The more human Ab-Soul dares to be on record, the stronger he becomes.

A Dancefloor in Ndola shows the art of the DJ as selector, joining the dots between musical trends in a way that flows effortlessly onto the dancefloor.

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.

The artist turns his lens inward on the back half of Guns, resulting in some of his ferocious music yet.

That's just about a half-hour shorter than 22 Dreams, but the disc in turn is twice the fun.

Few people would dream up an album as endearingly obtuse and gleefully dysfunctional as Yellow, let alone have the skill to realize it.

In comparison to 2016’s Fetish Bones, Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, is a refinement. ... Her lyrics seethe with revelatory clarity.

Jacksonville City Nights is a well-lit snapshot of a talented mythmaker modeling his best honky-tonk garb-- and this time, holy shtick, the tailoring is almost impeccable.

Time and again, the most powerful element of Gulag Orkestar, and what ought to be emphasized, is Condon's acrobatic, powerful, emotionally nuanced voice.

As always, Integrity’s affinity for chaos supplies much of Howling’s latent gravitas, especially on the first few listens. The record’s lurching pace is powered by a bludgeoning type of bait-and-switch mechanic; For every extended, arduous trudge through the trenches, there’s a shot of good, unclean fun.

Live From the Artists Den is focused and forceful.

She’s becoming an increasingly agile performer, rapping, singing, and everything in between. It Was Good Until It Wasn’t channels all those skills into sterling R&B that feels like a homecoming of sorts.

Gira's songs have many one-of-a-kind nuances that tether the album even when it ventures.

His antiquated fantasies still very much belong to him, but it's still a joy to peer inside them--even if the canvases they're displayed on have shrunk ever so slightly.

There’s a freewheeling spirit to the music they created together, a punchy camaraderie that connects these disparate songs from the agitpolka of “Guns Are for Cowards” to the Celtic dreamfolk of “Downstream,” and from the rambunctious ramble of “Turned to Dust (Rolling On)” to the despairing chorus of “Boise, Idaho” (which contains one of Oldham’s loveliest and most forlorn melodies).

Kazuashita ends up saccharine and pompous, like music designed to soundtrack bad wildlife documentaries. Thankfully, these missteps are rare on an album that proves Gang Gang Dance aren’t so much of the moment as of a different moment, an alternative and rather more pleasant one.

If Do It Again is the physical artifact of Robyn and Röyksopp's union, it's extravagant and left of center, but it's above all generous.

The mysteries that Robinson can’t seem to turn away from might elude our understanding forever. With Light Falls, though, he makes a most convincing case to go toward them rather than try and evade or ignore them.

If Dälek didn't have all this discordant float working for them, they'd be one of the most irritating rap groups in history.

[A] light, infectious, effortlessly cool debut.

It might seem like faint praise to call Flesh & Machine Lanois’ best and most realized solo album, but it’s also one of the best ambient records of 2014--an endlessly inventive collection of songs built on odd, often lurid sounds and textures, somehow rough and gentle at the same time.

Even after a six-year siesta, the Notwist's approach to pop music-- exploiting both its formal properties and endless possibilities-- is no less captivating and visionary than before.

When you start to pay attention to its manifold subtleties, you’ll likely only lean in closer, noticing even more details within an album that suggests they never end.

Silences, the second LP from Nashville’s Adia Victoria, scans like a biting, lush indie rock record, but it’s a blues album in this pure sense.

The savvily sequenced Algiers ebbs and flows between moments of gritted-teeth tension and furious release, its solemn, confession-booth ruminations offset by heart-racing, steeple-toppling rave-ups.

Protomartyr has commented, too, on how Deal’s sense of melody added “femininity” to their music of Consolation; her voice certainly adds life and levity. If Protomartyr learned anything from Odyshape, it might be the audacity to explore, to locate new methods of release—and they found a bracing clarity.

Time and again in these five tracks, it sounds as if Orcutt has reached the end of potential variations for whatever theme he’s playing, like an outlaw outrunning the cops only to reach the edge of a towering cliff. But he finds unexpected ways to extend the thought, with Miller and Shelley always maneuvering to give him room to do so.

There isn’t a moment where Perico is upstaged, and his immediate charm is in the stylish near yelp of his rapping voice, the way he struts over a beat. He seems to always be at the top of his register, but he tucks a deceptive range of perky melody into each verse and hook. All of this plays out over a sleek G-funk backdrop, with plenty of playful nuance in the production.

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

Terra doesn't just contribute to the quieter end of the spectrum, it reminds me of the boundaries of that spectrum, and all the sounds murmuring inside them.

