It helps that most of the album sits squarely in Merritt’s musical comfort zones.

Nothing is rushed, but nothing is lingered over for too long, either. And as gorgeous as Shepherd’s music and arrangements are, I keep circling back to Sanders, his horn now quieter but just as emotionally powerful as when he wielded it alongside John Coltrane at age 25. ... On this piece, a clear late-career masterpiece, it’s saying plenty.

At times, it sounds like either the most tenderhearted prog album you’ve ever heard or the most fearless, cold-blooded mutation of folk music. Sometimes, it’s just plain stunning.

Washington’s strengths have never been clearer. His sound is sinewy and centered, his rhythmic footing sure. And he’s a catharsis engine who also knows when to shrewdly dial it back.

We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy - though somebody will probably try - but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets.

On to hell with it, PinkPantheress sculpts a digital-age paradise that exists only in an invented memory of the past, setting the stage for a career set more firmly in the present.

Dark Energy has all the hallmarks of footwork--its frenzied pacing, arrhythmic kick drums, a graphic command of blank space--executed with clear-eyed self-determination. This gives the album an opaque, thoughtful quality.

Dissociation hits its stride when the band grafts new elements onto its classic sound--something that, for all their chops, hasn’t been easy to pull off in the past.

Pimienta has ably realized her potential and silenced those who doubted her deservingness.

“Blowing Kisses” serves as the emotional anchor of Castle’s stunning seventh album, Camelot, which feels like the sort of bold breakthrough that her peers in U.S. Girls and the Weather Station respectively experienced with In a Poem Unlimited and Ignorance.

Despite its obviously short shelf-life, Welcome Interstate Managers is delicious power-pop, unpretentious, loose and perfect for teenagers driving down to Ocean City for the weekend.

With its subtly joyous tones and lustrous songwriting, 'Sno Angel Like You turns out to be a labor of love with endless rewards.

Daughter is best when it's specifically first-person, when Price bends country to fit her own story rather than bend herself to fit the form.

It's the headphones album of the year from a producer with a long history who has come into his own.

The live album (recorded in Stockholm in 1994) and disc of rarities and demos put the finished product in context, while the array of EPs show off the wide stylistic range of everything the Breeders could do well.

The tape is a short, sweet, and potent mix of what Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs, and producer Alchemist do best. It is also an example of the good that can happen when seasoned vets link up and operate under the radar and outside of the major label system.

This teetering restraint masks the true weirdness of Space Is Only Noise. I could understand someone finding the intensely self-contained Space a bit claustrophobic, but the album is most rewarding when you just grab a seat at the table.

I can attest that the music really does move forward similarly to my own metabolism, gradually building, holding a modest climax in the middle, and ending on a long, fluffy comedown. [Review of UK release]

Despite the cries about careerism, they rarely settled into one spot for long, and even when they were correctly perceived to have done so--about one half of The Great Escape really is a Parklife retread--they were still spreading their collective wings on album tracks and B-sides.

On his latest album, God Save the Animals, he wrings strange beauty from our non-human companions, grappling with innocence and its discontents through their saucer-eyed stares. God Save the Animals stands out for its moments of sharp lyrical simplicity.

Fontaines D.C. are fueled by neither IDLES revolutionary fervor nor Shame’s festering disgust. They’re not raging against the current state of affairs as much as lamenting the local communities and culture in danger of being steamrolled by the march of modernity. As such, Fontaines D.C. are very much a post-punk band reclaiming a certain pre-punk innocence.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

Bakesale add-ons will mostly be of value to those who loved Sebadoh's first few years of all-over-the-place wildness, but it's not as if their second-disc inclusion can dull the parent album's punch.

jj's full-length debut is as easy to enjoy as whatever the last CD was you brought home with a giant cannabis leaf on the cover. They're as naive as they are cynical-- or is it the other stupid way around?-- and they manage to be pretty, touching, funny, and motivating, in different ways, in all the right places, for nine songs lasting 28 minutes.

Their music stands now as both a crucial piece in the roiling Seattle scene and as part of a noise-rock continuum that includes like-minded outfits such as Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers.

