Home Wrecking Years feels like a guy just filling in the downtime before he gets back to work with his main band.

Taken as a suite of music on its own merits, Volume One flows rather seamlessly—no small achievement. The canvas they paint on is remarkably spare and restrained.

The duo’s sense of freedom and unwillingness to mimic the tropes of conventional songwriting are to be admired, even if they’re not necessarily traits that will convince anyone but ardent early-Reich fans that drumming records are worthy of a place on their shelf.

The Childhood of a Leader is a clear high water mark for Walker in terms of instrumental writing, but it is also, in many ways, an apt extension of textural ideas Walker has explored on his past two albums.

Sometimes what seems like a forward move turns out to be a lateral one, and right now it's an open question whether Delt’s more professional environs were preferable to his messy charm.

Every song on the record contributes to this air of reverie, a testament to Roosevelt’s strength as a producer, as one track languidly slips into the next. If anything, it can get a little too laid back--it’s the kind of record that's so uniform it ends before you realize it.

These lyrics threaten to drag the rest of the album down if you listen too closely, but Stephenson’s vocal melodies are buoyant enough to keep it all afloat if you’re playing this in the background.

Fishing Blues’ saving grace, the only song with any real passion and continuity, is one about police brutality written from the perspective of the officer.

An album that’s disorienting at its catchiest, harrowing at its ugliest, and more than willing to run both of those modes at the same time.

Alice Bag feels like effortless self-expression that simply needed an outlet.

The melding of these stories with Cameron’s efficient, minimal compositions create the type of songs that penetrate deeply and linger in your consciousness long after you’ve stopped listening to them.

The album helps prove he’s a lot more than just Drake’s patois advisor. Clothes that don’t quite fit his boss feel effortlessly tailored to Brathwaite.

The album is simply not the format for DJ Snake. The conventional song barely is. He makes tracks. Instead of being, at least, a collection of great, standalone singles, the album is riddled with ill-advised rap songs and bad ballads.

There aren’t a load of bangers on here, [but] there are several stellar songs, the best of which showcase the duo’s adaptability, especially in surrendering musical control to the Spacebomb house band.

SremmLife 2 collects all of the quirks in the margins of its predecessor and develops them; more than anything else, SremmLife 2 is the ultimate middle finger to grouches who think this brand of rap can’t be complex.

It’s evident that Walker is talented and brimming with ideas--and there are moments on this record that mark the best music he’s ever made. But he needs to get a better understanding of his strengths if he wants to become more than just another nifty live-guitar throwback.

At times he nodded toward mainstream trends. “Way Down” soars like a jetliner; “Moody Blue” co-opts every soft, hazy sound of AM pop in the mid-’70s. But the striking thing about Way Down in the Jungle Room is how it stays true to all the music Presley claimed as his own in ’68.

Revisit older Factory Floor tracks like “A Wooden Box” or “(R E A L L O V E)” and there remains something tantalizing there--the way they morph back and forth between live band and broiling techno, a trompe l’oeil for the ear. On 25 25, they’ve shed this dimension, and the results can feel depthless and a little flat.

Even when their pendulum is swinging at a steadier pace, Thee Oh Sees still have the power to hypnotize--but from its twitchy jams to its blown-out power ballads, A Weird Exits’ most intriguing moments come when they break the trance.

Helpfully, the 17-song record includes eight interstitials to ease the intensity, though admittedly they’re more useful in the first half, which is frantic and sparkly, than the sleepier second.

His albums are very much the work and vision of one man, and so even on a relatively easygoing outing like Innocence Reaches, that insularity can grow stifling. It’s as if since Barnes can’t escape his own head, he won’t allow listeners to, either.

You get the sense that he can go pretty much anywhere sonically, and the brevity of each track combined with all the driving rhythms makes the record feel like a roller-coaster tour of his firing neurons.

McKenna has a remarkable facility for conveying the inner lives of women trapped in soured relationships; that may not be an easy sell for the conservative playlists of country radio, but it makes for one of the most accomplished and devastating singer-songwriter albums of the year.

