There's something more naturally personal about Pythagorean Dream, in the way its multitude of vibrations emanate from Chatham alone.

Its mystery isn’t a gimmick, nor a playful riddle to be solved, but an abstraction awaiting interpretation.

Watching and listening as Masters has spun off in as many different directions as he has only makes this album feel even more special; a brilliant, vivid snapshot of an artist and a band at the very beginning of a fascinating and unpredictable journey.

From end to end, Rakka thrives on instability and the fear it fosters. Its beats lock into a grid for only a minute or so at a time, allowing you just enough space to settle into a groove before dropping you into some cacophonous abyss.

In directing his anger inward, slowthai loses some of the urgency and incisiveness that made his debut so compelling, along with the contrast that made that album’s vulnerable moments so striking. But he’s undoubtedly honed his craft, sounding slicker as he retreats from placard rap to the journaling process that got him started in the first place.

It’s their most cohesive record to date, exploring a still, prayerful tone. On Earth Patterns, Szun Waves foreground their subtle, intuitive approach by dialing down the tension of their debut and the more utopian tone of New Hymn to Freedom.

I find myself wishing Dicker had allowed himself to get just a little weirder in these more muted, more indistinguishable tracks. Nevertheless, The Work holds together elegantly, moving from pick-me-up to gentle comedown, and at its peak affording a keen-eyed glimpse of a better self, a brighter world.

Hymnal is a planet of sound, teeming with life, that seems even more habitable than Fountain—a bountiful ecosystem experiencing a permanent May and June.

Billionaire may showcase the curling intricacy of her voice, but her songwriting seems less invested in striving for a similar complexity.

It’s ELO and ELP and the Cars on lithium. Roxy Music is another ingredient in the strange, gauzy casserole. It’s stylish in an uncomfortable way, like a Stereolab record by way of a hostage crisis.

Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power.

He winds up succeeding, thanks to the haunting quality hanging over much of Eternally Even, reflecting the tensions of 2016.

The first seven songs kill, but the album's second half drags on longer than a Def Jam debut.

Khruangbin’s takes this new mode of listening and injects its own singular and developing personality into the playlisting of modern music.

The mercurial three-piece may now be more cohesive, consistent, and focused, but volcano!'s unpredictability is Paperwork's biggest strength.

Animals is a provocative proposition with flashes of inspired bricolage, by a likable veteran muso, but for something so fussed over, it’s a little half-baked.

Undertow finds Wolf Eyes a bit tamer than usual, shoehorning their concrète-tinged racket to more conventional melodic paradigms. They’ve mostly done away with the bluesy flirtations this time around, instead applying a wrecking ball to the spacious, lush frameworks of world music, ambient, and even reggae.

A staggering and potent amalgamation of numerous genre influences, but it also has moments of information overload, where its boundarylessness becomes too much.

I’m not sure any skeptics will find their gateway with the well-meaning protest music of Days of Ash. .... But if nothing else, U2 at least sound like they’re learning to trust themselves again.

So Relayted is both better than it had any right to be, given the concept, and about as good as you could expect from the musicians involved.

They’ve made the first record of their career that feels like it might teach you something over time. It is rare, and special, for a band to be this effortlessly and completely themselves.

A solid, conventional effort by an artist who once seemed so vital.

It is, if anything, even denser, more dimly lit, more seamlessly contoured [than 2013's Cupid's Head].

The result is an album defined largely by what it lacks compared to the band’s past work: a reduction rather than an expansion. Waiting Game proves the duo can conjure their trademark atmosphere without many of their usual tools, but it’s harder to identify what their music gains from losing them.

Sunbathing Animal's considered, whip-smart rock revivalism is a work of substantial growth from a band that already did "simple" quite well, placing Parquet Courts in their own distinct weight class.

Her follow-up, Silence Is Wild, sounds not only more assured in its arrangements and performances, but more lively for being so self-indulgent.

