Acquiesce always goes deeper rather than bigger. TALsounds has always been an inwardly focused project by nature, but these songs feel uniquely designed to pull you into them. The album grows darker in its second half, but there’s a warmth and safety there just like the dimly lit shot of the bedside table on its cover.

The result is songs that often feel anthologized, and without interstitial dialog or music it’s not always clear how the stories they tell relate to one another as part of the narrative arc that will, presumably, someday underpin a stage show. All the same, Mann has created compelling, complex sketches of characters who are more than the cliches of mental illness that so often appear in popular culture.

Palomo’s previous albums sounded like the ghosts of ’80s memories. On World of Hassle he offers some unforgettable nights of his own.

Quantum Baby is a lean and muscular eight-song accompaniment to 2023’s BB/Ang3l that asserts itself with the insistence of manicured nails tapping on a hard surface.

Barring a couple of forgettable, filler-feeling tracks like "Don't You Think I Know?", the biggest drawback of Does It Again is the production. It doesn't sound bad, but the washed-out reverb and pushed-to-the-front keyboard creates a distance that the band sounds like they are constantly fighting to push through.

Show Me How You Disappear is bigger, brighter, cleaner, more ambitious than anything she’s done.

All the masks and cameos aside, this still feels like a Damon Albarn solo project, a place for him to treat the studio like the welcoming arms of oblivion, and for us to join him.

Fans of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will no doubt find Loose Fur an indispensable companion piece, as much of the music found here occupies roughly the same static-frosted moonscape as "Radio Cure".

Hear most of these songs a few times and you'll feel like you've known them all your life.

Love and Its Opposite plays more like a conventional singer-songwriter album. The shift in gears isn't unwelcome: Thorn, as always, exercises that smoky voice to great effect.

This is Field Music at their most baroque-- a record of sweetly melodic miniatures that coalesce into form only long enough to tumble into the next meticulously designed song suite.... [Yet] Plumb is a little too fussy. Great hooks rise up, but are quickly abandoned in the rush to the next good idea.

Like that high-pitched whistle that SonicScreens play outside corner shops, there'll come a time when what DZ Deathrays are doing no longer resonates with you. But for now, it's more than worth going deaf to.

If Fleetwood Mac shimmered more, rocked less and were organic without being raw, that might suggest the level of evocative language and romance The Lone Bellow exudes.

With Basar, they have assembled a vast glossary of fresh sounds, considerably enriching the language of contemporary dance music in the process.

The first third is playful if not quite memorable. ... But as “N” swoops down, with its slow, throbbing bassline, primitive drum machine pattern, echoing chimes, and flecks of flamenco guitar, you wonder if Lissvik might have pulled a fast one and gone back into an old hard drive to plunder some old Studio session, so dead-on is the sound.

Idle No More, released in 2013, was his first real adult album, with a real U.S. label and a sound that buffed away some of the rough edges but maintained that sense of the ridiculous. That charisma comes through on Murderburgers, his debut solo record and the first on his own Khannibalism Records (an imprint of Ernest Jenning Co.), although it’s more muted and even more mature.

As an album, PITH begins to drag towards the end, closing with a track rightfully called “Flatness.” But as a series of singles, its meld of ’90s grunge and early-’00s noise is delightfully strange.

The record’s strongest moments originate in its audacity rather than precision: Desert Window opens up the ambient ideas she’s perfected in the past into riskier, roomier territory.

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will--doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.

The band sounds something like 4AD's entire catalogue being chopped up and fed through a meat-grinder.

Behind his accented murmurs, Woolhouse fills out Songs with bolder strokes than the pale production of Life After Defo.

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

What a pity, then, to find the band more or less dozing off after their spectacular opening tantrum, drifting aimlessly in a space-rock black hole for the bulk of Interiors.

Forever misses some of Ventilation’s bite, even if the gentler tones are fitting given the new album’s themes.

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

The soundtrack album Les Revenants contains not a shred of the terror Mogwai is capable of wreaking, and it works terrifically--it rarely comes off overly dramatic or leading, and matches the unsettling feel of the show.

The 2015 tape may have felt more revolutionary as a shift no one saw coming, but musically, BEASTMODE 2 has the edge. And in its best moments, the unknowable rapper lays his cards on the table, vulnerable in a way he’s never been before.

The record plays quick and dirty, with uncharacteristically crunchy production value and lo-fi aesthetics. ... Lyrically, LAS QUE NO IBAN A SALIR mostly sticks to Bad Bunny’s trademark sex flexes and party jams. But even in tossed-off mixtape verses, he retains a goofy charm.

The lust, greed, excess, and anxiety that they grappled with on PAPOTA are still there, but this time, the atmosphere doesn’t feel as friendly or accessible. Splayed out across Bulgarian folk music, trance beats, bruxaria atmospheres, samba, and even bits of nueva ola, Free Spirits feels dialed all the way up.

