Emerald Sea is audibly crafted with tremendous skill and love, but its uniformity keeps it from soaring, no matter how many deities fly through the upper reaches.

Dijon is in her element here, eager to expand house music’s limits. For every pulse-racing dance breakdown, there’s a surprise.

The result is some of the most direct, spontaneous music in James’ catalog. Tracks feel less like songs or compositions than tone poems, mood pieces that flow naturally from one to the next, like clouds changing shape high overhead.

Though they haven't changed much in the span of three terrific albums, Camera Obscura no longer recall Belle & Sebastian; they only sound like themselves.

Making a Door Less Open would inevitably benefit from a willingness to risk spectacular failure—this isn’t the hard left-turn “Can’t Cool Me Down” hinted at.

Ghost's new album may not uncover many of the verteran MC's still-hidden darts but, even 11 years after his solo debut, there's no denying that one of hip-hop's most vibrant voices in its comfort zone.

We’re used to breakup albums that assume you just want to crawl into a hole and die, but I Never Learn is for the times when heartbreak is so life-affirming that you want to share the feeling with the world.

Even when the vocals are being run through processors and the guitars are distorted, it still feels managed, and a lack of high-range makes it inviting and easy to listen to even at its noisiest.

It's not that they're not real, it's that the shivering vocal timbres dominate the mix to the point where large shifts in tempo and style are obscured. It's during these moments when I think that Room(s) and its elevation of the vocal sample was perhaps a better idea than an album.

As a proper third album, Marci Beaucoup doesn't stack up to its precursors, but as an advertisement for Marciano's services as a beatsmith, it's much more successful.

It's to Kelis' boundless credit that she can make the twee screw of “Floyd” or the passive attack trip-hop of “Runnin” feel warmly human just by doing her best to overpower it--even as the music tries, and nearly succeeds, in overpowering her.

It’s evident that Deaf Wish can adopt just about any sound or style that they want to, and that’s what they seemingly tried to do on Pain. For many other bands, that approach could muddy the waters or create a convoluted listening experience, but this doesn’t happen here. They choose to be themselves--each one of them--and it works.

Lone’s DJ-Kicks probably won’t get your party started--not in a great hurry, anyway. But it fits snugly into an illustrious line of DJ-Kicks albums that favor the mind over the feet and the bean bag over the dancefloor.

For years now, Shabazz Palaces have oozed a kind of creative wisdom, the type that can only come with age and years of lived experience, but The Don of Diamond Dreams demonstrates a sign of even deeper wisdom: living an entire life of your own, and realizing that there’s still value in learning and listening from the youth.

Michael is an origin story that works best when it examines how worshiping at the altars of sex, money, and Jesus created the man we know today. But when he petulantly doubles down on critiques of his public persona and status as a Black multi-millionaire, the album is harder to stomach.

At times Wish on the Bone can be non-specific, and the universality of Howerton’s feelings becomes untethered and slippery. Perhaps that’s why the album ends with the brief, incisive finale “I Took the Shot.”

Sometimes he hits pure signal, and sometimes it’s just background noise as he gets to wherever he’s going next.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the heavy emotional inspiration behind Sia's trebly moans drags on over the course of 50 minutes.

The integrity of Richard's voice provides the through line, which is often caught in ghostly tangles of itself or locking into prismatic harmonies, similar to how Prince or D’Angelo treated their voices.

Even if there's no transcendent statement to be found, we're still left with these guys sketching out their own little Richard Brautigan short stories, rendering entire lives in quick, mysterious, devastating little strokes. If these guys wanted to make another one of these before another eight years elapse, I wouldn't be mad.

The fearsome symmetry and formidable concision Owens attempts here is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, and while the first half of the album comes on strong, the second half is a little more prone to interrupting itself.

Xiu Xiu's music is all about discomfort, but Stewart and co. have become quite comfortable in this conceptual space, and are able to inhabit it like painters making wild, broad smears that intuitively cohere into a look that is distinctly theirs.

Brood X’s quiet closers are no less visceral than their high-voltage predecessors, providing a more intimate manifestation of the agitated feelings coursing throughout the record.

Suga may not be remembered as a keystone in Megan Thee Stallion’s catalog, but it’s a fine portrait of an artist embracing her full self as her world changes drastically.