While The Dots is awash in dimensional, multicolored compositions, ALASKALASKA are able to pare things back when necessary.

The soundscapes he's constructed on his third LP, Howl, are spiky and imposing, too solid to sink into. The music is always shifting, so it's impossible to lose track of time while listening.

Most of the album, though, is absolutely irony-free, and better for it.

Yep, it's the face of a guy who just recorded an accomplished, cohesive debut, one that should please fans of "blog house" and Swedish pop alike. Now if only he owned a razor.

What once again prevents Case from delivering a front-to-back classic is a perfectionist streak that accounts for Flood's mannered meticulousness.

The result of Ounsworth bottling this "flow" and working it into a set of songs is an album that showcases the breadth of his talents much more than the limited palettes of Flashy Python or CYHSY.

They've developed an impressive sense of craft, and it seems they can only go up from here.

In a lot of ways, Country Sleep delivers while still making you feel like it's playing on your vulnerability.

The set most vividly captures the Clash's most enduring qualities: the triumphs and tribulations of being populist punks.

Etiquette gives up the homemade purity of Casiotone's first few records, but it hasn't entirely gotten where it's going, either.

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

My issue with Copia-- the thing that keeps this record from greatness-- is Cooper's approach to piano.

None of the songs are simple, and they mostly all build to surprising and surprisingly weird heights.

The scope and ambition of Morning/ Evening is profound, and will hopefully inspire producers to take bigger chances and not be satisfied with pop- or club-friendly lengths. Even where Morning/Evening doesn't quite work, it's daring and expansive.

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.

On Delight, Jain grasps for a joy that lies tantalizingly out of reach, bringing melodies informed by Raga Bageshri into dazzling contact with modular synthesis and digital manipulation.

Quiet River of Dust Vol. 1 is an enchanted forest of a record--deceptively tranquil, but always buzzing with hidden life. Parry’s other band famously told of us of a place where no cars go. This is what it feels like to actually be there.

The duo’s mutual respect, selfless skills, and tender chemistry have delivered an album that is among both artists’ best.

A streamlined product that die-hards can justly revel in.

It's the most weirdly mesmerizing in a series of promising single, EP, and full-length releases that includes last year's shadowy, cinematic heart-tugger "A Place Where We Could Go."

After the limp meandering of Afterglow, We Are Science is unquestionably a leap in the right direction.

Given A Vintage Burden's relatively standard space-blues construction, there's sure to be those Charalambides fans who will miss the levitational scope of the group's more free-form transmissions.

Real Warmth makes it easy to believe that music can be that lifeline out of the darkness, or at least a roadmap to home.

They have never shied from commixing independent sounds. In Moon 2, they have captured this utopian sort of jostling, where two people banging into each other make a great noise, and there’s a productive coincidence around each turn.

While less exuberant and love-me-or-else desperate than the debut, News and Tributes is energizing in its own right, full of asymmetrical hooks and surprise detours.

American Music Club's central values--humility, self-effacement through musical understatement, sentimental candor-- may be currently out of fashion, but The Golden Age proves that, handled with care, they never truly go out of style.

Rather than shade towards LCD’s sound, Museum of Love pull from the playbook of DFA’s other big band, Holy Ghost!, favoring the timbres, patch settings, and smooth productions of elegant 1980s new wave and nu-romantic acts.

The brilliance of Romance lies in its unsettling blend of antic energy with refined craft—in the depths of detachment, Fontaines D.C. strike an engaging pose.

Clinic play with a renewed sense of the same eerie raucousness that drew people to them in the first place; this would be an easy second-album recommendation for a new fan after they've initially discovered and absorbed "Internal Wrangler."

The music is skilfully marshalled: sober and lucid even while hallucinogenic and deranged.

The trio sharpens its focus, marrying clever production with the soul-eating intensity that propelled its rise.

The album is her most accomplished, arresting work yet.

The Ponys make good records, and Turn the Lights Out is no exception, but I'm still waiting on the great one I've always felt they'd had in them.

These two Ghosts volumes feel much more concrete and ambitious than the original quartet. Each has its own clear-cut identity, too: Volume five (Together) has a more hopeful sound. ... Maybe it’s because the tone better matches the animating spirit of the project, or maybe it’s simply because the pair have better ideas in a major key at the moment, but Ghosts V: Together is solidly the stronger of the two.

Twilight of the Thunder God merely refines these elements, but the tune-up is noticeable. In a discography filled with catchy songs, these are some of Amon Amarth's catchiest.

