Young Smoke's not trying to push things forward. Instead, he's trying to take the genre somewhere it hasn't really gone yet, by introducing new textures, giving his productions more space and room to breathe, and infusing the results with a dose of humor. Whether or not he gets there remains to be seen, but joining him on the ride provides its own level of fascination.

Though Eno and Beatie’s music often feels simplistic, by the end of Lateral, they’ve inched closer to the center of the heart.

The songs are frustratingly stagnant-- albeit beautiful-- exercises in lap-pop textures.

Mars is both refined and easygoing, if not a bit aloof at times.

The Massacre's best tracks have 50 dropping club-clatter and gangster lean to show us the mind behind the six-pack, gat, and Teflon.

In spite of the formalism, individual tracks on Quarterbacks are a sharp jolt. Together, they blur to make the album more of a mood piece.

Benson emphasizes the raw power of his riffs instead of polishing them into a smooth sheen. It's not as DIY charming as his earlier works, but it's pretty darned effective.

As an album-length wallow in bad feelings, it's an impressive thing indeed. But I prefer Jesu when their music is about connection rather than isolation.

Three/Three is stacked with features from Detroit area MCs (Danny Brown, Clear Soul Forces) and heavy-hitting veterans (MF DOOM, Ghostface Killah), but only a handful of his guests truly rise to the occasion.

Continuing from Thirstier, Scott has traded the cynicism of her earlier work for sincerity, but that doesn’t mean she’s losing her edge.

For Shy Child, synth-pop short-circuits the space between unreality and truth, the artificiality of its expanses allowing a sort of wide-eyed honesty that naturalism forecloses. That bittersweet sincerity sticks much harder than Liquid Love's sleek surfaces would ever suggest.

Dense and darkly lovely music.

Through Mitchell and Hamer, these characters, made flat by design and even more by time, spring into full dimension, ache and grieve and flirt, live and die and get born again.

For all the flaws in 50 Cent's persona, Get Rich or Die Tryin' isn't without its redeeming qualities.

In almost sequential fashion, the 12 tracks here capture a band trying to wiggle out of an aesthetic straitjacket one buckle at a time, evolving from a band you think you’ve heard a million times before into one you feel like you’re just getting to know.

In a sense, these thirty-six minutes show that the duo has basically been stuck in neutral since 1995.

If you really are the sort of person who's been waiting with bated breath for a new Depeche Mode release, then don't worry: You'll love this. Dear everyone else: It's pretty okay.

While Life Without Sound isn’t their strongest work, it’s got the seeds that could lead to their next definitive statement.

Unfortunately, few of these tracks wield the same impact as his tried-and-true hip-hop productions, and more often than not, feel like attempts at being everything to everyone.

Sometimes Ashworth sounds like she’s yearning to startle her own music’s hypnotically pleasant surface, and there are times you wonder if the gauziness of shoegaze is doing her a disservice, hiding her in plain sight. But SASAMI is a powerful first effort, and Ashworth is a compelling presence.

180 is structured like a gig, with the attention-grabbing hit followed by fun but less memorable tracks that build gradually in excitement.

Watching Movies with the Sound Off is a quantum leap in artistry, but it’s not without faults; the album’s about three songs too long, and a couple of the tracks in the back end just plain run together.

Better to track down this decade's insane explosion of tangents individually than to be given a brief summary by a hit-or-miss marketing device.

In lieu of new Replacements, Anything Could Happen is a decent replacement.

Soberish succeeds largely because Phair is no longer asking for tolerance. She is simply, fully, being herself.

Compared to Morrissey's oblique but resonant lyricism, the Jarmans deal in provocative sound-bite slogans, but the Cribs prove themselves worthy successors to a lineage of cheekily erudite Britpop that spans David Bowie through to the Smiths to Pulp.

The flaw here is that all these songs together are too much to absorb, but Miller probes deeply without ever coming off as sappy, skillfully weaving through breakups, self-loathing, skipping school, and poor decisions without sticking to his own sadsack introspection.

The Private Press is more solid an album than anyone dared expect from an older, wiser DJ Shadow, and though it won't be televising another revolution, I'd be lying if I said its celebratory pleasure centers didn't communicate directly with my own.

Her fifth full-length Air Lows feels like a goth psychedelic ritual intended to plumb the depths of the listener’s unconscious; while the record doesn’t always hit its mark, the moments that do sustain momentum radiate a delectably gnostic hum.

Sometimes the songwriting relies too heavily on swelling harmonies and crescendos, and occasional lyrical clichés grate.

They still occasionally bury vocals in a haze of effects, but their instrumentals are crushing now by design, their synth lines starker, the distortion more piercing. They’ve always been capable of expressing harsh feelings, but they seem now more able than ever to echo such sentiments in their music. Fires in Heaven is a more alluring invitation than ever to join them down in the depths.

A few odd decisions aside, there’s enough between the unforgiving slopes to make this essential for Amidon’s present devotees, if not the perfect mountain for prospective new ones to climb.