While much of the instrumentation is thoughtful (the Iranian-British electronic musician Ash Koosha contributed to the delicate “Snowblind” and the raging “Submerged”), nothing is as potent as Tagaq’s voice.

The one new track is “Devotion,” a showstopping slab of new-wave twinkle. Outside of a killer opening punchline (“I don’t feel emotion/It completely takes over me”), it’s uncomplicated and blissful, a portrait of codependence that begs to be read as a you’re-the-real-stars diva move. It’s a victory lap, and I don’t begrudge it. But Hot Chip are far more compelling when they’re navigating the course.

While Elwan may not herald any grand stylistic breakthrough, it does manage to synthesize some of the group’s most recent experiments in a way that helps distinguish it within their overall catalog.

The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold.

Like so many country albums, especially recent ones by Monroe's friend and bandmate Miranda Lambert, The Blade could be stronger if it was more streamlined and sequenced with some kind of overarching narrative in mind, but that's almost beside the point when the album sounds so damn good.

It’s Great to be Alive! is the sound of a veteran band in complete command of its back-catalog.

elela’s music is hydration for the soul, seductive and relatable even as she continues to refine and evolve her sound. You can be drawn in by Raven’s all-encompassing atmosphere, but it’s even better to lose your whole self in it.

The project’s raw immediacy initially suggested it might be throwaway, a palette cleanser before White resumed his usual studio tinkering, but its triple-octane riffage and seething, sticky hooks pointed to something more lasting and substantial.

Black Sheep Boy creates a roomy and natural showcase for Sheff's high-wire vocals, and as a result, it may be the band's best album.

Leave it to VHÖL to find another dimension to the ever-bountiful combination of hardcore and metal, where the cerebral and the primal stomp heads next to one another.

Using words and noise to create mantras and blow them up, Every Bad is the inspired result of a rock band finding itself in 2020, inhabiting many ways of being.

A record of achingly gorgeous dance-pop that captures both the joy of nostalgia and the melancholic sense that we're grasping for good times increasingly out of reach.

Lifetime is marked by aesthetic and personal conflict, and while it doesn’t uncover easy resolution, its beauty (and it is a remarkably beautiful record) derives in large part from the acceptance, or even embrace, of those conflicts as what generates a lifetime’s meaning.

Throughout, Satin Doll warps these standards delectably, leaving you pleasantly dizzy.

Cosmogramma is an intricate, challenging record that fuses his loves-- jazz, hip-hop, videogame sounds, IDM-- into something unique. It's an album in the truest sense.

Working mostly chronologically, this set flows so that you feel you’re riding alongside him.

For all of CHROMAKOPIA’s hitting-your-thirties ego death confessionals, it’s the braggadocious, Cherry Bomb-sounding tracks that really hit.

While there's no question that Grizzly Bear's last two records have sounded gorgeous, critics of the band have wondered if that's enough. Shields, the band's fourth and most compositionally adventurous record, should put those concerns to bed.

Ram is a domestic-bliss album, one of the weirdest, earthiest, and most honest ever made.

Beyond the Pale contains plenty of sharp songwriting, but despite the intrigue of its premise, it may have benefitted from a more thorough commitment to making a proper album.

No other American singer is repurposing our old folk scripts with so much authority or ingenuity; When I’m Called proclaims—softly, gently, and slowly, with a sly grin and a Southern ease—that what these songs have to say isn’t old at all.

FKA twigs is not a masterful lyricist, at least not yet; some of her couplets feel clunky, like she's grasping in the dark for rhymes and coming up with the objects closest to hand ("If the flame gets blown out and you shine/ I will know that you cannot be mine"). But when she zeroes in on the essence of a thing, she hits hard.

Hebden’s arrangement of Sound Ancestors shows deep and intuitive engagement with Jackson’s weed-scented sensibility, which has no use for presumptive distinctions between the beautiful and the funky, the silly and the profound.

It’s a testament to the band’s ambitions and execution peaking in lockstep that Diaspora Problems can be appreciated as both a fully visceral experience and a cerebral one.

