Whereas Murphy once took on all of these influences lightly and cleverly, they feel heavier across much of American Dream’s 70 minutes, with the lingering responsibilities of a disappearing history becoming more apparent. On paper, that might sound like a bit of a slog, but this is not the case.

It takes a special kind of force to get so many different voices in one place to coalesce. Maybe a common goal. Maybe a shared spirit. Sometimes, it’s as simple as having somebody at the center who’s willing and able to care for everyone—and who’s as magnetic as Sofia Kourtesis is here.

It’s beautiful and ugly at the same time and, for now, Iceage have found their own unstable sense of peace.

Perhaps as a direct result of I-Sound's presence, Music is a Hungry Ghost is a looser, more abstract affair than previous efforts.

Sometimes bludgeoning, always regal, Blue Cathedral is a calcified, hippified holy place.

The band's latest extends their newfound confidence to content as well as delivery, and stands as the finest full-length by Stuart Murdoch and his shifting collaborators since [If You're Feeling Sinister].

It's the album's end-to-end strength that speaks the most-- against hip-hop artists who fail to make solid albums and those rock idiots who say it can't be done.

Devotion marries her natural gift with throbbing instrumentation that breathes life into every single turn of phrase or sensitive vocal embellishment.

Chrome Dreams carries a dream logic that's bewitching in a way the individual moments simply aren’t, a testament to how a good album sequence can almost be a magic trick.

Steingarten is a nearly perfect album.

You & Me isn't as hard or immediate as the band's earlier records, but that's not a complaint; Its sound is coy, and invites you to spend time with it.

Set Yourself on Fire is about breaking up and breaking down, and as such the album feels wontedly cathartic, like the moments right after you hit your emotional nadir and start getting your shit together. Stars handle the mood delicately with few slip-ups; my only complaint is that they never handle much of anything else.

If Double Negative was a thrilling and uncertain expedition, bringing an alien landscape into focus for the first time, HEY WHAT demonstrates Low’s newfound mastery of the terrain.

Maus has a full set of songs whose architecture is just as sophisticated and riveting in actuality as it is in theory.

Though the leap is audibly huge, Dye It Blonde's many successes aren't wholly the result of its gilded production values and ambition. This band was able to furnish first-class melodies from the beginning. Now they've grown along with their resources.

With such simple arrangements, Sprague’s writing can sound like an intimate conversation, with larger context left unsaid. ... The more directly she composes her thoughts, the fuller the music becomes.

Future was always straightforward, never ashamed to confess his depression or infatuation, but the narratives never felt so focused, nuanced, or vulnerable than here.

It is the Knife's most political, ambitious, accomplished album, but in a strange way it also feels like its most personal.

The record mixes feelings of protection and safety with the tug of adventure and wraps it in compulsively listenable music that explodes at just the right moments.

It's respectful of tradition, quietly ambitious, and deeply personal, a wonderfully considered album from an artist who was starting to seem a lot like a forgotten gem in the wake of mishandled promotion.

In every other sense it’s another impeccably measured step forward.

It's a record played in the red, and it's not afraid to have a good time there.

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.

We’re used to breakup albums that assume you just want to crawl into a hole and die, but I Never Learn is for the times when heartbreak is so life-affirming that you want to share the feeling with the world.

Whether bellowed by Philip Cope or sung with witchy intensity by Laura Pleasants, just about every song has a chorus that immediately stamps itself on your brain. In that sense, Spiral Shadow is damn near a pop album.

Their peppy, gleeful, headstrong guitar pop sounds a hell of a lot like yesteryear's Britpop.

It continues Björk's run of releases that sound nothing like their predecessors, yet is, as ever, particular to her.

While you could put on I Don’t Live Here Anymore and take comfort knowing that the War on Drugs have Beach House’d their way to another terrific record by simply refining what works, there are a few songs that test the borders of the band’s classic little world.