Deeper Well is sympathetically fame-agnostic and focused on steadying Musgraves’ axis, but its emollient balms also aren’t particularly satisfying when you know what she’s capable of.

Her voice has matured to a fine saw-toothed rasp, and carries with it the echoes of every hard minute through which she's lived.

In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country runs like updated material from their majestic 1998 offering, Music has the Right to Children. And like that album's namesake, these five elegantly mournful melodies creep and explore like adored but unruly children, full of wide-eyed astonishment and naïveté.

This version of NoYork! doesn’t offer any new revelations about the record, but as the physical document of that time a gifted rapper blew off a promising record deal to geek out in the studio with friends and then came out with one of the defining documents of his scene, it’s still a win.

Listeners who prefer their folk flashier or wrapped around memorable, poppy hooks might find Pratt's approach meandering or bland. But those with a more patient ear will find her a worthy and quietly distinct heir of Baier, Bunyan, and Dalton's homespun sound.

Spanning just over half an hour, People Helping People requires a few listens before its logic begins to click, but eventually the fractured music overlaps with their catalog, even suggesting new directions for their work to come.

In the end, those appearances [by Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen] point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble.

The production isn't a disaster, but most of the stylistic flourishes can feel gimmicky or, at worst, like dry history lessons... There's also the tugging sense that Springsteen and Aniello are trying to cover up some of the album's lackluster songwriting.

I Was Born Swimming is her most expansive and professional-sounding record to date, and on the whole, does more right than wrong. But it’s an MFA of an album. As a project, it’s admirable. As an album, it leaves you cold.

The Expanding Flower Planet feels like an album full of trap doors, where a single, unexpected sound can deposit you into new worlds.

The Shadow Gallery hits so strong and so true, staying this particular course for a little while longer shouldn't bother anyone.

When Hughes tries out more rote pop songs, Cape God can get a little dry. ... Still, the sad world of Cape God is an alluring one, and Hughes’ vocal range is its unequivocal linchpin.

Though the dreamy atmosphere and embrace of pop formalism make for the band’s most accessible record, You’ll Have to Lose Something is still profoundly challenging.

Even when it’s clumsy, Seeking Thrills never feels manufactured. It’s a passion project, a result of trial and error, the singular product of someone learning to write for her own voice.

Things Are Great’s melodies are so breezy, its guitars so giddy with uplift, that these songs sound carefree in spite of their subject matter. It helps, too, that Bridwell often disarms his lyrics with gentle whimsy.

Ratking's greatest success is confidently offering a sound that feels untethered from expectations and bristles with the exhilarating energy of trying something new.

There is no grand thesis or groundbreaking concept on Boat, but Pip Blom provide a welcoming nook for spacing out.

This one is just a little tiny bit less perfectly imperfect than [Transfiguration of Vincent], but it's still got all the warmth and gentle disorganization of its predecessor-- with a few more oomphy tracks standing in for Tranfiguration's most introspective meditations.

Fordlândia trilogy is simultaneously skillful, gorgeous, and a bit too polished--they're a pristine composition on a record full of them, but it doesn't gel with the messy, self-destructive historical footnotes that inspired them.

For those who were drawn primarily to Eyehategod’s apocalyptic self-annihilation, History’s unadorned blues riffs and fully legible lyrics might be a bridge too far. For those of us who want Eyehategod to keep doing this for a long time to come, it’s a welcome evolution.

Rather than attempt to write jokey lyrics, as they did on Confident Music, Stephenson and Moore are more content just to vibe out, with far more engaging results.

The Bake Sale is the first commercially available product from a group that's built its rep via MySpace and live shows, and most of these tracks have been floating around the internet for a long minute. But it makes for a great little introduction to two guys who know exactly what they're doing and who do it well.

While he obviously has good intentions, at times, Bridges can't help but come off as an imitator.

Musically, Toy is their most experimental and varied album.

Taiga is OOIOO's broadest, busiest, and furthest reaching album to date. Strangely, those same characteristics ruin it.