Together also continues to emphasize the newfound clarity and purpose in Duster’s arrangements and production. There are still fresh experiments—like the kosmische synth swells that open “Escalator”—but this record is largely a refinement of the band’s sprawling, slow-paced sound, giving a little focus and momentum to their once-opaque instrumentals.

Calexico have created their first genuinely masterful full-length, crammed with immediate songcraft, shifting moods and open-ended exploration.

Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.

The Bed I Made is a lovely introduction to their orbit.

The Futureheads rely on actual chops and the kind of melodic astuteness usually associated with piano-pop balladeers, and in doing so, they exhibit complete control over their music and intertwining vocal deliveries.

No one aspect of Ali's personality really dominates. The Truth Is Here is all the stronger for it, and that can only be considered a good sign.

The music on Authenticity may initially sound remedial and elemental, even saccharine, but further listens reveal new intricacies.

A Light for Attracting Attention sounds more like a proper Radiohead album than any of the numerous side projects the band’s members have done on their own. ... The Smile spotlights the creative relationship between Yorke and Greenwood like never before.

Belladonna removes the buttress of Amaryllis’s horns and rhythm section. At times, the guitar and string quartet move like a single amorphous organism, untethered from any particular pulse. At others, one voice will offer a steady ostinato as a home base for the others to wander away from and return to at will.

This is an album whose every layer seems customized, whose every crease seems deliberate. That calculation doesn’t seem to have mitigated Indian’s power at all. Rather, this is the strongest they’ve ever sounded and the smartest they’ve ever sounded.

Philosophy of the World is the realest version of the Shaggs, flaws and force in full-view. A teenage symphony this is not.

His first solo release in nearly 13 years, his most adventurous and surprising, and his best.

Half of rage is confronting the sorrow that births it and watching it metamorphize. Witnessing the chrysalis is With a Hammer’s most generous gift.

This album still stands out among his recent work, not so much for the leap of faith he took collaborating with Auerbach but because it turned out so damn well.

One of the most impressive aspects of The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place is that it feels constantly in flux, growing and transforming with every note.

It’s to her credit that it [final song, “Call on God”] doesn’t sound like a farewell. Instead, the song—the entire album, in fact--is a poignant statement of the determination that motivated her all along.

Earle's music doesn't simply mirror the transcendence of its creator; it lends transcendence to the listener as well, as all excellent music will. But what truly makes this one of Earle's best records is that he refuses to be pulled down by musical decisions. It's as if he never faced a problem of whether or not to add this or that instrument, or to veer off in this or that direction. He simply had the idea and went with it.

Amidon and his cabal of collaborators-- Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, Shahzad Ismaily-- have been merging chamber music with indie rock for awhile now (see also: Sufjan Stevens, Thomas Bartlett, Owen Pallett, Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National), and their touch is nuanced and, on occasion, delightfully odd.

Diotima's glory is often in its details. It has fewer stops, starts, and redirections than its predecessors. Rather, the big shifts are now often misleadingly subtle and slight, created more by the way the musicians move against and with each other than how the band moves as a unit.

On Man With Potential Pete Swanson's ability to encompass many sounds and moods knows few bounds, if any.

The Regal Years does a thorough job of not just compiling the Beta Band's recorded legacy, but underscoring the real reason why they're missed--it’s not just for the music they left behind, but for the infinite possibilities within it that had yet to be explored.

Lucky for us, there’s no one else like them and on Present Tense, their success has allowed Wild Beasts to be even more like themselves.

As an entry point into two of the distinct faces of Cabaret Voltaire, #7885 is an undeniably valuable document, and one that’s as much about the importance of growth and change as it is about the birth of a sound.

Ra alights on almost all aspects of its bandleader’s multidimensional sound and presents a coherent trajectory through it, alternating between otherworldly explorations and earthbound beats.

The weakest of the three versions of Nothing Has Changed is the chronologically sequenced 2xCD version. It's basically just a slight revision of Best of Bowie, compressed to throw in five later songs....The 3xCD Nothing Has Changed, though, is the jewel among the three variations on the same core material. Its masterstroke is that its 59 tracks appear in reverse chronological order.

