It’s neo-neo-noir music that draws you into its discomfort. If its vast expanses leave listeners vulnerable, at least there’s more space to let yourself roam.

A quick glance at a recent list of his favorite hip-hop records of all-time--rooted firmly in the golden and silver ages of hip-hop--reveals what inspires him most. When Raekwon leans into those sounds and themes, the rhymes that flow through him are evidence that this OG can still hang with the best of them.

Cohen’s songs can sound loose and jammy on a first listen. The delicate strummed figure that kicks off opener “Milk” quickly refracts into pinwheeling dual leads—both played by Cohen, uncannily evoking a live performance—before the band settles into a groove, anchored by Evan Backer’s sensitive bass playing and Daniel Swire’s crisp drums (Evan Burrows plays drums on two other tracks).

By stripping away everything extraneous, Piñeyro has further refined the sound of his invented genre. Deep reggaeton has never sounded deeper.

At this stage, they sound both comfortable and ambitious, settling into their familiar chemistry while adding new chapters to a story only they can write.

What prevents Berberian Sound Studio from being a genre exercise is the care taken to paper over the cracks, to find some common ground between droney, Popol Vuh-type material ("Valeria's Burial (Under the Fort)") and more visceral horror soundtrack work (the positively seething "The Game's Up").

As Liberty proceeds to its final act, the mood grows graver, the music more straightforward and streamlined but no less inventive.

An above-average production of reasonable merit.

Listeners looking for lyrical meaning will still be disappointed, searching in vain for hidden significance in these nonsensical love song lines. A word of advice: It's best to just accept his words as conduits for his dreamy voice, and give in to his charming tunes.

Some of the rougher edges and raw(er) emotion that got the twins noticed in the first place get ironed out a bit. And one side effect is that a few of the album's final tracks sound somewhat similar in tonality, tempo, and their vibe. But Ibeyi still find subtle ways to create shape.

The Clientele aren't vain or foolish enough to try rocking out for a whole album. And even the ersatz shit sounds lush as hell.

Fans of the group's previous work-- and of Solesides/Quannum-related material in general-- will find treats within The Craft's many folds, but its irregular terrain will likely prevent consensus about which tracks represent the peaks and which the troughs.

"Blissfield, MI", like most of Runners in the Nerved World, is such an effortlessly enjoyable listen that you can miss the tension and ambition emanating from a band that’s chasing greatness as an escape from being Midwestern also-rans.

There’s a roominess to the music, a jovial looseness in its rhythmic complexity, and something like celebration in its exploration of these grave subjects. Nothing on here sounds rehearsed or calculated.

Despite feeling like the work of a couple laying themselves bare, it's also music to get lost in, to block out the real world.

In this more restrained setting, Bodies of Water aren't quite as commanding or charming, but they compensate with more confident, nuanced songs that incorporate elements of showtunes, disco, and folk, plus mariachi fanfares and hallelujah choruses.

Four of Arrows’ best songs are ones Menne co-wrote, ones that keep the energy up and the ideas simple.

King Hannah’s music may initially conjure journeys down America’s lost highways, but they’re well on their way to building a world all their own.

The best thing an album like DNA Feelings can do to you is make you feel lost, and it does, frequently.

By-the-Numbers probably wouldn't have ever been played much on the radio in the past couple of decades, and its mood is more relaxing than fun, but it's a lovely set of covers that sound like they could've been originals

Without the hooks of their previous albums, never mind those of their better-known bands, the songs on III take a while to sink in. In return for the slow approach, Bad Books offer a serious body of work that can stand on its own, a testament to the friendship that brought them together in the first place.

With L’Aventura, he’s done a fine job of sticking the landing.

II is just about perfectly synchronized with the zeitgeist, and if it’s not a flawlessly executed record, it still seems capable of making the most out of its moment.

Overall, the combination of outward-looking and backward-leaning influences on What It Means to Be Left-Handed makes for a pleasing combination of slacker indie rock ennui and joyous, ravenous culture-borrowing.

Shepherd Head thrives when it leans into the elements that make it so notably different from the albums that came before it.

