Dacus intended 2019 EP as something of a diversion from her usual work, a series of stand-alones intended to flex new musical muscles. Perfect as these songs are for our moment, there’s an unmistakable staying power to them, too.

Shepherd Head thrives when it leans into the elements that make it so notably different from the albums that came before it.

If this is your first exposure to Clogs, you've picked a fantastic time to become acquainted.

It's an album of quiet excellence, one that aims to soundtrack your most idle thoughts while romantically demanding your attention.

On those early records, like Soviet Kitsch, there was a bracing sense of raw possibility. Songs could swing from kooky anti-folk to cabaret to punk outbursts on a whim. Home, before and after, by contrast, sounds like the work of a seasoned professional. Every note is meticulous; every orchestral swell magnificently labored over.

On 'Electric Feel,' MGMT pull off lithe, falsetto electro-funk surprisingly well. There's not much to the song aside from a Barry Gibb vocal and limber bassline, but within the context of the rest of Spectacular, it makes perfect sense.

These new tracks are probably the strongest in his catalog--full of cheeky, relentless verses to match the energetic funk he’s best accompanied by--and the repetition feels strategic.

Listeners who come for the record’s novelty will stay for the class. Seldom do musical fusions sound both so perfectly weighted and utterly irresistible, a cartoon hit of delirious joy.

Despite retaining a relaxed, lightly psychedelic feel, Blondes' songs are properly functionalist grooves.

For all the rhythmic chicanery at play, AMOK feels strangely static and contained, giving a perpetual sense of jogging in place.

From here on out, Screws Get Loose starts sounding like the work of a retro-pop outfit, treading the same ground covered by the Raveonettes, the Donnas, and recent revivalist indie heroes Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls.

There's nothing hectic about the listening experience; thanks to its relaxed pace and gently abstracted shapes, Wald is every bit as contemplative as the forest walks that inspired it.

None of these songs would have the same effect if rushed, which is what set Big Ups apart from many of their peers.

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

With Hang, Foxygen have proven their capacity for lavish spectacle, but they’re still at their best when they give themselves the freedom to roam.

Effected is a confident step toward turning what used to be fantasy into cold, hard reality.

It’s a sweet snapshot of London 2018--an encapsulation of a newly brewing jazz community, uniting numerous cultural strands that make up the city. When the scene needed him most, Kamaal Williams returned to show the way.

UR FUN—a confection, a distraction, a collection of competent and sparkling pop songs—doesn’t open itself to the world as it stands in this moment.

Megabear is a unique and innovative concept piece that suggests lofty questions about intentionality and artists’ agency. But a regular 12-song album with a beginning, middle, and end probably would have been more satisfying.

Until that last song, fun persists in the album's absurdly infectious hooks without being marred by concepts or meaning.

Like 90s pop stars turned 10s pop sophisticates Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé, Charli XCX stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while.

The level on which Russian Roulette works best is experienced in a stoner's sound-design-obsessed bubble, where each crackle of a record and particular melodic line of a funk, fusion, soundtrack, or novelty sample seems to contain a cavernous importance simply for displacing air with sound.

The melding of these stories with Cameron’s efficient, minimal compositions create the type of songs that penetrate deeply and linger in your consciousness long after you’ve stopped listening to them.

The heavier quick-change songs push several different buttons at unexpected moments, but the more straightforward songs, the ones that should glue the record together, flounder.

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.

Woke on a Whaleheart is a deceptively easy listen-- steady, lulling, and vehemently organic-- but consequently, it can begin to feel invisible.

Instead of justifying or summarizing two decades of work, Tyler and McDonnell set them aside and come up with a concise, lovely album that, like a gentle tourist, takes only pictures, leaves only footprints.

Each track of Under the Same Sky will undoubtedly find a home in a record bag or set list somewhere, and rightly so, as there's really nothing fundamentally wrong with any of them. As an album, though, Under the Same Sky leaves you wanting more of a moody, immersive experience, and less of its clean surfaces and precise negative spaces.

The duo clearly have good stories, but need to expand the range of emotions they use to tell them.

On We Fall, Wiggs replicates the continuous momentum of the environment through sound, and she leaves just enough room on the rock to join in her wonderment.

You have to bristle and tug at it to get past the barbed wire around these recordings, but once you do, you’re immersed in a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rock.

So much of Stone feels like stitched-together composites of what has worked well in the past. Momentum is often squandered, and the electrifying bits rarely rise into something more.

The new album feels at once a return to the Kills' beatbox-blues origins as well an attempt to broaden their palette with more sensitive, intimate turns.

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.

Dramatic and driving, it never quite escapes the upper atmosphere, though thick loopy synth shapes provide an ample climax, showing how this band can go bigger without forsaking its cloistered center.

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.

The Neon nestles the duo back into their musical comfort zone when they’re exceedingly capable of more.

And though In Stormy Nights-- with its numerous false leads, over-the-top presentation and undisguised self-indulgence-- can hardly be said to be a perfect work, one has to admire and celebrate Ghost's determination never to step in the same river twice.