It's easy to imagine Go Tell Fire to the Mountain giving disaffected listeners the promise of an entry to something beyond themselves in a way that James Blake or Bon Iver can't. Maybe you've grown past that sort of thing, but what about a record of exhilarating expanse and passion that sounds like indie rock and yet feels way bigger? Well, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is that too.

The Songs of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach sounds like a heartfelt eulogy to an artist who helped pop fans find great beauty and even greater solace in all those lonely, uncertain moments.

Even longtime fans may find themselves thunderstruck by some of the turns she takes here. But the record also confirms the essence of her creative identity; it’s shot through with sounds and concepts that have defined her work over the years, just presented in a way we’ve never heard them before. ... No Home Record offers something radically new and, in places, almost shockingly contemporary.

SMD's excellent debut album as a stand-alone group, Attack Decay Sustain Release, is for dancing, not moshing.

The nine songs here follow their own innate paths, often beginning with a simple acoustic arrangement before blossoming into vivid daydreams.

Clean is that much-cooler indie record Taylor once sung of. Below the surface, its spark gleams like a secret.

It’s substantive enough to warrant its extended genesis and boost Sleep’s legacy, not just reaffirm it.

Despite all the collaborations on So Much Fun, the album is about Young Thug. He might not mystify as he did in the early stages of his career, when he was stumbling into new flows and deliveries at an inhuman pace, but now he’s able to wield the madness with ease, satisfying in many modes.

The lack of surtext makes Menneskekollektivet as conceptually rich as anything Hval has ever done. It is a statement about the beauty of slowing down, of not worrying about what you say and instead focusing on how you feel.

The subject matter subverts her inherent sensuousness, but this is still Charlotte Gainsbourg singing-- at times, she can't help sounding like the cooing French goddess her father helped popularize. It's dead sexy, reborn.

On Jennifer B, plot twists play out like a delicious art school scandal. Just when you think these orchestra enfant terribles will stick to their notation books, Jockstrap scurry to the bridge and chuck every page into the Thames.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a bold and inventive work, brimming with ideas and sublime moments of brilliance. But it's also unfocused and top-heavy.

As important questions about music's worth in the age of free continue to swirl around him, Sufjan's still combating instant-gratification culture the best way he knows how.

The Book of David is a pleasure-first listening experience, and Quik deploys each of his tricks with a showman's flair.

Afrique Victime is the fullest portrait of Moctar’s gifts that he has offered yet.

Quit +/or Fight may lack the immediate melodic punch of the band's debut-- it forsakes pristine strums for skewering electric guitar and scrappier arrangements-- but what the record sacrifices in warmth, it makes up for in atmospherics.

The rhythms are stately and unsyncopated. The arrangements are lushly orchestral. The songs are mostly around six minutes long, proceeding at the unhurried pace of guided meditations. And, perhaps owing to the sense of communion-via-solitude espoused in the first track, the lyrics are concerned with “we” nearly as often as they are with “I”.

Forget the details: The sheer comfort of this stuff can charm just about anyone, from the rock bar to the office to your grandma's house.

Soft and subtle, Superwolf is the kind of record that unwinds slowly, and is best enjoyed over multiple listens and, unsurprisingly, many glasses of wine.

Her voice is a tender muscle; her songs have a sinewy twist, and her loud-quiet guitar can flood in as unexpectedly as cheeks flushing at the wrong moment. What’s remarkable about PAINLESS is how she whittles almost everything down—the near-monomaniacal emotional range, the abrupt, broken language, her palette reduced to smoke and ash and nerves—and makes even more of an impact.

It’s that blazingly honest, hyper-personal quality that places Cerulean Salt in the tradition of Elliott Smith, early Cat Power, or Liz Phair's free-flowing Girlysound tapes--the work of a songwriter skilled enough to make introspection seem not self-centered, but generous.

It's probably the best thing Defever's ever done.

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.

