The result is a vision of a prospective future both strange and alluring, a journey through virtual spaces and experimental technologies that, at heart, feels human after all.

Inconsistency or complexity? Depends on how much you believe in this music as sincere self-expression versus its status as smartly crafted, artist-as-listener-proxy pop.

I wouldn't mind hearing Hollenbeck use the group to explore his softer side, because the pulsing comedowns on this record are some of its most arresting moments, even though the in-betweenness makes it unique and enjoyable on its own merits.

Time to Die bests it as far as consistency goes.

He devises a palette that lends texture and personality to Music for Writers. Still, not every composition stands out—“Pedvale Sunrise” sounds like someone noodling in a cloud—but even the ones that drift by in the background at the very least don’t rip you out of your writerly headspace.

While contemporary political and personal unrest continues to invade the lives of Molchat Doma’s members—and those of many other people—their music remains firmly rooted in the past. Even if it’s not entirely innovative, it offers a sense of security, and that can be its own reward.

Dark Hearts is best at its most artificial. The moments that aim for “realness” seem less so.

That’s the realm where CYMBALS work best, when they use understated sonic brushstrokes--a flutter of synths here and there--to deepen the mood.

There are bound to be uncomfortable moments listening to someone else’s therapy, but there are also passages of profound beauty and clarity amid the maelstrom.

There’s plenty of low and high end, but none of the gray in-between. It makes for an album that sounds more like backing tracks missing the singer and the song to complete them. If anything, Too Many Voices sounds like it has too few.

Ultimately, while this crowdedness [from guest appearances] prevents Supreme Blientele from feeling like a definitive statement from Gunn as a rapper, the album can still function as a fine entry point to the fast-growing catalog of an ascendant rap cult hero.

He delivers these lines like a seasoned storyteller, reminding himself of the timeless feelings that drive us to keep the music playing, whether it’s old or new.

Occult Architecture Vol. 1 is a good record that’s at its best when Moon Duo fully give in to these seductive inklings, like on “The Death Set” or “Creepin.’”

It's clear that he's arranged them with an ear for future extended mixes in which the pop songs fall away, leaving only the shuddering metallic chassis underneath. Maybe, in retrospect, it's his judicious sense of balance that holds him back: a few more extremes, and his next work might really sing.

Intimate and slow-moving, Woman is good but underwhelming.

Emphasizing the notion that this is brainy music would be ignoring the fact that PVT frequently achieve melodic catharsis on Church With No Magic. A lot of this is due to Pike's considerable vocal register, which can convey low resonance and high-frequency wailing alike.

Few verses on the album are particularly memorable outside of spots from Maxo Kream, Vince Staples, a string of appearances from the consistently good J.I.D, and the standalone moments of introspection from J. Cole himself. But the comp works because it never feels forced or closed off to ideas.

Curren$y's lyrics drip with nice things, and the joy that comes from fondly describing them. But the language he brings to them exists in its own universe.

This formulaically old-school approach is both J5's greatest asset and worst liability.

Unlike its predecessor--where the weight of the past sometimes bogged down the tempos, too--Little Fictions moves.

After a while, the songs on Alpha Zulu begin to mimic the experience of observing objects in a museum—you can admire all you want, but please don’t touch.

On Forever, Holograms take lofty themes and personal trials and make them a communal experience.

Repo is still abstract in a similar and smeary way, but it sounds like Black Dice have gotten a better handle on their gear.

The pity of The Lost Tapes' overambition is that it could easily be condensed to a single, first-rate album of genuinely new-to-record material.

Glowing in the Dark homes in on the group’s most memorable set of songs to date—and it sounds like a little extra time curating has helped them loosen up and have fun, too.

After over 30 years in pursuit of the perfect song, Pollard has finally started to recognize the album for everything it can be.

In directing his anger inward, slowthai loses some of the urgency and incisiveness that made his debut so compelling, along with the contrast that made that album’s vulnerable moments so striking. But he’s undoubtedly honed his craft, sounding slicker as he retreats from placard rap to the journaling process that got him started in the first place.

Quakers is kind of a mess, and odds are that a not-insignificant number of people are going to find the beats more consistently entertaining than the verses... But ambitious messes are the best kind, and riding out the less-interesting moments is worth it in the long run.

Even at a lithe 31 minutes, it serves as Hecker’s most diverse work, an unfixed landscape that moves from shadowy to frigid to transcendent with ease. The song titles and album notes leave no real clues as to which films each track was actually intended for.

Even the more lighthearted moments are rich with subtext. Like a De La Soul project, ISTHISFORREAL? gestures at a running talk-show concept without really committing to the bit. Instead, KTO deploys a breadth of styles to match the record’s expansive themes.

