The slower that Russell moves, the better for allowing the disparate components of Everything Is Recorded to settle into something exquisite.

It’s a cohesive listen that doesn't quite translate into a cohesive statement of purpose.

Not every song on Don't Stop or its bonus All Night EP is a classic, but Annie's good taste has yielded another fine crop of pop tunes.

Brazilian Girls have no problem making their mish-mash sound downright normal, which in a way it is.

The band’s fourth album, Of the Sun, doesn’t so much directly address the state of the world as vividly conjure the day-to-day sensation of existing within it, forever teetering on the tightrope walk between luminous ugliness and awful bliss.

Bad Neighbor whizzes by in a blunted haze, which might be an insult to another project, but it works well here, when the stakes are low and the mood is most important.

Because the album’s scale and ambitions are modest, some of its songs blend together. ... Still, the individual songs are strong enough that obsessing over their similarity feels like nitpicking.

Spielbergs don’t deal in complex subjects, and they sing plainly enough that any hook heard on the first chorus can be joined on the second.

Whiteout Conditions packs the most blanket pep of the power-pop group’s seven albums, dense with that particular new wave brand of electronic two-for-one.

Through a combination of Arling and Cameron's sharp studio skills, their sure feel for genre, and most importantly, an unfailing sense of humor, these two manage, somehow, to make the zillionth such retro LP sound fun and cool.

Despite the band's two-year hiatus, (k)no(w)here's incremental shifts-- slower tempos, starker arrangements, and the addition of McCann's high, keening backing vocals (which, somewhat disconcertingly, recall Journey's Steve Perry)-- advance the drama.

On Multi-task they’ve honed their sound to the point where it’s hard to imagine them playing anything that doesn’t take sharp turns or hit abrupt stops.

Bird can sound too clever, Mathus not clever enough. But These 13 allows each to compensate for the shortcomings of the other while playing up what makes them distinctive. Their voices and instruments combine effortlessly, like old friends getting together for coffee.

For those who were drawn primarily to Eyehategod’s apocalyptic self-annihilation, History’s unadorned blues riffs and fully legible lyrics might be a bridge too far. For those of us who want Eyehategod to keep doing this for a long time to come, it’s a welcome evolution.

Doves' fourth album is another sterling example of why the Doves should be household names and why they probably won't ever be: their unwavering flair for producing mountainous, Wembley-worthy pop anthems that are nonetheless invested with a palpable degree of grace and humility.

ove Lo’s songwriting is unsubtle but not uncomplicated, and while her scenes are well-worn in pop music—bodies tangled in purple lights, morning sun stabbing at hangovers—her best tracks are both blunt and polished enough to sound original. At its worst, the album can slump into fizzy banalities.

Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful.

Holding all of this together, as always, is Riley's sharp humor.

The record plays quick and dirty, with uncharacteristically crunchy production value and lo-fi aesthetics. ... Lyrically, LAS QUE NO IBAN A SALIR mostly sticks to Bad Bunny’s trademark sex flexes and party jams. But even in tossed-off mixtape verses, he retains a goofy charm.

Who knows if the Men would be energized or completely lost if they took more time next time out, but Tomorrow’s Hits for now mostly succeeds in toeing the line between being on a roll and being in a rut.

Garbus continues to examine our political landscape—and her own position in it—with her usual unflinching lyrical style, but this time it’s been metabolized into something more outward-facing and hopeful: songs you can really dance to.

Ay Ay Ay is a sticky-sweet, unbounded mess, but only the priggish and unimaginative will hold that against it.

A good record with some incredibly sick production work.

What’s most exciting about GLORIOUS is its idiosyncrasy. Expanding beyond playlistable trap prerequisites and the wistful soul chops that signal A Serious Rap Album, GloRilla channels the music of her youth, cycling through crunk and gospel with aplomb.

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.

Peanut Butter is a chaotic listen, powerful in parts and fragile in others, and often both at the same time. No matter where it goes, it's always running away from itself.

