You have to have the grit to handle some vulgarity to even begin the job of really remembering. In Jazz Codes’ promiscuity, Moor Mother plots an escape from the oppressive confines of institutional memory.

The Hanged Man continues to project a bold, subversive spirit even after that introductory blast of static clears.

TID might be Bejar's most pompous, profane, and pastoral record, but it's also his least "intelligent," rational, or linearly clever.

II Trill is a solid and occasionally great record, an album more directed toward car-stereo utility than bedroom contemplation.

When it's all said and done, the 15-track set runs almost an hour long, causing one to think that the Keys might have done the best material here a disservice by shoving so much onto one album when they could've easily saved some up for their next release.

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

With the Screamadelica nostalgia out of their systems, More Light primes the Scream for their fourth decade in the best possible way, serving as a summary of everything they’ve done before, yet sounding nothing like it.

The songs are moody and dark, with clear moments of guitar solo-driven catharsis.

At its core, $oul $old $eparately is a full-circle exhibition that allows Gibbs a minute to rest on his laurels: His comfort zone is whatever studio he finds himself in.

Wild Smile is wild indeed, the band's aesthetic and feel summed up perfectly by the cover art.

Inferno shimmies with the vigor of a man who can keep this up so long as the tunes, one a year if necessary, keep coming. Just don’t press him. As “One Bird in the Sky” reminds listeners, “I eat only when I eat.”

New Build's arrangements are impressive and uncomplicated throughout.

Dijon is in her element here, eager to expand house music’s limits. For every pulse-racing dance breakdown, there’s a surprise.

You still never know from one song what might appear on the next, or even where the song you’re listening to might go, and it keeps the music fresh even when it’s retreading hallowed ground.

You’d have to be in a particularly loose frame of mind to listen to it top to tail; but there is enough of the Beach Boys’ singular genius—perhaps the expression in pop of a musical mind pulled to and fro by the heavy weathers of psychological torment—to deliver. This is the Beach Boys at their best, their worst, and most frustratingly human—just like we want them to be.

There's power in pauses, silence, and empty space, these songs affirm, and small doesn't have to mean slight.

Even as its mood slides from pensive to morose to quietly exuberant, this remains throughout one of the more enjoyable experimental releases this year.

While Pangaea and Hessle's peers have resorted to mealy, house-music gruel (Hotflush) and thinly veiled populism (Hyperdub), Release offers willful, self-conscious antagonism of the purest variety.

Regresa maintains their brand of tropical synth pop, but while their first records could be cheeky, poking fun at Latino machismo, this LP probes deeper questions of life and identity.

The album may not shock the singer’s die-hard fans, but Broken Gargoyles is a moving, painful listen and an ideal access point for the uninitiated.

Religious music was never a hot button issue, and at no point does this, Moore's latest, feel like anything other than an honest expression of love.

They returned with a successor that takes what worked on their previous album and pushes further in every direction. False Lankum sprawls, dense with ideas.

Yannick Ilunga feels like pop music's future--borderless but deeply rooted, challenging but pleasurable--and La Vie is strong enough to have earned Ilunga the right to call his revolution whatever he wants.

Illegal Moves is just as powerful a statement about the urgency of the times and the reactions we should all be having, because being entertained doesn’t have to mean being disengaged. That Sunwatchers make their calls to arms sound so fun doesn’t diminish that power--in fact, it just might be the most important part.

The Body has always been obsessed with feelings of consuming futility, and in kicking free of conventional structures and following Wolpert's lead, they've come closer than ever to their truest selves on record.

It’s both solipsistic and psychedelic, urging listeners to travel into their own depths and welcome the joy and despair they might find there.

While the shift towards tempered indie rock often robs Holy Ghost of the instant gratification of early MoBo, there isn’t a single clunker lyric that was wedged in for the sake of cleverness.

It’s austere, formidable music, but by fitting within a tight 40-minute package, it endears itself to listeners who might not know much about drone music.

The union of players and material inspires a new synthesis: the sound of Iyer consolidating strengths and discovering some new ones as he settles into the vibe created by his most potent band yet.

Former Things is packed with Campbell’s busy, weaponized arrangements. The lyrics, too, are deliberate and dense—she’s one of those uncommon songwriters whose words work equally well on paper.

Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) is the far warmer of the two works, despite titles that allude to Iceland and Saturn’s frozen moons. In its most mesmerizing moments, Hassell slips into memoirist mode, allowing old tropes from his past to flicker back to life.

Thickfreakness isn't quite their debut, but it's still a powerhouse, even exceeding its ancestor in total spectacle. Raw rock grandeur as so frequently conjured up on this album is hard to come by in any capacity; if that means having to overlook a few minor flaws, it's worth it.

