Where they once aspired to be your blood-pumping druganaut, Black Mountain now excel at the art of making you uncomfortably numb.

Changes’ lyrics are immediately and sometimes overly familiar, but Bradley’s unmistakable voice is the obvious draw throughout.

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.

A Mineral Love bursts with cheerful, candy-colored falsetto funk, not unlike Ambivalence, while leaving out the crunch and glitch, letting the instruments breathe.

The tape plays like a final installment, going out with a bang and saving some of the series' best for last.

We listen to Weezer in 2016 largely for nostalgic dog whistles. We listen because Blue retreads like "Endless Summer" and "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" offer Proustian pleasures in spite of their obviously-recycled frameworks, and because the simpering, sweet "L.A. Girlz" is the group's best single since "Island in the Sun."

Though it's Moderat's strongest record, III isn't quite all killer. The very Field-like "Finder" bounces its vocal loop into the pocket, but it doesn't show off the songcraft found on songs like "Reminder," which might have sprung from a solo album by Thom Yorke.

Slow Forever thrives in that existential anxiety, as though Wunder and Fell realized they had a lot to lose but even more to gain. As surprising as it may seem for an album where death, despair, and destruction linger in every word, Cobalt gambled on resurrection and, against the odds, advanced.

Lacking compelling hooks, a unifying mood, or a clear narrative, his debut is oddly inflexible and over-calculated.

Even as they explore alien aesthetics, the Body and Full of Hell are constantly finding ways to uphold the spirit of each other's work.

Wuthering Drum is a work seemingly unconcerned about giving you what you want, but what it does provide is almost enough.

These songs feel personal. They tug at important moments. It's a quietly masterful, emotionally rich work. Of all their records, it's ultimately the one that sounds the most like the image their band name evokes.

Much like the producer’s former offerings, Dame Fortune tries to be everything all at once, making for a good listen with occasional lapses.

Each song is well-structured and wise beyond its years while the messages are confused, delicate and very, very teenage. This is the sound of growing up smart.

At 11 tracks, it's longer than 2 and lacks the experimentation of Drink More Water 5, and it drags.

Daughter is best when it's specifically first-person, when Price bends country to fit her own story rather than bend herself to fit the form.

After two albums that struggled with the growing divide between the serious band they seemingly longed to be and the bubblegum punk band listeners want them to be, The Thermals strike the right balance on We Disappear, an album that manages to satisfy both camps.

A frequently gorgeous, sometimes roiling set that stands out in each artist’s catalog.

Glitterbust is not unlike Gordon's other recent duo, Body/Head, though less bold. Still, it feels like a gift to spend time in the oceanic space Gordon and Knost summon, letting its nuances wash over you.

Vroom Vroom is pointedly uncommercial and abrasive.

At times it almost sounds as if they know they've taken their current sound as far as it can go and seem palpably frustrated they can't figure out their next move.

Baauer and the other artists meet the heavyweight expectations head-on.

Hinton has an ability, not unlike the Books when they first hit the scene 14 years ago, of making shopworn techniques in sound manipulations seem strangely fresh, and Potential is the kind of music that makes you think about what your own part in a seemingly passive musical transaction of music might mean.

While the ground it covers is startling and often picturesque, Grapefruit is an album you feel led through, rather than being left to explore or inhabit.

As put-together as Good Grief’s presentation is, and as ingratiating as its songs are, the record suffers from a distinct lack of identity.

Festival is refreshingly cohesive, exploring varied themes without drifting off-course.

By the fourth or fifth trip through Gensho, the idea begins to slip into pure gimmickry, as though this were a notion that sounded fun for old friends to try but isn't so fun to hear.

Stefani’s focus on the good times alternates with songs where she expresses cartoonish anger by awkwardly rapping and shouting non-sequiturs (“Naughty,” “Red Flag”), and neither mode plays to her strengths as a songwriter and signature vocalist. Her best songs are the ones in which she is audibly upset.

No Burden is an uncommonly warm indie rock record.

Massive Attack were always equally as good producers as they were curators; it's promising that, as much of their old sound as they've retained, they've kept this as well.

What is most impressive about The Last Panthers is the way in which Clark has taken all of this incidental music and shaped it into a flowing 48-minute suite that conjures almost as much of an imagined visual story as The Last Panthers show itself.

If there's emotional utility to be found in Epic Jammers, it's in how meditative, trancelike, and overwhelmingly positive this hour of music is.

Many of the songs here sound not just derivative but generic. Compassion still feels like the album that Lust For Youth have been working toward this whole time--it just turns out that the journey may have been more rewarding than the destination.

For the most part, the songs on Cosmic American Music slip into the ether without much to keep them earthbound.

As a guitarist, Forsyth has a clear and immediately identifiable voice. His tones and melodies are familiar yet fresh, at once embodying grace and freakiness, tradition and experimentation, the past and the present.

