Even if the emotional intent often feels recycled from other records, Tamer Animals is a record that takes you places.

Here, and on the album’s other highlights, the air of mercantile anonymity feels generous rather than cynical, the music as anxious to accommodate its imagined audience.

Frequently gorgeous but over-lubed, the album forges soundscapes so lush they're almost narcotic.

This World Is Going to Ruin You cannot simply be pegged as a lateral move or a leveling up: It explodes Vein.fm’s sound into seemingly dozens of different directions.

The lyrics are wrung out with the same shaved-down discipline as the music, where nothing ever topples over into over-wrought emoting. Despite this rigid adherence to restraint, much of this material proves to be emotionally affecting.

I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone curls into dark corners, exploring the depths of desperation and self-loathing that Chastity Belt only hinted at on their last two albums.

Thomson's lyrics are at once Single Mothers' main attraction and--for some listeners--their presumptive sticking point.

While unassuming on paper, there’s something about Possible Humans’ music that sticks; there are hooks hidden in these songs, obscured by Macfarlane’s production but present enough that you might hum them after even a passive listen.

Positions doesn’t broaden Grande’s sound the way her past few albums have, and it isn’t buoyed by a heroic anthem, like “no tears left to cry,” or guided by a specific mission, like how “thank u, next” honored her relationship history. The record resonates partly because it doesn’t weld grand statements out of living with trauma; it narrows in on the wobbly path of pleading with yourself, the begging and bargaining of healing.

Ultimately, the album functions as an offering, an effort to commune with the listener despite the limitations of language and the specificity of her pain.

Leaner and more direct than its predecessor, "Hocus Pocus," few fans will be disappointed with Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds.

Candy defile hardcore’s typical structures with elements of industrial techno and noise. While their spewed condemnations of society feel expected, Candy occasionally wade into the muck of lust. It is their love songs that feel the most extreme.

Even if Folila is less surprising than the two albums that came before it, it still makes me look forward to seeing where they'll take this fusion next.

This is the band's most beautiful record, an expertly arranged blend of their acoustic old school country augmented by pedal steel guitar and bowed saws and sometimes colored by elements of mariachi, gospel, and rural folk.

The wider canvas and broadened palette reveal the complex human emotions within War’s music, resulting in a breakup record that’s emotionally resonant and curiously hopeful.

Like the best bands of the C86 era, the Drums craft these songs by taking a basic template and perfecting it.

It’s this unabashed ambition that makes You Should Be Here resonate long after one has internalized its motivational urges ("Can't nobody love somebody that do not love themselves") and tender observations on the mechanics of relationships (see the wistful "Unconditional").

Drug Church’s music has always felt like an extension of their wider community, and nods to peers and influences dot Hygiene’s landscape.

No Waves stands as a memorable document on its own and a hopeful harbinger for new material to come.

There are clichés, and there are exalted clichés, and Dee Dee at her best reminds you of this distinction.

While Twerp Verse offers no tune as stick-like-glue as Foil Deer’s “The Graduates” or Major Arcana’s “Plough” it offers compensatory pleasures.

And that's the odd thing about this collection: If it provides people with a bridge into appreciating Ono's work, it won't be by making it more accessible.

Holley’s vocals knock Broken Mirror half a stride out of Davis’ considerable shadow, the singer’s unique charm forging something genuinely new out of White’s inspired but retrospective musical work. Broken Mirror is a tribute to risk-taking and unlikely musical chemistry, an improbably fruitful fusion of unstable elements.

In A Dream is Maclean and Whang's most fruitful, balanced partnership, and if it fails to truly make a star out of either of them, it cements them as the kind of ever-evolving collaboration DFA was built on.

With Best Troubador, Oldham reflects the format’s most expressive tendencies—to filter an artist’s work through the lens of your fandom. Through these songs, Oldham’s appreciation for Haggard seems to stem less from his innovation within the genre than for his patient evolution and longevity.

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.

Meek has made the move from mixtapes to the majors with a solid vision.