While Liminal is a testament to the Acid’s breadth of vision and production prowess--seamlessly incorporating everything from subterranean techno and avant-R&B to proggy sci-fi soundscapes and sad-bastard bedroom folk--its uniformly predictable pacing, with every song painstakingly built up from a pause to a pulse, grows wearing over a 51-minute stretch.

No envelopes are pushed on the quartet's latest, The Lucky Ones. But there's an increase in firepower that makes it their best effort in a while.

Roots and Crowns is bluesy and soulful without reverting to revivalist schtick, and experimental without relying on blind cut-and-pasting.

Portions of Shame, Shame might prove to be just a little too effervescent--certainly not a bad thing for a band with a track record that usually ran contrary. The important thing is that these songs hit more than they miss, occasionally with shimmering resolve and a couple of really big choruses to back it all up, often quite memorably.

Whichever end of her spectrum Lee swings toward--the harshly noisy or the hypnotically meditative--her sound always commands attention, making Ghil the biggest surprise in a career already full of them.

As with any piece of music that ebbs and flows this forcefully, you should listen to it loudly, and try to get swept away by it.

While it doesn’t break much new musical ground, and plays against Future Islands’ reputation for excess, The Far Field’s breathtaking sorrow is transformative.

The beauty of Death Lust lies in how Williams makes them all sound like part of the same continuum of disaffection, and how he approaches each mode with a pop songwriter’s ear for concision. Chastity's debut full-length is a brief album, with 10 songs clocking in at 31 minutes total, but the terrain it covers is vast.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me captures the messy, confusing headspace that precedes future growth.

A vibrant living record whose nervy, protean spirit pushes it miles beyond mere alt-rock radio nostalgia.

Underneath all the fuzz, there’s always been pop sensibility at work; Lightning Bolt riffs have been catchy in their own warped way since Ride the Skies. But at points, they allow those instincts to come into startling focus.

For every circuit-overloading workout like “Copy of A” and “Disappointed”, there are a number of tracks where Reznor reverts to the teeth-gnashing angst of old without the pig-marching blitzkriegs to back it up, applying undue pressure on the the songs’ brittle structures.

Choir of Young Believers have created a singular sonic world all their own.

He’s constantly halving the distance to his target, getting closer but not quite getting there. But those infinitesimal improvements on Hell Below--indeed, the very places where it remains static--show, in some ways, what that Ideal Album might look like.

It’s wish fulfillment as transportative as any of the prog fantasies White Reaper’s idols put to tape. On You Deserve Love, the risk and rewards are lower: White Reaper aspire to be a very good American band.

The band’s tight, canny songwriting is so winsome on most of the album that weaker tracks, or trite phrases like “I’ll always be addicted to your energy” on the otherwise charming “Roundabout,” momentarily break the spell.

The songs that follow range in scope from atmospheric brooding on “Blue Vapor” to hyper-specific autobiography on “Said Goodbye to That Car.”

The album as a whole is moderately enjoyable while it's on, but that's about it.

It is a mostly great show, though not all dynamite.

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.

Stranger Fruit is an uneven record. But by mixing genres and squaring them against ancient issues that remain tragically current, these songs grapple with past, present, and the possibility of the future by asking two necessary questions: How can art let us understand the problems we’ve overlooked or misunderstood? And how can we begin to fix them?

There's more to diskJokke than bulletproof connections; his spacey electro-disco is technically impressive and effortlessly appealing.

On disc, Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a bland, bluesy celebration you can afford to miss.

The Beets' newfound focus on recording quality could have easily highlighted shortcomings, but instead, the band found a way to broaden its sound by recruiting a member who exponentially adds to its worth.

Forsaking the earthier vibe of later Trux records like Veterans of Disorder and Pound for Pound, White Stuff feels like an extension of Herrema’s work with Black Bananas, thriving on the tension between old-school authenticity and modernist manipulations.

This is very comfortable music, but Meek threads strange disturbances into its weave. Residing alongside the blankets and stars and blue jays of his lyric sheet are darker things—faces forming on the ceiling, broken tongues, swimming pools full of turpentine.

This is a huge, sturdy record, built for arenas and it's richly and carefully enough constructed to endure the extensive exposure Welch's heartache is going to get over the course of this summer.

Still curious, still appraising, Bird offers an intellect remarkably porous to change.

The record mixes feelings of protection and safety with the tug of adventure and wraps it in compulsively listenable music that explodes at just the right moments.

While the songs on New don’t have the historical import or epic ambition of his best-known work, they also don’t have the same kind of flaws.

The communal, freewheeling looseness is one of the album's greatest assets, as you feel as if you were a party to the making of the record in Eagle Bay, too.

Like Power's best work, Dumb Flesh moves you when it literally moves you.

With 12 songs of nearly equal tone, volume, and length, the nearly hour-long As You Please becomes its own endurance test. When As You Please is taken in smaller chunks, the minor variations between the songs where Citizen churn and the ones where they steamroll ever forward become more discernible.