As pretty as it can be, New Album is another minor Boris album in a string of minor Boris albums.

Throughout Wabi-Sabi, Cross Record thread their way between graceful and sinister, unfiltered beauty with heavier and uglier sounds, and tap into a dark well of energy that has potential to grow more powerful the further they explore it.

At its best, Bottle It In pairs music with message to create a new tension in Vile’s work.

May disappoint fans hoping that the muted reception to Frankenstein might inspire the band to shake things up, but Laugh Track does fine-tune its predecessor’s approach, albeit subtly.

Unusual musical flairs pop up all over Who Needs Who... [but] the style never becomes the substance. Likewise, the drama behind the album's making doesn't overwhelm the music.

Meliora is a step in the right direction, but their pandering can only go so far, and even then, it might be misguided.

Perhaps when performed live these songs will accrue the desperation and dynamism their studio versions lack, but for now The Silver Gymnasium too often makes the act of remembering sound like a consequence-free undertaking, as though certain horrors are too far in the past to do us much harm in the present.

Kamaal the Abstract is not a great record by any means. But it is an interesting one, a unique effort by an artist struggling to mesh two disparate musical systems, gambling that inherent internal friction could spark some excitement.

un doesn't reach the heights (or more accurately, wallow in the depths) of Moon Pix, but more than anything else she's made, it feels like a companion piece to that record, a conversation with an older and wiser voice.

Connected is far from being the first record to make a virtue out of spinning in place, but there's a discipline and control here that's rarely heard, a feeling of two musicians utterly dominating their craft.

While Hunter seems more enamored of radio hits by the likes of Gary Numan and Flock of Seagulls here, Lower Dens never quite settle into an easy genre hook.

Swimming is less virtuosic than those artists’ [Chance the Rapper, Anderson.Paak and Frank Ocean] recent works, but no less heartfelt, and the album’s wistful soul and warm funk fits Miller like his oldest, coziest hoodie.

Compared to the careful sprawl of triple-LP Sr3mm, which artfully unwound the brothers’ divergent styles and production tastes while avoiding lulls, this outing can feel formulaic and less adventurous at times.

They try and fail to reinvigorate themselves in the rock’n’roll fountain of youth they helped create, only to emerge with a dozen hackneyed duds.

His post-genre American-mythos statement.

While Water Curses is plenty enjoyable on its own, it also sets you dreaming about where Animal Collective will go next.

It's not often that padding out an already hefty album actually improves it, but in the Queens' case, the revised tracklist provides a more accurate portrait of how the band molded its mercurial Desert Sessions experiments into chiseled hard-rock monoliths.

Every Ladytron album has a few extremely low points, and on Ladytron those are “Run” (a part two to “The Animals,” not a particularly necessary one) and “Paper Highways” (the first part is great, as if wrought from iron wreckage, but it veers into a saccharine, completely misplaced chorus, like they handed it to Disney for a second). Much better as a ray of solace is the quietly experimental “Tomorrow Is Another Day.”

Throughout Ripe 4 Luv you can sense that it’s taking every ounce of discipline Cook has to play these pop songs as straight as he does, so he can be forgiven for indulging a little kitsch at the finish line.

There’s nothing woefully timestuck about these sensitive dance songs, though. They’re made by someone living passionately in the moment and rushing into the future at breakbeat speed.

The virtually quirk-free Laughter's Fifth settles nearly its entire weight onto Jayne's songwriting shoulders. Fortunately, however, it's a load Jayne sounds as if he was born to tote, and here he delivers what is undoubtedly his tightest, most satisfying batch of songs to date.

B&C aren’t at that level [Foo Fighters, Deftones, Brand New or Thursday], but considering the leap they’ve made from their pedestrian debut Separation, The Things We Think We’re Missing serves notice that we shouldn't be surprised if they get there.

Better Oblivion is a collection of quiet, wandering thoughts: the sound of twin souls burrowing deeper into their common ground.