Justin Vernon sings on three songs, “Flood,” “Keep Away,” and “Glow,” and his voice pairs well with Saleh’s falsetto while transporting him into Saleh’s world. .... Of Earth & Wires’ emotional journey takes shape through these intentional collaborations and musical references.

LP is efficient, prickly, and noticeable, or not much like modern techno at all. That he is operating like this at the same time many others are is a boon, for us, so long as he keeps his blinders on.

Although it’s replete with period photos and memorabilia, 50 Years of De-Evolution doesn’t quite capture the thrilling sense of otherness Devo conveyed at their peak. Heard within the vacuum of their own catalog, Devo seem more eccentric than revolutionary.

Part of Brewis’ duty in Field Music was to keep them from veering over the edge into too busy AOR prog, and he uses that same keen ear to keep Old Fears from becoming too cute or kitsch with the tweed-funk.

Without an overarching conceit like Once I Was an Eagle, Short Movie comes off sounding like a transition record, a short movie in the sense that it’s a prelude to something bigger.

While it doesn’t have quite the artistic heft of his self-titled album, the bright, punched-out shapes are more fun to listen to, with an emotional accessibility that makes me imagine a kind of post-rave Eluvium.

June tends to write in easy, sly rhyme schemes reminiscent of the late John Prine, whom she eulogized last April with a solo cover of “In Spite of Ourselves,” the famous duet that they performed while touring together in 2018. For every moment when this style borders on hokey, there are others when it feels complete in its Prine-like knack for waiting until the very last word to earn the listener’s smirk.

Wanderer drags just the tiniest bit. It speaks softly from the echoes of the best Cat Power moments, which means it doesn’t ice-pick you in the center of your most treasured insecurities the way some of her most celebrated music has.

Romantiq doesn’t dispose of the past. It just situates old habits amid a more vibrant and fully realized present.

At just over 40 minutes, Beautiful Rewind is an effortless listen, but when it wanders it feels like a bauble, one from an artist from whom we are accustomed to receiving richer gifts.

Book of Changes is refreshingly exposed and intimate, as if Blakeslee has found a lingua franca for writing when it really matters.

Tracking the spiritual crossroads of hip-hop, reggae, soul, and flamenco, Joyful Rebellion stirs each of those ingredients into an album that, at the very least, deserves acclaim for blending classic and often forgotten Afro-sounds into 04's hip-hop scene.

While his lush harmonies are occasionally quite striking (as on the slow-motion Fleet Foxes pastiche “Butterflies From Monaco”), this tendency leaves lethargic material like “Somerville Demo” feeling especially listless. On an album as rich with the spirit of teenage discovery as Jules, these are forgivable sins.

Crazy Itch Radio isn't a bad album by any means; it just doesn't scream "best album of the year" from the moment you put it on.

She doesn’t shy away from political protest, but she’s careful to couch her dissent in the personal and the compassionate.

Highway Songs ultimately feels hopeful rather than weary, upbeat rather than defeated.

The result is one of the most structured, deliberate releases of Frisell’s career, a diaristic set that no one will ever mistake for a genre study.

More than his previous records, Lay Low focuses on the clarity that arrives with age and time. You can hear the proof in Chacon’s songwriting, which has sharpened to an impressively minimalist degree.

With fleet-footed beats, breezy woodwinds, and impassioned lines in Yoruba, Fireboy invites the world to the lively sounds of his hometown.

It may not be an extreme reworking of song forms or a sudden return to action, perhaps simply another chapter in the various indulgences he enjoys, but in numerous ways, The Jazz Age is Ferry's most radical work yet.

The pleasure of the people playing this music is obvious and infectious, but it’s hard to shake the idea that despite their effectiveness, the hardest-charging songs here feel incomplete, that the film score’s mandate not to draw too much attention to itself hampers the songs’ ability to fully bloom on their own terms.

The Man With the Iron Fists OST is a strong album and certainly the best Wu-affiliated product since Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II, but it never strives to be awesome. And for a RZA project, that means it can't be great either.