Everything could be accepted for what it is and be held to a more manageable standard: how good does a Weezer album have to be before it can be considered actually good? As it turns out, about this good.

This guy is still on a very serious roll, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere near over.

If you're inclined to Tennis negatively, they look like a group of blank people offering bland sweetness devoid of deeper meaning. While the band might've fit that description at one point, they've since grown past it, so if you're one of the listeners who dismissed their earlier work as banal and bourgeois, know that Tennis has since earned another chance.

Rather than forming the second half of a complete statement, Part 2 struggles to differentiate itself.

The Clearing feels lovingly erected, fashioned bit by bit.

With El Pintor, Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol; it’s a sad notion for anyone who once held this band’s music dear to their hearts, but taking into account what came before, it’s a miracle that Interpol still exist in this capacity at all.

The 11 tracks on his self-titled debut are strange and stirring enough to make him one of the genre’s most exciting young voices.

Neither refinement nor fulfillment, Cuidado Madame serves as a refutation. Lindsay’s lyrics are spare and precise enough to work on the page--and that’s a rare compliment. But even if they were woolier, his band’s rabid imagination won’t let these songs congeal into boutique hotel background music.

It’s interesting to hear how Alvvays nod to their vaunted indie forebears while also stretching against the limitations of being too closely associated with the past.

At just less than 30 minutes, Highway Hypnosis is in fact her longest record, and it feels longer still.

They still occasionally bury vocals in a haze of effects, but their instrumentals are crushing now by design, their synth lines starker, the distortion more piercing. They’ve always been capable of expressing harsh feelings, but they seem now more able than ever to echo such sentiments in their music. Fires in Heaven is a more alluring invitation than ever to join them down in the depths.

There is a good album here. The band’s more characteristically brief songs are flawless, but there’s a lesson in this album for punk bands who may want to explore pop: It ain’t as easy as a great hook.

In a first for PUP, the best tracks on their album are slow songs and mid-tempo romps, which bolster Who Will Look After the Dogs? after its rambunctious opening track.

While I Got Too Sad’s emotional tenor can occasionally feel one-note, its warm, lush sound offers a counterbalance to its gloomy lyrics.

Moving away from the more varied songcraft that speckled the record's earlier tracks, Jinx eventually resigns itself to a pillowy darkness that, while not unpleasant, feels safe and flat.

Rose Mountain might be Screaming Females' most deliberate music yet, but it lacks much of their former wildness.

If their debut fails to offer a consistent, forceful message the way their riot grrrl heroes once did, they have at least figured out how to capture some of those predecessors’ energy. For now, Dream Wife leaves you revved up and ready to go with nowhere suggested.

The most complicated forms of techno and footwork are built simply, from the ground up, and on Nothing, we hear the simplicity of each component and how it all comes together to make the music that we love.

New Blue Sun is the most emotionally direct music André has ever made. The methods might be oblique, the instrumentation often unclear, the man himself occasionally missing in action or off on his own pursuits, but the sense of intermixed sadness, loss, and peace that permeates this music is impossible to miss.

There are superficial differences in aggression—slightly more electronic buzzing, harsher vocals, gristly guitars. It’s Foals’ raw record, but it’s still filet mignon tartare.... What Went Down is their most consistent, steady-handed work yet.

It’s a fluidly cohesive album that develops its music themes--that nautical lurch, that calming lull--over eleven carefully yet imaginatively arranged songs.

Tarot Classics' popcraft proves well beyond promising, and these songs are certainly sturdy enough to handle their lusher productions and knottier sentiments.

With the Screamadelica nostalgia out of their systems, More Light primes the Scream for their fourth decade in the best possible way, serving as a summary of everything they’ve done before, yet sounding nothing like it.

Rather than dour, however, the album sounds concerned, perhaps even worried, which illuminates even some of its weaker or seemingly extraneous tracks. It focuses Pollard, who sounds like a man who has said so much already but still has so much left to say.

On Ores & Minerals, there was a measure of spaciness that’s been lost here, perhaps surprisingly considering the circumstances of its birthing. If that album was a leap, this one is a step, and a gingerly one at that.