There are a few spots on Silver/Lead where Wire succumbs to its own subtlety, as words empty and the tempos deflate toward flatness. But the group catches itself quickly, producing the album’s best track, “Sleep on the Wing.”

Although the scattered nature of some of the songs keeps any single narrative from taking shape, the album is a significant improvement for a band that’s still coming into its own, still, in other words, in its youth.

Sure, they could use a few relatable sentiments to go with their outstretched sound, and the Clinic thing's just gotta go. But few bands this young are operating on quite this scale, and fewer still have the brass--and the patience--to pull off a big, glitzy, complex record like Zeroes QC.

At its best, Pressing Onward amplifies that magic with powerful choral harmonies, carving out new space in contemporary gospel and shaping it in her own image.

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

Given Ought’s radical inklings, you wish they dared to make these lovely songs say or do something a little more righteous, to twist them into more adventurous shapes. However, Ought achieve this spectacularly on the blue-eyed soul of “Desire.” It towers over Room Inside the World like the album’s lighthouse.

Compared to the careful sprawl of triple-LP Sr3mm, which artfully unwound the brothers’ divergent styles and production tastes while avoiding lulls, this outing can feel formulaic and less adventurous at times.

Rather than lurching between styles, they mostly stick to whirlpooling guitars and a newfound supply of silvery electronics—sometimes pulsing, sometimes throbbing, sometimes seemingly on the brink of short-circuiting.

It's brilliant at points, exhibiting the casual, grimy grace that laced Up the Bracket through English countryside benders, sing-alongs, and pub anthems, but evidently, The Libertines are creatures of excess, and even a good thing can be overdone.

The album captures an anger and regret intense enough to nearly bruise listeners and attendees, but also manages to preserve the pristine trembles in Oldham's throat.

On their proper full-length debut, a sound in danger of stagnation has been brightened and reconfigured in appealing ways.

This is very comfortable music, but Meek threads strange disturbances into its weave. Residing alongside the blankets and stars and blue jays of his lyric sheet are darker things—faces forming on the ceiling, broken tongues, swimming pools full of turpentine.

It exists in a cloud of gloom that consumes the album. And yet, there’s something endearing about Boogie’s honesty, his commitment to the established mood, and his charming vocals to go along with his rap abilities.

What Jakobsson has always tried to accomplish with DJ Seinfeld was to try to tap into some grand universal emotion, a sense of want inside us all. This time, he finds it in joy instead of grief.

Offering more than mere updates of classics, Songs of Love and Horror also showcases the depth of Oldham’s catalog through obscure tracks like the slow, haunted “Most People” and the previously unreleased “Party With Marty (Abstract Blues).”

Harkin is most alive when it sprints with that sense of speed and purpose, surging with adrenaline and sparking with twilit excitement. The one or two songs that stumble into a medium-paced chug.

Unusually for such an introspective album, the guest spots are welcome respite.

Drug Rug have allowed a bit of the drawl of their early work to carry over here, and even when they're playing it fairly straight, there's something slightly twisted about their melodies.

There are so many types of music he's experimenting with on this album, not even from track to track but within each song.

One of Oldham’s most complicated albums. ... If you’re left confused or disoriented, that’s exactly Oldham’s point. Welcome, he seems to say, we’ve been waiting for you.

Toting a whole gleaming new set of synthesizers and some surprisingly complicated riffing, Gales transforms the band completely. The experience is sort of like catching a show you used to watch on a CRTV in high def for the first time.

Big Ideas plays like an eclectic compilation of scattered thoughts from her journal. Songs grapple with big questions but offer few answers.

Even while it's unfortunately anticlimatic, The Volunteers is a fine record, and a welcome addition to the modern singer/songwriter canon.

That first half [of the album] proves the less successful, though at the same time the opening three-song run may be the best thing Deacon's ever recorded... It's the second half of America that promises and more or less delivers something great and new for Deacon.

His score is only one small part of the movie’s audio track, a subtle human presence within Reichardt’s typically rich palette of natural sounds.

There are shortcomings... When Smoosh are good, though, they're really good.

Like much of Magnolia before it, the songs lope along quiet, lazy rhythms in no particular hurry to get where they're going. But while the Wooden Birds never quite arrive anywhere special, that's not to say Kenny isn't pointed that general direction.

Not every intuition bears fruit, but more and more it is becoming clear that the iconoclastic rapper’s impulses are to be trusted.

More often than not, they make the whole big mess work, even if they can’t make you care whether or not that damn boy even makes it out of the well.

It settles for being a mildly adventurous AAA rap album made by two friends searching for fun in heartbreak.

That's ultimately the sticking point with Infiniheart: VanGaalen's songs tend toward folly, yet it's impossible to discount his commitment to the material.

For the first time, Lacy’s virtuosity is in service of his vision rather than the extent of it.