It's to the Weakerthans' credit that their lyric-driven songs can be, in a way, useful, at least by helping reassure the sentimental souls with whom Samson's deftly told stories resonate. Still, they're rarely as striking here as on the groups' previous albums.

While Manuva's unorthodox style is a unique pleasure, too often his flow can be laconic to the point of being subliminal--a good portion of Slime & Reason's midsection demands attention, but doesn't necessarily deserve it, not when the beats that support his rhymes are just-below-scale like the budget g-funk of "Kick Up Ya Foot".

For now, Cully's another voice in the crowd in that regard, but his promising talent displayed elsewhere on The New Life suggests that he's one to keep your ears perked up for nonetheless.

Golden Retriever has carved a niche that’s not strictly indebted to post-Berlin School ambient or to the more organic work of new age composers but rather snags details from both aesthetics.

Because Remiddi also sustains an ear-pleasing flow between those songs, it may take a few listens to recognize and appreciate what an artistic success Microclimate actually is.

After the maze-like worlds conjured by Age Of and Garden of Delete, Love in the Time of Lexapro plays it disappointingly straight.

It’s a leisurely paced album with a lot of repetition. Each piece is full of slowly sighing synth passages and languorous piano melodies that mimic the strange way time dilates when you remove yourself from the rhythms of the city, the way an afternoon alone at the beach can feel like a beautiful eternity.

On Fate & Alcohol, Japandroids deliver the conviction that made their early records so great, but cannot overcome the palpable mismatch between their current lives and the characters their newest songs portray.

Principe del Norte across as genial, charmingly rumpled, and totally unflappable.

He doesn't exactly break free on Bright Penny, but typical of Hayes, it's not for lack of trying.

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

At its best, it feels like an opportunity for two daring drummers to explore with and without their kits.

When it isn't a high school poetry recital, Lustre often feels like a disappearing act-- an attempt to put on a few musical disguises to see if anyone likes them better than the musician beneath.

Despite the confidence of that opening track, Heaven Is Whenever sounds like a transitional album, hopefully paving the way for something stronger, more cohesive, more specific.

Sparse without feeling empty, clear without being awkwardly straightforward, Ui can remind even the most jaded of guitar gods that what Mingus (or Mike Watt or Peter Hook) did wasn't a fluke-- the bass doesn't have to be supplementary.

[Robinson's] kind of soft rock-- closer to "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner than I'm comfortable with-- probably isn't going to score many points with the indie crowd, but it's not going to throw off your concentration for very long.

What's ultimately confounding about the album is how one-note its euphoria can be. The songs are almost interchangeable; the lyrics rarely stray beyond the easy cliche,

Kwes’s gentle songwriting sensibilities are unable to keep up with his exploratory beat making and the result is too often a mismatch that ends up leaving the listner at a loss.

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.

Book of Changes is refreshingly exposed and intimate, as if Blakeslee has found a lingua franca for writing when it really matters.

Unlike the effortless Atlas, In Mind exposes a trace of tension between form and content. For all Courtney’s synchronicity with his home environment, he sometimes sounds like he’s spinning his wheels rather than exploring the new contours of the recalibrated band.

His message loses strength, in part, because he doesn’t fully commit to it.

Without the hooks of their previous albums, never mind those of their better-known bands, the songs on III take a while to sink in. In return for the slow approach, Bad Books offer a serious body of work that can stand on its own, a testament to the friendship that brought them together in the first place.

Skullcrusher is just a sketch. The EP is less than 15 minutes long; you could grab a glass of water and make your bed and have made it most of the way through these four songs. But “Trace,” a song that feels like the final embrace at the end of a relationship far past its sell-by date, shows Ballentine inching towards something more fleshed out.

All of this is a continuation of the familiar PUP ethos: standing up and screaming about what ails thee is vastly preferable to standing still and shutting up about it.

It’s impossible to fully grasp the album’s narrative arc without the aid of a written guide—detailed promotional materials, for instance, or any of the highly personal interviews Shabason has given. Without such thematic grounding, The Fellowship still delivers rich and emotionally engaging ambient-jazz, but some of the more abrasive passages (“13–15,” “Escape from North York”) wind up feeling more like fragmented narrative transitions than satisfying compositions.

More than a remix album, then, Source ⧺ We Move is like an expansion pack to Source’s electric, eclectic universe, opening up paths and byways that shed new light on Garcia’s work while staying true to her vision; a modular musical adventure that is best enjoyed in context.

Despite its razzle-dazzle, this is the rare King Gizzard release that actually sounds like it was composed as quickly as it was.

Instead of Lungs' largely charming yet discombobulating diversity, Ceremonials suffers from a repetitiveness that's akin to looking at a skyline filled with 100-story behemoths lined-up one after the other, blocking out everything but their own size.

At its best, the album explores the contours of an emotional journey in space and time. Occasionally, though, scattered moods and unfocused songwriting blunt the record’s impact.

Transit Transit maintains a puzzling lack of urgency for an album so long in the works.

