It's a brilliant ambient musical experience-- you can tune it out if you choose and it'll still enhance your surroundings, or you can engage yourself fully and allow it to positively hypnotize you.

Fennesz may not care much if he surprises us, but he never runs out of ways to get us.

This Land is the first place where Gary Clark Jr. doesn’t appear hemmed in by the past. The album may be informed by old sounds and forms, yet these familiar tropes feel fresh thanks to Clark’s idiosyncratic splicing.

It's an album you can spend time with and understand as a whole work, and one that grows on you with each listen, revealing yet more detail and nuance.

There’s a tense, nervous energy running through all the tracks, which connect to each other like wires that spark electrical currents when they meet.

It's among the most fascinating music I've heard and deserves a listen by anyone with even the remotest interest in the possibilities of sound.

This stands pretty much alone in Weller's catalog in terms of sheer eclecticism and unpredictable, dream-like flow.

Sparse without feeling empty, clear without being awkwardly straightforward, Ui can remind even the most jaded of guitar gods that what Mingus (or Mike Watt or Peter Hook) did wasn't a fluke-- the bass doesn't have to be supplementary.

The bristling energy that once held would-be sympathizers at bay has been turned inward, resulting in an unprecedented illusion of warmth.

Their music has never gone down easier, but their commentary has never hit so uncomfortably hard.

The end result is akin to Norman Smith and DJ Shadow sitting in on a RZA-produced session-- spry, voiceless prog-hop by any other name.

The funny thing is that for most bands, Beacons of Ancestorship would be the very definition of an ambitious record--commanding, aiming for conceptual unity and broad scope. But this mode seems to come naturally for Tortoise, and their mastery of it accounts for the record's broad successes and slight drawbacks alike.

The songs on Green Twins feel like attempts to save remnants of the cherished encounters that fill up a lifetime. So few of these moments last long. But Nick Hakim has set out to preserve his any way possible.

It's pure fun-- insanely, immediately likable, and ingenious in how much it achieves.

As was the case with "Popular Demand" and even the split he did with Fat Ray from earlier this year, you get the odd feeling that Milk put his heart into his work, and yet it feels slightly impersonal, save for the career summary 'Long Story Short.'

Some who fondly remember Kill My Landlord or Steal This Album might initially wince at the less-abrasive sonics, but just as Riley's rhymebook includes more of himself than ever, so have his rhythms become more intimate and seductive.

The mercurial three-piece may now be more cohesive, consistent, and focused, but volcano!'s unpredictability is Paperwork's biggest strength.

Curren$y may not do "new," but he is very good at what he does: riffing on cars, money, women, weed, and obscure moments from television shows.

If The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte reaffirms Sparks’ status as rock’s most reliable fabulists, the album’s grand finale brings forth an uncharacteristic introspection.

These songs have more muscle than the typical McCombs song, with “Wheel” chugging like V-12 pistons, and “Satan” smoldering with sticky saxophone smears. This befits their subject matter as well as the vibe of the album, on which McCombs plays with genre more explicitly than usual.

For all its artfully-deployed discordance, AZD maintains a musicality that holds the listener close.

With Harmlessness, the World Is a Beautiful Place have accomplished a rare feat: a lofty, loaded album with the grace and momentum of a far leaner one.

Beyond the Bloodhounds isn’t a blues record per se, but in the grand tradition of the blues, it creates space to look your demons in the eye and acknowledge their foul existence without necessarily doing much about them.

It is a mostly great show, though not all dynamite.

It's a record just as baffling as it is beguiling.

While the sounds of these bands will certainly be familiar to fans of Konono, there is a remarkable amount of variety on the disc.

Even at its most inexplicable, there’s not a moment on Dolphine that feels careless. As her imagination roams, Birgy understands that sometimes irrationality is necessary to make sense of reality.

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.

As wild as a Danielson record can get, his compositions are always meticulously recorded and arranged, and his work ethic is palpable on every track--it's not that these songs feel over-labored, exactly (although they certainly don't seem spontaneous), it's that it's easy to hear all the ways in which Smith is consumed by his work.

Hebden’s arrangement of Sound Ancestors shows deep and intuitive engagement with Jackson’s weed-scented sensibility, which has no use for presumptive distinctions between the beautiful and the funky, the silly and the profound.

As a whole, though, Surgical Steel succeeds brilliantly in its return-to-form mission.

With these production qualities, the band is just comfortably abrasive, snagging against the mix of bent-string guitars and strange, trebly percussive clamor.

Post Plague is just another stop on an increasingly adventurous course through the genre map.