The bracing, sometimes violent collision of rock ‘n’ roll and dance music that’s powered Primal Scream’s best work has been melted down here into mercurial droplets--shiny and radiant, to be sure, but ultimately non-descript.

By wearing their influences on their sleeve while never slipping into gimmickry, HÆLOS are able to pull off an impressive trick, a debut record that both cements them in a genre and leaves then room to grow.

A good 80% of You and I, the latest album of the lot, consists of covers, many already released in some format.... The new material includes a version of "Grace" that is basically a fully formed demo, while "Dream of You and I" is barely even that; the title is literal, Buckley thinking aloud about a dream he had about a band’s "space jam," which inspired him to write what’d eventually become "You and I."

3001: A Laced Odyssey does an adequate job of reminding us all of Flatbush Zombies’ smart, sharp lyrics. What they lack in hit-single potential, they make up for in talent, but without a calling-card song it's hard to know what their next move is.

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.

Underworld’s never had trouble getting listeners to their feet. This gorgeously love-drunk finale makes Barbara a record that can bring them to their knees.

Petrol, a looser, messier album, does a better job of communicating new ideas, and its emotional depth feels less gestural and more genuine.

Though it’s mostly a pleasant record, there’s not much from it that sticks around long after listening--for all the talk of deluge, More Rain manages to wash itself away.

The unusual dependence on space in the arrangements can make the interiors of Låpsley’s songs seem uncannily empty, glassy structures with their insides removed so all that’s left is angled crystal.... But in other instances her voice dissolves into an overabundance of negative space, and listening to the less-inspired sections of Long Way Home can feel like trying to remember something boring that happened to you once.

None of these songs would have the same effect if rushed, which is what set Big Ups apart from many of their peers.

Overall Brute is a frustrating mish-mosh of middling and artful. When it’s working, there is a certain panache in the high-powered, informationally dense musical speedballs she creates.

If Post Pop Depression’s refined execution has you missing the more unhinged Iggy of old, rest assured, he’s not going down without a fight.

Arcology, like its predecessor, is a genre study first and foremost, rearranging familiar elements according to McRyhew's own idiosyncratic vision.

Where Walker sings more naturally, with easier tones, Cleaver's shy, young-old voice is a reassuring presence beneath the music’s astral blanket. That they both sound overwhelmed by Forever Sounds’ vast scale is in fact the record’s saving grace; as ever, Wussy’s proximity to ordinariness is precisely what makes them lovable.

More often than not, ColleGrove plays out like 2 Chainz pulling his friend and mentor up by his bootstraps while ceding a bit of the spotlight in the process. It’s a generous gesture, but a costly one.

She wears her obvious theoretical grounding lightly and never lets it obstruct her ecstatic quest for new ideas and deranged stimuli. And Varmints is a knockout, the kind that makes you see cartoon stars.

In My Feelings often feels as if its about to collapse under its own weight, which is doubly frustrating when you consider it clocks in at a slight 34 minutes.

As a record, Eraser Stargazer is sometimes weirdly hookless and ponderous. There’s plenty of stoner fog, but not always much to grip. It is a forward move for the band, though.

Despite the agitation and raw nerves, the album feels like a therapeutic offering.

Poliça is a group with too much collected talent for that; as in life these days, one only waits and hopes the clouds will clear.

As with TPAB, untitled unmastered. demands to be approached on its own terms, even when you don't know what those terms are. You can't say he didn't try for you, ride for you, or push the club to the side for you.

Neither stale tribute nor sloppy lovefest, Headspace aims for simple fun and hits it square, like a T-16 targeting womp rats back on Tatooine.

The resulting album, the most resolutely electronic work he's done yet, buzzes like an ice-cream headache.

A Man Alive's great virtue is that Nguyen can still sound like she's having the time of her life even as she's recounting the darkest moments from it.

Though compositionally The Ridge feels less exploratory that Neufield’s previous work, it is still a moving document of her engaging, virtuosic playing.

The lyrics are elusive at first, darting behind fast-moving songs and delivered in impressionistic, conversational bursts that recall the delivery of Joni Mitchell. But the fearless generosity behind them communicates itself loud and clear, and it's a spirit that animates the entire album. With it, Spalding has once again redefined an already singular career, dictating a vision entirely on her own terms.

All 11 tracks are paced somewhere between 120 and 125 beats per minute; all of them follow pitter-patter house beats; all of them use the same palette of cool jazz samples and Chicago house basslines and warm, watery keys. But if you're a fan of this kind of thing, A Minor Thought proves that sometimes variety isn't the most important quality in an album.

Värähtelijä is a weird, grotesque record, where genres are superimposed on one another and where eccentric choices are the rule and not the exception. Yes, Oranssi Pazuzu is out of the old black metal box and lost--wonderfully, strangely--somewhere between heaven and hell.

They're not trying to pull off anything like that any more; instead, they're polishing up the durable façade of their signature sound, while the songwriting that it used to support has crumbled.

