How Many Times necessarily loses some of its steam after that song, and how could it not? “Songs Remain” is the heart of this album as well as one of the finest moments in Rose’s catalog so far, showing how heartache can change how you experience a city and how music can keep you running.

[The songs] are peculiarly absorbing, and they only grow more so with repeated listening.

On every level, PLAY ME is the most populist and literalist music Gordon has ever made. There are fewer jagged ruptures than on her previous solo records, more clearly demarcated beats, hooks that resemble hooks. The loops recur and aren’t so violently flayed open.

Ay Ay Ay is a sticky-sweet, unbounded mess, but only the priggish and unimaginative will hold that against it.

Her best and most cohesive work to date.

The record’s best songs are imbued with real emotional weight.

Beyond simply making surface references to scramble suits and fields of blue flowers, Essaie Pas connect to something deeper--real human emotion.

She Remembers Everything is a collection of miniatures that collectively paint a vivid, haunting portrait of the blessings and bruises of life.

Modus is essentially the antithesis of the half-baked works that arose from Kanye’s Wyoming sessions in 2018. It is the result of a handful of talented collaborators who provide enough eclecticism to balance out the bombastic sound of G.O.O.D. in-house producer Mike Dean.

Apart from splicing “Bluebird” and “For What It’s Worth” into a Buffalo Springfield medley, Los Lobos stay faithful to these original arrangements, which doesn’t mean they’re replicating records. They’re relying on their collective strengths as a rock’n’roll band.

ILYSM isn’t a brilliant album, but it shines bright and it soothes an aching soul. In this case, that’s more than enough.

Listening to Smoke & Fiction in the same sitting as Los Angeles or Wild Gift, the lasting impression isn’t how they’ve changed over the years, but how much of their original spark they’ve sustained.

Maggie balks at the chance to make your knees go wobbly, keeping its allure strictly intellectual and technical rather than hot-blooded. That ethos isn't going to win a lot of hugs and kisses from fans or non-fans, but Maggie never asks for more than a firm, professional handshake, the kind of appreciation it more than deserves.

Sound & Color is not an electronic record. But it is strange and mystical and unexpected.

Sylvian is front-and-center on every song, which is good because he provides the only rhythmic and melodic stability, as the instrumentals dart and scratch and feedback around him.

The lyrics rarely transcend pillow talk, but it hardly matters; Dornik leaves the poetry to the arrangements.

For the first time, Lacy’s virtuosity is in service of his vision rather than the extent of it.

Helms Alee doesn’t slough any of its previous interests wholesale, and each aspect of their musical personality is too distinct to camouflage with the rest. But the seams now crisscross in brilliantly unsuspected patterns, giving each element its space and the benefit of contrast.

They always sound nostalgic, but the immediacy of Dahlström's vocals yanks all the warm, communal feelings associated with that sound into a present where they're in short supply.

The new record feels less like a collection of proper songs than a series of evolutionary steps as the band unmoors itself from its taut rhythmic foundation to drift further out into the chop, and not always with a set destination in mind. It’s the sort of record where each successive track seems to embellish ideas introduced by its immediate predecessor.

Smith’s work here is more lucid than anything he did on the last few Fall albums or his guest appearance on Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach.

Ambient music is sometimes associated with reverent stillness, but one of the best qualities of The Blue of Distance is its constant, pulsing movement.

A Little More Time sounds like a record made by someone who has internalized the old music that they love and is now letting it flow out naturally.

At its best, the album constitutes a ’70s synthesis 50 years in the making—Sabbath meets electric Miles meets, well, Perry himself, who is able here to simultaneously revisit his most fertile period while breaking heretofore unexplored musical ground.

On Surrender, she sounds renewed, submitting to the pull of her heart without apology.

In contrast [to 'Donuts'], The Shining is more of a general audience record, by virtue of its song-length tracks and pervasive vocals from Dilla and his crew. As such, it presents challenges that Donuts didn't.

The Ascension is, by design, kind of a drag: a dark and emotionally distant mood piece whose lyrics rarely touch on the specifics necessary to anchor the music, and whose music is rarely exciting enough to elevate his words. ... The Ascension fares best when Stevens looks inward.

Though their approach hasn't changed from the radically orchestral turn of 1998's Deserter's Songs, these songs are far more personal than their last set.

There is not a single second of new or unreleased music waiting for you inside this handsomely designed object.... His three studio albums have settled into cultural totems, albums that anyone hoping to know something about rock history buys sooner or later. Even 40-odd years later, their thumbprint remains unique, a strange and compelling mix of timeless poetic melancholy on the one hand, and cloistered, pampered schoolboy modernity on the other.

Despite the lyrical clunkers and ill-advised production choices, The Future’s Void has the feel of a real statement, of an artist trying for something new even if she doesn’t always get there.

