larger developmental purpose, marking one more evolutionary hop for Sam Beam, and christening a new genre-- post-basement.

At Weddings remains remarkable for its grace, candor, and composure. For now, with or without religion, Tomberlin seems equipped to keep her demons at bay.

It's no slight to say the record's distinguishing quality is the one Elbow has had since the beginning, an honest humanity that's imperfect but can be appreciated if you live with it.

Here, when everything's as clear as it is on Les Voyages de l'Âme, he feels almost too exposed, and the big climaxes he's reaching for don't arrive. There's no denying the beauty, but it feels weirdly muted-- or perhaps just unsurprising.

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.

It’s a slightly deflating end to an album that succeeds through its unnerving, unflinching personality. By now, the most interesting characters in Bridgers’ story are the ones she puts on the page herself.

Each song on Welcome to Conceptual Beach has an accessible core to which it can return, allowing Young Jesus to scrutinize their exploratory impulses without lapsing into fussiness or formlessness.

Garden feels like a refinement of the same sound [on 2019’s Weeping Choir], pulling them to greater, if somewhat less accessible, heights.

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.

No distinct group voice emerges from these 12 tracks, no clear sense of where they hope to head now. But there are enough revelatory moments, both solo and shared, that this lack only suggests itself once the album is done, when its pleasures have finished unspooling.

The sound of Warm Chris is sparse and oblique, and trying to anchor yourself in Harding’s lyrics can feel like organizing a narrative from the shape of passing clouds. But that’s also where its brilliance lies, what makes this some of Harding’s best songwriting yet.

There's a sense of discovery to Quarter Turns Over a Living Line, with Andrews and Halstead unveiling the slow evolution of their sound over its 40-minute runtime.

Stand for Myself, with its themes of inner fortitude only brightening the white-hot star at its center, vaults Yola to another place in the pop world, with her boundless curiosity and vocal brawn establishing her as a knowing, honest voice for those who need help summoning their own strength from within.

The structure of All American Made works in a strange way, grouping like-minded songs together and moving at a galloping, constantly shifting pace. It hits its peaks at the beginning and end.

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.

There are two immediately apparent differences between Stephen Malkmus and Pavement's catalog: first and least surprisingly, there's less of a group dynamic here than on Pavement albums. It definitely has the sonic hallmarks of a "solo" album-- the songs are less jammy and spontaneous, more rigidly structured. Second, it's a lot more fun-sounding than Pavement was near the end of its shelf life.

Banhart's disinterest in obvious narratives is, for now, his greatest strength.

The excitement is sustained so consistently over the hour-long running time that you'll almost begin to wish the six-minute songs were even longer.

While Neon Cross highlights the versatility of Wyatt’s gorgeous, commanding voice, she finds her comfort zone in singalong anthems like “Goodbye Queen.”

The Edge of Everything is perhaps too esoteric for either camp—a 5D rendering of the genre rather than a simple homage. But in calling back to concept-driven works like Goldie’s divisive Saturnz Return or the Japanese swordsmanship references of Photek’s Ni - Ten - Ichi - Ryu EP, The Edge of Everything proves that drum’n’bass can still wield an awesome experimental power as it enters its fifth decade.

Pale Horse Rider was recorded out in the Mojave, and sounds like it—this is patient, languidly paced music, full of casual saloon-piano rolls and shooting-star pedal-steel sweeps (courtesy of Tyler Nuffer). But it’s a desert record where the glow of big-city lights can still be felt in the distance at night and the ominous hum of power lines infuses the air.

More willing than ever to flex their jazz chops, the Vanishing Twin of Ookii Gekkou sound best when settling in for the long haul, exploring the nooks and crannies of their pluralist fantasia with a microscopic attention to detail.

The record’s innovations are modestly hidden in clever programming, while Paradinas himself is too level-headed to inspire Aphex Twin-style devotion. But he does make a compelling case for the genre as a living entity that’s open to new ideas, and not nearly as persnickety as its reputation suggests.

This is the best way to approach the album—as an impressionistic work that rewards the questions and ideas it stirs, rather than a puzzle demanding a solution. Its knotted discussions of agency and morality take a backseat to how alive its characters feel in this illicitly exciting world.

The intricacies of this Earth -- Carlson's harmonics and harmonies, Davies' careful builds, Blau's unexpected bass maneuvers, Goldston's adventurous versatility -- demand attention and immersion.

Like the Gorillaz's self-titled debut, Demon Days goes the way of most auteur projects, its oversize idea load making for a trip equal parts peak and valley. But also like the debut, Demon Days is better than it has any right to be, featuring singles stronger than anything released under the Blur banner since, you know, that "Woo-hoo" song.

