As with Psychopomp, the album’s most powerful moments come when Zauner examines seeming contradictions that actually aren’t or shouldn’t be.

The discrepancy between Steadman’s skill set and the kind of music he’s trying to make here is hard to overlook.

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.

As good as the remaster sounds, the primary attraction of this edition is its second disc, 11 tracks from Prince’s vault of unreleased songs, all cut between 1983 to 1984. ... The vault tracks sound like fully-formed Prince songs—animated, vibrant, reflexive, fluid, almost vehicular in their design and velocity.

The free-jazz vibe still makes for a visceral experience, regardless of whether not you can actually follow Quazarz’ path. They continue to eschew standard song structures in favor of free-flowing compositions whose direction is guided by instinct.

This time around, the edges of the Quazarz universe feel smoother, the ride less jarring. The low end is still intense, but it feels more like a deep tissue massage than a trunk-rattling rumble.

Need to Feel Your Love continues to dance along the line separating proto-metal and power pop, but leans more often toward the latter. Bassist Hart Seely’s slightly crisper production lets you better savor the jangly acoustic strums underpinning the power chords, while liberating Halladay’s singing from the payphone fidelity of those earlier recordings.

He is so compelling when he digs deeper into his psyche this way, providing more than superficiality, but there aren’t enough of these moments to sustain Issa Album, which is as basic as its title.

The new album finds Boris honing in on their most essential quality: their ability to wrest a kind of endless subtlety from thick layers of distortion and volume.

Exquisite as a great deal of Lifetime of Love sounds, it is not an album especially rich in emotional depth or apparent meaning. Its merits, not to be shrugged off, are nevertheless mainly superficial—the slight but definite virtues of a decidedly minor record.

While lacking the close mic’d intimacy of her early work, Out in the Storm is equally immersive, with songs that play like fiery exorcisms.

This is incredibly heavy music made light (joyful, even) by the zeal and power of its players. By plowing into, through, and ultimately out of the dark, Ex Eye is an ecstatic fusion--an exhilarating exclamation of defiance, no warning required.

For all the missteps, there are gratifying moments littered throughout. For the most part, the production, spearheaded by David “CDOC” Snyder, is patched together smartly and with regard to tradition.

Though often framed as the band’s discovery of R&B, Sunshine Tomorrow reveals Wild Honey to contain almost as many connections to brother Brian’s sad-boy masterpieces and psych-pop as it does to the surf-rockers of yore.

It’s been more than a half-decade wait for Chronology, but in a genre known for singles, Chronixx has produced a complete, solid album.

The momentum generated by “Mirage” and the equally limber funk workouts that bookend Boo Boo end up compensating for the tedious midsection of neither-here-nor-there experimentation.

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

Several of the new versions on Crime Rock just amount to tighter, better-quality recordings. In other cases, the changes are quite dramatic.

There's something more deliberately approachable about the melodies he uses here. He meditates in the spaces in between phrasings, allowing the more volatile segments to linger like light trails in your vision.

Many of the songs on the second half slide into each other in a forgettable jumble, but Grateful’s best songs are here, too.

More so than Forgiveness Rock Record, Hug of Thunder presents Broken Social Scene as a rock band making rock songs, a coherent montage rather than a patched-together highlight reel.

Again and again, Woodstock promises a protest but delivers a party.

There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight.

Neither reinventing pop nor changing the course of dance music, it’s a vacation of an album that doubles as the producer’s own stopgap until his next wave comes along.

As on Days Are Gone, its sheen is current and its spirit out of step. Beat by beat, Haim are the classic sound of heartbreak alleviated, if only for a moment.

Though the majority of B-Sides and Rarities can be easily found by those inclined to find it (the piano sketch “Rain in Numbers” is a hidden track at the end of Beach House’s self-titled debut, making it not much of a B-side or a rarity), the impulse to gather up loose ends into a cohesive package feels like a solid effort at future-proofing recordings peripheral to the band’s primary discography.

Wintres Woma is an album that makes itself easy to like.

TLC's letting-go is bittersweet and good, a sometimes somber, sometimes playful requiem for their time together (and with us).

Algiers have produced a record that is timely and necessary but also scatterbrained and messy, one that is so over the top it becomes a political melodrama, undercutting the issues it seeks to amplify.

Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful.

He surveys ideas on wealth and success with a confidence that makes even his most clumsy boasts about not going ham on the ’Gram seem sophisticated. Rap’s biggest winner coolly sustains his biggest losses.

Reflections--Mojave Desert is arguably his most ambitious recording to date, if only because he availed himself of the Mojave Desert itself as his recording studio. Clocking in at under half an hour, the soundtrack shows Floating Points in a transitional phase.

Truly, it all feels right on Mister Mellow, which is why it doesn’t leave much of an impression. Even if Mister Mellow asked more of Greene than any prior Washed Out album, it lacks the artistic ambition and tension that made his work endure beyond a blurry moment in the sun.