Though Say Sue Me have narrowed their focus, their reverence for the indie-rock lexicon remains broad. ... Some of the styles they play with highlight their strengths more effectively than others.

The Night is frequently cold and lonely, but Saint Etienne make for invaluable company.

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.

River runs so well as a unit that, unless you’re able to spot the tunes or sleuth the liner notes, you likely won’t detect that Bachman didn’t even write two of these numbers.

Paradise challenges its listeners to emotionally engage with their surroundings in hopes that they develop a conscious understanding that there are consequences to our daily conveniences.

Forth Wanderers, their Sub Pop debut, feels like the end of the montage and the beginning of something real.

Throughout these songs, Doiron shines as a vocalist. She has remarkable control over her voice, folding simple sentences like origami to reveal surprising detail.

Simultaneously sparse and rich, The Crying Light mines maximum intensity from a relatively minimal mix of basic melodies, pithy lyrics, and understated arrangements.

The lack of palplable passion on Nobody Wants to Be Here is, once again, somewhat disappointing and even more surprising.

As a songwriter, Giddens achieves immediacy by imbuing her stories with striking interpersonal drama and emotional depth.

While Traditional Techniques easily succeeds as a curiosity, its songs continue to delight after the novelty wears off. The most surprising thing about the album isn’t how far Malkmus has strayed from his comfort zone. It’s how at home he sounds there.

For all its sprawl, The Argument maintains a brisk pace, with a White Album-inspired sense of irreverence that ensures Hart never gets stuck in place for long.

Throughout Bloodsports, Suede consistently strikes the balance between decadence and elegance that marked their signature work.

Heart is a valuable pop record for those of us whose cardiac muscle hasn't stained completely black.

Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper.... It's the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Radiohead hated being Radiohead, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Radiohead record yet.

Let Go's only plausible use is to forcibly expose us to mid-90s alt-rock in the context of today so that we might come to grips with just how damn crappy it sounds.

Even the dubious choice to make an official live album out of a lo-fi audience recording proves a good one. A little added echo goes a long way for Morphine's spare sound, and fills in the blanks far better than a crystal clear soundboard recording ever could.

Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary capsule capturing how he ticks.

LP is efficient, prickly, and noticeable, or not much like modern techno at all. That he is operating like this at the same time many others are is a boon, for us, so long as he keeps his blinders on.

Throughout the length of Ventriloquism, in Ndegeocello’s hands, no cover is ever mere lip service. A cover is an act of scholarship, an act of criticism, an act of intimacy. An act of love.

Across 11 tracks clocking in at 72 minutes, Romance offers a comprehensive yet concise survey of the best of Oneida’s vast and varied catalog--transfixing ambient loops, expansive krautrock jams, and even straight-ahead rock, while taking less time than ever to get to the point.

Haley Heynderickx may not have a garden just yet, but if beauty can cure uncertainty, this album should be enough for now.

Throughout this album, the band generally keeps within its sweet spot of familiar, wistful progressions complemented by Kim’s interior detailing. But that’s not to say it’s without brave moments.

It’s music for small rooms with weird lighting, old churches where you have to sit on a bench, graveyards where you are always standing under a tree. It is also poetic but in an extremely self-aware and twee kind of way, doing things like meditating on the difference between “dog” and “god” or describing a weirdly sexy interaction with a doctor.

Here they are weird and jagged and noisy, occasionally abstruse and often disarmingly melodic. It seems they’re only out to impress themselves, and that’s the sort of stuff that doesn’t burn up with time.

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

Pulse and Quartet feel plucked from a vacuum, a place where flickers of dissonance yield to waves of redemptive harmony and where the chord always comes back to sparkle. In a world of increasing entropy, these are two too-tidy self-reflections, Reich on what made Reich great.

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

Compared to 2017’s ken, a gothic-sounding record distinguished by chillier tones and pared-down lyrics, his masterful new album Have We Met sets a larger canvas. Produced by bandmate John Collins, the music is sweeping and bold and surprising.

The clean lines and easy momentum of It's the Arps are really refreshing.

As familiar as the music on I’m Terry will sound to anyone who’s followed indie music over the past three decades, they pull together so many different strands from that era that the result is too distinctive to simply be filed away with a particular genre. They also have a knack for making their idiosyncratic songs so catchy as to feel universal.

If Pissing Stars reflected the cruel, chaotic world that every new parent worries about bringing their child into, then SING SINCK, SING emits the fragile hope that the next generation will be able to steer toward a better future.

To say one of these albums is better than the other is basically beside the point-- anyone who buys one will certainly want the other, and both are fairly comparable as far as quality is concerned, anyway.

On Ratchet, an honest, earnest pop record, Shamir elaborates on the gutsy melodies of those early demos and singles and makes good on the hype.