Diggin’ is a remarkable transmission: a document of a wave of heady creativity swept under our headlong rush toward tomorrow.

Jaguar is a sleek cocoon of funk-tinged R&B that excavates what it means to be in control.

Gaudet has such a witty way with one-liners, and the band is so effervescent in their execution, that it’s easy to overlook the elevated level of craft at work. Football Money clocks in at a lean 10 songs and 27 minutes, with nary a second wasted.

Forget the technicalities and call it what it is: a messy, glorious, and cohesive artistic document of internet café-era indie life that sounds best when sung by heart.

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.

The melancholy saunter of Henriksen’s lines is isolated and sculpted by glimmering, whirring atmospheres full of emptiness and portent. Testing different ways to contrast eloquent material and enigmatic medium, the record plays like some lost collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and Brian Eno circa Ambient 4: On Land.

Mostly, though, it's nuanced and mature, with a slickness that sometimes drifts into banality and makes you crave a reprieve in the form of surprise gastric sounds or cavalier testicle jokes.

While it showcases the breadth and the peaks of her capabilities, My 21st Century Blues lacks a clear thematic throughline.

That first half [of the album] proves the less successful, though at the same time the opening three-song run may be the best thing Deacon's ever recorded... It's the second half of America that promises and more or less delivers something great and new for Deacon.

Though it ranks among Chasny’s most gentle records, Burning the Threshold nonetheless accommodates a large supporting cast of avant-rock all stars who lend these intimately scaled songs a greater dimension.

Most obviously changed is her voice, which has strengthened and deepened over the years. Her choruses are a bit less breathy, and she glides into belting without sounding strained. There are micro-changes in inflection.

The writing on Companion Rises is still thematically obscure. But, at least temporarily, Chasny has resurfaced in search of a more immediate connection, letting heavy notions push his songs upward rather than drag them apart.

There's something almost voyeuristic in listening to such an intimate musical relationship built on exchanging confidential messages to one another, but it's this warmth that gives the record its spirit.

Blackshaw's musical ideas are interesting enough that it's easy to see his piano pieces progressing as his technique comes along, opening another avenue to explore his musical concepts.

As a first step, both Teenage Hate and Fuck Elvis Here's the Reatards are astonishing. All the energy one could hear in Reatard's better-known work is here in it's rawest, most volatile form.

Nothing is off limits, yet everything works within the context of the album, as rousay unearths modes of expression that make it hard to remember a time when ambient music sounded any differently. Through it all, rousay somehow makes this progression feel completely natural.

“Well Rested,” like the rest of Civilisation II, meditates not on human decline as much as the fables and myths we create in order to adjust to it. KKB are as inquiring and self-aware as ever—only now, their eyes are trained on the future.

Unfussy, fun, and occasionally even funny, it is also their most purely pleasurable album in nearly two decades.

Rejecting escapism and celebrating invention, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is equally compelling and uncompromising. The music and the feeling of being absorbed in it is its own reward.

Jim O’Rourke’s soundtrack is perfectly calibrated to this unforgiving space squashed between parched fields and blown-out sky. His palette—detuned piano, watery vibraphone, and a muted, amorphous shimmer that might be harmonium or synthesizer—matches the film’s dusty tones of beige and pewter and mobile-home brown.

If Favourite Worst Nightmare is notably lacking something, it's another song like the debut's standout, "A Certain Romance".

Although Floating Coffin does quite well with its searing powerhouses, the quieter moments add a much-needed sonic diversity.

Oh No is a gorgeous and deadly pop music manifesto that proves yet again the sad girls are not vulnerable and silent subjects.

Now Only isn’t as easily categorized as its predecessor. These songs arrive with such urgency, such purpose, that it feels all-encompassing: part-memoir, part magnum opus.

By turning the rock knob down a notch, DFA79 have kept You're a Woman loud and nasty and ensured a cohesion and unusual degree of listenability.

It’s not that Leithauser has dramatically changed since his days in the Walkmen; rather, pairing with Rostam has brought out the best in him. It’s rare for collaborative albums between known entities to feel like equal reflections of both parties, but Rostam find a middle-ground in mutual longing for the past.

Don’t Lose This sounds like an excellent entry point for newcomers and casual fans, a gateway to exploring the Staples’ vast catalog.

It all adds up to a remarkably visceral, sensual, confident electronic record that stays absorbing from beginning to end, and should finally catapult Hopkins to stardom in his own story.

A Love Surreal is short on big, arcing-rainbow melodies as a result, but one of its joys is watching Bilal warp his voice into improbable shapes.

She expresses no hesitation here, and for that, her band has never sounded better. Sure, you can come for the twin guitars and the loaded rhythm section, but at last, Cottrell has made it clear you’re staying for her.