Bratten has made an expertly produced, emotionally honest record that defies genre and expectation.

One wouldn't expect Gibson's latest to bowl over any audiophile chasing the wow!-factor, but for the patient, contemplative listener, La Grande-- much like the campfire depicted on its cover-- is a record worth warming to.

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

Even if it can’t measure up to Spirit, Band of Brothers is still a showcase for what Nelson does best.

Twelve Reasons is generous comfort food for Ghost's fanbase, a group slowly being whittled away by time and creeping indifference.

One True Vine tarries too long in doubt before finally breaking that dour spell and inviting the listener in on the celebration.

Though Dej's talent is walking both sides of that divide, she's a strong enough singer and rapper that it's great hearing her not stuck on instrumentals that straddle the genre fence.

If space-rock as a whole is a role-playing game, one in which its players imagine having front-row seats for the heat-death of the universe, then Deep Trip is the one of most advanced vehicles yet designed to take them there.

Largely forgoing the cinematic flair of Simz’s previous records, James surrounds her voice with unfussy arrangements that draw from jazz, Afrobeat, and rock. It’s a difficult balance but they manage, more or less.

Forgoing the bitterness that made 2006's What Are You On sound so tinny and doomed, We Live in Rented Rooms, despite its endtimes stoicism, may be Cornog's highest-fi album to date.

Throughout Time Makes Nothing Happen, Gengras toys with the tropes of electronic dance music (repetition, meter, gridded quantization), only to gradually veer off into unkempt wilderness.

The album sometimes sounds slightly undercooked, like a set of production sketches awaiting further embellishment. And the debt it owes to its influences dilutes any shock of the new. But it takes skill and a degree of daring to riff on an album as monumental as Loveless

Hornsby plays with elegance, at ease with both his traces of hipness and essential squareness. It's a confidence that arrives with both comfort and age and it's what unifies all the disparate elements of Absolute Zero, shaping the album into a testament to the full range of Hornsby’s gifts.

For all its wow factor, No Horizon has less replay value than most Wye Oak releases. Because of those choral arrangements, it burns bright but fast—a little bit of coloratura goes a long way, and these songs don’t skimp on it.

Even when Helioscope offers a more traditionally post-rock track, such as "The Trap", Vessels' way with arrangements and sonics produces something refreshingly out of the ordinary.

Transmutation is the enduring lesson of Kenney’s small catalogue so far: Turn life’s impasses into empathetic rock songs, little anthems for overcoming self-renewing heartache and exhaustion and anxiety. On Sucker’s Lunch, Kenney gets closer to the core of that idea than ever before thanks to sharper writing, stronger hooks, a versatile voice, and a continued partnership with friends who allow her to try new approaches.

Lantern’s risk-taking is daring and giddy, but its favored mode, and Hudson Mohawke’s best, is hooky, crowded, rap-conscious electropop.

The smartly paced set switchbacks between minimalist drum tracks and deeper, more atmospheric house, and it climaxes with two previously unreleased Audion cuts and an interlude.

The takeaway here is that, two albums in, Cold Specks have the graceful part down pat--but there’s room for more expulsion.

Miller was a natural melodicist, a captivating vocalist, and an evocative songwriter, all of which are here on display. It’s a mood piece, and the mood is sweet and sedate.

The BQE is probably best classified as an unusually successful vanity project, as well as evidence of Stevens' restless creativity.

There is no doubt Peace Is the Mission will suffer some criticism from dancehall purists, those exhausted by EDM and people who hate Diplo (a hate that he has certainly worked overtime to earn), but their maturation is palpable across the album's nine tracks.

Case and Newman trade lines, finish each other’s thoughts, reveal the unspoken meanings of the songs; they’re old friends who find sustenance in each other’s presence. The essential humanity at the heart of this relationship offsets the dread that flows throughout In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, and gently leads the record toward something resembling hope.

Simpson can’t quite sustain a double album in this style, and Cuttin’ Grass loses some steam toward the end. However, there are more than enough bracing moments here to make you wonder what Volume 2 will sound like, especially if it’s all those ’80s covers he promised his wife.

