Liberman is excellent on its own. Carlton's voice is the key attraction on songs that register between low-key pop, rock, and folk.

Many Moons works as a remarkably cohesive album, meandering its way across themes of past and present to a state of aching clarity that's modest, but no less genuine for

Strip the clever vocal snippets away from Vibert's productions and you're left with those choice drums and goofy melodies, but there's little beyond that to mind.

Leave it to VHÖL to find another dimension to the ever-bountiful combination of hardcore and metal, where the cerebral and the primal stomp heads next to one another.

The soundscapes he's constructed on his third LP, Howl, are spiky and imposing, too solid to sink into. The music is always shifting, so it's impossible to lose track of time while listening.

It’s as unhinged as it is straightforward; as it acquires mass in the choruses it seems to list off the ground into some new, uncertain gravity. For all the blur and motion of their music, this hint of deeper chaos might be the album's most exciting moment.

At a relatively brief nine tracks, the record is a perfectly paced blast of dark pop that deftly reflects Fortune’s growing prowess as a songwriter.

As If leans a little too heavily on the groove in the middle, with moments like "Funk (I Got This)" fading into the background, but it's reinvigorated towards the end by the riveting "Lucy Mongoosey", which uses another singalong chorus as an anchor, an introspective pause among all the dancing.

Give Life some time and you might find it infecting your synapses, too.

It’s 46 songs of verbose, intricately delivered raps, spun from a story with enough character to have already made it a New York Times best-seller. There’s a lot of ground to cover regardless of medium.

This tension between plain old songs and structures and an interest in omitting details and accessorizing sounds enlivens Over and Even from start to finish.

Greatest-hits compilations in general are something of an endangered species, given that streaming-service playlists can now generate them for you, but there's still something to be said for getting a band's own take on what they deem essential.

Unless you approach Electronica 1 as a collection of unrelated songs designed to be cherry-picked for playlists--and given the generic title, maybe that's the point--there's little to hold it together.

Divers is not a puzzle to crack, but a dialog that generously articulates the intimate chasm of loss, the way it's both irrational and very real.

Thank You is still undeniably a Beach House album, a familiar mix of warm tones and chilly sentiments. With the imprint still fading on Depression, Thank You’s impact is undeniably dulled, causing a strange "too much of a good thing" problem.

Future is YACHT's would-be critique of our pre-dystopian, post-Internet culture, but it rarely comes off as more than a charismatic cover band singing us yesterday's news.

With an album replete with Spanish guitar jams, wide-eyed hip-hop, and psychedelic rock k-holes, there isn't much ground left for Raury to cover. Now, he must figure out how to do it all just a little bit better.

Alone is less stripped-down than Impersonator, but it feels less confrontational, too.

The production values are higher, and there’s even more of Palomo's queasy pitch-shifting, 16-bit synths, and disembodied samples--more of everything.

The Documentary 2 solidifies him a grade-grubbing student of hip-hop, one with far more resources and drive than natural talent, but a student all the same.

Repetition is key to this music, but after several cycles, tracks begin to plod, broken up only by Khan's vocal work. The Sexwitch interpretations lose vital elements from the originals like horns, organs, and bells.

She expresses no hesitation here, and for that, her band has never sounded better. Sure, you can come for the twin guitars and the loaded rhythm section, but at last, Cottrell has made it clear you’re staying for her.

The result sounds like something that's already been comp'ed to death by Putumayo.

Diaphanous of texture but heavy of spirit, Safe revolves upon this tension, the pressure point of a soul under strain.

No No asks a lot of listeners, that we unpack all of these fun inferences even as we're being assaulted by the 143 different sounds Co La casted into the vestige of a snare drum. No No, on balance, is worth the effort.

A pristine dream magic seems to inform Apologues--the fluid serenity of the music projects a lulling, murmured unreality that suggests that the album is a figment of the listener’s imagination even while it is in play.

Some can't be saved, which happens when you keep expanding..... More often than not, though, the center holds, and it makes Ultraviolet look like a scratchpad for what they ended up doing here: radically shaking up their formula--from the inside out--and come back with compelling results.

Clutch work best when they keep the pulley of punchlines and pummeling riffs running at max speed, and as a result, Psychic Warfare proves a tad too meandering to eclipse Earth Rocker or Blast Tyrant

If there isn't a Deerhunter sound, there's a Deerhunter perspective that runs through their work, best summed up in "All the Same"—"take your handicaps/ Channel them and feed them back/ Until they become your strengths." The weird era continues.

Nothing about Timeline is bad. It's a pretty strong release for a brand new imprint to build on. But if the same record were released from, say, Stones Throw, we might sigh, and chalk it up to another good-but-not-great album from a label that still hasn't quite figured out a unified new direction.

Dilly Dally always sound like they're being crushed throughout Sore, in a good way: They inhabit the dank space beneath dead weight, the place where the good stuff festers.