Putting the Days to Bed is a solid effort-- a step in a promising new direction.

Like their best, "SNL"-aired material, these songs get better as they go on, mostly because of the way the lyrics carry the joke to its logical and grotesque endpoint.

Tucker’s titanic vibrato and ferocious conviction are the anchors of Little Rope. She has audibly risen to the occasion, in every note, to support her friend.

Vertigo is a minor Necks record, destined to stand forever in the shadow of the 2013 opus Open. But, after a quarter century, the trio’s explorations still sound as ecstatic as they do limitless. That, at least, is another minor miracle.

He not only has an impressively deep knowledge of traditional song forms, but takes liberties with the country's past in order to document his own personal present.

The resulting sense of chaos redoubles Boris’ wrath and gives it a welcome depth, the sense that it’s here to stay because it’s been here all along.

Loom feels like the first time that Gateley’s technical prowess and songwriting are fully on the same page. The album may be rooted in loss, but Loom’s success lies in the clarity of vision that she has found.

Throughout Free at Last, Freeway displays a deft ability to play the foil to less exuberant MCs, with the exception of a firebreathing Busta Rhymes cameo on 'Walk With Me.'

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.

There are moments on Lust for Life that, while less successful on a pure songwriting level than some of Del Rey’s more focused work, are fascinating distillations of what a Lana Del Rey song mean.

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.

Kudos is considerably more laid back and vibe-heavy. The guitars still jingle-jangle, just with a little more economy.

The result is oddly refreshing: an artsy, accomplished band turning their second album of the year into a pulpy slasher flick.

On Mykki, her assertiveness never wavers, whether diving into top-shelf hedonism in the club bangers or keening to find love past carnality in the ballads.

Closing In is a classic guitar-driven heavy metal record. It's a throwback to early 80s thrash, the era before speed often became a substitute for creative ideas.

The MUSIC that does exist is somewhere in between, a flawed, contradictory, inflated, loud, exciting, mainstream-ified, uncomfortable, nostalgic event, but one that is still fixated on the music above all. It might go down as the purest distillation of Playboi Carti.

Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

On the evidence of Mr. Impossible, they still sound like no one else and they're still thinking hard about music and texture. When you're craving something trashy and tripped-out in this very particular way, they still deliver the properly damaged goods.

At their best, these songs share the self-scrutinizing intimacy of Elliott Smith and the imaginative melodic intonations of Joni Mitchell, two of Glaspy's most obvious influences.

Love it or hate it, the precious, nasal vibrato Oberst affects is the tie that binds all these varied tunes together in the end, and in most cases, it compliments the music admirably.

Front Parlour Ballads offers the traditional Thompson mix of lush folk beauty and cruel knife-twisting lyrics.

With Stonechild, Jesca Hoop complicates centuries of feminized folk music by singing about the ugly, violent aspects of motherhood. Stillbirth, spousal abuse, sexism inherited from mother to daughter—all claim vignettes on this record of electro-folk, seeking, much like Love did, to render motherhood in fucking intense terms.

The album sounds exactly, defiantly like Mariah, acknowledging her place in the pop ecosystem both implicitly and explicitly without chomping at the bit.

The pace is unhurried, and Gibson offers a cathartic tale of loss and redemption, set against a gorgeous sonic backdrop. She sounds newly confident, invigorated, and free.

Sincerely plays better as a whole rather than as tracks excerpted for a playlist, which is fine, though “Sugar! Honey! Love!” and “Daggers!” rank among Uchis’ most lived-in tracks.

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

There's no romance in the songs where the duo confront their demons (Barât has also struggled with addiction and depression), but they're still full of fight.

For anyone who enjoys a thoughtful singer-songwriter record with adept, minimalist instrumental backing and a powerhouse vocalist, Echo the Diamond is a worthy listen.

An album’s gotta end sometime, but these songs, two of the record’s most propulsive, seem to grab us by the arm to yank us into the shimmering neon starlight--and then it’s all over. If it’s good enough, the audience will linger through the credits. King could let it linger a little more.

In evoking Lynch and Badalamenti, Xiu Xiu have made one of their most beautiful and listenable albums, one that highlights everything the band does well while shaving down the rough edges that often turn away foes and friends alike.

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.

On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist.

Turns out, so-called mini-Mariah can hold her own in 2014; and while the best songs here may not be timeless, they certainly feel right for right now.

From start to finish, Dear Mark J. Mulcahy is a treat. In fact, it may be his best yet.

