It seems now that the band is terrified of change, leaving them to rehash what their first five albums accomplished in lieu of actual progression.

This is a massive artistic statement from The Microphones, and though it may be cryptic-- even overwhelming at times-- it remains warm and open, thanks to the stunning intimacy that has consistently been the group's hallmark.

Gedge seems oblivious to the fact that all the gushing critics and cliquey consumers are crowding the 60s, 70s, and 80s lounges, leaving him to hog the stage in the remember-the-90s room.

Can't Wait Another Day would be easier to love if it didn't keep accidentally signposting a shortage of fresh songwriting ideas.

The emotional complexity--or rather, saddled contradictory feelings--aren't all that set her apart from her peers: She also draws on influences from outside folk which, largely due to her finger-style treatment and accompaniment choices, wind up adhering to a folk template.

Poring through hardball's rich history with the exhaustiveness of true geeks but the wit and empathy of born songwriters, Wynn and McCaughey repeatedly manage to draw effortless metaphorical lines between baseball and life.

Everything on Thao & Mirah feels of a cohesive collaborative piece, separate from either artist's solo work, a combination that synthesizes their individual strengths to outstanding effect.

With the Freaking Out EP, Bundick moves from vaguely funky 1980s-tinged makeout jams to more explicitly funky 80s-tinged dancefloor jams-- think Chromeo. The change isn't as successful as his best work, but it still makes for a plenty rewarding between-albums EP.

Polymers isn't a total overhaul from the taut and punishing Travels, but it does dial back tempos and lean far more heavily on blaring arcade synthesizers.

The Belbury Tales is stranded somewhere between the abstract work of Jupp's past and the fuller sound of the live instrumentation he is applying, making this feel like his most pleasingly open-ended release so far.

The sharply differentiated genre experiments become less well-defined in the home stretch, but the sound design stays immersive, with pleasant little things to listen to festooned in every niche.

It’s no slight to say nothing on Ultramarine matches its opening triad--not much does. The remainder of it is solid, though it shows a band still using established pop framework in lieu of a personality.

When he’s at his best, you feel like you’re getting a well-selected sample from the endless trove of sounds and ideas blubbing inside his brain.

If you’ve loved Built to Spill’s music your whole life, Untethered Moon will have this same comforting, classic feel.

Jessie Jones is a well-rounded introduction, one that holds little back.

Musically, Nephew in the Wild feels like a logical progression from Ashworth's past work; lyrically, however, it isn't always as clear of a step forward.

Boeckner's melodies are precise and the choruses show moments of bright clarity cutting through the foggy verses: not unlike fleeing a bleak reality to find asylum in a dream. He hasn't sounded this committed and angry since leading Atlas Strategic a decade and a half ago.

Yes, the music this band makes is undeniably fun--Dead Cross bounces along with so much pep you could almost consider it a party record. But they stick to a fairly straight-ahead take on thrash and hardcore that doesn’t shed much new light on the players involved.

While Mudboy is a strong and holistic statement from an upstart rapper, with the early-album run from “Live Sheck Wes” through “Chippi Chippi” being particularly stunning, these songs feel like underscores for the colossal “Mo Bamba.”

Gorgeous and overstuffed, ALL features Tiersen’s tearjerker melodies and his tendency to crowd them from all sides.

A clumsier artist might turn this self-excoriating streak into something brutally caustic, stripping back the layers until only rawness remains. Houghton resists that impulse on Lung Bread’s later songs, purging her past while leaving her strange, spiky magic intact.

Even for demos, they’re surprisingly rough, in a way that only sometimes breeds intimacy; most often, he bashes around on an acoustic guitar, both his verve and falsetto well into the red. Though Bowie’s folk period is ignored today by all but his diehards, it does offer some insight into the man’s mind, and Keyhole adds several moments to that discussion.

Like a message from a wise friend, The Best of Luck Club is worth revisiting whenever you’re in need of a little perspective.

The overload of nostalgia keeps the album from feeling fresh. As thrilling as those vintage Squarepusher records were (and still are), it wasn’t necessary that Jenkinson make another one.

Markus Popp isn’t quite there yet, but Scis proves that he’s still following his own path.

Though the album is staid and formulaic by design, it doesn’t always color inside the lines: It feels more like background music failing up than ambient music failing down.

Energetic, lush, and measured, Three Dimensions Deep is a cohesive debut from Mark that doesn’t lose sight of the bespoke sound that she’s developed over the years.

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.

Changes is the most subdued and modest record of the Gizzard’s October harvest.

Hozier calls the album’s sound “eclectic,” but disjointed is more apt.

That’s the surreal magic of Statik: pallid terror deceptively wrapped in an inviting soft-focus glow. If it’s not Cunningham’s best work, it may be his most quintessential, a true distillation of his ability to simultaneously attract and repulse.

