Ultimately, even when she veers into previously unexplored aesthetic territory, every track feels just like Peaches, which is rather remarkable given how rigid and predictable she had been in the recent past.

Skimskitta isn't particularly strong or potent, but it's relaxed and smooth enough to induce a very mellow, mild buzz.

It’s a dream-pop distillation of the classic Khotin sound—and a suggestion that this master of atmosphere might have a future in actual songs.

Aside from the loose DOOM-in-England motif, there's not enough of an overarching theme that Jarel's serviceable-but-indistinct production can pull together.

Sometimes, the lyrics on One Million Love Songs unhelpfully pull you from your seat just when it’s just starting to get good. .... But the album masters melancholy anyway, using careful guitar and vocal flourishes to make the music’s embryonic self-consciousness feel urgent, like it’s yours.

As a front-to-back experience, but album doesn't exactly stay with you.

The Bears for Lunch, however, is the most consistent of this year's trifecta. It may not boast an instant, indeliable earworm like Class Clown's "Keep It Motion" or Factory's "Doughnut for a Snowman", but there are no buzzkill duds like "The Big Hat and Toy Show" either.

Apokalypsis turns out to be a kind of book completely different from what its cover promises.

Fake Surfers doesn't continue these new adventures in hi-fi. Rather, it plays to the Intelligence's extremes, casting a more pronounced British Invasion pop influence in warped, peak-level lo-fi sonics, emphasizing a connection between post-punk and psychedelia that stretches from Clinic and Guided by Voices through the deconstructionist pop of Swell Maps and Wire and back to the whimsical wordsmithery of Syd Barrett and Skip Spence.

Their debut feels ragged in all the right places, a testament from a band that shoulders the weight of disappointment, lost years, and heartbreak without allowing it to become a burden.

Though Say Sue Me have narrowed their focus, their reverence for the indie-rock lexicon remains broad. ... Some of the styles they play with highlight their strengths more effectively than others.

If the de rigueur synthetic frills keep The Lady Killer from the visceral, tactile highs of the current soul revival, they do remind that artifice can often be its own reward.

This is the Joyce Manor album for Joyce Manor fans—a loving, uncynical refinement of the band’s best.

While few really stand out on their own, together they lean on one another to impressive effect. As a result, it has the feeling of an album that really holds together. Now that's an anachronism.

Patient, generous, and smart, the song proves that while Kenny does well to maintain the Wooden Birds' solitary core, he does well to expand it occasionally, too.

When backed by such light-touch production, these mantras can feel like a first draft whose final hues haven’t been colored in. At its best, though, this unforced approach manifests in Levy’s gift for stream-of-consciousness narratives that spin out as if propelled by their own internal velocity.

On Melt My Eyez See Your Future, Curry again retools his sound, trading livewire energy for introspection and vulnerability. The album lacks the vividness of his past releases, but its concept offers a glimpse into Curry’s roving mind.

Omnium Gatherum proves King Gizzard still have a whole lot of it left in the tank.

On Surrender, she sounds renewed, submitting to the pull of her heart without apology.

Like many albums recorded over many years, at various studios with different producers, This Side of the Island can feel a bit scattershot and piecemeal. .... Still, his ragged charisma holds it all together.

The result is an album that never sounds settled or still, defined not by one or another place but by the tumultuous spaces in between.

This is a cherry on a cupcake.

The Anteroom is full of skittery electronics with hints of ambient and house textures that work as both as a marker for how outside of the margins Krell operates and how narrowly he deviates from his own previous innovations in the underground.

It’s refreshing to see Milli step out with both her classic approach and new attempts at claiming selfhood. You Still Here Ho ? meets Flo Milli in her most adventurous form yet.

Many of these dozen imagistic self-avowals have a discouraging sameness. So fluent is their collaboration that their weaknesses become complementary. ... Yet when Broken Politics’ material matches the record’s title, it triggers a sense of unease, a tentative awareness of danger, like smelling something burning in the kitchen.