The Stand-In is a gorgeous-sounding chronicle of such archetypal props, characters, and sounds, though the conceit does occasionally smother their narrator’s natural, vital wit.

It feels like a stopgap. Harper explores no new territory, sonically or thematically, on the disc’s seven songs; if anything, it’s a stately retreat into the 72-year-old’s well-trod sound.

Talent Night at the Ashram is grounded in a very palatable reality, one that harkens back to the band’s first two albums. But that isn’t to say this record isn’t without its surrealist moments.

Most of the songs on A Million and One burrow between ecstasy and threat, Nova’s voice playing at the edges of those feelings.

Though they haven’t solved all their curation and sequencing issues, Quavo and Takeoff’s compatibility grants Infinity Links an easygoing energy that’s hard to resist.

American Supreme, even at its most unlistenable and monotonous, still makes its point.

The machines on 120 Days II are so holographically vivid that the human element can't help but seem wan.

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

And yet, however thematically mired in misery, Cold Dark Place plays out as a triumphant march into the darkness: one man’s pain, collectively conjured and conquered.

This is the sound of musicians confident in their legacy and what they can do with it.

It's thanks to these big highlights that II becomes a record you walk away from only remembering the best parts, as they largely overshadow all else.

VI strips down the prog to an ingestible 2-guitar/drums setup, forgoing many of the spacey, Yes-influenced synths and flare of previous releases and instead narrowing its focus on more immediate hooks and transitions.

It’s a seamless and occasionally thrilling listen that establishes a fact many could have predicted: Blige’s throaty vocals, as passionate and emotional as ever, are an ideal fit for house music. Nonetheless the album doesn’t exactly play out how you might expect.

It’s the sound of an artist drawing from his repertoire while demonstrating that he is still looking to the future.

Elseq feels like an advancement of the duo’s recent live sets, offering a similar ratio of rhythm to noise and order to chaos, but a richer palette of sounds.

Empty Hands is at its best when the maximalist arrangements sound big, not bloated, and despite a few clunkers, most of this record plays to those strengths.

The songs here aren't necessarily breaking new ground stylistically, but that really isn't what matters. At this point, Mould clearly has nothing left to prove.

Unfortunately, some of Kittin's lyrical deficits undercut her production.

Songs for Sinners and Saints doesn’t cover as much ground as Michael, which offered the rich multi-genre sprawl of a classic Dungeon Family release. But the narrower palette and lower stakes of the project restore the focus and play of his “Snappin’ & Trappin” days.

All of these songs were available as part of the 2002 Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe 2XCD. Right, all of them. Even the liner notes included here.... If you're looking for silver linings, it’s the first time 25 of the 30 songs have appeared on vinyl--purists, there’s that. And, of course, the music itself is mostly great.

With Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins has emerged as an assured, fully-formed cosmopolitan able to merge readily recognizable influences with a sense of theatre too often missing from the legion of similarly-intentioned performers.

[Pond Scum may be] a fans-only album. And yet, taken on its own terms, Pond Scum is also a good-faith effort to plumb the nature of God. Not just any deity, but the distinctively American one born in 1741 in Jonathan Edwards’ hellfire sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and since then praised and perpetuated in countless old-time folk and gospel songs.

They sound more into straight lines than catchy arcs, more into the moment than what came before.

By reimagining the weighty concept record as light, escapist entertainment, King’s Mouth is as strong a candidate as any for Baby’s First Prog Album.

Corey’s enormous productions and Ritchie’s conversational flows feel hypnotic in dark rooms over large sound systems, but on an intimate listen, moments like these meander.

Suga may not be remembered as a keystone in Megan Thee Stallion’s catalog, but it’s a fine portrait of an artist embracing her full self as her world changes drastically.

It’s as good an introduction as you’ll get to the group and its charmingly skewed perspective on the world.

True to that nighttime scene-setter, Nocturnal Koreans ranks among Wire’s most musically relaxed releases, with Newman mostly singing in calm, sometimes hushed tones. But it’s only relaxed in the sense that a sleepless night in your bedroom is relaxed.

A Productive Cough felt more like a genre exercise than a passion project, and that’s true of An Obelisk, too, except this time the genre is a far better fit.

If the satisfying Afterparty Babies doesn't have the same thunderclap impact of its predecessors, it's because that element of adventure is subdued.

It’s all fittingly scathing, but there’s whimsy under the surface, especially in Dwyer’s berserk vocal performances. His taunting, sneering voice cycles through loose impressions of iconic punk singers—Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Ian MacKaye, Johnny Rotten—without ever assuming a final form.

Lady's is a well-trodden field and, at times, their lyrical tropes are overfamiliar to the point of feeling vague, if not downright lazy. So Wray and Walker distinguish themselves by amping up the charm and cheeriness to the max.

Hyetal has a firm grasp on his spin of sweeping, beat-infected sentimentality, and Modern Worship is strong enough to see him lead a crowd, or keep dancing on his own.

Nina Revisited… A Tribute to Nina Simone seems geared towards introducing a contemporary to the High Priestess of Soul, and how well it does that remains to be seen.