The delicately chained unison of the guitar and vocal melodies makes for a standout passage in a record that feels fresher and sharper than we've heard from Veirs in awhile, and perhaps serves as the dark flipside of children's record Tumble Bee.

A handful of the beats skew generic—closing tracks “The Way,” with its sleepy Wreckx-N-Effect sample, and “Race,” in particular, play like car-commercial music—but To What End avoids defaulting to a rapper spitting with a backing band.

Ballad of a Tryhard is a relatively straightforward collection of orchestral pop, bursting with hooks. Like the heartfelt folk songs of Amen Dunes’ Love, it is a grand step towards traditional songcraft.

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.

Shygirl’s ability to cook cutesy, juvenile references into grown and sexy club candy shines on “Wifey Riddim.” Its vintage lunchroom table production, evoking Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss” or Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” gets a refreshing update with the addition of hip-rocking Jersey club breakdowns.

Poring through hardball's rich history with the exhaustiveness of true geeks but the wit and empathy of born songwriters, Wynn and McCaughey repeatedly manage to draw effortless metaphorical lines between baseball and life.

The rest of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack consists of Rahman's evocative score, which meshes pounding technoid percussive-heavy pieces (such as "Riots" or "Mausam And Escape") and slightly less forceful cues (such as "Ringa Ringa"), some of which seem designed to bring to mind specific moments in the film, some to evoke more general emotions.

Their new, self-titled album bears all the hallmarks of classic Duster records: plodding drums, skeletal basslines, and guitar work that sparkles in the darkness like dew on a cobweb.

Most Droogs inclusions are fairly frivolous affairs lyrically--anthems of lust, celebrations of rocking out--but Third World War anticipate punk themes with the proletarian plaint and Strummer-like sandpaper vocals of “Working Class Man.” Hustler forge a link between the Faces and Cockney Rejects with “Get Outta My ’Ouse,” which is like Magic’s “Rude” recast as pub boogie.

Invisible Life is the clearest and most dynamic Helado Negro record to date.

Pretty Little Head is better than her debut. It's less showy, more confident, tighter, lacking antics-- it's confounding stylistically, just as her debut was, but less an act of throwing ideas at the wall.

It’s tempting to speculate that there are more versions like that out there, just waiting to be discovered. Blackbox Life Recorder, the EP, might seem relatively modest, but the black box that is Aphex Twin’s extended universe remains delightfully unfathomable.

Mutoid Man may not be the resurrection of Cave In’s on-again-off-again majesty, but it savagely boils down Brodsky’s brainy ambition to a primal scream.

Hopefully, Rolling Blackouts marks the moment in the Go! Team's career where the idea of moving forward becomes less of a literal concept and more an artistic one.

Sirens’ unrelenting nervous abstraction can be difficult to take over 14 songs, but perhaps that’s the point.

Sadly, I Guess Sometimes... too often falls into the typical pitfalls of edge-of-millennium electronic music. Over the course of its seemingly infinite 65-minute runtime, Magnétophone's formula rarely varies, and many of the songs blur together.

Jardín represents a soft rebuke to the star--as well as a rich, buffed debut from an adept young artist.

Lyrics like those [in 'Whiteboy'] make up for the clunkers, but more importantly, the music itself sounds shockingly vibrant for a band only recently taken off ice.

Rembo is an album that prizes function as much as idiosyncrasy; much like Differ-Ent’s It’s Good To Be Differ-Ent, the yearning for experimentation is always kept in check by an intuitive appreciation for what dancers desire. It’s a talent to be cherished.

Unlike a lot of ambient-leaning electronic music, this doesn’t necessarily work as background listening: Its moods are too mercurial, its changes too nuanced. You need to be paying attention to really appreciate the subtle mutations in his sound, yet there’s also something about his queasy tones and grizzled frequencies that keep the listener at arm’s length, emotionally speaking.

Barnes seems playfully aware that his lyrics are Gordian knots, impossible for even the most devoted Of Montreal fan (including, possibly, himself) to untangle completely. And yet there are moments of clarity on Lousy with Sylvianbriar that prove Barnes is both his own harshest judge and most lenient jury.

Quever has extended his transition into dreamy territory really well.