If Timeless feels slighter than its predecessors, it’s no less assured, its purpose no less profound: to get you moving, even in quiet moments.

Purity Ring, by placing the mature perspective of an adult woman in the throat of an adolescent girl, confer upon children a maturity and sophistication that most don’t possess, and shouldn’t have to. Still, WOMB is some of Purity Ring’s strongest work, a confident and singular statement from a band often imitated over the past decade.

The guys' commitment to music-as-fun and big, croon-y hooks (Goddard's velvet vocals sound as good as ever here) keeps it enjoyable throughout.

Valentine pours a generous splash of funk into the homebrewed elixir, offering one of his most accessible entry points in years.

Hunn is an adept mixer, and he plays the long game in a way that rewards close listening.

Running 78 minutes, The Return is a dynamic suite of a record, touching on multiple genres without losing focus. ... The Return occasionally feels like it’s beating you over the head. But that’s also part of its charm.

They’re more interested in making a lovable rock’n’roll record than a pointed political statement, even though at its best Endless Rooms happens to be both.

Though it clocks in at just 28 minutes, This Is Steve is generously overstuffed--with gorgeous melodies, compositional quirks, sonic details, goofy ideas, and messy feelings.

While there isn’t quite anyone who possesses Sagar’s style in the wide world of indie rock, he’ll have to add a few more tricks, lest he fall into rote routine.

On Feel It Break, they've got that creeping cinematic synth-psych style down cold. Moving forward, I'm curious to hear what else they can do.

Through little fault of Goatsnake’s own, listening to Black Age Blues can sometimes feel like watching wizened blues musicians play the music of their now-distant youth. The style is familiar enough to be comforting, but it’s also inherently trite and redundant.

Combining post-punk’s propulsive rhythms with progressive rock’s winding melodies, Lifeguard channel the verve and manic energy of making art with like-minded peers and the rush of sharing your bespoke musical world.

Much of this album, like most of her recorded work, resembles a well-organized room decked out in tasteful furniture, with every part slotted neatly in place.

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.

Though the concept of "growth" can border on illusory, the shady, gnarled Black Forest comes on less strong than Pale Young Gentlemen, but is ultimately a lot harder to shake than its charming, if slightly hammy predecessor.

Throughout Antiphonals, Davachi smooths out recognizable elements until they blur into the sonic landscape. Compared to the orchestral ensemble recordings of earlier albums like 2018’s Gave in Rest, these eight songs sound subdued and solitary. However, there are moments when individual instruments receive a moment in the spotlight.

The EP moves deliberately from chaos to catharsis, with tighter performances than we’ve heard from A Place to Bury Strangers in a long time.

Hands of Glory possesses an almost academic quality, as though Bird and his cohorts were presenting a musical essay about endtimes imagery in country music.

At eight songs and just over 40 minutes, Filo is a fine thank you to friends--human and machine--who’ve stayed true over the years.

The Great Regression has fun pointing out the world’s contradictions, subverting its vulgarity, questioning its systems. At its peaks, it feels like an antidote for the ennui of ceaseless catastrophe.

Death by Sexy rubs out the line between novelty and earnestness, reminding us that music doesn't have to be ironic to have a sense of humor.

The best songs here are warmed and colored by instrumental flourishes, as with the bright guitar and piano notes on “Demons” or the opening electric noodle of “Tangent Dissolve.” .... The album’s weakest moments come when the band leans on contemplative vibes without evoking any whiff of danger or hallucination.

This is a singer's album, highlighting Hukkelberg's voice above all else.

Tones of Town may lack the swooning immediacy of its predecessor, but it still sounds like a labor of love.

Memories Are Now, perhaps more than anything she has done in the past, is closely engaged with the present moment, yet so lyrically and musically idiosyncratic that it never sounds overtly political.