With these songs, you can hear the love letter to aughts rap-rock that Bear aimed for, not a misguided attempt at catering to Fortnite players. Unfortunately, most of Hole Erth comes across like the latter.

End Beginnings shows an understandable desire to crack open the Sandwell District aesthetic, but the album too often struggles to express these ideas with the tyrannical clarity heard on, say, the malignant deep freeze of Function’s Isolation, or Sleeparchive’s Elephant Island, by which O’Connor and Sumner were so influenced.

This album might be more focused than its predecessor, but what it's focused on is a the kind of murky, paranoid weight and depth that doesn't much make for chart-climbing singles.

This is a far more serious record than its predecessor, but Palomo isn't always as assured in rendering the darker material.

At this point in her career, Thorn shouldn't be courting the middle, and considering the best moments on Out of the Woods, she didn't have to, either.

There are a lot of things about Heartland that feel like Pallett is presenting himself more and more fully as an artist; the scope of breadth and mood of it are all grander, more assured, making ever more of a case that the guy shouldn't be viewed as a side note (string arranger for the Arcade Fire, the Pet Shop Boys) or a minor interest.

Like Total Life Forever, Holy Fire threatens greatness, and whatever disappointment comes from missing the mark is mitigated by its scope: A bomb needs to be operational more than it needs to be accurate.

Shattuck doesn't often telegraph the resemblance, and the band's growl-and-bash obscures it, but if you're listening for Beatles-of-'65 nods, they're all over Whoop Dee Doo.

For all this record’s hubris, the long-touted “generational voice” that is Alex Turner has never sounded more real, or more himself.

This remastered Collection of Rarities is intriguing beyond its archival purposes, as it traces the evolution of an artist over the course of 11 years.

At Bunny’s best, Dear is as slippery as ever. Following in his purple wake and soaking in his twisted tragicomedy is a chase to be savored.

McCauley’s raspy crow often overwhelms the more delicate material, but throughout both albums, the band varies its rhythms and arrangements with surprising agility.

Their most understated, surprisingly sweetest album to date.

There's no question that many of Lost Time's lyrics are funny, but the attitude that fueled NVM feels crushed. In both the vocal delivery and the driving guitars, the vibe is damper, the color somewhat drained.

Ruminations is Oberst’s most emotionally legible work since Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, also defined by its similarly cloistered worldview and sonic cohesion.

Hormone Lemonade is the work of a band who couldn’t write a bad chord sequence if they tried, allying rare melodic nous to dazzling rhythmic instincts. Rather than being trapped by his past, on Hormone Lemonade Gane draws upon it in brilliant new ways.

Their sources are varied, yet the pleasure isn't recognizing the different sonic elements, but in relishing their almost supernatural co-exist

Dosh has indeed graduated from the sketchbook-like arrangements that marked his earlier work-- but Tommy's occasional tedium is a reminder that there's nothing wrong with doodling in the margins, either.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart simply made a slyly confident debut that mixes sparkling melodies with an undercurrent of sad bastard mopery.

Darkness and Light isn’t the political feat Mills and Legend had hoped for, but it’s a step forward in the singer’s evolution. He may never be a firebrand, but Legend proves there’s still strength in humility.

Absent the verve and pop of UMO’s previous work, V can feel remote and insular without the charm of being coy. There’s just enough shown here to leave you craving a more direct experience of the world Nielson is spinning.

As ever, Ragon's lyrics are highly evocative if not outright provocative.

Perils from the Sea may not be a seamless collaboration, but neither artist has sounded so purposeful in his reverie in years.

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

It's startling to realize Pickpocket’s Locket is the odd Carey Mercer release you can almost mellow out to. Once you delve deeper than the pleasant aesthetic, however, it's hard not to wish for a few more distinguishing moments to hold onto.

Close It Quietly is honest about the pain of rebirth, but it doesn’t dwell there. Kline’s more interested in what grows out of that mess.

A capable vocalist with a lightly nasal tone and a dramatic streak, Cabello rarely misses an opportunity to riff or sail into her wispy head voice. But her spoken delivery can be just as captivating.

The actual sound of Fine Line is incredible, and most songs have at least one great moment to grab hold of. ... While the music wades into the mystic, his songwriting, pointedly, does not. ... Styles doesn’t have the imagination of Bowie or another pop-rock touchpoint here, Fleetwood Mac, who took their lives and transfigured them through cosmic fantasia or Victorian grandeur.

As ever, Zedek specializes in thorny songs that unflinchingly address adult topics and full-grown problems, with the malleable backing of her guitar and band providing either momentary refuge or sympathetic cries of exasperation.

He has the ideas: ISAM's pieces keep wandering into unmarked industrial zones, evoking broken things and blight. But this is heavy, foreboding music; Tobin hasn't yet learned how to balance his robust sound-art impulses with footholds for his listeners.

