Appropriately named, Movement feels like a progression and challenge from one of the year's most exciting new voices, producers, and composers.

Louder, faster, fiercer than their 2019 LP Itekoma Hits, the 20-minute, 18-track Super Champon goes down like a tart smattering of face-scrunching, neon candy.

For the most part, Protect Your Light takes a more patient and self-reflective approach, vibrating on a different frequency. It’s the act of refilling one’s vessel in song form.

Her sophomore effort, I Speak Because I Can, finds Marling, still only 20, shrugging off virtually all traces of girlishness and wide-eyed charm, instead delving into darkly elemental, frequently morbid folk. And yet, astonishingly, the expected growing pains never come.

As a solo record, it's no declaration of independence, but by sticking to what he does best, Staples makes it ring with sadness and sophistication.

Overall Still in a Dream is a job well done: an accurate portrait of an era that, while it can’t really be described as a lost golden age for rock, nonetheless provided sorely needed radiance and refuge during a particularly grim period.

It’s the kind of record that would be called “triumphant” if Boucher was in a position to enjoy any of it.

Although Moms is the result of its two creators' putting themselves through the wringer, it never feels overshadowed by dread.

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.

Strange Keys is generally relentless and tremendous, burying its themes in kaleidoscopic distortion. It's as if the comparisons that Bower has earned in the last seven years--Merzbow, Wagner, second wave black metal--finally took magnificent hold.

i am > i was shatters the notion of 21 Savage as a specialist with a narrow purview and audience, and recasts him as a star in waiting, all without forcing him into unflattering contortions. It also cements him as a far more original stylist than other hopefuls from Atlanta.

Humble Quest lives up to its name: 11 lithe songs about love, work, and family, some great, some good, with a coherence and clarity that make it feel matter-of-factly masterful.

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.

Scott fully inhabits her loudest moments by inching towards post-rock and synth-rock.

Campbell's vocals sound breathless on the radio show, as she displays little vocal control, gasping for air between words and syllables. Despite that, it's still a worthy artifact.

Monomania is certainly a strong effort on its own merits, and more importantly, they’ve avoided making their deflating “diminishing returns” record.

Make no mistake, the record is extremely endearing and flawlessly constructed-- it's just hard to love an album that has a dazzling surface and not much underneath.

The Private Press is more solid an album than anyone dared expect from an older, wiser DJ Shadow, and though it won't be televising another revolution, I'd be lying if I said its celebratory pleasure centers didn't communicate directly with my own.

Loss, regret, and a minor key brilliantly permeate jangling guitars and rhythmic and tonal shifts-- and although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights.

Armchair Apocrypha is ultimately another object of strange and unique beauty from this inventive songwriter and performer.

Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.

That stuff was fun on their debut, 2002's Thought for Food, but today those easy jokes seem like a waste of their skills. Better to seek out the greater mystery of those weird and splendiferous sounds, and those voices that seem so close and so unknowable in the same breath.

The songs here are almost all identical: polyrhythmic miniatures built by small drums and shakers, clouded by blankets of echo and reverb; deliberately basic structures; short, and in their own way, catchy and pretty.

Every moment is tactile and visual, like paint strokes that are just color on their own but together create a meaningful image. The resulting pictures are also wide and expansive, like a slow Stanley Kubrick pan or a meditative Terrence Malick nature shot.

On Source, she weaves together so many threads so masterfully that she instantly establishes herself as a foundational voice in the larger, ongoing story of the London jazz scene. Her debut is a stunning introduction.

Without an overarching conceit like Once I Was an Eagle, Short Movie comes off sounding like a transition record, a short movie in the sense that it’s a prelude to something bigger.

The tension between artifice and reality is what gives Seth Bogart most of its conceptual heft, but it obviously helps that the album is very fun to listen to.

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.

The resultant record [Toy] is a mixed bag. Bowie and his band gel well. ... But these seasoned pros often fail the material, losing the ramshackle charm of the originals. ... The 1990s albums reissued here, however, tell the story best.

Williams refines her singular voice as a songwriter, bringing a focused, single-minded intensity to her songs without giving the impression that she’s ever repeating herself.

The While We Wait mixtape remains their best-written release, but Kehlani, with “Folded” leading the way, proves she wants to compete in the marketplace.

If LUMP is a commentary on the commodification of art and the self, then its final minutes suggest the duality of music as a commodity.

As was the case with the first two McCartneys, III’s eccentricities are best put to use when they’re supporting Macca’s endearing melodies rather than corrupting them. Fortunately, McCartney III has enough radiant moments to outweigh its stumbles.

It all comes together to make an album that stands up as a varied and well-sequenced work, and as a collection of songs you can scatter through a shuffle and dig just as deeply.

Mutant is an album of contrasts, and Ghersi has an uncanny ability to let extremes interact with each other to create something new.

Sacred Paws have arrived, on the back of a troubled groove: a little preoccupied, maybe, but ready to dance.