It is an album of well-portioned, difficult grooves that owe as much to craftsmanship as they do to scholarship, the sound of a chronic disciple slowing learning to make his influences work for him.

Down with Wilco shouldn't be purchased simply on the desire to hear new Wilco material, but would almost certainly appeal to fans of the Summerteeth era.

Slurrup is the unmistakable product of Hayes’ peculiar personality, infusing songs that feel like lost '70s classics with dispiriting images of stardom unattained.

Range Of Light is the first album that defines Carey apart from his bandmates and contemporaries, as his developed, earnest, Midwestern glow bursts through the album's cracks.

Merritt has a long way to go before she runs the risk of being mistaken for A-league stars like Emmylou Harris and Dusty Springfield. But that we can speculate about her one day achieving that status is itself a tremendous compliment.

Museum feels like a transitional statement—a small but powerful reflection on an era when everyone and everything ground to a halt. But at their best, these songs also offer hints of how Ákadóttir might start moving again.

Even with a generous handful of tracks that easily rank alongside the White Stripes' best work, Get Behind Me Satan remains a confounding record, one that wears its "transitional album" tag like a heavy peppermint-striped crown.

No Poison No Paradise, his latest, features some of the ugliest-sounding, and therefore best and most fully-realized, music of his career.

Constructed from old demos, Mowing casts a drowsy, hypnotic spell that unites the genres and subgenres it visits.

Real Estate doesn’t upend their own foundation; they instead find beauty in filling in its empty spaces.

There’s something curiously touching about these twitching, disembodied songs; you almost want to pick them up and try to put them back together again.

TWICE sound most self-assured when eschewing maximalist bombast for subtler evocations.

Rather than in volume and intensity, Sings Dylan finds subversion in its very form, as a covers album that celebrates and estranges its source material at once.

Electric Arguments holds onto an original Fireman ideal: to make Paul McCartney sound less like Paul McCartney. That it does so within more traditional pop-song presentations-- while steering clear of McCartney's usual preferences for piano-pounded rockers and string-sweetened ballads-- is the ultimate testament to its success.

Director's Cut provides a unique opportunity to do an A/B comparison between a late-career artist and her younger self. But which you'll prefer likely depends on whether you favor a more assured artist working within her strengths, or a brash younger artist delighting in the defying of pop conventions.

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.

There are moments on Gold and Stone when it seems like these songs long to wander off, to further explore some of these textures and moods, but not a single track extends past the four-minute mark, almost as if out of fear of throwing the album off its tight schedule.

The album works best when the technology evokes abject isolation. ... Despite the complexity and insight it offers in its lyrics, the jumbled rhythms on “$$$ Huntin’” trip up any groove the song might otherwise achieve. Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune often loses its footing at moments like this, when the tempo picks up.

Fortunately for the diehards, Hypercaffium Spazzinate is devoid of the stylistic overindulgence or inflated self-importance often associated with hiatus-ending efforts.

Nothing on Words and Music redefines or amplifies Reed’s legend. Instead, what we get is a photograph, stark and charming. For an artist known for cool and cruel observations, for cutting remarks and misdirections, these recordings show him completely free from guile. Lewis Reed, unguarded.

A solid, riff-driven rock record that may disappoint those still awaiting Bee Thousand II, though it offers plenty of treats to those who are willing to approach it with open ears.

There’s palpable joy in the songs’ anthemic structures and Medford’s bright, confident delivery, even though there are reminders that this self-awareness was hard-won. Medford makes the crying and bleeding sound fortifying nonetheless.

On Threace, the group’s second full-length for Drag City, Cave’s heart still beats to the motorik pulse, but they’ve broadened out their repertoire to include some of the other groovy, stoney sounds of the 70s.

The time-slowing, pulse-quelling Spirits is a good place to get some thinking done.

Though Barnes and company fail to bring this bewildering array of streams into confluence, the album contains enough flashes of such melodic invention and daredevil instrumentation that armchair travelers can't help but be drawn to the group's exotic scrapbook.

