Liberation! gives Bauer a voice, and the mystery of where he goes next is just as exciting for us as it is for him.

Electric Brick Wall is a far more coherent synthesis of those disparate influences, and possibly her strongest record since the Trux’s peak.

Evolution takes time, and Mastodon continue to publicly work out their growing pains as they determine which traits best represent the unified sound they’ve been chasing this decade.

On HEAL, it’s not just the lyrics that are memoiristic, but the music as well.

Sea When Absent has the quality of one of those spectacularly bright summer days when they color in everything seems a little over-saturated, and it induces the same dizzy, woozy feeling you get after staring directly at the sun.

The occasional sense of compositional confusion makes sense: even if it doesn't always result in a thrilling listen, Seek Warmer Climes captures a promising band in transition.

There’s little left for the DJ crew to prove with the fourth installment of their mix compilations for Strut, but that doesn’t mean that IV fails to please. If anything, it clarifies that when it comes to crafting dance mixes, Horse Meat Disco find a way to stretch out, queue up the campiest of disco cuts from their shelves and wring the most aural pleasure out of them, whether they’re from the dollar bin or in the triple digits.

The title of this album is a challenge as well, as How to Dress Well’s modern masterpiece is conducted with the most eternal transparency--Krell asks “what is this heart” and lets you look right into his own.

Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 2, for the most part, is a stellar collection of songs--playful, ballsy, informed by the past but living very much in the present--but they’re songs that relate more as cousins than as siblings.

Whether it's through casual observation or the to-the-bone identity struggles, Open Mike Eagle's overlap between amusing insights and uncomfortable truths makes for one of the most compelling indie-rap listens of the year so far.

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.

He’s strip-mined one thing he loves in order to drive another. In doing so, he’s found a wonderful, unexpected kind of combustion.

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

In the Lonely Hour comes from a personal place, it doesn't end up feeling like a very personal record.

Reality Testing stands as one of the year's best, most luxuriant, and accomplished electronic albums, more proof that when it comes to forging a new future out of what’s already taken place, Cutler remains at the top of his game.

Love Frequency isn’t a complete disaster, if only because the new, chastised, and chaste Klaxons aren’t really capable of doing anything that could inspire that sort of animus. At their best, Klaxons dredge up the kind of sounds that keep the Coachella Sahara Tent bumping all weekend, composed to be aggressive and participatory, yet strangely ambient and easy to ignore.

While she makes some big strides here as an artist, she’s also made sure to keep one foot planted firmly in the style that some of us consider nearly perfect.

Against all odds, they’ve become one of the most interesting indie rock bands working, and the stately beauty of Familiars is the latest satisfying effort from a band that continues to reward those listeners who give them the attention their elegant, secretly weird music deserves.

With Niggas on the Moon, though, it's hard to shake the feeling that Death Grips might benefit from a change in aesthetic and conceptual focus.

This is principled music, not doctrine, and while inspired by its surroundings, it’s defined by its leader making bracing art.

Too often Favorite Waitress sounds too too clever to accommodate something as visceral as a groove.

As both look back and a step forward, it serves as a possible gateway album, and more intriguingly, it hints at a new chapter in the band’s chameleonic career through which all their scattered points of reference might operate in beautiful, deadly unison.

The album sounds exactly, defiantly like Mariah, acknowledging her place in the pop ecosystem both implicitly and explicitly without chomping at the bit.

A solid, conventional effort by an artist who once seemed so vital.

Ultraviolence finds one feeling--a seedy, desperate, hyper-romanticized sense of isolation and loss--and blows it up to drive-in screen proportions, saturating the color riding the blue crest of sadness for the better part of an hour. Whether or not you want to take this particular ride will largely depend on how much stock you put in “authenticity,” your tolerance for Del Rey’s vocal tics, and your reflexive response to her lyrics.

Though it’s laced with "Twin Peaks" references, Charmer ends up sounding more influenced by another example of uber-90s television--the one where people stop being polite and start getting real.

Overall, CLPPNG is chock full of ideas, and if its failure is due to overambitiousness, well, there are worse ways to fail.

Making the Saint is a refined yet minor record that works as an intimate aperture into the subtle wonders of Schlarb’s catalog.

III is, indirectly, Led Zeppelin’s own version of Pink Floyd's Meddle--the folky, pretty early record that was never too popular and hence a favorite of indie types skeptical of such a massive mainstream band.... III has easily the best bonus material too.

The bonus disc is a mildly interesting amalgam of alternate mixes and rough takes--the kind of stuff anyone but the most dedicated obsessives will listen to only once--and there’s little advance here lyrically from the debut, but II is still close to perfect.

Led Zeppelin is one of music's most assured and fully realized debuts; individually, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham were great players, but the whole of their sound somehow exceeded the sum of its parts. But even above the instrumental virtuosity, Led Zeppelin is a triumph of production, each part clear and forceful but adding up to something even more powerful.

It’s darker than Roar, but also wiser, more mature in its conflicts.