His lyrics have grown more sophisticated. Humor was always part of his music, but on b’lieve i’m goin down it’s an animating principle.

T.I.'s confidence seems effortless and second-nature, his self-aggrandizement turning relentless and convincing.

The headier and grander it grows, the more its heavy drones swarm, the more undeniable the duo’s alchemy proves to be.

The free-flowing and intuitive nature of the sessions is apparent in the recordings, which have the amiable looseness of first takes. You get the sense, sometimes, that they are figuring out a song’s ideal arrangement as they track it.

Sometimes the single versions here are superior to the album edits, 12-inch mixes, and other edits, but not always. It is also possible to imagine a more nuanced and inventively sequenced gloss of Pet Shop Boys’ career than this chronological survey. But there is particular value to this nerdy historicism.

The Bad Seeds sound even edgier and more sophisticated on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, providing a fitting pulpit for their bandleader's ravings.

Return to the Sea is a case of Diamonds and Tambeur yanking up their anchor and setting sail for new waters, enjoying the freedoms of exploration and discovery.

What Parker tapped into on The New Breed, he blows wide open on Suite for Max Brown, a mesmerizing follow-up and informal companion piece. While his electric guitar remains a highlight, Parker builds out a fast-slashing range of ideas using dozens of other sounds and instruments, most of which he plays himself.

At first listen that seems off-- the chops and compositional sense here are the most immediately impressive part of the album. But dig deeper and you realize Local Natives never lose sight of the pleasures of being a youthful rock band-- right down to themes of wanderlust and discovery.

Blue World falls just off-center—not a major addition to the Coltrane canon, but certainly an addition to a major part of it. ... But the strongest moments on this offhanded, unintended artifact are remarkable even by the standards of this band at this juncture, and the historical record will reflect that. Finally, the cat’s out of the bag.

It feels rare to hear an album that’s so experimental, that aspires to stretch itself out across genres and play with form, and that attains exactly what it sets out to achieve.

What we have here is a long-awaited stepchild of IDM and hair metal sensibilities, joined by the omnivorous appetite of hip-hop.

Power Trip’s fist-pumping choruses, ricocheting grooves, and ample charm are so animated that they leave us with something addictive and, well, fun.

Arab Strap's music is still fractured, Smog-like, and woefully beautiful. The group's pitted, narky ambience fuses Irvine Welsh with Brian Eno's Another Green World-- Elephant Shoe is ambient for the Tamazipan massive.... Arab Strap's depression is as addictive as their expression of it is alluring.

Kano doesn't just defy the sonic tradition of grime on Home Sweet Home, he defies the tidy boxes MCs are usually plopped in upon their arrival.

Most Normal is a direct attack that hits like chugging gas from the nozzle. It’s not only thanks to its mauling noise, but the antic and insistent cadence of Kiely’s delivery.

On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band.

Mutant is an album of contrasts, and Ghersi has an uncanny ability to let extremes interact with each other to create something new.

Ultimately, the release of The Carnegie Hall Concert feels right on time, providing a welcome jolt of focus to a widespread impression of Alice Coltrane that’s started to seem just a tad vague. .... As this set shows, she always contained multitudes.

As an album, I See You has the eerily seamless wholeness of the self-titled debut, a smooth and polished object with no visible edges.

More so than any identifiable influence, More Than Any Other Day is ultimately defined by its unsettled, restless spirit; this is an album that treats panic attacks and adrenalized ecstasy as two sides of the same pounding heart, with its simultaneous transmissions of joy and fear, discipline and chaos, comedy and tragedy.

With his first officially licensed mix CD, for the 51st entry in the DJ-Kicks series, one might expect a set of dusty disco and deep house, but Dixon confounds expectations throughout, detouring at peak moments, going left where he might build momentum, all of it leading to luminous results.

She wears her obvious theoretical grounding lightly and never lets it obstruct her ecstatic quest for new ideas and deranged stimuli. And Varmints is a knockout, the kind that makes you see cartoon stars.