Heavy Rain is a surprisingly inspired piece of late-period dabbling from a dub master.

The riffs are glam-nasty, the lyrics sublimely knuckleheaded, the basslines nimble and bombastic, the mood frivolous and fun and unabashedly corny.

Armonico casts the molten steel of meaningless syllables into machine-gun bursts, sonar echoes, radioactive dirges, and girl-group coos of the group's best work.

To say one of these albums is better than the other is basically beside the point-- anyone who buys one will certainly want the other, and both are fairly comparable as far as quality is concerned, anyway.

Fast-Moving Clouds benefits immensely from its mid-fi, almost homemade sound, which lends weight to her inventive pop flourishes.

With Centipede Hz, Animal Collective have delivered a cluttered, abrasive album that confirms their naysayers' exaggerated perceptions of the band. But even a patchy Animal Collective album yields several exceptional songs.

This mannered, understated virtuosity permeates Collett's music, just like it did the Band's.

At times charming, oddly affecting, and certainly promising but understandably something less than life changing.

Porcelain Raft borrows liberally from both the shoegaze and dream-pop playbooks, and so we get layers of sonic gauze shot through with delicately strummed acoustic guitar patterns and Remiddi's reedy, rather androgynous voice.

On first listen, his second album as Death Vessel may seem passive, even flat-- just competent, non-descript folk-rock. Give it time, though, and Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us proves more intriguing.

Heart On does reveal a slightly maturing sense of pop songcraft from Hughes and Homme.

There’s a newfound focus that was missing even on Salvia Plath’s The Bardo Story and Silk Rhodes’ self-titled.

Full of charm, panache, and eccentric raw power, Knuckleball Express makes good on his promise to make something real.

Sylvian is front-and-center on every song, which is good because he provides the only rhythmic and melodic stability, as the instrumentals dart and scratch and feedback around him.

Man-Made ultimately sounds exactly like you'd expect a Teenage Fanclub album to sound, but with just enough extra to make it feel new again.

With DSVII, the series evolves into a space for tinkering, where Gonzalez can embrace different influences. With neither someone else’s vision nor any cohesive album statement to fulfill, he reverts to maximalism, melding his two musical identities—synth-pop showman, serious composer for other mediums—to become the director of his own electronic daydreams.

On We Fall, Wiggs replicates the continuous momentum of the environment through sound, and she leaves just enough room on the rock to join in her wonderment.

Save for a digital flourish or two on the pop songs that make up much of the film’s back half, there’s very little here that would’ve sounded out of place on blockbuster film soundtracks of decades past. At its peaks, the album delivers on the promise of its star-wattage with some of the most affecting and emotionally overwhelming pop songs of the year.

Powers narrates these vignettes from a distant storyteller’s perspective, and a gap emerges between his authorial point of view and the intimacy of the home video material. This dissonance is certainly haunting, but when the album’s final track arrives in a montage of the VHS clips strung together over heartfelt piano, its affecting ambience feels somewhat abrupt. But the record’s final moments remind us that these songs still spring from a singular voice.

It’s all gleaming and immaculate from a distance, sharp and shattered if you get too close.

That split between sound and spirit lends another layer to the forlorn songs she’s been singing her whole career. In the genteel melodies and floating arrangements, she suggests that it’s still possible to find meaning when you’re weighed down by these feelings.

Escapades is entirely in line with this gleeful approach, guilelessly reaching beyond musical norms to seek out ecstasy in the patently absurd.

The script might contain plenty of familiar elements, but they're ably, and occasionally superbly, shuffled and recast.

Stellastarr's bold, cinematic sprawl demands a certain kind of tolerance, and might require a few listens before you're able to fully adjust to its dramatics, but Christensen is, in the end, an oddly convincing leader, and, if nothing else, you'll at least be stuck to your headphones trying to guess his next move.

Pete Rock and Smoke DZA have forged something we still need, too: a great, modest New York rap album of concrete beats and blood-in-your-mouth bars.