Floating Points keeps the mood consistent. Few selections move faster than a resting heartbeat, but they nevertheless feel dramatic.

After over an hour of totally becalmed drift, the bustling pace here at album’s end feels like leaving a day spa only to squeeze onto a rush-hour train. You might find yourself simply wishing the album extended just a few minutes longer.

Most Droogs inclusions are fairly frivolous affairs lyrically--anthems of lust, celebrations of rocking out--but Third World War anticipate punk themes with the proletarian plaint and Strummer-like sandpaper vocals of “Working Class Man.” Hustler forge a link between the Faces and Cockney Rejects with “Get Outta My ’Ouse,” which is like Magic’s “Rude” recast as pub boogie.

Whenever the album breaks out of its stream-of-consciousness flow, it shows a clearer sense of identity. Merrick’s secret weapon is her soaring singing voice.

Hooke’s Law is an accelerant. Over staggering tracks overrun with rhythms, melodies, and voices, keiyaA hurtles through the abyss and dares you to keep up.

Few can match their feel for arrangement or sense of structure.

Sometimes Williamson sings, after a fashion, which is where Key Markets gets weird, in much the same way that early Fall records got weird when Mark E. Smith tried to carry a tune.

“Rats” and “Witch Image” get their strength from smoldering licks and stacked harmonies plucked from the Ozzy Osbourne playbook, providing metalheads with a welcome break from all the mid-tempo durdling. Given the unremarkable tracks that follow it--particularly “Helvetesfönster,” an ostentatious, baroque instrumental reminiscent of Medieval Times muzak--the latter might as well be the record’s closer.

Palo Santo is a promising sophomore album because it evolves past the sound of the band’s debut. But at its low points, the record lacks the bite to drive home the razor’s-edge duality of sacred and profane that Alexander seems to thrive on.

On an album full of infernos, “One of the Greats” is one of the few songs to stand apart: Its ambition and vulnerability come closest to fulfilling Everybody Scream’s mission to let it all out.

Given Ought’s radical inklings, you wish they dared to make these lovely songs say or do something a little more righteous, to twist them into more adventurous shapes. However, Ought achieve this spectacularly on the blue-eyed soul of “Desire.” It towers over Room Inside the World like the album’s lighthouse.

But while Elliott Smith includes some of his least inspired music of all time on Figure 8, he also surprisingly pulls out some of his best to date.

So Far Gone still scans as one of the most compulsively listenable mixtapes of a great year for mixtapes.

This album is more of a mood piece, its melodic rewards teased out over time and drenched in the type of steady rain that his home state is known for.

Barbarism is a deranged playground, a portal to uncomfortable feelings in an increasingly uncomfortable world. Like a half-remembered dream, it seems to continuously promise access to hidden answers, if only we could penetrate the chaos. And though it’s grating, uneven, and perplexing, Barbarism feels familiar.

Martin and Taylor don’t think in opuses, in grand gestures and proclamations, in magic or illusion. Hovvdy simply slows down time just long enough to capture the beauty in the moments that always threaten to float away if they’re not captured immediately and cherished.

With this new LP -- released on a major label on both sides of the Atlantic, no less -- odds are, a lot of people are going to listen, and I don't mean in the tail-eating, blog-bite-blog sort of way.

Even when Guidance gets complicated, there’s a more organic and unforced feel to it, as if songs were allowed to grow wild rather than carefully cultivated.

The Sophtware Slump manages to sound reasonably fresh, yields its share of unshakable melodies, and excels in production. This is quite possibly the last great entry in the atmospheric pop canon.

Earl is carefully whittling away at the proclivities he's always had, remaining confident that he’ll light upon something that feels fresh and honest. So far, he's right.

Vince is at ease here, intertwining his personality into his somber celebration of Long Beach like never before. He’s rapping his ass off, and hooks are mostly an afterthought. He dips in and out of inventive flows.

On Time Out of Time makes the billion-year-old buzz of two neutron stars into something heart-stirring.

What we’re left with is a great-sounding Matmos album constructed from bits of Schaeffer’s work. You probably won’t come away knowing much more about either the duo or the composer than you did before, but if it gets stoners curious enough to hit up their local electroacoustic festival, it’s a win all around.

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

Many of the familiar sounds of ambient music are here, and Evans boldly breathes new life into them.

Warm Leatherette was alternately more sanguine and more severe—a bracing confluence of reggae, new-wave, and post-punk that showcased Jones’ range as a performer and her uncanny, occasionally perverse vision as an interpreter of other people’s songs.

While tracks like “Credence (Ash in the Winds of Reason)” and “Syndicate II” fit snugly into the band’s previous guitar-driven repertoire (not to mention this current era of peak post-punk), Deliluh are the rare band that can summon the menacing propulsion and imagistic density of the Fall without resorting to Mark E. Smith pantomime-uh.

Hadsel is a new beginning for Beirut that sounds like old times, a record born of despair and solitude that still feels full of life.