Too often, Be the Void finds Dr. Dog unleashed, letting their wilder ideas get the better of them.

Admittedly, the album's moves are exceedingly well-worn, yet like fellow 21st century synth-poppers Junior Boys, Pallers' precise craftsmanship means they're also able to elicit many of the same deeply affecting moods and sensations as their forbears.

Sonically, the album backs away from the dirge-rock rave-ups that defined the group’s last four albums. That’s a welcome development.

At their best, Pulse Emitter’s tracks trade ambient music’s aimless drift for deep compositional structure.

The album's chilling resonance is due in part to Godrich's anagogical recording of minimal instrumentation and digitally etiolated detail.

Kind-hearted and disarmingly earnest, Doiron's music remains as resistant to curmudgeonly critique as it is to over-exuberant hype.

My Morning Jacket is their least adventurous album yet. When they riff, they’re squarely within a July 4th classic rock block; when they vamp, it’s the fog-lit, psychedelic soul that’s invigorated their most recent work. In either form, they occasionally hint at their soaring, festival-ready populism, heady instrumental exploration, or fluency with the American songbook, but never the fusion that once came so organically.

H.N.I.C. Pt. 2 makes for a much more complete and visceral portrait of an incarcerated man than the most precise and technically sound record could possibly manage.

Them Crooked Vultures still feels like a record to be checked off a list rather than one to live with and fully invest in.

The particulars of the feelings evoked here will vary from one set of ears to another, but above all, Knoxville offers an opportunity to lose yourself in a rush of highly detailed and overpowering sound. And the spaces it builds come across as beautiful and celebratory, no matter how crazy things get.

Mable might not be a knock out of the park—"Bench" sounds like lukewarm Weezer, and the five-minute "Out of Body" seems out of place--but it might be one the catchiest sets of pessimist punk songs since Fireworks’ Oh, Common Life.

These 11 songs may be meant to chronicle a pointedly personal inner voyage, yet he’s wound up with a warm, collaborative record that feels like a balm for fear and loneliness.

What prevents Berberian Sound Studio from being a genre exercise is the care taken to paper over the cracks, to find some common ground between droney, Popol Vuh-type material ("Valeria's Burial (Under the Fort)") and more visceral horror soundtrack work (the positively seething "The Game's Up").

These elements [traces of her jazz and blues-rock past] add splashes of unexpected color to these songs, bringing the extroversion of those styles to the too often introverted genre of indie pop and making Hummingbird, Go! sound to big for any kitchen to contain.

Created in mere weeks, it doesn't sound fussy or fussed over, and manages the tricky balance of audible intimacy without crappy bedroom acoustics.

Something you might say about even the best stuff on Invisible Girl. Khan and Sultan move between the trappings of doo-wop to skid rock so fitfully it's easy to miss that some of these tunes aren't all there lyrically.

Super elaborates and intensifies Electric’s approach: Louder, brighter, more. It doesn’t have the sustained arc of that album, but Price specializes in renovating house and disco, modernizing with care, and his small details still beguile.

By drawing out the minutiae of Belief System’s rigid conceptual framework, Woolford loses the spontaneity and audacity that made this music so thrilling in the first place.

Working with material hog-tied to the past and performed with traditional trappings puts Diane at some risk for creative stagnation and worse--the kind of anonymity and irrelevance enjoyed by vast swathes of the contemporary folk universe. To Be Still avoids these traps thanks to Diane's spectacular voice and, well, the little, mostly indescribable things.

Unlike "Ok-Oyot System," Hera Ma Nono credits all songs to the band, as opposed to individual band members, and no doubt the results sound more cohesive as well.

Tracking the spiritual crossroads of hip-hop, reggae, soul, and flamenco, Joyful Rebellion stirs each of those ingredients into an album that, at the very least, deserves acclaim for blending classic and often forgotten Afro-sounds into 04's hip-hop scene.

What it is is the announcement of a stunning and unexpected late-career renaissance; Prodigy is tapping back into the fearsome frustration that once drove him.

Though the album doesn't work in many places, it's a laudable attempt to mix together two styles which are, at first appearance, utterly alien to one another.

We all know a little something about chasing that ideal version of ourselves, and Antony's persistence in the face of futility makes it a joy to run by his side.

Pale Communion only toys with the building blocks, revealing influences that were already apparent but refusing to invigorate them alongside each other.

The album’s second half slows down a bit, but it maintains the focus on songcraft and mood.

The relatively sparse and chilly tone of Departing ultimately feels less like a slump than a conscious decision to present itself as the wintertime counterpart to Hometowns' prairie summer.

Too often, it tries to get by on what it's opposed to instead of what it stands for, a gambit with little margin for error if you don't have a viably exciting alternative, or enough trust in the taste of the listener.

Given its years-spanning tracklist, No One's First obviously has a retrospective flavor, but it also seems to point the way ahead for Modest Mouse, if only to suggest that the band will continue moving in opposite directions--backwards and forwards--all at once.