A little like a greatest hits, a little like a soundtrack, and a little like a collaborative art project, Black Mountain's 51 minutes of music for Year Zero serve as a reminder of how good this band has sometimes been and as a tease of the music they might still make.

Their careful pace and refusal to succumb to instant gratification is a tonic against chaos, a reminder that otherworldly idylls exist within terrestrial grasp. The Ground Our Sky encourages sensuality in the most literal sense: an awareness of one’s senses and taking deliberate pleasure in them.

Their record is more interested in the truth of their own pleasures and failures, and in the ways both of those can, on the best of days, connect us more closely with each other.

It's easy to imagine Go Tell Fire to the Mountain giving disaffected listeners the promise of an entry to something beyond themselves in a way that James Blake or Bon Iver can't. Maybe you've grown past that sort of thing, but what about a record of exhilarating expanse and passion that sounds like indie rock and yet feels way bigger? Well, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is that too.

The old Francis, the quirky, quipping storyteller, triumphantly returns on Human the Death Dance... to his unique blend of diaristic, down-to-earth meditations, eerie soundscapes, and loopy abstraction.

Lange is clearly in the mood to experiment, letting more traditional instruments take a backseat while he fiddles with electronic equipment, peppering nearly every track with whirs, burrs, clicks, and clacks. He occasionally takes time to build distinct grooves from all these little pieces ("Cenar en La Manana"), but more often than not, his fiddling is distracting.

Whatever the case, he and Switch are kicking off summer with an armful of perfect cookout-, top down-ready songs, like the daytime soundtrack equivalent of all of the summertime night's rooftop music that's been coming from Swedes Air France and the Tough Alliance and their new wave of American indie disciples, such as Real Estate and Memory Cassette in the past year-plus.

Exploring the vacated ghosts of stale forms, Coxon has breathed new life into some of rock's most bankable clichés.

The quiet-to-loud dynamics aren't forced, the ahh-ahh backing sighs come at the exact right moments, the church bells on the title track sound like god. These songs are simple, mostly, but they're executed perfectly.

Mostly, though, Jurado claims ownership of Saint Bartlett's achievements simply by turning in his strongest songwriting to date.

But if The Chaos marks the point where the Futureheads admit to themselves that the past ain't so bad, closing track "Jupiter"-- clocking in at a career-topping four minutes-- points to an intriguing new direction where the Futureheads apply their eccentricities to lengthier, more conceptual pieces.

Luckily, you don't have to write genius lyrics to make reliable, stadium-ready rock. The tics of weirdness that made this band so initially affable may be gone, but they're now a cut-rate pop act instead. Nothing wrong with that.

The murk and sloppiness of the early records has been mostly swept away.

Brighter Wounds, Son Lux’s fifth LP and second since guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang entered the fold, has loftier ambitions than Lott’s prior work.

Although Sigrid sings each line as if it’s eye-openingly profound, anyone looking for depth on How to Let Go will quickly find themselves in the shallow end.

Tomboy is a much more considered record, with thickly layered psych-style production.

Instead of the modern Stardust, Serpentine Prison is merely a prolific musician’s stopgap.

'Rue the Blues' is easily the most euphoric thing here, with that banjo-tuned-guitar, um, pickin' up a storm, I guess, and Sullivan opening his throat when he sings.

It doesn’t feel corny or hyperbolic to call this record life-affirming, so perfectly does it capture the flashes of gratitude, self-knowledge, and inexplicable joy that often follow an experience of great pain.

Even as Punk Rock shows that The Mekons have far better musicians today than when they were first fumbling around with Gang of Four's instruments, it also proves they're better songwriters.

Even while it's unfortunately anticlimatic, The Volunteers is a fine record, and a welcome addition to the modern singer/songwriter canon.

One of Excuses for Travelers' greatest weaknesses is that the album is too uniformly boring to be affecting in the least.

AOI:Bionix takes a belt sander to hip-hop's rougher edges, resulting in refinement, sophistication and undeniable accessibility.

Another in a line of accomplished, eternally pleasant and intermittently brilliant Stereolab records.

Despite their ultra-slack style and prodigious output, nothing about them says "half-assed," so it's another year, another fine Woods album.