Murder of the Universe may be built from the band’s now-familiar krautpunk battle plan, but their ability to execute outsized architectural complexity at manic, warp-speed velocity is no less astonishing.

Snoop sounds in great shape and like he’s having the time of his life.

The 11 tracks on his self-titled debut are strange and stirring enough to make him one of the genre’s most exciting young voices.

In a Mood is a referential album, but what ultimately ties it together is Okely’s lyrical simplicity and willingness to let his songs breath.

Dust is a dense and heady record, and from certain angles can seem intimidating, even impenetrable. But between the clever track sequencing and a handful of irresistible outcrops of groove and melody, Halo provides plenty of footholds to cling onto while you acclimatise to her lawless universe.

On Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, Monk is a heavyweight engaging with a middleweight, and middlebrow, in Vadim, whose career was more defined by his romantic conquests than his artistic content. But that’s not on Monk. And his work here, in the middle of 1959, is as thought-provoking as anything he recorded in that prodigious year.

The gifts of Precious Art are more apparent when comedy shades the melody instead of overshadowing it.

This duality of lush, sensual guitar music and entropic noise resonates with the album’s implied textual theme.

With his wry charm absent, the album ultimately shows only a partial picture of Jeff Tweedy as a solo artist.

There are times throughout Iteration when Haley sounds trapped in the same old rut. Overall, though, the album balances between bombast and gestures that are a little harder to read. That contrast gives Iteration a texture that’s missing from previous Com Truise releases.

Ditto’s non-traditional view down a well-trodden path is welcome, but you do wish she’d kick up the dust a bit more.

There is a lot of music about anxiety in the air these days, but Ellen Kempner’s voice is specific and visceral.

Big Fish Theory is a compact rap gem for dancing to or simply sitting with, an album that is as innovative as it is accessible; if not a glimpse into the future, then it’s at least an incisive look at the present.

There’s little of Future’s jadedness. If in the past Thug has made everyday experiences seem chaotic and formless, his achievement here is distilling the murky waters of young love and lust into vital, undeniable pop.

Years removed from its source, its impact is multiplied tenfold. In 1996, it was a path towards adult-contemporary pop radio; today, it’s an exquisitely faded Polaroid.

This is the culmination of an eight-year second-wind. It’s also the most complete 2 Chainz album to date, and places him where he belongs: in the upper echelon of rappers from this era.

The album’s second half slows down a bit, but it maintains the focus on songcraft and mood.

Like much of her work throughout her career, each of these tracks feels like a glimpse of something larger. You won’t get the full picture from any single track, but let the whole album sink in, and you begin hearing the implicit connections that link them all.

Like the best bands of the C86 era, the Drums craft these songs by taking a basic template and perfecting it.

It’s not hard to hear City Music as a lament for lost innocence, a pledge to maintain optimism and humanity at a time when those qualities don’t just feel like vestiges of youth, but of some better civilization that’s rapidly disappearing. In his best album yet, Morby makes a prayer out of the squall.

The Singles traces both Can’s genius and how they ultimately ran out of ideas, losing all of their Vitamin C.

House and Land don’t just make these songs their own: they effectively reclaim them, illustrating that they’ve always been theirs.

It’s a shame there’s no such thing as a subtitled listening experience because OUÏ is rich with brilliant, funny ideas about conception, nurture, and identity.

Whatever plane The Fifth State of Consciousness represents, Peaking Lights make it sound like gold at the end of a rainbow.

The raw, carnal fervor of Booker’s punk numbers is still present--and sometimes it’s more pronounced--on Witness’ acoustic and naked electric blues and soul, when the opposing forces of a lush or refined landscape and Booker’s gravely voice work in concert.

Boomiverse doesn’t have the same freewheeling, blitzkrieg energy as Sir Lucious, but it reestablishes Big Boi as a dependable record maker who will always make music worth checking for, no matter what else is going on around him.

Adiós doesn't add much to Campbell’s legacy--the comeback records of recent years formed a fitting final act--but it’s a pleasant postscript, a wistful reminder of the joys a great musician once gave.

Weather Diaries is no Tarantula-sized affront to Ride’s legacy, but neither is it a Going Blank Again-style triumph of reinvention and focus. Weather-wise, it is an overcast day with a hint of sun: promising but never quite satisfying.

Despite Isbell’s general aimlessness, The Nashville Sound features several winning moments.

While Trouble Maker doesn’t usurp the band’s primordial peak, it’s far and wide their strongest effort since 2000’s excellent self-titled.

Lorde captures emotions like none other. Her second album is a masterful study of being a young woman, a sleek and humid pop record full of grief and hedonism, crafted with the utmost care and wisdom.

Crack-Up contains his most compelling writing to date because it’s so damn relatable in 2017--reacting and retreating inwards as people and institutions fail to meet the standards set in one’s head.

He struggles to let his guard down, and ironically, operates best when he keeps it up. Tiller comes off not as the passionate lover, but as the sappy everyman—too bland and full of tropes to be the new hero pouring his heart out in a thunderstorm.

Overall, Sugar at the Gate is a compact record from a band chugging along smoothly, unspooling sweet rhythms like it is finally their job.