As when the biggest guy in the bar has your back, Vee Vee is filled with extra spittle and bottomless bravado.

This album is an affirmation of global connectivity and an emerging global culture that transcends and repurposes tradition as it sees fit--the sound of Mali merging with the world at large.

Although they've expanded their sound, the Arcade Fire's transition into extroversion isn't always smooth or graceful. Neon Bible is full of clunky lyrics, revealing Butler's tendency to overstate and sensationalize.

Light years from a mere slap-dash rarities compilation, The Other Side of the River takes some of a seminal rock musician's most interesting sketchworks and reimagines them as his magnum opus.

The band's lack of swagger is refreshing amid the hot fussed-over convicts and misogynistic sun kings of the New Wave sphere, but it also hampers the less convincing tracks.

While based on a text to help the recently deceased reach rebirth, Songs of the Bardo is very much an album about life; a salve as much as a guide.

The intended arc from invitation toward aggression occssionally scans more as zigs and zags between a few distinct suites. Still, the separate moments are astounding, evidence of a musician who has managed to remain inquisitive even as he’s established his signature.

Rejoicing in the Hands establishes Banhart as a major voice in new folk music. Not only does it improve on the promise of his earlier releases; it effortlessly removes the listener from the context of the recording.

While We Are the Pipettes often swells and soars... it doesn't come near the symphonic grandeur of the best of 60s girl pop. At its best, however, these pocket-sized songs still burst with verve and vitality, mixing heart-pumping melodies with carefree, almost conversational vocals.

He's an excellent pop craftsman who knows how to turn the power up for maximum effect.

Port of Morrow doesn't sound like it belongs to any particular decade or style, instead hopping around like some fully loaded AM radio dial that cranks out gem after gem.

Beyond, the band's first record as the selfsame trio since 1988's Bug, benefits enormously-- more so even than fellow MA-veterans Mission of Burma or latter-day Sonic Youth-- from the years, experiences, successes, and disappointments elapsed between then and now.

Glow On is not a crossover hardcore album that looks to transcend the genre, but one that tries to elevate it to its highest visibility.

Knowing how it all ends does nothing to detract from the joy Black Country, New Road have poured into Ants From Up There—not when they spend every second reminding us of why we let ourselves get swept up in these beautifully doomed fantasies to begin with.

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.

We Are Monster has the depth if you have the time. Yep, here's a fun record that's a work-for-it, in-the-details record, too.

Top-heavy with sad string passages and mournful vocal loops, Untrue is an album meant to be heard at home, in the car, on headphones-- his songs feel almost like beautiful secrets being whispered to a listener.

Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room.

By using country as a starting point for experimentation and recalling genre-porous artists like Ray Charles, Candi Staton, Charley Pride, and the Pointer Sisters, Cowboy Carter asserts Beyoncé’s place in this long legacy while showcasing the ever-expanding reaches of her vocal prowess. .... Her magnitude tends to cast a shadow over everything before her, no matter the medium. The side effect of this is that some of Cowboy Carter’s songs feel small and ill-suited for Beyoncé’s stature.

As a culmination and refinement of everything the National have done over the past decade, Trouble Will Find Me couldn’t be granted a more fitting mission statement.

Unlike the blunt, confrontational NO LOVE DEEP WEB, Government Plates lets you think for yourself and even if it doesn’t have an agenda, that doesn’t mean it’s nihilistic.

An innate sense of contrast amplifies the music’s force. Showing utmost respect for empty space, they know precisely when to pull back—to emphasize the cracked edge of Busch’s voice, or leave room for a silvery tendril of guitar—and when to flood the zone with pure, cleansing fire.

The songs may be catchy, but their intricacy and thoughtful storytelling makes them stick. And for its impressive sonic sheen, the album's skillful restraint makes it sound better with every spin.

In the process of recording another incredible album, he's discovered that light is most visible when it's flickering alone in the dark.