It sounds very busy, but Silva never loses the balance of these productions.

The soundtrack is a pungent, incoherent, occasionally haunting trifle. The feeling is of a bunch of intelligent and talented people trying on a bunch of funny-colored clothing and giggling at each other. If you're not wearing the costumes, there's a limit to just how entertained by all of it you can be.

This vulnerability World Wide Whack puts on display is truly affecting, but for a convention-busting artist as Whack, her directness feels strikingly ordinary.

There's invention and heart in these tunes, and the range is impressive.

It just took some time, but we’re finally hearing what Adkins has to say for himself.

The musical flourishes and pitch-black noir that run like a current underneath American Nightmare bring the album into a wider world.

When Kele’s familiar voice leaps all over the limits of its range, songs like “The One Who Held You Up” take on a stagey quality. But overall, The Waves, Pt. 1 is a mid-career detour worth indulging. The left-of-center UK rock veteran sounds better here than he has at least since the best songs on 2017’s folksy Fatherland, his previous no-frills record. But this time Kele also sounds free.

The fragmented texture of the songs doesn't allow it to slip into bland slickness, but it's clean, theatrical, and kookily conservatorial in a pretty satisfying fashion, if occasionally a little too keen to change tacks within a single song.

Baauer and the other artists meet the heavyweight expectations head-on.

Despite What’s New, Tomboy?’s enlivened arrangements, the most interesting element is his lyrics, packed with fragments of daily life and ruminations on death.

Don't get me wrong: with its staccato, bonus level synth stabs, keening psychedelia and 1980s-drenched drum sounds, Melt is still very identifiably Truise. But with the exception of the banging double whammy of "VHS Sex" and "Cathode Girls", there's nothing much here to suggest that Truise has upped his game in any meaningful way.

This isn't the Roots' most accessible album, and it's definitely their most downbeat, but it comes from a place that isn't always easy to dwell.

No distinct group voice emerges from these 12 tracks, no clear sense of where they hope to head now. But there are enough revelatory moments, both solo and shared, that this lack only suggests itself once the album is done, when its pleasures have finished unspooling.

Pang is such a coherent musical statement that when something doesn’t fit, it stands out. Polachek restructured the album somewhat late, swapping out five songs; what’s left is a sweeping, delicately latticed album with a few odd pop songs. They’re not bad pop songs.

It’s a mature and compositionally sophisticated collection of songs whose only real unifying thread is that Flea is very excited to be playing all of them.

Halfway between French Romantic and Nashville outlaw, Loveless’ songwriting can come across sometimes as overly bleak and therefore sensationalistic, yet Somewhere Else makes such boldness a virtue, as thought decorum blunts creative expression.

Roberts’ songs here are quieter and simpler, and his language less ornate. And while all of Roberts’ music, even at its most traditional, has sounded unique and intimate it has seldom sounded this personal.

It may not be their definitive show of force, but it’s a dazzling spectacle nonetheless.

If you like DeMarco, you'll like Another One. It's like a novella, or a made-for-TV movie--something to chew on while we wait for the next major project. It riffs on his established formula.

Shaken-Up Versions doesn’t threaten replace anything in the Knife’s catalog, but it does highlight the levity that’s always been present in their music.

This is house music at its most shiny and immaculate, a genre made from ache and escapism, high strings and numbing throbs. But Gaga’s lyrics are plainspoken, mostly free of religious metaphors and pretense. ... For all Gaga’s emphasis on Chromatica being an album meant to be heard start-to-finish with no skips, the sequencing is a bit off.

Goodnight Unknown feels comfortable and, to a point, casual, too, but it bears the kind of exploratory vigor that "Emoh" lacked.

His raps land firmly within the established pockets of beats, but each song is so distinct and JPEG’s writing is so fluid and witty that no two moments within the album’s humid atmosphere sound the same.