Real Life Is No Cool isn't just the achingly stylish and neatly accessible dance record to end all that, it also constitutes a fresh new take on the strand of retro-futurism that Lindstrøm helped create.

Return to the Sea is a case of Diamonds and Tambeur yanking up their anchor and setting sail for new waters, enjoying the freedoms of exploration and discovery.

Mirror Traffic tickles that nostalgia without sacrificing maturity, discovering that "playfully relaxed" is a valid third route between "slacker" and "manic."

Overall, the half of Beyond Now that focuses on McCaslin’s original material fares far better, and should be sought out by anyone who wants another experience of the invention heard on Blackstar.

If anything, the album now sounds more like the masterpiece it felt just short of at the time, a work nearly on par with its more universally regarded, nocturnal sequel Automatic for the People.

Whereas their earlier material veered towards melodic art-rock, the music on Giver Taker sounds radically gentle and confident.

CHAI generously extend their wonder-filled perspective to anyone who will listen. In turn, they ask us to find our own joy, wherever and whenever we can.

Throughout Cedars, Clearlake continually find beauty in melancholy and melancholy behind beauty, while raising your hairs in reverence with occasional guitar squalls.

Like its predecessors, it's full of sweetly sung melodies and deceptively simple arrangements of originals and lovingly chosen covers.

There isn't much in here that could be considered hip, or that shows technical skill. But there's a total gut-level joy, as if these were tracks made by an ecstatic, well-meaning kid who hadn't yet encountered the complicated concerns of the places people might actually dance to them.

The execution of I Shall Die Here is so full-blooded, so committed to forcing your head underwater to the point of blackout, that it's hard not to view this as a singular piece, out there on its own, in a place most people wouldn't want to go anywhere near.

Sonnet positions Meluch somewhere beyond the insular place he occupied before.

Though he sticks closely to the conservative R&B, blues, and jazz modes that have defined his ’00s discography, the LP’s 14 songs showcase his determination to wring profundity out of even the most common language.

The result is a patchwork quilt of an album, stitched together from scraps gathered here and there—but then, those quilts are often the warmest, the most comforting. ... Especially after the unrelenting darkness of its predecessor, The New OK sounds all the more affecting for not being quite so dire.

I miss the enveloping nature of Daniel’s last two albums, the feeling of floating through a particularly absorbing dream. But the new album does have plenty of buoyant moments.

Distracted works so well because it resembles a pop blowout at first, only to pull the shag rug out from under our feet.

One True Vine tarries too long in doubt before finally breaking that dour spell and inviting the listener in on the celebration.

American Head handles this heavy subject matter with a light touch, framing its stories in a magic-realist sunset atmosphere that lends even its gravest songs an earthbound charm.

At first listen that seems off-- the chops and compositional sense here are the most immediately impressive part of the album. But dig deeper and you realize Local Natives never lose sight of the pleasures of being a youthful rock band-- right down to themes of wanderlust and discovery.

Goes West feels less conceptually united than any of his work—more inspired by the contemplation of history than history itself--but this searching quality adds to its honest, meditative power. Many of the songs feel like visions left intentionally ambiguous, and the record is bound by a pensive, permeating calmness.

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

The new album trades in queasy atmospherics for a more robust rhythmic attack, with Tagaq feeding off the band’s energy as much as vice versa.

What elevates Stellular from just another decade’s nostalgia exercise is that longing.

At times the music can get sentimental and even sappy, but it's never heavy-handed.

It’s both sharp-tongued and warm hearted, an LP-length memoir that dabbles in political manifesto. But it comes over like an album Ali made for himself, and he sounds better off because of it.

His songs are about joy and hunger and reflection and fun. Not one of them feels as if it’s trying to save hip-hop.

The themes Cara explores here are moving and mature, but she dilutes them when she relies too much on metaphor and conceit.

Kenny Dennis is definitely a type, but he's a type that feels real enough to want to hang out with, even during his downer moments.

At times, KOCH is so microscopic it feels like there’s barely any place left for this music to go. But Gamble keeps finding new ways to take it apart and reassemble it, to the point where something so closed off, so concerned with the smallest of gestures, feels thrillingly open.

KoKoro isn’t perfect, but Assbring’s knack for creating well-written, catchy melodies carries the record it even in its slightest moments and a huge step forward from Pale Fire, positioning El Perro Del Mar well for an interesting Act II as a modern world pop purveyor.

The album draws its power not simply from the quality of Kozelek's songwriting, but from the close intertwining of words and music, which makes his albums much more essential than any book he could ever publish.

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

Bursting with color, nostalgic but never retro, easy-going yet slightly unhinged.

The Loves of Your Life feels like a neighborhood that’s deeply familiar, yet so packed with life that new details emerge on each stroll.