The record is not always as engaging for the listener as it might like to be. Gengras emphasizes the experience of sound over the process of constructing it.

Fec’s most disturbing songs were often his funniest, but Sweatbox Dynasty rarely allows Fec’s puckish side to rise from the muck.

Now and then, Wild Beasts break beyond the surface to offer a few sharper observations.

Almost half of the first CD is made up of Cline originals, and these pale a bit in comparison with the surrounding material. Though thanks to its sly and measured embrace of the experimental, Lovers still has all the originality it needs to endear.

It’s a fully-formed offering that seamlessly balances her more rugged raps with pristine pop songs (sculpted in “Body”’s image) and tender slow jams.

Like all of his albums, Major Key is a mixed bag, fitting for a maestro who traffics in a blend of chest-thumping and humility that’s both as comical as it is prophetic.

As Durk grapples with leaving his old life behind to create a better life for his sons, he creates his most gratifying and moving work yet. Lil Dirk 2X seeks rehabilitation but finds evolution.

Cheena is not trying to blow your mind. In fact, they’re not trying to do much of anything. But that spirit rings true, and it feels less like a pose the longer the album goes on.

Another brisk half-hour of barbed power-pop tunes that sting so sweetly that it’s only after the fact you consider you might need a tetanus shot.

Fortunately for the diehards, Hypercaffium Spazzinate is devoid of the stylistic overindulgence or inflated self-importance often associated with hiatus-ending efforts.

Elseq feels like an advancement of the duo’s recent live sets, offering a similar ratio of rhythm to noise and order to chaos, but a richer palette of sounds.

Due to the narrow artistic parameters of Shriek (mostly: no guitars), every song on Tween has this quality of a gem rescued from the cracks.

Even when Guidance gets complicated, there’s a more organic and unforced feel to it, as if songs were allowed to grow wild rather than carefully cultivated.

Give a Glimpse does, however, stick largely to well-trod paths, with not a ton in the way of experimentation. As always, it’s Mascis’ guitar that is the main attraction here, the reason for caring.

Victorious is filled with moments that give you glimpses of the club in heaven, but like the afterlife itself, it’s always out of reach, distinct only in brief flashes and in feverish moments.

The King of Whys is never not magnificent, maybe too much for its own good–despite Kinsella’s unsparing account of his father's alcoholism and depression, the handclaps and chipper strumming of “A Burning Soul” could’ve made it a mid-‘90s college hit à la Guster.

At 54 minutes, the 18-track record begins to feel a little baggy, its uncharismatic drums and textural familiarity giving Nao’s paragliding voice one job too many. Even when overlong, though, the songs can impress with their breadth.

Memories are themselves temporal hangovers; as one accesses them, one also accesses what could’ve been, drawing reality through the distortions of regret and nostalgia. The best Johnny Foreigner songs, several of which are included on Mono No Aware, depict this process holistically; you hear someone sifting through their failures and their fantasies, their past and present mistakes swarming into each other.

Sweaty and ecstatic, elevated and pure, The Disco’s of Imhotep weaves quite the spell. This might be the most accessible Hieroglyphic Being album to date, but Jamal Moss remains out there on his own.

Taken as a whole, S+@dium Rock ultimately feels less like a document of an historic homecoming event and more like the sort of bonus material that comprises the extra disc of a deluxe reissue.

As a snapshot of an influential band in their prime, Live is undeniable, and the set serves as an especially effective tribute to Bewley’s crucial contributions.

His openness to creative inspiration in far-flung cities has paid off. If this is what he came up with in a fortnight, running on what couldn’t have been much sleep, the wait for what he does next should be worth it.

For all the champion horsepower in their stable, Gone Is Gone just never really gets going.

It will please fans looking for Another Gucci Mane mixtape. Everyone else will likely find it a bit spotty. Certain songs fall into familiar--now six- or seven-year-old--formulas. His vocals, no doubt out of practice, sound a bit rusty. But most of all, it just feels unfinished, rushed.