While Haxel Princess was full of goofy and relatable teenage dispatches, Apocalipstick shoots daggers. Now 19, Creevy sounds wizened and ready for battle.

Beth and Hostile have been collaborators for nearly two decades, and together they’re responsible not only for every sound on the record, but for the entire visual package, too. Their mutual force and focus give the album the pressurized insularity and cracked intensity of a one-person project.

By maintaining their singular aesthetic while venturing into more inviting pop sounds, the weirdest band from Brighton just might have become the smartest.

The pacing is so languid, the dynamics so muted that I doubt this iteration of Son Volt would last very long in a real honkytonk.

More consistent-- if more predictable and less spectacular-- than pretty much any other record in his exhaustive catalog.

Homesick is not quite a concept album, but there's a ghost of a narrative visible in the record's bookending tracks.

The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations. While some of Metheny’s best original work this century has spoken to his ambition as a composer (2005’s The Way Up), his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting.

His words come off poetically, and in its totality, Ology is a slow burn that grows more infectious as it plays.

By refining their reality, and allowing themselves to be a little more seen, they feel more reachable than ever.

An album that delivers a gorgeous, if somewhat restrained, step forward. It’s a document of quiet, if not necessarily earth-shattering, revelations.

The result is a strictly passerby album: one that is heard and then quickly forgotten.

With today's cartoons darker and more violent than ever, I'm sure cartoon music could someday sound as though influenced by Suspended Animation, but I highly doubt any rock music will.

Putting the Days to Bed is a solid effort-- a step in a promising new direction.

They really leave no space for Palumbo, and while there are distinct choruses, there are no hooks. There are more memorable basslines than vocal melodies.

His bars vary from the goofy (“She made me bust a nut, that’s a starburst”) to the confusingly profound (“Time is poured on me when I ride that Maybach”), but it’s his ability to apply his signature inflection to just about any rhythm he conjures up that can make Drip or Drown 2 nearly hypnotizing.

Throughout Time Makes Nothing Happen, Gengras toys with the tropes of electronic dance music (repetition, meter, gridded quantization), only to gradually veer off into unkempt wilderness.

He mostly manages to boil down the macho bloat of his sources to graceful essences without underplaying the pomp.

Her supple singing and the lively production keep Jupiter from being a slog, but the hazy symbolism sours the experience.

These new songs are energizing for González, but they lack that sense of genuine discovery, of a songwriter being lifted away from his usual comforts. Instead of letting the drum machine reshape his songwriting, he mostly uses it as a metronome.

While it doesn't recapture the magic of the Sprout-era Guided by Voices records, Universal Truths and Cycles marks the return of some of the most sorely missed qualities of early Guided by Voices: strong vocal melodies and refreshingly atypical song structures.

Selmasongs breaks no new ground whatsoever for the Icelandic composer, instead dwelling in more comfortable regions already mapped by Homogenic.... the record definitely has its great moments. The problem is, there are only two of them.

An immediately engrossing and challenging collection of moody, evocative songs-- an entire album of "I Want You" and "Watching the Detectives" for those so inclined.

The Golden Dove has moments of significant achievement.

Tape-chewed textures and digital glitches initially defined Wyatt’s first few releases, but there’s a remarkable clarity throughout Union and Return that belies the fact that for all the beauty of his fourth album, his inherent weirdness still squirms beneath the surface.

The band sell their introspection by marrying it to convincingly urgent music. It’s also a lot of fun; all the flying guitar chords and thumping beats inevitably quicken pulses.

Like most of his recent records, it’s another collection of mostly very good Gucci Mane songs, marred by occasional awkward bits.

They say you have to see egg punk live to really get it. But the goofy, revved-up glory of Super Snõõper comes pretty close.

Consider OH the "most Lambchop" of Lambchop releases, as it swings through almost every tone in the band's history of influence-collisions, arriving at a soul of its own.

Thrice Woven is WITTR deboned. As welcome as it is that they’ve dropped Celestite’s pseudo-kosmische schtick, they’ve come back with a facsimile of what once was.

While the band has always played around with a variety of sounds, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of songwriting, most of Mystics doesn't measure up.

It starts to distinguish itself from its long-established template when the band gets less edgy.

The mercurial, combustible potential within suggests we may not be laughing at it for much long.

Even without the heavy emotional resonance of those mixtapes, Str8 Killa works as a showcase for a ridiculously solid rapper. Gibbs knows his craft inside and out.

This is a transitional record, an in-betweener, one that Lidell may eventually look back on as a door to something else. The good news for all of us is that even when he's down, he's not out.

It’s an adventurous, impressive display of instrumental can-do, a music nerd’s romp through high-fidelity magic that’s only occasionally hampered by insipid writing.

Deschanel is more convincing when she's on an extreme end of romance--either losing it or being swept into it--than when she's trying to rationalize it.