Greys tear down everything they’ve ever known about making music, and piece it back together from the ragged-but-arresting wreckage. This dark incarnation of the band is one that their 2011 selves wouldn’t recognize—and they wear the change well.

Few verses on the album are particularly memorable outside of spots from Maxo Kream, Vince Staples, a string of appearances from the consistently good J.I.D, and the standalone moments of introspection from J. Cole himself. But the comp works because it never feels forced or closed off to ideas.

Slow Pulp excel in this pared-back country-folk mode, with a sigh of pedal steel or a hug of harmonica, and vocals that feel like a secure embrace rather than a distant cry. When the pressure of life threatens to pop you like a tire, their clear-eyed sincerity keeps on rolling.

They sound exhausted, right where we left them.

Angels is a Marah album, which sort of sucks, but that 'Blue But Cool' and 'Santos De Madera' and the title track might still make you a little misty eyed and/or end up on a mixtape.

While I wouldn't say that Postcards From a Young Man is quite the late-career masterstroke Journal For Plague Lovers was, it is still a product of a re-energized band. Whether or not it actually garners them the hits and mass audience they're aiming for (and at least in Britain, it seems inconceivable that it won't), they've managed to make an inviting, populist album that deserves the attention.

Chasny has distilled all of his impulses and obsessions-- slow drones and brisk picking, solemn mumbles and cheery riffs, ponderous lyrics, and ruminative instrumentals-- into 43 muted, marvelous minutes.

Their music has never gone down easier, but their commentary has never hit so uncomfortably hard.

Sure, maybe Eremita is sometimes awkward, chintzy, or melodramatic, but for 52 minutes, Ihsahn mostly allows the listener to have a blast, if occasionally and arguably at his own expense.

Dialing down his avant tendencies has given Moiré a fresh perspective and helped tame his music, for better or worse.

Weirdon doesn’t attempt to alter the course or conviction of Polizze’s faith in six strings, a volume knob, and the truth, but it does make it more compelling than ever.

Recorded in the London studio that Al Doyle set up during the pandemic, it’s the first Hot Chip album to be written from scratch by the full band all in the same room, and its sound reflects that pooling of energies, full of exuberant dance rhythms and arrangements that burst at the seams.

Like an solid frame to a complex painting, Levi’s score concretizes and helps control the artistic experience of the film. In effect, the score may not supersede its filmic anchor, but is sure does make the entire endeavor more beautiful.

The record gets interesting when it lets ugliness in. .... Butterfly comes up short because it mistakes scale for character. Its drops and hooks have been engineered for maximum lift instead of maximum surprise.

Payola is fast and furious, but carefully engineered for maximum, straight-ahead velocity.

Where The Eraser sags is in the middle, with tracks 3-5 falling particularly flat. Like too many of Radiohead's new songs, they contain a single weak idea dragged on interminably.

There's potential in The Visitor's mix of electro, new wave, and pop, but it's obscuring or distorting Aguayo's personality, which is the engine that has driven his songs for so long.

Mogwai’s cautionary approach all but drowns out the faint echoes of the once brave band struggling to get out from within.

His confidence is why he flies when he swings for the fences on his new album, Free TC.

Those hoping for a trove of overlooked gems will be disappointed, as too much of With the Lights Out sounds like nothing so much as a dull-edged instrument lifting flakes of material from the bottom of a barrel. Simply put, there's enough good stuff here for a solid single disc.

Cleaner and more elegant [than previous album, Does You Inspire You], buffing their crisp electronic pop to an immaculate sheen.... Truly great.

For all Jackson's personal struggle and exploration, Paradise feels like a safe record, calibrated for the comfort of an imagined audience, working at its best when it becomes almost invisible--the accessory to the experience and not the experience itself.

Adams evokes the goodwill of his masterpiece as a singer, anyway, even if the songwriting doesn't come close.

Who knows whether or not the Felice Brothers--brothers Ian, Simone, and James, plus a friend called Christmas--are actually, consciously trying to come as close as possible to replicating Dylan an/or the Band on their self-titled latest. Regardless, the point is, whether they intended to or not, they've come eerily, awkwardly, creepily close to capturing that familiar mix of mood, mystery, atmosphere, and aesthetic.