This Is Gap Dream ends up being too truthful, as there’s rarely any indication Fulvimar intended for this to reach an audience far beyond himself.

Iit confirms anew that Big Business remain a band without comfortable genre quarters, as indebted to power pop and psychedelic rock as they to sludge or stoner metal.

Warm Leatherette was alternately more sanguine and more severe—a bracing confluence of reggae, new-wave, and post-punk that showcased Jones’ range as a performer and her uncanny, occasionally perverse vision as an interpreter of other people’s songs.

While it’s a creative step forward for Kiwanuka, it’s still tough to get a sense of just who he is at times.

With Coolaid, arguably Snoop’s first real hip-hop album in half a decade, we find his reinvention back into “Rapper Snoop” to be a bit wobbly.

Like its older sibling, the songs on Cistern exist independently of each other. The nine tracks feel connected only by the fact that they share the same space on record, more like a collection of long takes rather than a movie.

The group has never sounded richer, fuller, or more confident in their own narcotic powers. Misery suits them.

Artistically speaking, Demon City represents a leap forward in terms of Crampton’s musical growth. American Drift was like a sumptuous glass overflowing, but Demon City is a wonder of concision, with songs that mostly fall under four minutes.

The moody guitar solo at the end is deflating endpoint to a well-trodden path, but Shepherd’s band nonetheless exhibits a rare combination of restraint and brawn.

Centres initially seems like a near-formless sea of sound and voice. But over time, it reveals patterns inside the swirl, and the more time you spend in it, the further you will to get lost in its wondrous confines.

Overall, it’s hard to see where his strengths are, and on some deeper level, I can’t imagine a situation where listening to this album is appropriate for anything else but falling asleep at your desk.

BBNG can still be frustrating, but IV is a sign of a band hitting its stride. It’s their most jazz-forward album, and it’s filled with some markers of magnificent growth.

The ten tracks here are all honest executions of a sound that was essentially perfected ten years ago; nostalgia alone can’t justify how little legitimately new material MSTRKRFT bring to the table.

Any Hanna-related project is prone to vanishing beneath her mighty specter, but the deeper collaborative process that went into Hit Reset shines through.

Versatility, it turns out, may not be Clams’ strong suit, though that’s hardly a problem; as the first half of 32 Levels demonstrates, there’s still plenty of room left for Clams Casino to grow into his own sound.

Nothing’s Real offers a fresh vision for pop’s new reality.

Jackmaster lets his choices breathe and doesn’t hurry from cut to cut for the sake of covering more ground, even as tracks pool together and reform anew.

The result is a captivating, dizzying record by a band aware that they can do anything--so they’re doing it all.

Blank Face turns away from the ambitious fusion of To Pimp a Butterfly, instead doubling down on a smoked-out atmosphere that points the listener’s focus toward rapping. That puts the onus on Q to hold attention for the duration of the record’s hour-plus running time, and he does so.

At times it may feel cheesy, or like “naive romantic shite” as they say at one point, but in the end, it’s honestly comforting.

The album may be musing or abstracted, but that’s his hallmark, and blackSUMMERS’night is polished to a blinding sheen.

Even though the surface is smoother and and the vocals less garbled than usual, it’d be a mistake to read Bubblegum as a true unmasking. Filters swaddle Copeland’s voice throughout, distorting and distending it but stopping short of intelligibility; lyrically, he’s striking a tricky balance between deadpan nihilism and pop troubadour nostalgia.

Into the Light is the kind of record that requires rapt attention, best enjoyed in still solitude. But even as Anderson’s instrument simmers, it still reaches for the great beyond, and she makes you ache to reach along with it.

What we’re left with on Dream World is a solid project that flies in multiple directions.

What elevates Take Her Up to Monto--and all of Murphy’s records, frankly--is a fearless, restless spirit.

In anyone else’s hands, Summer 08 might seem strange and cold. But from Mount, as ornery as it is, it feels like a gesture of trust.