You can feel their newfound focus and commitment here, racing through every new crest Hernandez hits or each burly refrain Hill bellows.

If not all of Dub Thompson’s ideas work, the more important takeaway is that, at this early stage, they sound like a band with no lack of them.

What's Between provides some compelling glimpses at Kelly's cimmerian headspace, but knowing that he possesses the ability and the vision to flesh out his own ideas, it's hard not to be left wanting more.

Love Me ultimately confirms what we already knew about Barfod’s solo work: he plays well with others, but a greater overall consistency might garner him the love he’s seeking.

House of Spirits doesn't bring much in the way of sonic surprises beyond a few drum machines and synths, but it does find the band making subtle changes to its M.O., delivering a set of songs that's less urgent, but--in a freaky-yet-endearing way--more personal.

While nearly every track on Nausea finds Vallesteros trying to grapple with these issues [feeling displaced and connected at the same time], he rarely wrenches out any insight or personal detail.

As a distilled 5-song EP, Stockholm might have served as a refreshing slap in the face--a potent reminder of what a vibrant jolt of lightning Chrissie Hynde can be--but instead, it's a rather wan listen.

Rather than lending International depth, it shrinks the album into an admittedly accurate recapture of top-heavy, single-centered records of Norrvide’s preferred influences.

It’s an almost self-consciously busy-minded album, chockablock with ideas and sounds, all colliding violently and sometimes brutally.

After 30 years, Esoteric Warfare is a Mayhem album worth talking about more for its sounds than its associated baggage.

Black Hours shares some of its strengths with Leithauser’s work with the Walkmen, and same goes with its weaknesses—namely, an occasional lapse in focus.

It’s pointedly brief--11 songs, 39 minutes and with a scope every bit as limited.

Amid a musical landscape now splintered into infinite subgenres, Superunknown remains the very definition of no-qualifiers-required rock--a tombstone for a once-dominant aesthetic, perhaps, but also a solid, immovable mass that endures no matter how dramatically its surroundings have changed.

This is an album built for slow weekend mornings spent in bed with a loved one more than brisk, early-morning runs.

Dereconstructed can be fiercely intelligent, but more often it is frustratingly blinkered; his lyrics can be defiantly blunt, but they’re often elbowed out by music that is dumbly bombastic.

This Machine Kills Artists may not amount to more than an odd itch Osborne felt like scratching, but at least he scratches it with glee.

Dalliance is the sound of a good band tightening to the point where they become something greater.

Sunbathing Animal's considered, whip-smart rock revivalism is a work of substantial growth from a band that already did "simple" quite well, placing Parquet Courts in their own distinct weight class.

Even though you know just what you should be getting from an album like this, Lee Fields & the Expressions play like the stakes have never been higher: they lay it all out there, put it on the line, and make damn well sure you feel it.

Like a child playing dress-up with their parents’ wardrobe, Only Run’s impulsive change-ups can result in some ill-fitting looks.... Fortunately, Only Run finally hits its stride in its more focussed second half, with Ounsworth and Greenhalgh strategically building upon simple ideas rather than trying to cram them together and see what happens.

Ultimately, they're at their most engaging when maintaining an ironic distance between subject matter and tone.

Nothing on Beauty & Ruin truly resembles experimentation, as Mould, unburdened of so much baggage of late, seems joyously unconcerned with proving anything to anyone other than the fact that he can still craft hook after hook.

Now, you can only hear faint echoes of their past greatness underneath the lard-laden production; it’s something that will please the fanbase.

It’s beautiful and devastating in that way that all the best albums are, and that in and of itself is worth some attention.

Like Hercules’s first two records, Feast transcends mere homage not only through sonic innovations but by the quality of the emotional connection it makes with its audience.

The bleakness feels more panoramic than before, and when it zooms inward, it tap into reservoirs of power that Trash Talk are only beginning to explore.

A U R O R A can be heard as Frost’s attempt to create something physical, and it stands above the rest of his discography.

Unlike the blunt, confrontational NO LOVE DEEP WEB, Government Plates lets you think for yourself and even if it doesn’t have an agenda, that doesn’t mean it’s nihilistic.

For the most part, Fortuna projects a confidence and self-belief that wasn’t all that perceptible on the rough-hewn Antipodes.

Hundred Waters are always set to simmer. That mostly works in their favor on The Moon Rang Like a Bell, as the album’s strength comes from its gradually accruing moments.

It's honest music from the noise-­pop couple, both of whom come into this project having broadened their sound within their own respective bands.

Sylvan Esso is feel-good music on all fronts, and when it comes time to throw on something at a summer gathering that’ll make people feel slightly hipper than they were when they arrived, Sylvan Esso will be a go-to. But it’ll still feel like I’m living in a beer commercial, someone else's idea of an inclusive, hip summer day.

If Do It Again is the physical artifact of Robyn and Röyksopp's union, it's extravagant and left of center, but it's above all generous.