As a standalone suite of songs, like a tuxedo you only dust off every now and then, it is beautiful, but only appropriate when the occasion demands it.

The oafish opening to “Hard Piano” aside, the writing on Daytona is knotty and strong, with texture and grit and plenty of tight turns. The album is, in many ways, a years-late payoff of the promise shown when Ye and Pusha performed “Runaway” at the 2010 VMAs.

It’s when he sticks to the highly personal that Curry’s music is devoid of all cliché--the power of his performance, the veracity of his pen, and the color of his wordplay make him an expert at voicing the tribulations of this doomed condition we call being young.

Though Crow and Now Only are spare records, Jacobikerk makes the versions on (after) sound hollow but full. Elverum’s voice, impossibly soft, fills the space with solemn clarity. But the most striking thing about (after) is that, even after so many performances, these songs sound as raw as they did when Elverum first committed them to paper and tape.

She colors her songs with vibrant shades, drawing out tragicomic absurdities with sly panache. The result is direct but disorienting, like a grim domestic scene painted by Matisse.

It’s dance music interested in the loneliness of late-night partying, and Minus tends to the subject with a subtle hand.

The album is a 2010s time capsule of introspective R&B, Jordan’s diaphanous vocals floating over tracks inflected with quiet storm and UK garage. This is still very well-trod territory, but Jordan’s music distinguishes itself with an almost-claustrophobic melancholy.

The catchy country-pop rhythm of the title track, buoyed by a twangy electric guitar solo, wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place in between Clint Black and Dwight Yoakam on Country Music Television in the 1990s, but Childers frequently channels a vision of the genre that predates the video era.

Her third album in eight months, is a statement of self-definition—one that encourages you to be at peace with all your insecurities. It’s this propensity to let the irregular feel like second nature that makes Fratti so magnetic. Sentir que no sabes is a summons to make your own rawness a home.

Sometimes extended improvisation carries with it an expectation of drama, where you think about what just happened and what might come next. This exceptional record fixes your attention on the present moment.

Fabulous and melancholy.

Her precision never feels overly technical or stiff. Tether is as intuitive and loose as it is intentional.

Like those on their last album, these songs reveal themselves gradually but surely, building to the inevitable moment when they hit you in the gut. It's the rare album that gives back whatever you put into it.

The project is distinctly rough around the edges, to great effect; there’s the sound of dust popping off vinyl and cassette hiss throughout. ... His uncle and father are gone, but Earl is still here, carrying on their artistic legacy--and, with the help of his collaborators, building his own.

Where “Damascus,” “The Manifesto,” and Sparks-assisted pinger “The Happy Dictator” play to their unlikely collaborators’ strengths, the bombast of songs like “The Plastic Guru” and “The Shadowy Light” teeters into folly.

If it doesn’t quite show the knack for experimentation and variety hinted at via Inspiration, Wings is a quietly amazing document of Otis’ doggged determination over the quarter century between leaving the business and the first Inspiration reissue.

Brown meets JPEG’s tempos with alacrity, flashing a singsong flow on “Orange Juice Jones” and mirroring the jittery horn fanfare of “Burfict!” The short bursts don’t provide space for Brown to stretch his limbs, yet he remains a virtuoso in miniature.

The album’s best and most revealing tracks are those where James herself takes the mic, though she’s careful never to give away too much.

What’s remarkable about It’s the Long Goodbye is that even in these moments of consuming anguish, the album doesn’t feel oppressive. The musicians’ interplay and MacFarlane’s exquisitely sculpted production balance Graham’s grief with consolation.

The songs sound as fresh as morning air through open kitchen windows.

Still inventive and imaginative, still grounded in his dexterous picking and robust vocals, it’s his most bittersweet album, with a melancholy lingering in each song, no matter its subject matter.

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

The new-stuff disc offers few hints as to where the label is headed next, which is unsurprising, but the variety on display is only matched by the quality of the tunes themselves.

He has his handful of obsessions, his rules, his limitations, and once in a while he returns and gives us a record like this, something that will be sounding good five or 10 or 15 years from now, or whenever the next solo record comes along.