A good listen to the album today reveals some ways it was ahead of its time.

We might not learn a lot of specifics about him, but there’s a lot of honesty in his music if you look for it.

The question, going into this album, was whether he could give them purpose and meaning--whether he could put his technical mastery into the service of music at once experimental and lyrical. Where All Is Fled answers resoundingly in the affirmative.

Complicated arrangements and gorgeous melodies reveal themselves to you as rewards for your patience. Over time, even the alien voices begin to sound natural, even inviting.

The mechanics of dance music might inspire feelings in listeners, but within the genre, overrun with the egos and opinions of "bro-teurs," her emotions are revolutionary.

The extras dug up for the Tug of War reissue (the Super Deluxe Edition of each also contain DVDs of era-appropriate ephemera) make for some interesting listening—demo versions of "Wanderlust" and "The Pound Is Sinking", and a version of "Ebony" with just McCartney on electric piano. But those pale in comparison to the veritable alternate LP included in Pipes of Peace.

It's generally a meditative set, and only on the album's final track, "Exit the Acropolis", does Dozzy return to the sound with which he's most closely affiliated: Tapping out clicks like 808 hi-hats, and weaving three or four layers of mouth harp into enveloping contrapuntal pulses, it's the perfect approximation of Berghain-styled techno.

Shopping’s idea of choice doesn't mean one agenda at the expense of another, but establishing a welcoming space for all comers. It works because their naturally scatty, riotous spark means they could never sound neutral.

If Right was about the evil that men do, Intellect goes one bigger and asks why they do it. The answer, again and again, is rooted in hurt, pain, neglect, and disappointment. Intellect draws its energy from the panic of mortality.

Early fans of those raw recordings may be less than happy that she's given into the customary tropes of bubblegum pop. And Cara herself sounds a little unsure about leaving behind the walls she knew so well for ones that may end up holding her back.

Despite these more reflective moments, Zipper Down mostly sticks to the formula of the duo’s past three albums, frequently recycling structural and instrumental elements from past songs.

It plays like the natural next phase in Jackson's discography, which individually might be markers of their time but are ultimately ageless.

The problem is that Melidis’ ear for busy atmospherics and his desire to say something deep don’t quite mesh; this music is like that huge spinning wheel on "The Price Is Right"--efficient, colorful, deadening.

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.

The title of Age of Transparency acts as Ashin's commentary on the way we live our lives out in the open, and his music seeks to pull you through uneasy, emotional dregs with its every turn. But what once felt intimate has started to lean to over-exertion.

V is a perfectly capable record, one that showcases what we’ve come to expect--and in many cases, enjoy--from Williams and his band. Even so, you wonder where else they might have gone.

With Harmlessness, the World Is a Beautiful Place have accomplished a rare feat: a lofty, loaded album with the grace and momentum of a far leaner one.

While some tracks unwisely try to replicate the source material's dystopian energy, the best moments come when remixers go blissfully off-script.

Women's Rights is an album created entirely for the moment, which keeps the spirit lighthearted even when they're dealing with heavy-handed subject matter.

At 50 minutes, it's maybe a bit too long: when you're working with coiled energy, you can't afford to lose momentum. That said, when they're in the zone, there's not much like it.

Jay Rock’s concepts are braver and weirder here, his words more arresting and illustrative, but the major reinvention of 90059 is his delivery.

As The Light in You’s dichotomous halves prove, Mercury Rev are much better at being trippy than being groovy.

On Big Grams they hit a bit more of a stride.

New Bermuda, if anything, is more overwhelming than Sunbather.

C-ORE isn’t a Kingdom Come-like statement of return, but it’s also not a departure. As a collaborative work, it documents multiple experiences of life on the margins of America, of music—putting it all on blast.

The album’s language is intelligent but wholly straightforward, rarely witty and almost device-less; Simz always says exactly what she means.

While it’s not quite the same deep-dive into confectionary pop, Innocence shares both that group’s [ABBA] fondness for immediate melodies and their egalitarian spirit.

As a whole, Fetty Wap adopts the same self-assured stance: Fetty's formula definitely ain't broke, and he doesn't seem in a hurry to fix it.

What Press Color does is distill our collective excitement and unceasing wonder at a scene that’s almost four decades old.

1000 Days is a heartening record, a record that sees a young band picking up steam, playing with their influences more deftly than on their prior LPs, and bringing a thoughtful approach to old and well-traveled sounds.

Like its predecessors, Dodge and Burn can leave you wishing for more interaction between the two leads--the duets are always the highlight of any given Dead Weather record, the moment when all that simmering tension boils over. But Mosshart once again handles the heavy vocal lifting with menace to spare.

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 record is not only catchy as all hell, but it’s also sweet and openhearted and not one bit cynical.