Despite its heavy conceptual burden, No era sólida never crumples under its own weight. It shows rather than tells, guiding you through its prickly, unstable moods with a mystical sort of grace.

Craig’s music is not concerned merely with his gadgets or the way he wants his voice to be. Thresholder is, instead, a summary of the way his voice might be heard or ignored or interpreted in a universe where activity and entropy only increase without bound.

As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that.

With Love is like a pocket book of poetry, a series of short thoughts only tangentially related. Zomby is the elegant menace, capable of beauty and great affect but too stoned or disinterested to fully commit.

In only two years, Wand has mirrored the maturation of the genre itself, moving from the youthful verve of “Tutti Frutti” toward rich, emotional terrain.

As the less ambitious of the two albums, Hypnotize is at once more aggressive and more restrained.

Blue Rider is short--eight songs, 35 minutes--but it slows everything down around it while's playing, coaxing half-formed feelings out of their corners and giving them space to exist.

Friendly Fires is teeming with ideas, and although the record's consistent sound can be exhausting--there is no release, no relaxation in tempo--it's encouraging to locate a new band with too much passion, so much that it can hardly execute its ideas on one page.

His lyrics' power stemmed from the imagery and humor he used to render in full color a world that for most rappers exists only in black and white. To the tape's considerable credit, Gucci disappoints here only when compared with himself.

Natural, the latest in the group's long line of records, is, per Tweedy's dictum, truly post-apocalyptic folk, music for when the lights go out and hope burns only dimly. It's the Mekons unlikely "unplugged" bid.

Her songs remain as focused as ever, and she uses these other musicians with the same consideration with which she uses various techniques; nothing is simply spectacle. More than anything else in Williams’ catalog, Acadia is open to tangents, wild ideas, sudden realizations, and sustained moods.

Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record--and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre.

While a cynic might see New Gen as merely a reflection of Caroline SM and Renz’s taste and grassroots network; an optimist might say it’s an underground scene collectivizing for its mutual benefit. Nevertheless, it’s one of the more impressive collections of underground talent of late.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

His music is heavier and more complex than it used to be, the arrangements harsher and stranger. And then there’s his singing: Once a competent and breezy instrument, Walker’s voice has evolved into a throaty speak-sing that sounds depleted, as though it’s been scooped out of itself. These shifts give the record a deeper emotional resonance than anything else he’s put his name to.

If there’s anything bad to say about Sexistential, it’s that it’s too damn short.

There are no real songs to speak of—just scenes, which flow together as seamlessly as fields glimpsed from the window of a moving train. The album is clearly meant to be experienced as a single piece of music, and the pacing is immaculate.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

It reveals a manic, uncommon glint in their inventive fires, the unmistakable fervid gleam which accompanies artists who know exactly what they're doing, even if the rest of us don't.

Though probably not the best UGK album, it might be the strongest illustration of what they do best.

From an artist whose mind and appetites have always ranged so freely, such a cohesive, uncluttered document is doubly revealing.

un doesn't reach the heights (or more accurately, wallow in the depths) of Moon Pix, but more than anything else she's made, it feels like a companion piece to that record, a conversation with an older and wiser voice.

If, like me, you're one of the admirers, then there's plenty to like here. If not, well, give it a shot anyway-- who knows, you might find something you like.

This disc is aural aloe.

For fans missing the pause-in-the-thunderstorm pregnant solitude of Songs:Ohia, Let Me Go will get you that fix you've been craving, a teasingly short half-hour reminder of his old persona.

This set is the document we've been missing of the onstage Family Stone of legend: the tightly knit extended family that sang and played together, the group that magically united black and white audiences. If it doesn't quite live up to their radiant reputation, it comes pretty close.

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

It's arguably his best of the calendar year, thanks to strong songs as well as the band’s sensitive accompaniment. Rather than evoke the romanticism of the road (as Sun Kil Moon did on 2003’s Ghosts of Great Highway) or the emotional detachment of touring life (as Kozelek does on every live album), Desertshore pry open his brain and soundtrack his thoughts.

Dessner's mordant vision is uniquely his; these are real, meaty works, troubling and beautiful.

Skeptics be damned that's just what Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is, an improvement and distillation of the duo's sound.

Even if there's no transcendent statement to be found, we're still left with these guys sketching out their own little Richard Brautigan short stories, rendering entire lives in quick, mysterious, devastating little strokes. If these guys wanted to make another one of these before another eight years elapse, I wouldn't be mad.

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.