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

Only a interpreter as shrewd and tasteful as Loretta Lynn could find the inherent commonalities in these songs, and make a grab-bag late-late-career album like this feel not only emotionally grounded, but like a powerful choice.

At a certain point the album's dynamics become routine, all of the energies produced by the band hit the ear neutrally, and Rot Forever begins to rot itself, softly melting into a background, not of its own accord but by something built into its nature.

La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive.

LNZNDRF is a fine-if-flawed testament to the company's Thatcher years, but it could have been tremendous if they had kept it strictly instrumental.

The only times Plaza comes across as less than convincing are the moments where Shane Butler and company tip their hand a tad too heavily, such as on closing number "Own Ways," which falls just short of featuring faux English accents and sounds like Quilt’s musical answer to a '60s mod costume party. Elsewhere, though, they steer clear of slavish recreation, cleverly revealing new wrinkles in the arrangements from one song to the next.

Unfortunately, The Art of Hustle is mostly forgettable as a major-label rap record, but it bears out a teachable truth about Gotti's career: sometimes showing up is more than half the battle.

A collection that leaves so much on the table in terms of possibility. Many of these selections are too on-the-nose, kowtowing to Johnson’s legacy as though kneeling before his corpse at a wake.

Where that album [Glow & Behold] felt like an expansion, albeit a minor one, Stranger Things feels like a retreat.

While the sound on Grandfeathered is deep, it often feels impenetrable rather than multilayered.

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made is nowhere near as bad as its detractors would like it to be. It’s an occasionally inspiring, often corny rap album made for winning Grammy nominations and waking the hearts of the unwoken. The sum of this is sometimes appealing, though frustrating.

The tension between artifice and reality is what gives Seth Bogart most of its conceptual heft, but it obviously helps that the album is very fun to listen to.

Even when the music intentionally plays dumb, Bentham and Nardi are clever lyricists, and Higher Power could almost be a narrative concept record about salvation if you play it out of order.

M:FANS is less reclusive, just by virtue of its premise--Cale is collaborating with himself, the ultimate glum foil--but also because it fills every swatch of white space with his later-career electro-industrial leanings.

Principe del Norte across as genial, charmingly rumpled, and totally unflappable.

Sledge is a very straightforward lyricist; he doesn't stunt, he yearns. His lyrics favor plainspoken confessions over catchy turns of phrase, and when the album falters, it's because his words reduce a pair of lovers to their mouths and hands.

When you sleep... has a much more distinct and iconoclastic character than their slick debut, drawing from the effervescent, percolating polish of early '80s Hot 100 pop that they flirted with on "Heart Out.".... That doesn't mean that When you sleep is consistent by any stretch. It's 75 minutes long, which could mostly be solved by trimming the four (!) lengthy ambient tracks on the record.

Going Down in History may not mark a sea change for Langford and company, but between the humor, the honky-tonk, and the affable, full-bodied sound, it’s an awesome chance to catch up.

As an act of low-impact celebration, George Fest is a fine affair.

How to Dance is most invigorating when it sweeps the band’s easy-rolling tunes off of the front porch and drops them at the roadhouse.

The album is presented as a consumerist critique, intentionally blurring the line between artist and product, but the quality of the songs varies too widely to pull off an actual concept album.

Her music is bold and fully formed.

Traditional Synthesizer Music feels not so much traditional as a refresh: a suite of music that is crafted and ferociously complex, but at its root a pure and primal thing, high on its own chaos.

That impulse to complicate is thankfully mediated more thoroughly and evenly on Love Yes than on previous efforts, only poking through here and there. It is also striking that this very complex album was recorded entirely live; the music seethes with precarious energy.

It was sometimes unclear when Stereolab's mid-century references were meant as kitsch, but here, Gane & co.'s retro-futurist flashback feels optimistic, as though convinced that the key to fulfilling the promise of a new era were just one perfect rhythm away.

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.

With his first officially licensed mix CD, for the 51st entry in the DJ-Kicks series, one might expect a set of dusty disco and deep house, but Dixon confounds expectations throughout, detouring at peak moments, going left where he might build momentum, all of it leading to luminous results.

Kozelek's more recent output has obviously been vulnerable, but he feels especially open here--he’s not just making fun of himself, but also deeply dissecting why he makes fun of himself, and the sadness that’s hidden within a punchline.

The Heretic’s Bargain [is] their most cohesive record to date, and suggests that it will likely be bested on that count by the next one.

On Need Your Light, they finally hit the sweet spot.

Tonally and instrumentally, the album is a change in style, but there is no moment of surprise; it still feels very predictable.

Marketing aside, Phase doesn't sound unpleasant, just generic.

High Note complements rather than contradicts those bleaker depictions of 21st century America and casually argues for Staples’ legacy as an agitgospel singer.

Ultimate Care II is a daydream of domesticity, a chore ignored. Call it the revolutions of everyday life.