On the one hand, it is an empowering statement of wholeness and self-sufficiency; and yet, in Fohr’s resonant voice, it is weighted with sadness.

Continuing the trend of 2018’s King of Cowards and 2020’s Viscerals, Land of Sleeper feels a shade crisper than what came before. Whereas they once prioritised the churn and burn, now their songs are leaner and tighter.

Not every song on Don't Stop or its bonus All Night EP is a classic, but Annie's good taste has yielded another fine crop of pop tunes.

This is, to date, his quintessential live release, capturing a set that toggles carefully between the band’s luxurious sounds and his urgent songs. The Johnsons are in their most measured and exquisite phase, giving new life to cuts familiar from Hegarty’s catalog.... The accompanying film, however, tries to do too much, in turn missing the simple, genius focus of the conceit.

It points to an artistic flexibility that will pay dividends down the road. The room to grow is there, should he decide to pursue the colors Wave[s] has opened up for him.

By lacing arms with Dan Deacon, the duo throw themselves into an auspicious zone, creating an album that remains introspective even at its wildest moments.

Comparing the two releases, it’s clear that Calexico and Iron & Wine have found a way over the years to leave a little more mystery in the words and let the music provide more of the clues.

Chastity Belt is largely confessional; her words are the focus here, and these simple, serene landscapes are a fitting backdrop to hear her loud and clear.

Moreland’s songs have long dwelled in the contested middle ground between doing the right thing and not being able to figure out what the right thing is. On LP5, he articulates what it feels like to get it, however briefly, and let go. And he doesn’t always need words to do so.

Unclouded may not push her in a new direction, but it’s marked by a newfound grit and a palpable confidence.

While Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it's easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them.

There are glimmers here not only of the band that they were but also suggestions of what they could become.

These songs are generally not the type to grab you right away, but there's enough mystery and melody there to call you back.

Nothing short of elemental in its beauty.

Plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell.

The lengthy, indistinguishable tracks could pass for a Daniel Lanois-produced collaboration between the Dave Matthews Band and Kenny G.

To stick with the digital-age-anxiety theme, Networker feels not unlike a dating app meetup that went fine, but not great—just entertaining enough to hold your interest for a round or two of drinks until you’ve decided you probably wouldn’t see them again.

While if i could make it go quiet is an occasionally uneven listen, it’s a strong declaration of conviction. Although Ulven is still fine-tuning her approach, her eagerness to explore hints at promising potential.

At their best, Rush to Relax's songs maintain a firm grip even when they meander.

Loud Planes documents not the dissolution but the redefinition of their relationship; it's a staying-together album, which not only makes it much more interesting but provides a persuasive argument for their musical compatibility.

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

Like the city in its ’80s golden age, MILANO is superficial, vibrant, and full of possibility.

With Hummingbird, Local Natives have made a thoughtful, lovely album with small gestures that provide great rewards.

It's an impressive influx of new talent, but you would be hard-pressed to hear it for most of the album.

The band’s effusiveness often feels torrential, which makes its more inane moments come off as collateral damage. On Shadow Offering, Braids isn’t afraid to steer dangerously close to the eye of the storm.

Everything Ecstatic marks his first slight step backward as a solo artist but it's hardly a failure.

Though less memorable than its predecessor, Lex succeeds when it is heard as intended: as a conceptual companion to Reassemblage’s opaque experimentation, an appendix of utopian ideas that adds nuance and provocation to a seductive sound world where East meets West, and breath and circuitry are made one.

None of these modes are new—you might hear echoes of the Ramones’ brash vintage punk, PJ Harvey’s spare 4-track demos, or Jeff Rosenstock’s radically optimistic pop-punk—but Grace comfortably inhabits each.

As a technical achievement and as a piece of pure sound, The Civil War is inarguably Matmos' best record.... [but] there's less of an emotional core here than on previous offerings.

Nothing sounds overworked. If anything, Burhenn and Swift present the songs in an understated manner, confident in the quality of the material and the strength of her voice.

Infra works as an enveloping and moving work even absent any knowledge of its beginnings. Others may glean different feelings from it than I do, but that is part of the point.

Oh Holy Molar, Felix's second album, recalls the starkness and exaggerated intimacy of records by Cat Power and Scout Niblett, but Chua is a far more reserved and poised individual... [Yet some songs] reveal the limits of Chua's voice and aesthetic.

77 is long; 18 tracks and 68 minutes, and you’d think that if a band insisted on staying around for so long they’d have more to say, or at least display more stylistic variation.

At first listen, it’s as perplexing as its immediate antecedent Not the Actual Events. ... The EP’s final track is both the strongest and strangest.

Visiter stands out within their consistently enjoyable catalog for being the least consistent and most surprising—an unalloyed mix of timely African polyrhythms and freak-folk wooliness, bowl-passing ruminations on the existence of God and one-minute shrugs about getting dumped.

It is an album of quiet delights, but at times it feels like the songs are simply stretched too thin: three-star meals served with five-star service.