While Get to Heaven's ceaseless terror and heavy arrangements can be overwhelming, more power to Everything Everything for attempting to offer a nuanced understanding of a broken world at a time when a lot of their significantly less imaginative British indie rock peers say worse than nothing.

Sundowner is sharper, more in sync with his previous records. It’s certainly referential, but it’s hardly completely retro.

While Savage Hills Ballroom awkwardly stretches to make universal points from Powers' personal distaste, his personal heartache results in the most truly resonant moments.

Much of Try to Be Hopeful is spent digging into the complexities of self and society with a lens that is simultaneously critical, sensitive, and goofy.

While the palette of sounds Boy Harsher plays with on Careful can seem limited--brisk drum machine loops, oscillating synths, and Matthews’ haunting incantations--the group finds ways to make each song sound distinct.

Younge’s soundtrack evokes Sly Stone’s improvised funk and buffers Bilal’s ruminating ballads, and the LP falters when it strays from that sound.

Digital Ash has the claustrophobic feel of a singer locked up with a computer, and it's distractingly chipper, like Rilo Kiley in their own Dntel homages; not every Bright Eyes record has to be an emotional epic, but Digital Ash feels like a practice run.

The main issue with Green Language is that it feels scattered.

When they settle down domestically, many rock artists seem to lose some of their spark, their hard-won happiness diluting the angst that made them so compelling in the first place. But on Bitter Honey, Barzelay thrives on the secret fears that lie beneath the surface of even the most secure relationships.

It's hard not to compare the two albums and find this one wanting; even the best songs, which are quite good, wouldn't bump anything off of Illinois.

Electronic music that genuinely rocks.

Whereas Too Young to Be in Love was the excited doodles of a crush's name in a notebook, Hairdresser Blues is the discarding of the love letters that came after.

Like Vile, Polizze writes lyrics as if he’s muttering them to himself, even when he’s gesturing toward something universal. And if his language rarely feels bold on its own, it does establish an undeniable mood paired with such laid-back music.

It'll be interesting to see where Beach Fossils go from here, because What a Pleasure is the type of release that shows they're talented, but still have a little work to do fully capitalize on it.

Though repetition is part of its hammering appeal, things eventually begin to grey a bit as the record moves on, losing the punch of the pure blacks and neon reds of the first half. And though those spoken word samples that pepper the album do more obstructing than enhancing, there's no hampering Youth Code's intentions.

Red contains no clunkers, only lukewarm forays that further convince me this band can nail any sound they want, cheekiness be damned.

Although most tracks on Try Me are taut and concise, they’re built around churning, sprawling riffs that feel far larger than the songs that contain them.

His most fully realized work yet, and also his most original. Bookended by a pair of gentle, ambient-leaning cuts, the record mostly ignores the dancefloor in favor of resting pulses and humid atmospheres.

Lungs is a cloud-headed introduction to Welch's world, where It Girl hype, coffins, violence, and ambition combust on impact; it's a platinum-shellacked demo reel drunk on its own hi-fi-ness.

The group could have delivered 10 variations on “Clearest Blue” and made (relative) bank. Instead, they let their influences sprawl widely. ... Better yet, they finally build on the darker parts of 2013’s The Bones of What You Believe as they excavate their own career.

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.

Is Rob in a Mellow Mood occasionally predictable? Sure, but there's nothing promised here that isn't delivered on, no premise underachieved.

Somewhere is as its best when Garvin bares her teeth and uses her sense of humor to talk about what is haunting her, be it spending far too much time alone, or trying to find your place on new ground.

The real irony of Nobody Knows is that it makes him sound like a more fully realized artist, but a more conservative one, too.

When Meath and Sanborn ease into a slower lane, they find a sweetness that isn’t entirely likable. There is a bitterness to their Southern bless-your-heart feel, swaddling sharp observations in mannered dance-pop.