Good to Be Home's recollections are only meant to be alluded to, a summer-jam album riddled with familiar nods to shared experiences but still walled off from observers who think they really know Blu.

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.

They’ve been slowing down for a while now, but here they feel nearly worn out.

In Conflict might not be an autobiography the way you or I would write it, but make no mistake: the deeper you look into it, the deeper Pallett himself stares back at you.

Are We There may be her most present-tense album to date, her most immediate and urgent--the peak of a steady upward trajectory.

Kibby's willingness to push boundaries makes In Cold Blood worth listening to—and, who knows, maybe one day its songs will make for some great karaoke.

As an experimental electronic album, Reachy Prints comes off as milquetoast. As a pop album, though, it sparkles.

Black Thought remains a spectacular rapper, decades into a career with plenty of invitations to burn out. He hasn't slackened an inch. His flow patterns on "Understand" hit like flurries of jabs to the sternum. The problem for listeners, of course, remains that he never quite knows how to stop dancing on his toes; he always sounds like he's high-stepping through a tire-field.

The music is undeniably alive, even though--or perhaps because--the band that made it is all over.

Of course, Grace Jones is the star here. Five of the original album’s nine songs are covers, though rather than fealty to the source material, Jones sounds as if she’s shredding the songbook with her bare teeth.

Definitely Maybe is the sound of people who feel like they need to scream to be heard—and even then, the chances of anyone actually listening seems depressingly unlikely. And yet, not wholly impossible.

For all its emotional charge, Changing Light barely feels more intimate than Share This Place.

While Ultima II Massage starts off with material that's heavier and meaner than anything he’s done previously, the lighter sound of the album's back half can't help but come across as a drop in ambition, turning down the volume on what could've been the most dynamic Tobacco record to date.

Nothing else on Metamodern is quite so bold or quite so dense as “Turtles All the Way Down”, but Simpson comes across as a man deeply dissatisfied with the easy answers country music typically passes along as wisdom.

A handful of tracks on Volume X are decent placeholders that do nothing to expand or appreciably reinforce the band’s aesthetic, but “Ice Fortress” stands out to represent everything Trans Am does right.

Ghost Stories certainly sounds like the product of someone working out their private pain in public; unfortunately, the results are less Blood on the Tracks and more "Can I Borrow a Feeling?".

On the plus side of the ledger, you can understand what the hell Oberst is talking about most of the time on Upside Down Mountain, which makes it an immediate improvement over Cassadaga and The People’s Key, two albums that somehow managed to be cryptic and pedantic at the same time.... But elsewhere on Upside Down Mountain, he wields populist observation like a politician, trying to utilize his homespun wisdom from an elevated plane.

So as good as Abandon is, one can't help but think the more he goes through, the richer and more resonant his music will become.

The Serpent & the Sphere reveals a familiar Agalloch that you’ve never quite heard--evermore patient, risky and, mostly, free of fault.

Su might not have the highest aspirations, but minor dreams can still compel a listener; Sincerely Yours just needed to find better modes of expression.

While Lithium Burn is an easy album to empathize with, you wish it'd do more to make you root for the band.

At last, Young Widows sound less like a string of hyphenates and histories and more like their own demented, delightful selves.

Hour of the Dawn sounds like a summer record, meant to be played when emotions are high and the sun is out. Most importantly, it shows what she’s capable of when the shine has worn off.

It's true that the new versions sound more modern and souped-up than the originals (which you also get if you buy the "deluxe edition" of Xscape), but their producers don't have enough distance from Jackson's presence to reframe his voice the way that, say, Junkie XL's remix of "A Little Less Conversation" reframed Elvis Presley's.

Farmer’s Corner is an album about labor and its rewards, about wanderlust and rootlessness, about memory and regret, yet for most of its fifty minutes, its mood is affable and laidback--as though Toth wants to make it all look easy.

White Women is the closest Chromeo have come yet to fully realizing their sound, but it's also far from perfect.

The latest Horseback album, Piedmont Apocrypha, compacts this meandering trajectory into a five-song narrative that's inclusive, intriguing, and unquestionably creepy.

The line between exhilarating and exasperating is still being straddled to the point where it's starting to chafe.

The Evans narrative provides an emotional throughline that connects and grounds this stylistically free-ranging collection.

As long as McMahon is singing, Amen Dunes will never sound quite like anyone else--and on Love, he sings better and more ambitiously than ever.

Process carries with it the possibility of Yvette evolving into something even more ambitious and imposing.

Throughout Turn Blue, it's difficult to tell how invested these guys actually are in the music they're making, an indifferent attitude that encourages the listener to act in tandem.

Bermuda Waterfall was written for his friends, whom he memorializes on "Hangin On" for being so thoughtful as to wonder when he might be coming to a party. That's the type of inconsequential, commonplace interaction that sometimes means the world to an individual, and Savage’s ability to locate an oasis of connection in a desert of heartbreak is what makes Bermuda Waterfall endearing rather than irritating.