Xiu Xiu's music is all about discomfort, but Stewart and co. have become quite comfortable in this conceptual space, and are able to inhabit it like painters making wild, broad smears that intuitively cohere into a look that is distinctly theirs.

[Blackshaw's] playing carries some of the echoes of his ornate 12-string flourishes, but here there is a grittier edge, with bent notes and the audible sound of his fingers sliding on the strings, his winding melodies casting out concentric smoke rings that call to mind Ben Chasny's acoustic work in Six Organs of Admittance.

On Restarter, that precept again takes the lead, and Torche have made their most compelling record since Meanderthal.

Highway to Heavenly is a worthy addition to one of indie pop’s most consistent discographies. Thirty years on, their music is as fresh, creative, and catchy as ever.

Sure, the band is rooted in American folk, but they're also adventurous listeners and composers, and Outside is unclassifiable in the same way records by northern contemporaries Beirut and Man Man are unclassifiable-- folk music, it turns out, is a broad and fluid thing.

Foxygen haven't so much produced memorable songs as much as cool, disembodied sonic layers that might one day coalesce into memorable songs in your head if you listen to it enough.

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

Lucifer is just their third album, and yet it's unmistakably drenched in their specific brand of patience and calm.

Watch Me Fall is neither a reinvention nor a holding pattern for Reatard--walking the line between them is tricky, but he continues to make doing so look easy.

Whether experienced alongside the film or on its own, Halo’s Midnight Zone is an object of bleak, almost terrifying beauty: a snapshot of a forbidden world, and perhaps a warning that some treasures are best left buried.

Taking the greatest-hits route through Gorillaz's career, it's impressive how few of the tracks sound dated.

Beth and Hostile have been collaborators for nearly two decades, and together they’re responsible not only for every sound on the record, but for the entire visual package, too. Their mutual force and focus give the album the pressurized insularity and cracked intensity of a one-person project.

Experience can be a crutch, an excuse to tread water in comfortable waters. But Popular Songs wears its age well, a calm but firm reminder of an indie rock perennial it's all too easy to take for granted.

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

The record doesn't abandon the moody sprawl of the band's last few full-lengths, but it does help restore urgency to an aesthetic that seemed in danger of growing soporific.

Quantum Baby is a lean and muscular eight-song accompaniment to 2023’s BB/Ang3l that asserts itself with the insistence of manicured nails tapping on a hard surface.

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 resultant songs have a familiarity that aims them toward the back of your brain but an internal energy that prods them into prominence with repeated listens.

Unclear messages and unspooled melodies break new ground for Hval, and she inhabits it with grace on The Long Sleep. It’s as penetrating a work as Blood Bitch and its predecessor, Apocalypse, girl, but more humble in concept and more suspicious of its own claims.

There's not a bad song to be found anywhere on this disc, and it remains engaging for nearly its entire duration, only falling into the background in a few isolated spots.

Few groups do wistfully melodic trad-rock any better right now. Smith Westerns haven’t only not burned out, they’re a budding institution.

Songs of a Lost World may not be a vast step up in quality from the highlights of Bloodflowers, 4:13 Dream, or whatever your favorite is of the band’s post-Wish records. (Opinions vary wildly.) But it feels like a record whose time is right, delivering a concentrated dose of the Cure and cutting the fat that dogged their later albums.

Time Off’s biggest asset is its ease. There’s a real sense, listening to these tracks, that everything could be a little simpler if we all stopped trying so hard.

If Romans is something of a lateral move where innovation's concerned, it's by no means a step down in quality. In the last couple years, Stallones continues to carve out what feels like uncharted territory; hard to blame him for wanting to survey the scenery a little while longer.

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.

In the rare spots where the production is grating and the writing limp, Grande makes up for it with skill and intuition. thank u, next may be an imperfect album but it’s a perfect next chapter.

Un Día is as warm and welcoming as it is weird, but it's also something of an experiment.

Future Me Hates Me is more than proof that she and her bandmates made the right choice on refocusing their musical concerns--and it’s an absolute thrill to think about where this young band will take their talent next.

Even as she treads upon dead earth, Castle’s connection to nature is potent as ever: with Pink City, she reminds us of how good it feels to be alive, even when life gets in the way.

Bruun has sealed many of the foundational cracks in her compositions and owned the audacity of the project and the form at large.

Powder Burns doesn't reinvent the Twilight Singers' sound, but it's clear that Greg Dulli is searching for new and darker back alleys to walk down.

There's lots of good stuff on Age of the Sun. It's just that sometimes, there's a bit too much of it.