Not every big swing makes contact. The ultra-earnest ballads “Big Dreams” and “Bailing on Me” are overly sleepy, and they interrupt the flow the album establishes with its faster songs. Far better are the record’s experimental flourishes, like the sax on “U Should Not Be Doing That” and the inspired, oddball pairing of jaw harp and vocoder on “Me and the Girls.”

For all the guitar pyrotechnics, Western production, and reggae infusions, Azel never sounds like anything other than a sublime iteration of desert blues.

Aside from its abundance of overlong songs, You in Reverse is marred by a lack of strong melody when compared to Built to Spill's other records.

On Islah, his hook-writing is sterling.

World Eater does not seem like a doomsday device by design, though. It might sound like one now, but Power leaves open the possibility of it being his darkest transmission before the dawn of a new bright tomorrow.

When the production is as over the top as Peck himself, it can be easy to excuse—if not quite ignore—these affectations, but whenever he’s relatively unadorned, as on “Let Me Drown” and “City of Gold,” his unsteady, amelodic quaver is difficult to ignore. All these tics were on Pony, too, yet there they added to the charm. Here, as part of a grander spectacle, they become a distraction—a nagging element that keeps Bronco feeling earthbound.

Showbiz! is the young artist’s greatest accomplishment thus far, the product of a passionate, creative journeyman fully making his home in music.

Lie Down may be Oldham's most country record of new songs in years, and it's also one of his most accessible and least academic records.

On Man Made, Teenage Fanclub seemed to be suffering a sort of rock'n'roll midlife crisis. Five years later, Shadows finds them at ease once again.

Land of No Junction is the sort of record that seems to acquire more confidence and force with each passing track.

Haunted Mountain is his fullest and most structured album. He and his band amble through these songs with… well, not more purpose or focus, which are anathema to getting lost. But listen to the coda of “Didn’t Know You Then,” which stretches out before losing its way.

For perhaps the first time in the Bajas’ catalog, there are parts of Inland See that can get stuck in your head.

Despite its flaws, though, The Lost Tapes is nice. Not a return to form, per se, but possibly as close as we're likely to get.

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.

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.

Ladytron's musical interests stretch back before MTV, to '70s Bowie, Roxy Music, Kraftwerk and Cluster. They're like an unabridged Encyclopedia of musical Eurotrash with a sharp pop sensibility. And with 604, they've made a fine debut full-length.

It's one of her most captivating and immediate front-to-back statements of purpose as a singer.

On IRÉ, Combo Chimbita don’t just herald the coming of this future; they usher it into existence, note by electrifying note.

[Jarmusch] brings a rich history to the proceedings, experimenting with passerelle bridges, cigar box guitars, and radio static. Just as in his films, he spins strange yet strangely familiar stories from everyday stuff.

The warmth emanating from the lyrics flows throughout Nothing Lasts Forever. Teenage Fanclub never quickens the pace or belabors the melodies, choosing to luxuriate in their twilight grooves.

Most so-called "cinematic" records earn that distinction due to some quirk of reverb or their use of space, but the Long Blondes only have modern England's typically confined, 17-year-old-from-Doncaster guitar-dudish sound. Instead, it's the songs themselves, their narratives, and their characters that speak to the band's widescreen ambitions.

For all their reverence toward the past, Bitchin Bajas know how to live in the present--there’s no knowing distance here--so at its best, Bitchin Bajas doesn’t give you ideas about sounds, but the sounds themselves.

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

With a more cohesive sound, some of the rhythmic quirks and time signature hops from their past output are smoothed out. On occasion, the music is so pristine that it’s easy to miss the evocative lyrics buried in the tightly wound grooves.

Magnificent City is lazy and inept, devoid of force and inspiration and chemistry.

Songs build and build and build and then die, gazing longingly at exhilarating emotional peaks just outside their reach.

It is slow, winding, and meditative, composed almost entirely of piano, bass, and drums, and builds outwards from minimal meanderings to overgrown thickets of instrumentation.

AWVFTS adapts, making ATOMOS louder and more mobile than its impeccably tentative predecessor—more volatile and disjointed, with basses you can feel in your body because this is for the body.

[Anderson and O'Malley] find a middle ground of compromise that steers safely away from the frisson of conflict. At least they sound good doing it.

The Internet’s songs have always felt like scenes of salaciousness happening just out of earshot. Ego Death finally pulls us into the maelstrom.

Layered and smeared and cut up into melodies, the vocals chant and enchant, and at times it’s difficult to tell what’s what. ... For a little over an hour, the past and future spin, dissolving in fields full of chatterboxes. It’s a world not unlike the present one.

On this one, they fall short of reinvention, which also means they are still—improbably, unmistakably—Pearl Jam.

With its accomplished fusion of debris and warmth in a place somewhere between b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism, Los Angeles is a big step forward for a still-young career, an album well worth revisiting years from now--preferably on vinyl, where the pops and clicks can only multiply.

Every strength this record holds draws off the symbiotic relationship between Martin's beats and Robinson's voice, which adapt to each other in a way that the last two people in a barren environment might.