A sprawling, complex, and fascinating document of American indie rock.

Bunny is not as uptempo and optimistic as the punk-adjacent guitar pop that put them on the map; instead it basks in its afterglow, as if spending the morning in bed after a long night out.

At its very best, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love captures this feverish lightning-in-a-bottle energy. But where Kushner’s many moving parts lock into place, spurring each other on toward a harrowing, rapturous climax, the songs of Chris’s album never quite cohere.

Admittedly, some parts are easier to admire than they are to enjoy. But stick with Sisterworld as it builds, let it seep into your brain while you wait for its bulging seams to burst, and you might find yourself unable to turn your ears away. Eventually, Liars' commitment to their own creepy cause proves contagious.

It's no reflection on him, but Go-Go Boots goes a long way to proving him wrong, suggesting a band that knows where all the bodies are buried.

They tease out old ideas and combine them with new ones, affixing Appalachian folk to classic rock, ambient, avant garde, and a kind of musical entropy that pushes many of their songs into sputtering, oddly compelling noise.

Though Shigeto has absorbed a host of positive qualities from his fellow beatmakers, he seems caught, between a more purposeful, narrative form of music (like that of Four Tet, and the calmer compositions of Flying Lotus) and the abstruse, diffuse form that’s endorsed by the Leaving Records camp.

The album's six songs work within the limits of hardcore and industrial to create a monolithic record that slyly undermines its central thrust.

Speed is perhaps the point here; whereas 2017’s Strike a Match punctuated energetic pacing with more meandering tracks, Run Around the Sun barely stops for breath.

Gou’s studied craftsmanship coalesces with her tastemaking abilities. It’s most meditative in its unwavering commitment to methodical bass. Gou has always appeared to have an old soul and with this endeavor, it’s on full display.

The Circus is measured, soothing, and a suitable accompaniment to brandy and a cigar in a comfortable chair.

Paradigmes is a good time, but its intellectual merit is entirely surface level. It’s like watching the funniest person in a college philosophy seminar give a presentation they failed to prepare in advance: you laugh, but not because you learned anything.

With its deliberate, languorous pleasures, this is an album to live with, settle with and be crisply rejuvenated by.

At every turn, Total Life Forever is inviting. Much more alive than earlier efforts, it's an album with a complexion that constantly changes with time....[But] the album's second half doesn't fare so well, drowning at times in aqueous atmospherics.

Beneath all of this nihilism is some real skilled songwriting that includes complex rhyme schemes, swaggering rhythms, and stunning harmonies.

It’s not a slight to call Impermanence functional music: If it helps someone else simply cut through the noise in their head, Silberman has gotten his point across.

Intentionally making musical wallpaper doesn’t sound like an exciting prospect, but Mount seems invigorated by abandoning the pursuit of the perfectly structured 10-track record.

While contemporary political and personal unrest continues to invade the lives of Molchat Doma’s members—and those of many other people—their music remains firmly rooted in the past. Even if it’s not entirely innovative, it offers a sense of security, and that can be its own reward.

Hoop is an undeniably charismatic musician, but her music will benefit from a more natural and organic absorption of these impulses. In other words, she doesn't need to work so hard to prove anything.

An album full of fake rap, famous-people cameos, and scatological jokes shouldn't have any replay value whatsoever, but Turtleneck & Chain holds up awfully well, partly because the music is almost always, at the very least, listenable, and partly because the jokes depend more on earwormy hooks and absurdities spinning out of control than on simple punchlines.

Rub is the first album in her career where the music feels as foregrounded as Peaches' persona, which makes sense, as she co-produced it with Vice Cooler.

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

Traces of Liars’ DNA persist, as do similarities to those tireless Texans Shit and Shine, but it’s hard to think of another guitar-based band conjuring fear this exhilarating and volume this rapturous.

Stricken by the same backward-looking guitar worship disease that seems to have struck many in the indie community, the relentless string-bending and beer-bottle slides can't help but sound like stale recidivism.