Nothing on the EP would sound out of place amid the dreamy desert blues of the band’s 28-year-old debut album, She Hangs Brightly.

What's most remarkable about this album is, despite the high gravitas of the subject manner, it still manages to capture the yearning and imagination of youth, and never loses touch with the redemptive qualities of interpersonal connectedness.

Brain Holiday sounds like that kind of safe space, but it’s also a testament to what can be accomplished when you’re a little distracted.

Her energetic thrashing is infectious, like an open invitation to dance away your own pain.

Fruit Bats seem to be further embracing modernity and sounding great doing it.

Overall, it reads like a look through some stranger's photo album-- there are a lot incredible images contained within it, but there are also a few embarrassing shots and the occasional moment in time that isn't framed quite right.

Glory instead settles into grooves and revisit territories. Stetson plies us with all his best techniques.

The production is more ambitious, the songwriting more accomplished. If JENNIE has the most robust individual musical identity of the quartet, it’s because her songs have a crucial element the others’ lack: They sound good.

The relatively sumptuous presentation of The Flower Lane successfully separates it from the rest of Ducktails' discography. Unfortunately, a familiar emptiness remains.

Ladytron has succeeded at programming a record so distant that you'll wonder just what comprises the wind beneath their wires.

Seraph might be shifty, but Arsenault still works with blunt force.

Ultimately, It'll Be Cool succumbs to the general lack of ambition that has always been Silkworm's Achilles' heel.

In a way, they don't even try to [reconcile their spotlight-swallowing energy], and that makes No, Virginia... an album on par with the Dolls' two fully conceived LPs.

The whole record is a smart little left-turn for everyone involved. And if it's not quite an unalloyed triumph, I would totally play a video game with this soundtrack.

The productions shine, mixing taut electro rhythms with those swirling strings. There's a sense of scale to the album that is really attractive.

When Weber’s composition is led by a sense of density—multiple musical voices all intertwining to create a sense of vibrant dialogue—it is at its most engrossing. ... Where Conference of Trees falls down is when its electronic elements talk over its organic ones.

In the end, One Second of Love is enjoyable but slight: its stronger moments render the weaker ones particularly forgettable.

One-note? Perhaps, but the note is hypnotic. There is much to be said for an album that is simply exceedingly nice, like a hug or a blanket.

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.

The brilliant writing on First of a Living Breed ... would position the album as a candidate for one of the year's best rap records if it weren't for those drawback tracks ["For the Kids", "Cedar and Sedgwick"].

Though Settings’ music sprawls, it feels minimalistic in practice, exploring just a couple of chords like Philip Glass and encouraging deeper listening like Pauline Oliveros.

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.

Fans of big, stadium-swinging hooks might find Sister Cities a sparser, more introspective affair than they prefer, but the band seems okay with leaving South Philly basements behind and seeing more of the world.

Calexico have made records that sound like this one before, but they’ve never made one with quite this much fight in it.

Willis still viciously circumnavigates his drumkit with authority and adventure. Warren still manhandles a viscous bass tone that he funnels into heavy themes. Kasai adds texture and dimension, augmenting what's there instead of adulterating it.

Though her approach has calcified, the environments generated by her records are still singular, a gentle, untroubled, indefinite ambience that is very soothing to inhabit. It's like being embraced by the air.

Santogold might try to separate formula and art, but her album catches fire when she blasts that distinction into irrelevance.

Mettavolution reassures that for as long as they’re around, Rodrigo y Gabriela will be echoing their influences as only they can.

Cokefloat! is not always admirable but it's emotionally open.

Often, the band feels like they’re deliberately avoiding their old tricks, finding new ways to arrive at the same destination. Generally, the proceedings have a light touch, a gentleness that is readily apparent on the opening shuffle “Love Earth” but also on the thicker rock’n’roll of “The World (Is in Trouble Now).”

Fenced in by the demands of the film, Fussell and Elkington make modesty both a virtue and shortcoming.

Though it's Moderat's strongest record, III isn't quite all killer. The very Field-like "Finder" bounces its vocal loop into the pocket, but it doesn't show off the songcraft found on songs like "Reminder," which might have sprung from a solo album by Thom Yorke.

Christmas in Reno is uncomfortable to listen to--the tracks that you so often associate with being jolly are torn up into pieces and burned at the core. However, that's exactly Ramone's intention.

Thomas’ music is one long effort to reach across the void and connect. He’ll never reach everyone, but with every album he gets a little closer.

Love Me ultimately confirms what we already knew about Barfod’s solo work: he plays well with others, but a greater overall consistency might garner him the love he’s seeking.

The Silver Cord won’t convince every listener to join King Gizzard’s Phish-like fandom, but it stands out as one of their most playful records in recent years.