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.

He’s responded in the best way possible: by producing a record that, in structure and scale, is every bit The Seer’s equal, yet possessed by a peculiar energy and spirit that proves all the more alluring in its dark majesty.

It’s great the band was able to find a throughline between the comfortable and the experimental this time around, but on Nabuma Rubberband they let go of a little too much of themselves in the process.

If Youth Culture Forever runs the risk of alienating listeners who aren’t particularly interested in what young people have to say about anything, though, it’s a mark of the album’s endearing success that PAWS don’t seem to care.

There isn’t much romantic love, just the romanticization of young lust and teen angst. Those are part of the same continuum, though and when II taps into its eternal power, the cries from Milner’s bedroom nothing short of universal.

For the first time in Atmosphere's long career, the stakes feel low, and Southsiders feels both pleasant and noncommittal, like it isn't even convinced of its own right to exist.

The works are raw and technically poor, but the bitterness and hatred they express is overwhelming, illustrating how base feeling, when expressed with such belief, can overcome any window dressing put up around it.

In the Hollows never feels lived-in, or more generously, part of the reality Baldwin has found and written into these songs. The exception comes with the title cut, the record’s biggest production and the most anomalous and audacious pop anthem of Baldwin’s career.

Sheezus has a few good points and some admirable intentions, but too often it misses the point.

The record is an easy, pleasant listen, but it's not particularly compelling as a whole, occasionally falling into a pattern of contented stuffiness.

The immaculate emptiness is, in a sense, Asiatisch’s masterstroke, helping bolster the pervading sense of dislocation of being exposed to a society that’s been fed through the photocopier one too many times.

Their refusal to let the record resolve itself into something that can be easily sorted or explained makes it easy to play it on repeat, trying to find a new angle to approach it from.

Her mesmerizing, eventful, and strange album brings these remote voices close enough to feel their breath in our ears.

The album finally makes good on the post-punk and metal influences that have forever lingered at the edges of Wovenhand’s output.

Nothing here bears the strain of overzealous ambition, there are no flubbed notes, unseemly textures, unfortunate lyrical ideas; everything positive or negative about Breathing Statues is simply too ephemeral to make a fuss about.

As with Skying, it’s a high compliment to say Luminous is a giant bowl of assorted, premium ear candy, and it’s about as nourishing, which maybe is the point.

Gone is the chipper ukulele of w h o k i l l and BiRd-BrAiNs; Nikki Nack signifies maturity while still allowing room for Garbus to do zany things.

Artificial Sweeteners certainly isn't a terrible album, and it does the trick if you're just looking for a quick pick-me-up, but it leaves a bland aftertaste.

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.

Someday World is well arranged, meticulously produced, even catchy at times. But there’s an overriding sense of aimlessness, of people just dropping by the studio and breezing into the songs before wafting off to a more important appointment.

For an album recorded primitively inside a Nashville box, there are some stunning performances on A Letter Home.... Occasionally, though, the recording quality distracts from the album's content.

Chad VanGaalen's world is weird, but never just for weird's sake--his creations spring from deep inside the singular, twisted mind of their creator, and Shrink Dust is the closest we've come yet to getting inside his head.

The album is an interesting, almost peculiarly personal mix of sounds, one that almost seems underdeveloped and unlikely to win Polachek any new fans. As an outlet for Polachek’s songwriting, though, it suggests there's more interesting work yet to come from her.

Noise interference is ramped up, as are counterintuitive rhythms and ugly chords, only to tie them all together into an unexpected sort of cohesion.

Ultimately, Chasmata is slightly inferior to its predecessor due to a sequencing issue near the record's end.

Get Back still finds McBean trying to tap into something risky and surprising, even if the results are the sometimes-egregious misstep of a mid-40s rock musician obsessed with the letdown of aging.

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.

The relative warmth and light here gives the music a nostalgic cast, which was at the heart of what made Endless Summer so memorable, but Bécs also possesses an added layer that doesn’t necessarily work in its favor. Fennesz once illuminated the beauty of a digitally scrambled memory, but Bécs is a memory of a digitally scrambled memory.

More so than any identifiable influence, More Than Any Other Day is ultimately defined by its unsettled, restless spirit; this is an album that treats panic attacks and adrenalized ecstasy as two sides of the same pounding heart, with its simultaneous transmissions of joy and fear, discipline and chaos, comedy and tragedy.

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

Her voice also takes up more space on this record, going deeper and flitting over Stack’s melodies with such abandon it’s as if she might float away.

Robots is decidedly lowercase music, more a piece of his puzzle than a picture on its own.

Ryonen is an engaging first strike.

The best thing about Death III is that it finally unravels the narrative set up by their previous two albums: that Death was a punk band, one that in some way may have even helped invent punk.

Even though such familiar record-collector reference points abound on Drop, the mischievous melodies and funhouse-mirrored guitar contortions render the results unmistakably Oh Sees.

What Pharoahe Monch is doing may not be as vitally important as it once was, but it still can feel surprisingly vital.

Despite Weird Drift's genre-busting ambitions, the album feels humble and unpretentious.

Z's biggest problem is that, despite choosing a sound that is soft and somnolent, SZA is too often overpowered by the music.

As referential as Free To Eat can be on its own, there are times when a band notes an influence that completely changes your perception of it.

Honest surges with the self-assurance of an artist finally coming into his own.