It's still perfectly effective fuzz-metal, but it's coming from a group of guys who have done seriously indelible work with the same ingredients, so it comes off a bit too slight.

Reserved and mechanical as it is, Horizontal Structures is a very warm record. Von Oswald and his regulars soak the music in reverb and atmosphere.

By culling from early releases and rescuing tracks from last year's tepid Drag It Up, the band showcases a surprisingly deep and ridiculously rich canon of loser anthems ("Wish the Worst"), dark ballads ("Salome"), odes to romantic doubt and suspicion ("The Other Shoe"), cowboy calls ("West Texas Teardrops"), and frenzied barnstormers ("Doreen")-- all written and played with generous humor and genuine exhilaration.

He has every right to experiment and try on sounds as he sees fit. Hit-Boy attempts to balance this out by heading in the opposite direction so fully that it occasionally overwhelms Benny’s personality. ... Burden of Proof is undoubtedly the next step in Benny’s evolution, even if the music doesn’t always match the vision.

Visions of a Life is an expansive trip. Devoutly 4/4 and unsyncopated, it nonetheless carves out raucous passages in which to burst open.

For the most part, they sound like they’re having more fun than ever.

XOXO is a battle-scarred but unbroken collection, worthy of being filed alongside venerable mid-career milestones like Wildflowers and Time Out of Mind.

These songs don’t have the same mythical grandeur as Tyler’s best work, or the same unfurling experimentalism of Anderson’s. Instead, they play like a wandering search for peace, with both artists turning to their guitars—and to each other—as a respite against a country that seemed to be tearing itself apart.

There are enough explosive moments to suggest that DIANA have another gear to explore.

Murray's Revenge is one of the better gang-unrelated and Dre-unaffiliated records to come from the West Coast since Murs' last one.

While self-diversifying is a perfectly acceptable (and sometimes glorious) approach to recording a fully realized, internally cohesive album, Holland's scope periodically makes Escondida appear non-committal and/or scattered.

By working with Daphne & Celeste’s notoriety and, it turns out, actual charm, Tundra is able to project his idea of what pop should sound like in 2018 onto an essentially blank slate. Instead of a tired pastiche, the three musicians have created one of the most weirdly compelling pop collaborations in recent memory.

It feels like he's listening harder than ever to feel out new ways to move forward, causing him to quietly cleanse his vision in ever more compelling ways.

The Church are still producing at a high level, and Untitled #23 is a must for anyone who's followed them this far.

It leaves a very hazy, almost spectral impression when it ends. But it's also warm and in some ways comforting, and it improves the more you listen to it and tease out the details in the songs.

So the production is great, the songbook is varied, and the band is tighter and more ambitious than ever-- the only problem with Louden Up Now is the unfortunate paucity of ideas within the songs themselves.

Not only are there scattered moments of lyrical brilliance on The Hardest Way, but from a producerly standpoint, it's probably Skinner's most accomplished and interesting record yet.

The most disappointing aspect of Probot is that many of the songs sound more like Foo Fighters turned to eleven than actual metal.

Despite it all, Reefer is Thorburn's best album of the year, and it is so successful because it feels tossed off, like he's not trying so hard.

The already apparent holes in some of the Brakes' tunes, which at their worst can seem little more than a stutter from Hamilton and a steady scrape from the band, do pop up occasionally; then again, they rarely overstay their welcome, as Dodelijk sneaks 20 tunes into just shy of 45 minutes, and in a way even help the good stuff kick harder in contrast.

The sense persists that the more Eluvium piles on, the less unique he sounds. False Readings On is awesome while it’s playing, and when it stops, it’s gone.

On this album, every time it feels as if he’s close to breaking out—and the album’s best songs are replete with moments in which Bridges seems a hair’s breadth away from true passion—he recedes into the background and lets the technical expertise of his studio players, or that timeless-seeming studio itself, take over.

Hoyas, sounds like a soundtrack for an ice-slicked, insomniac winter drive. Blending mumbled folk and bleary-eyed blips, lead-off track "Two Angles" sounds like the Postal Service might have if Jimmy Tamborello's tapes had gotten lost in the mail and accidentally ended up on Phil Elverum's doorstep.

Despite its clever syntheses, there are times when it's not much more than pretty. But the good is not only good, it's promising.

What Cooler Returns lacks in heft it makes up for with unadulterated kicks.

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.

So Pitted sound like they move as a unit. This is where their true energy derives--from their internal communication. You don't hear the gears grinding or see the wires--you only see the bull in all its terrifying, joyful glory and the destruction it causes.

Ultimately, Constricting Rage will either prove redundant or ravishing.

The surprise is that it's as cohesive as it is, with remixers and remixes alike plumbing the same lines of soft-edged, computer-processed home-listening lullabies.

Tromatic Reflexxions sometimes seems to work like a Fall album, wearing you down with its relentless energy.

More energy and less uniformly drab scenery might have kept these well-intentioned stories from blurring into each other.

Massive Attack were always equally as good producers as they were curators; it's promising that, as much of their old sound as they've retained, they've kept this as well.