When the Wind Forgets Your Name shows that in generous spurts this band can still sound as driven and disarmingly sincere as they did a quarter century ago. If it’s a lesser Built to Spill album that’s because they all are now. But as their lesser albums go, it’s one of the better ones.

Abendrot never feels dishonest, just occasionally overwrought in its desire to achieve the stakes and transcendence of similarly inspired records like Holy Ghost or Goodness. Fortunately, You Blew It! just as often let their guitars speak for their behalf and Abendrot can be heard as the completion of a directive started by their last two albums: grow up, dude and keep doing what you’re doing.

Each of her songs has a steely core built from lyrics that examine heartache and vulnerability.

So while they've long segued from fin-de-siecle Brooklyn to edge-of-the-continent Silver Lake, losing more than they’ve gained along the way, TV on the Radio are still capable of conquering big stages and broad sonic territory with the kind of precision and power for which their increasingly desperate older contemporaries need to rely on expensive stunts.

Vasquez’s new album, Criminal, batters down the restraints that choked back his voice in the past, letting him break from a whisper into, finally, a scream. If it isn’t his most nuanced record, it’s certainly his most decisive.

In his synthesis of varied styles, Hayashi’s compositions feel less genre-defying and more genre-unifying.

Spanning just over half an hour, People Helping People requires a few listens before its logic begins to click, but eventually the fractured music overlaps with their catalog, even suggesting new directions for their work to come.

No Highs ultimately works as an example of what ambient music can be, rather than a suggestion of where it might go.

The songs that follow range in scope from atmospheric brooding on “Blue Vapor” to hyper-specific autobiography on “Said Goodbye to That Car.”

The Joy Formidable might not have the most plausible ambitions for a 21st century rock band. But Wolf's Law offers enough thrills to suspend your disbelief.

The rest of Dos can't quite keep the pulse of those initial salvos. Staying inventive within the confines of repetition is sometimes too much for the band to muster. But Johnson's fiery playing is impressive throughout.

Fated is an overwhelmingly pleasant listen. It is decidedly un-dazzling.

While The Fool doesn't fully capture their brain-melded performances, it's a worthy simulacrum.

The elements of pastiche are woven smoothly into her sound, which dances gracefully on the edges of past and present, of waking life and dreams.

Continuance isn’t an overhaul of the blueprint established on Covert and Carrollton, nor is it straight-faced fan service. It’s a space for two rap veterans who are comfortable enough with their chemistry to continue prodding at their margins.

Dabke lives or dies by its ability to make people move, and although Souleyman is no-frills, and borderline gruff compared to other dabke performers, there’s something in his stentorian singing that’s irresistible.

Though the strength of Petals for Armor is derived from the complexities inherent in self-actualization, it is, at times, weakened by its musical and lyrical scope.

While the band may have struggled in the past to reconcile their post-hardcore roots with their art-rock ambitions, more often than not, IX marks the spot.

There is no gotcha moment, no big replicant reveal; Mouse on Mars have bypassed the easy drama of deep fakes to delve into the realm of synthetic essence. Where Dimensional People’s voices were often run through electronic processing until they sounded almost like synthesizers, here the voice is a synthesizer, in effect.

Like the band’s classic LPs, Sanctions locates a strange beauty in plaintive sadness and offers no easy answers, just the feeling of being let into a secret world you don’t entirely understand.

It’s easy to indulge a reverie when it’s a vivid one, and Messes invites you to lose track of time for awhile with it.

Already in possession of telekinetic players and a distinctive fusion of indie-rock hooks and jam-band dexterity, Garcia Peoples grow more intriguing as they step out of the shadows of their inspirations.

Peace Love Death Metal is at its best when the inside joke is buried deep in the music, but whenever the deathtongue is planted squarely in the deathcheek, the songs turn not just silly, but lumbering and self-indulgent, overburdened by the overriding concept.

It's well-recorded, well-written, and teeming with both force and emotional depth.