Whether asking for reconciliation ("Clearest Blue", "Empty Threat") or demanding closure ("Never Ending Circles", "Leave a Trace"), Mayberry is judge, jury, and executioner, making convincing, carefully worded closing arguments set to casually devastate.

Adams' 1989, for all its sincerity and technical execution, is ultimately hollow because it's nothing but context.

Ultimately, Caracal just doesn’t feel much fun, and even its highs are nowhere near Settle’s polished bliss.

Although Good Sad Happy Bad is certainly the band’s least polished-sounding record, the combination of the scattered arrangements and Levi’s ruminations on sadness shrewdly underline the topsy-turvy feeling suggested by the title. Even with the band’s music messily chopped, looped, and jangled, the emotional messages always ring clear.

Even as its backdrop mutates from deep-house throbs to psych-rock guitar solos, Half Free always focuses your attention to where it should be: on Remy's radiant voice and vivid storytelling.

Off record, the band’s ideas about getting free are much more urgent, inventive, and contemporary than those psych clichés. Sadly, the band's stylistic conservatism has such a blurring effect on their records that any three tracks contain its total rewards.

While the execution has at times wavered over the years, Allas Sak finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that it has staked out over the past decade--performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever.

What’s remarkable here is how Fennesz dissolves into the bleak landscape, his signature sound rendered indistinct, a loss of identity that mirrors the album's main theme.

Even with Drake’s lazy punchlines, though, both he and Future are still great rap artists in their primes, and sometimes they figure things out just based on sheer talent. What the tape lacks in congruence, it makes up for in glimmering Metro Boomin production.

Music Complete certainly doesn’t do anything to diminish New Order’s formidable legacy, but it doesn’t necessarily expand upon it either. That being said, it still sounds like classic New Order.

His lyrics have grown more sophisticated. Humor was always part of his music, but on b’lieve i’m goin down it’s an animating principle.

There's nothing hectic about the listening experience; thanks to its relaxed pace and gently abstracted shapes, Wald is every bit as contemplative as the forest walks that inspired it.

At its best, Sleep feels like compositionally rigorous new age music. It’s a place in which you can settle for a while, with or without a pillow, and emerge only when you are ready to rejoin the restive world.

Yours, Dreamily draws spirited performances from its players, but works best as a one-off event.

Honeymoon just synthesizes ideas she's been vamping on from the beginning into a unified work. She figured where she was going long before she got there; with Honeymoon she has finally arrived.

While its ingredients are undeniably basic--all of the songs are built from a few period-appropriate keyboards and chugging drum machines, and that’s mostly it--what makes Cake Knife so consistently endearing is how effortless it all sounds.

Blackalicious is most effective when Gift of Gab’s knotty multisyllabic schemes unspool without decryption and nestle neatly in the nooks and crannies of Xcel’s soulful romps.

Have You In My Wilderness embraces the specific, rather than the eternal, and in her narrowed focus you can sense a palpable self-confidence and a hard-won precision.

The songs he summons from the synths offer proof that there were more songs left in him, but he's still digging in the same mine. Ad Infinitum might be the sound of an artist challenging himself, but it's not the sound of an artist challenging his listeners.

They seem to be stretching themselves on this record, searching to create something meaningful in an ugly world, realizing that there are limits to their subgenre-referencing sound and if they are to grow they’ve got to push themselves.

Don’t Lose This sounds like an excellent entry point for newcomers and casual fans, a gateway to exploring the Staples’ vast catalog.

While Savage Hills Ballroom awkwardly stretches to make universal points from Powers' personal distaste, his personal heartache results in the most truly resonant moments.

Though many of the songs convey images of earthiness and of dirt, there's a beauty that helps the collection soar above the ground.

[The] more chaotic and caustic Sun Coming Down, but the album’s relentless drive and uncompromising attitude constitute their own special kind of thrill.

In Beal’s attempt to exorcise old demons, the LP comes off way too moody and far too methodical to resonate long term.

He is most effective when he harshly distorts his vocals to create texture, and in the company of others he can serve as a welcome change of pace.

The moments when the music matches the intensity of Lydon’s singing are exhilarating.... Other mid-tempo tunes on What the World Needs Now don’t fare as well.

In Pagans in Vegas, humans and machines exist in a binary relationship. The reality is both more nuanced and fertile than that.

Artificial Dance is enough to make you rethink what you thought you knew about that era--and to make you wonder what else might be out there, just waiting to be rediscovered.

Ones and Sixes is all at once beautiful, ugly, tense, warm, inviting and repellent.

It's her mastery and attention that is ultimately what, I suspect, makes her work so consistently complex and worthwhile.

What the Isley Brothers achieved can't be contained in a single album nor can it be adequately summarized in a hits collection. They seized all the tumult, all the excitement, all of the sounds of their time and turned it into enduring commercial art whose endurance and depth is best appreciated in a set like this, where the actual records can be heard in their entirety.

So while Too is at times brave, that doesn't necessarily make it compelling.

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.