Free Humans is a passionate rebuke to both fatalism and futurism. It’s the sound of four cosmic souls resolutely staying put—not wanderers but wonderers, still in love with their own bizarre planet, and baffled by the senselessness of leaving it behind.

And yet as much as Everything Was Forever consolidates the band’s strengths, it also blurs the traditional contrast between Sea Power’s principal songwriters.

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.

The impulse to cast off cultural standards dictating how music should sound dominates IRISIRI, which seems most interested in articulating femininity outside the constraints of patriarchal expectations.

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.

God Said No stands apart from Apollo’s previous releases not only because of its genre experimentation and its stickier choruses, but for its willingness to get ugly.

Mostly there's a strong sense of discovery, of someone attempting to make sense of their surroundings, with Brooks cast as a voyager trampling through vast stretches of the British countryside, crisp leaves crinkling underfoot as he expertly funnels everything he sees and feels into song.

Their portentous crescendos and surges of Jewish klezmer music set the pace, making post-rock sound improbably carnivalesque. That none of their experiments feel gimmicky speaks to a diverse and inquisitive musicianship.

Welcome Back to Milk scans as an overhaul of its protagonist’s romantic history, a poised reassessment of domestic situations that seemed okay at the time, but maybe weren’t the best, after all. Wherever her gaze turns, Houghton’s conviction is lethal.

Some of these big numbers, however, rely on cheesy tropes that lack a degree of empathy. ... That’s not to say that Bird isn’t powerful in more vulnerable moments.

The Gold Fire Sessions combines Santigold’s musical past with a passion for spontaneous experimentation. It plays like a distillation of joy.

For the first time in a while, it sounds like they’re listening to what’s happening in clubland and asking themselves not what they can poach for the charts, but what they can bring to the table.

Songcraft is still their priority, and their moments of indulgence are not without self-awareness or criticism.

Set to music that looks toward new horizons, Olympic Girls is a gentle study into freedom’s precariousness. The quest can be exhausting and frustrating, but, here, Tiny Ruins relish its brief embrace.

Growing more staged, warier, and a little less playful with age, Stars don't quite match the wily rush of "Set Yourself on Fire" here.

Illusion of Time is a confidently relaxed listen: Created in a pressure-free situation by two artists with no road map and nothing in particular to prove, it is expansive in scope, charmingly rough around the edges, and brimming with possibility.

She isn’t breaking ground in pop by disregarding its supposed borders. But where post-genre stream-baiters pull their numbers by anesthetizing distinctive sounds, King Princess pulls hers by playing up their contrasts.

It's a huge headfirst leap into the unknown for Kidwell, and more often than not, he sounds pretty lost. But it's an encouraging kind of lost, and the scenery is often breathtaking when it's not so jarring.

Carla dal Forno is willing to provoke listeners on a number of levels without spoon-feeding them. With You Know What It’s Like, she manages to do so on her own terms, in a way that feels both distant and inviting and rewards the listener’s willingness to sit with the ambiguity in between.

An unexpectedly varied and satisfying listen.

For a record this simple and, even at its punchiest, seductively serene, it might seem far-fetched to compliment it for being daring. But considering its own orbit--and her eschewing lo-fi recording techniques--Rose cuts right to the chase, making lean, elegant music that practically glows in the face of exceptional fuss.

Von Schleicher doesn’t necessarily need to be transparent; more often than not, teasing out the hidden messages that lie beneath her impressionistic songwriting is genuinely enjoyable. Calling one’s pain by name can be terrifying, and she has a great talent for subtlety. Still, Consummation is at its most transfixing when it is at its most legible.

It's a dense, patient work that could only have been made by someone who's done this before.

Mvula's music hearkens back to an earlier era than that of her many British contemporaries: She hovers on the edge of pop, but the majority of her songs are too reserved to fully break through.

On Sorry I Haven’t Called, which was co-produced by Rostam, Tamko changes shape once more, resulting in bright and dewy electro-pop songs with more rhythmic dimension.

The songs are decent, the singing is stunning.