Oh No knows just what he's got to work with on this album, and in finding every angle he can for an incredible array of source material, he's made that much more of a case for his own style, too.

BSP's performance art antics and throwback posturing come with a distinct set of innovations and surprises, and The Decline of British Sea Power proves that BSP have the song-power to back up their bullshit.

Throne might not get butts on the dance floor, but its sense of movement--both within its songs and within the arc of Leigh’s evolution--is profound.

Likewise is more minimal and elegant than any Hop Along record.

Holding to Marshall’s wavelength requires a little more investment than the dingy music asks for, but that’s not to say his shadowland of the heart lacks nuance.

Granted, the record is far from perfect... Despite all of that, it is a Stephin Merritt record. And SM still maintains his charmingly cynical worldview and almost bottomless well of clever turns of phrase.

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.

What doesn’t work as much are the attempts to make Masterpiece feel overly homemade.

The bleakness feels more panoramic than before, and when it zooms inward, it tap into reservoirs of power that Trash Talk are only beginning to explore.

The elegiac tracks of Landfall, most no longer than two or three minutes, are episodic fragments that can cut off abruptly, like photographs with torn or water-damaged edges. This gives Landfall a momentum and a grace that’s slightly askew.

Sonically, the album backs away from the dirge-rock rave-ups that defined the group’s last four albums. That’s a welcome development.

Despite Dâm’s preference for playing tracks pretty much all the way through--which suggests an infectious, wide-eyed passion for the music that fits into his mind-control powers--the mix is properly appreciated as a whole.

Mono and Stereo would be fine records from any musician-- that Westerberg himself is the source makes it all the sweeter.

It’s a lonely album with a whopping heart, a hungry siren call for connection.

Coupling their graceful, intuitive musicianship with a resolute outward-bound gaze, Feathers appear ready to join the elite of the avant-folk underground.

Oozing Wound have matured without losing sight of the frayed ends that make their music interesting.

Strength of a Woman finds its power in going back to basics. As a whole experience, it luxuriates within the magisterial hip-hop-soul queendom she formulated in the ’90s and the attendant themes that trace back to wronged-woman blues.

The collection is a timely, if at times exhaustive, introduction to the Six Organs origin myth.

“Auster” remains, despite the pauses, a minimalist study of harmony and tone color, and the gorgeous “Third Hour” is languid and drifting. But there’s also more motion here than we’ve heard in her work before.

Even as it draws on new and old songs, 50 presents a startlingly current and nearly apocalyptic vision of America; it’s album full of brimstone and brine, perhaps more perfect for this moment in history than we’d like to admit.

Demain Est Une Autre Nuit feels not just a good fit for the label's vintage-modern aesthetic, but a culmination of something. Perhaps it's simply that this weird, mannered synth music is no throwback, but merely a style ahead of its time, and one that only now is coming of age.

Nine Types of Light is unquestionably TV on the Radio's most patient, positive recording to date, taking its cues as much from Dear Science's serene ballads as its brassy workouts.

The result is a thoroughly dazed album that conjures a daydream so immersive (if not always so idyllic), it precludes any intrusive thoughts. The instrumentation on Sundays feels sun-baked and toasty in its fuzzy beach towel of distortion.

Mountain Moves indicates that something better--something made by diverse but like-minded collaborators--might be able to come next.

Galás’ sense of dynamics is all the more moving when you sort of know how the song’s supposed to go.

At two hours long, The State Between Us ought to waver in focus or intensity, but Herbert has never sounded more at home. Safe in the knowledge that most British people, for better or worse, can’t help but engage with the subject, he taps into a small, honest hope that would be inexplicable as a thinkpiece.

Carrie & Lowell Live--while highlighting the starkest, saddest songs Stevens has ever written--reflects that side of his personality like no other release. This juxtaposition makes it a compelling listen and a fitting companion to a deep, multifaceted record.

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

If lacking the conceptual heft of past releases, Wait for Love is a richer, more versatile experience.

There’s a lightness to Simz’ tender explorations of Black fatherhood, the failure of her community to help those struggling with mental crises, and the slippery loss of solidarity across economic divides on “Broken.” Sometimes the production’s soft edges can belie the bite of the words, but overall it’s a pairing that brims with possibility.

It's best to turn off those imaginary filters when you pump Limbo, and just let it be as entertaining as it clearly wants to be.

Here, Richard and Zahn have captured grief like a carved piece of obsidian—glossy, beautiful, and sharp.

For all its disjointedness, the album never wanders more than a few inches away from the sublime. It’s a document of a band knocking loudly on the door of greatness.