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.

The raincloud hung heavy over her past four records; on Engine of Hell, it breaks open. The personal tragedies that come pouring out are scarier than any of the grisly apparitions she used to conjure.

At times, KOCH is so microscopic it feels like there’s barely any place left for this music to go. But Gamble keeps finding new ways to take it apart and reassemble it, to the point where something so closed off, so concerned with the smallest of gestures, feels thrillingly open.

Rarely do the Mekons get quite as loose as they do on Deserted, alternating between arid, nocturnal atmosphere that seems to emanate from Susie Honeyman’s fiddle and moments of near hysteria, as though their sun-baked brains have gone haywire. These songs take their time to wander about, even getting lost in the vast expanse--sometimes a little too lost.

The ’90s were a decade very much in its feelings, and the best parts of Wallop are its most emotional.

Let's just say Tower of Love isn't out to offend or challenge or discomfit anyone. But the album's less simplistic than it comes on, obviously, its snugly melodies decorated with snaking structures and surprising instrumentation.

Migration Stories simply drifts along at its own lazy pace, letting its pretty textures become the connective tissue. Sometimes, Ward’s words break through the haze.

Little Joy is not going to stop the world or change your life, but it's one of the sweetest, most listenable, consistently enjoyable records of the season.

Rose’s voice is as pure and light as ever, but the most inspired part of This Ain’t the Way is how the album repositions that quiet register as silent rage.

On Perfect Shapes, Kenney builds a comforting space for her own reflection and growth. It reflects a welcome boost in confidence, Kenney at last stepping onto the pedestal of her own design.

It is slow, winding, and meditative, composed almost entirely of piano, bass, and drums, and builds outwards from minimal meanderings to overgrown thickets of instrumentation.

Oddly, at times it seems like Darnielle works more movingly and astutely when he's inventing his tales rather than partaking in personal anecdote and/or trauma.

It seems almost unfair, though, to criticize Gallab for the minor crime of engaging with a sound that’s not as inherently interesting as what he’s proven capable of elsewhere, as Mean Love cements his reputation as a capable musical wanderer willing to engage with a variety of sounds.

There's a disarming simplicity and artlessness... with an increased emphasis on persistent pop melody over crafty wordplay.

Although Tchad Blake's mixing is a fabulous constant, his consistency means the weaker tracks are revealed for what they are: solid formula-followers lacking the elusive intangible charm that an unexpected note or rhythmic tic can bring.

In the end, enjoying the Weeknd requires a certain suspension of disbelief, and that remains true on Beauty Behind the Madness. You really have to buy into his bad-guy persona.... For newcomers, there's a whole world to explore, and on Beauty Behind the Madness it's richer and smarter than ever.

As big and bold as it can sound, there's little here that's especially flashy or blatantly attention-seeking.

Motorhead do what they do best: be Motorhead.

The ideas sprawled across Mirrorland are mostly in service of songcraft, adding color and texture to their vibrant visions of a super-black Emerald City. It’s Atlanta rap fantasia, manifold in form and style, each track a new, distinctive set design in the production.

With this album’s unpredictable forms, the trio moves confidently beyond its acuity for cultural synthesis, stepping into stranger, more scintillating territory where unexpected shifts and mercurial sounds are the standard. The beauty of Afternoon X lies in its unusual balance of chaos and calm.

Nothing on Your Need exceeds the four-minute mark, landing the album squarely in the electro-pop zone rather than the Russian underground dance scene. Such directness leads to Kedr Livanskiy’s catchiest album to date, even if it means that the best tracks are over too soon. Despite the airy vocal hook and 1990s-inspired breakbeat of a standout like “Sky Kisses,” it tantalizes and then starts to fade away.

Unlike its creators' best prior accomplishments, Broken Bells doesn't seem prepared, or even attempting, to cross over. Nor does it feel like a new direction or outlet for either artist-- it's more of a nice detour.

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