Coffman doesn’t necessarily transcend the cornerstones she’s sampling on City of No Reply, but she’s not aiming to.

With Witness’ confounding combination of songwriting sloppiness and sleepiness, broad strokes are the really the best Perry can hope for these days.

Droptopwop, his full-length collaboration with Metro Boomin, is Gucci’s first post-prison project that truly gels. This is thanks in no small part to Metro.

She is in touch with love’s fragilities and understands that it is worth protecting, there is just a lot of tireless work to get it. The record is all the more beautiful for it.

Dawson grows as a singer throughout these songs, sometimes with humorous results.

The Chuck Berry template rears its head, for better and worse, throughout Chuck.

It’s the slowest and least cluttered instrumentals that feel here the most effectively expansive, capturing the scope of the quartet’s chosen themes without collapsing beneath symbolism and meaning-making.

The melancholy saunter of Henriksen’s lines is isolated and sculpted by glimmering, whirring atmospheres full of emptiness and portent. Testing different ways to contrast eloquent material and enigmatic medium, the record plays like some lost collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and Brian Eno circa Ambient 4: On Land.

Platinum Tips + Ice Cream presents a most curious contradiction: it’s a greatest-hits album designed for die-hards.

Saint Etienne never identified as Britpop, and fair enough. But with Home Counties, they give us a glimpse of what cutting-edge ’90s pop could have become if it had evolved into adult music with a more earthbound point of view.

Pixx is at her sharpest when her doubt and discontent are animated by something more acute.

After the strong, finger-picked Buckingham solo feature of “In My World,” however, the rush of hearing these two pop-rock titans team up starts to wear off. ... Granted, successful moments are sprinkled throughout the whole album.

Capacity is a remarkable record, one that proves that Big Thief are not a one-trick pony, they are the full circus.

Through wallowing in its own mire and coming out the other side, Cigarettes After Sex becomes one of those restrained, low-boil albums where tempo, repetition, and muted composition construct an entire story within the pauses between the notes and the ideas between the lines.

For all their complexities, Phoenix have typically sounded effortless. And from a stage or streaming playlist, these songs will gel with the music of their last two albums. But the work that went into them, apparently on a 9-to-5 schedule, is palpable.

The slower, more agonized songs best reveal Souleyman’s strengths.

When Somersault reaches its unfettered climax, the five-minute-plus tension-releasing eruption of “Be Nothing,” it’s clear that the project has overcome its greatest burden. Like DeMarco and DIIV before it, Beach Fossils emerged from Captured Tracks haze and established its own identity on the other side.

On an album full of radio experiments, some succeed--“100 Letters,” “Walls Could Talk” and “Alone” demonstrate the perennially fertile sound of alt-pop--and some inevitably fail.

Asking his band to change course in a dramatic fashion after nearly three decades together might be too much. But allowing themselves to get away from the tried and true could give the Charlatans a nice creative jolt to keep them going for another 30 years.

I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone curls into dark corners, exploring the depths of desperation and self-loathing that Chastity Belt only hinted at on their last two albums.

RELAXER shows us what remains after those quirks are dialed back: some perfectly nice, perfectly blank lads who have no idea why they are standing in front of you and even less of an idea what to say.

As a writer, Hackman may owe a bit to PJ Harvey, but I’m Not Your Man is the proper arrival of a bold young British force.

By aiming for the textbook definition of a big-picture pop album, Antonoff has ended up with the epitome of a vanity project: an album that revolves entirely around one person, made more enjoyable the less you expect from it.

While Waiting on a Song is casual in execution, it’s extremely intricate in construction, with each disco-string sweep, brass-section stab, and razor-sharp acoustic strum deployed with push-button precision. At times, the album feels less like a traditional singer/songwriter affair than a business card for Auerbach’s studio.

For all of the uneven and uncertain moments of Cascades, it ends on a very high note, and “Landscape” is one of the most unequivocally gorgeous covers imaginable.

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.

His vocals are becoming more textural and less the main focus. That actually works, as Crown has his smartest writing in years, keeping his youthful demons alive, if not running amok. He may have matured, but we don’t want to him to grow up.

Is This the Life’s myriad sonic references to his work with Pink Floyd suggest that Waters is comfortable with his past. The more you accept how much his past reflects in his present, the more receptive you’ll be to this album’s charms.

Though far too long and sometimes aimless, Teenage Emotions is the mind of a child star blown-up and on exhibition at the epicenter of modern rap. It’s there to be gawked at and appreciated, and then maybe enjoyed.

Recording and performing for nearly 20 years with Oneida and spin-offs like People of the North, Colpitts’ drums have sometimes provided an almost melodic key to understanding the full-bore noise-blasts surrounding them. On Play What They Want, those melodies can be heard more directly than ever.

The lyrical setbacks also help emphasize Dreamcar’s greatest strength: It’s a simple labor of love, as opposed to a grandiose spectacle, and in doing so, it sidesteps the usual supergroup cesspool.