Only swatches of the lyrics are intelligible ("Look at me," "Feast your eyes," "All is yours") but that's part of the enchantment of magic: A fleeting glimpse of something that might have been transcendent, leaving our minds to fill in what we didn't quite see.

Hunx's punk rock versatility has made Street Punk his most through-and-through entertaining full-length to date.

For the most part, Body of Song offers the expected mix of rock tracks and balladry that one would expect from a Bob Mould solo record.

Don't Be a Stranger, American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel's best record since 2001's The Invisible Man.

By paring down and zooming in, it’s the most wide awake their living music has felt in years.

Whether it was intended or not, White's personality sometimes overwhelms, and makes Consolers sound like a little sibling to Icky Thump--a little less unique, certainly, but another loose, comfortable affirmation of what they do well.

Konstellaatio fills a lot of room, then, with very little range. But what’s there is excellent and, for Vainio, a striking and surprising contribution to a scene that’s watched him work for at least two decades.

Together, this trio excels not just at the expected but also delights in the quest to find a common vernacular amid multiple musical languages. That’s the challenge and the charm of Shade Themes from Kairos, a record that minds borders only long enough to maneuver around them.

Nothing here sounds like it's been fully thought out or planned, and Songbird sounds all the better for it.

Tiga's still not a dancefloor chameleon like Basement Jaxx and he's not yet as pop-oriented and clever as say, the Pet Shop Boys, but Ciao! at least sees him glancing in those directions.

Sling may be an album concerned with time, fears of obsolescence instilled by a vampiric music industry. But it also finds exuberance in stillness, a kind of gentle unburdening.

Golden Retriever has carved a niche that’s not strictly indebted to post-Berlin School ambient or to the more organic work of new age composers but rather snags details from both aesthetics.

The album may be scattershot, but perhaps that doesn't matter so much when it's delivered out the barrel of a 12-gauge.

Parades' recipe--soft verse, big chant, heavenly "aaaaaaaaa", elliptical, Nordic orchestrations, stir--is clever to avoid repetition but extremely taxing.

Bruner is still getting tipsy and pondering what waits for us in the beyond. There’s growth and acceptance in that wonder—the title suggests as much— but not necessarily in the songwriting. The album lacks the anchoring power of a full-bodied jam like “Them Changes,” “Heartbreaks + Setbacks,” or even his 2011 George Duke cover “For Love I Come,” leaving us lost inside Bruner’s mind. hat isn’t always a bad place to be.

On I Don’t Run, the Madrid quartet wade through these messy feelings with confidence and exuberance to spare, taking us on a pleasure cruise through choppy waters.

When tested to come up with his most insightful work and justify his missteps, he delivers compelling alternate truths. Wins and Losses shows the rap game is much harder to score than one might think.

While Cosentino is anxious to figure out who she’s become, Fade Away points to how strong she’s been all along.

Even at their most emphatic, Au Suisse’s songs don’t so much explode as unfurl—gracefully, regally, like pennants announcing the anointed heirs to a long tradition of lush, emotive synth-pop: a little dandyish, at times even a little absurd, but still dazzling in their silken finery.

While the band has a very developed sense of texture and sound, though, they rather desperately need to work on changing things up a bit more with regard to the songs themselves.

By the end of Vessel of Love, it is apparent that an interest in reggae is far from the only thing Cook learned from Ari Up, or the most important thing. She learned to find her voice and make it heard.

Borders functions as a gateway between traditionalist dance forms and the artier end of the electronic-production universe. It also offers new ways of understanding both by reflecting each against the other.

At times, bursts of velocity push the group toward a kind of transcendence, particularly when the spiky “Everybody Dies” is chased by the galvanizing gallop of “Stuck in a Dream.” The moments of speed also lend a sense of urgency to McCaughan’s nagging anxiety, which complements the barbed melodies and gnarled chords; every element suggests that he’s searching for a way outside of his head.

Garden feels like a refinement of the same sound [on 2019’s Weeping Choir], pulling them to greater, if somewhat less accessible, heights.

The confident diversity of My Love Is Cool indicates a band who have their own thing all figured out, who shouldn't veer from their own strange path to live up to outdated narratives that dictate what a young British band should be.