What makes Gem feel like a such step forward (and such a straight-up enjoyable romp) is the way it playfully appropriates the debauched excess of glam rock to achieve its own singular vibe.

Pleasure features a number of songs that stretch towards the five-minute mark, making more sense as part of the whole rather than individually.

These songs don't ever feel overstuffed. Everything is faithful to White Fence's well-established aesthetic, but simplified.

Night of the Furies retains the urgency and emotional mobilization of Neighbors, but with a darker edge.

While Chance is fond of joking, this album is no joke. As In Search plays out, it becomes increasingly clear that the record’s scatterbrained eclecticism and frantic energy is less a product of eccentricity-for-eccentricity’s sake than a manifestation of the very real anxieties fuelling this endeavor.

Since their inception in 2016, Magdalena Bay have made aqueous internet pop and low-voltage funk full of pinwheeling arpeggios and inside jokes. Imaginal Disk sounds like that, but bigger and punchier—more keyboards! More percussion tracks! Add a string section!! Synth harp!!! The total effect brings to mind ’90s Madchester, the progression of Tame Impala after Lonerism, and peak CD sonics.

Still inventive and imaginative, still grounded in his dexterous picking and robust vocals, it’s his most bittersweet album, with a melancholy lingering in each song, no matter its subject matter.

Even as she’s lost some of her range, Williams’ voice remains sui generis. She’s never sounded more tender or unguarded as she does on “Where the Song Will Find Me,” leaning into her vibrato, letting the holes and pockmarks in her voice tell their own stories.

VII pursues no radical new directions for Maserati, but even though you sort of already know these songs, they still have enough engaging motion and kinetic force that if you ever loved them in the first place, you'll love them all over again here.

At just half an hour, this is a slight album, despite moments of heart-bursting ambition that at times leave you wishing for more to sink your teeth into.

On their second album, Harm’s Way, McGreevy and fellow guitarist Lewis don’t do much to upset their winning formula; they just execute it with more militaristic precision.

This ability to summon intensity without a lyrical shock factor is new for Goat Girl, and they’re better for it.

Aspiring guitarists might need the alternate tuning suggestions, but listeners won’t really need the anecdotes. Rather, Jones puts it all right there in the pieces, speaking volume about the challenges and triumphs of growing up and older without singing a word of the blues.

On 925, Sorry lovingly poke fun at themselves and at rock history—but they also prove they’ve got the talent to go further than their gags.

Back to Me is a bolder album [than Failer], with Edwards figuring more prominently and actively in the more personal songs.

His self-produced beats do more talking than his words, filling in emotional blanks with a 4o-esque fogginess and R&B samples that add some longing to his nonstop raunchiness.

Built on Squares is the fun and catchy work of talented pop musicians, writing terribly interesting songs without compromising pop's essential, visceral lure.

Cold Spring is miles from epic or strained, and it's comfortable with its imbalance.

Although not as compelling as his more subversive material, this softening of his sound doesn't carry the negative connotation of an artist losing steam later in his career; Callahan's distinctive baritone and cutting inflection are unchanging and iconic, and show that this sensitive appearance is just one more spin of the kaleidoscope.

Jarak Qaribak is a rich, fascinating case of music both carrying history and shaping the future, redrawing the limits of the possible in specific, limited, yet meaningful ways.

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.

Boot! is the Thing’s sixth full-length album and it’s among the group’s finest efforts at pairing bludgeoning physicality with heady free jazz chops.

The Tarnished Gold is an impressively vital showing.

Sunshine turns simple words and sounds into something larger.

Wares are ultimately less concerned with craft than catharsis, no matter how messy it gets. Hardy’s irrepressible personality abounds even in the album’s more delicate moments.

Kidjo finds her own way into these songs, infusing them with a tactile sense of empathy.

What elevates I Predict a Graceful Expulsion above pure comfort food, however, is how it subtly tugs against the big, major-network-drama payoff for which it feels custom-built. There's a naggingly elusive quality to the songs that troubles as much as it soothes.

More than any previous Spiritualized album, however, And Nothing Hurt feels like a mere set of songs, an accessible group of tunes that may be painstakingly constructed but are only casually connected.

Just as Mandy strikes a nerve with nihilistic noise, he sweeps back to a gorgeous, heart-rending theme, like “Death and Ashes.”

This might not be the most inviting sound world to contemplate, but Johannsson's confident touch with it is powerful, and The Miners' Hymns creeps into your consciousness like a musty attic draft.

The album's most convincing when tackling the push-and-pull conflict between the individual and his hometown, as Common's good intentions are buoyed by memory, generosity, and attentiveness to his craft.