In the age of glossy mixing and instrumental auto-pilot, their ungovernable racket’s refreshing and woefully needed.

It works in part because of the surprise factor (who knew Lewis had this kind of record in her?) but mostly because Lewis does what she always does: She sells the material.

Magma’s not nearly as esoteric as the albums that preceded it--and considering how Gojira’s progressive tendencies have distinguished them from the get-go, the catchiest tracks on the record arguably take the biggest risks.

The Avalanches are all about feel. And Wildflower, though it misses some of its predecessor’s thematic unity and from-nowhere sense of surprise, has that feel in spades.

Crucially, with his beats less busy, it has left James more room to focus on spine-tinglingly rich tunings and timbres. And that’s where Cheetah really stands out: To sink into it, preferably on good headphones or better speakers, is to be immersed in woozy, viscous frequencies far more vivid than you’ll find almost anywhere else.

Rarely does a band bid you farewell and admit it overstayed its welcome in the same breath.

There’s no laundry list of injustices or outrages to be found here: just an uber-compressed pop rune that muses on the sheer, disorienting helplessness that results from realizing that we’ll never be able to help everyone. Maybe, just maybe, stolid songcraft can be rescue enough.

The hooks aren't quite as catchy or well-written on Murder For Hire 2 as they have been in recent months.

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.

Weaves is most compelling when it’s thrashing right along with Burke, giving into the urgent hunger for connection. It grates when the band is more intent on pleasing itself with quirk for quirk’s sake.

The earnest California takes plenty of time to sprawl out, from wound-licking power ballads (“Home Is Such a Lonely Place,” “Hey I’m Sorry”) to high-shine navel-gazings that hew closely to past hits.

Post Plague is just another stop on an increasingly adventurous course through the genre map.

New English is so woefully derivative it almost builds itself a new vocabulary from the Lego blocks of other rappers it stands on.

Harvey remains mostly reverential to his sacrilegious source, but Delirium Tremens is much more than just Gainsbourg fed through Google Translate. Rather, it amplifies the unsettling undercurrents that always stewed beneath Gainsbourg’s impeccable arrangements.

By improving his craft, layering sharper melodies over increasingly sophisticated arrangements. Steinbrink’s music--so often insular, gorgeous in its way yet tentative--has grown up, becoming wiser and more confidently strange, ready to embrace the world outside his bedroom window.

Luckily, by the time we get to lead single “Sunday Love” The Bride has hit its stride, the track’s shuffling drum loop and plucked strings transporting listeners directly into the mania of the Bride’s pure heartbreak. From there, what began as a slightly unbalanced collection begins to take shape.

At the very least, “End of an Era” is a disturbance to Autodrama’s surface-level shimmer and proof of Puro Instinct making an effort to provide depth.

With I, Gemini Let’s Eat Grandma not only hold their own with their predecessors, but they also create a world that demands you come to it on its own terms, not the other way around. An impressive achievement from musicians of any age.

Despite its clear seriousness, Brigid Mae Power runs on that sense of newfound freedom. Power and Broderick find glimmers of light even in the darkest moments, and she learns to trust the kind of love that enables independence, after some period of coercion.

It is perfectly sequenced, mysterious and moody. For a debut album, the fully-formed nature of their songwriting, sublime pacing and monolithically tasteful atmosphere is remarkable.

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

Yoncalla highlights all the best elements of Yumi Zouma, wrapped up in some of the prettiest music they’ve made yet.

Freetown resonates with everyone sagging under the weight of systemic oppression.

It's punchier; the themes are weightier; the emotional range is more dynamic. And it finds Kodak Black sounding like nobody but himself.

It’s clear that the artists are well aware of the risks of throwing themselves too eagerly into the wine-dark churn, but here, O’Rourke isn’t quite capable of reining in Fennesz’ more impetuous inclinations, and by the end of it, you find yourself craving a quiet patch of warm, dry land on which to catch your breath.