Cheena is not trying to blow your mind. In fact, they’re not trying to do much of anything. But that spirit rings true, and it feels less like a pose the longer the album goes on.

The Beta Band's best moments often came when they worked in extremes-- minimal sampled beats followed by insane, multitracked chipmunk vocals and massive, reverb-soaked drum fills. Here, as with Hot Shots, the band attempts to split the difference, and in doing so, sacrifices the momentum that made their first two albums so thrilling.

Allah-Las are ultimately preoccupied with sound above all else. So long as there are 12-string guitars, four-piece drumkits, and lots and lots of reverb, the rest of the world can go away.

It’s not a slight to call Impermanence functional music: If it helps someone else simply cut through the noise in their head, Silberman has gotten his point across.

Overall, it's clear that HIVE1 doesn't manage to engage all of its composer's talents, despite its occasionally locked-in blend of notated percussion parts and sharp electro-production.

There's enough of a sweet spot in the clean, backward-leaning production and offbeat samples to allow the record to distinguish itself as more than a sum of disparate parts.

Even for a committedly lo-fi aesthetic, Warm Slime is rough going at times; listening to it back-to-back with the relatively cleaner Help is startling, like blasting a bug-spattered windshield with a jet of wiper fluid.

Even as life interferes, you can imagine the album as a flight of whiskey: subtle variations on one recipe, pure fun to consume, liable to intensify one’s desire to punch cops. Very occasionally, the production is countryfied to achieve a spaghetti western vibe, or larded with Halloween pedal effects.

What’s here, across 30 minutes, is a worthy and incomplete document that contains some of the most unrestrained live Can moments yet available. What it’s missing are the doldrums, the drawn-out experiments, and that feeling that Schmidt hopes to convey.

She tears into every song with indomitable energy, and usually has production to match. Though it doesn’t quite mesh with the ballad, the twitchy percussion of “Carnival Games” at least livens things up.

There is palpable anger in her voice on Sex & Cigarettes, but beneath it is a deep sea of tranquility, and it’s the latter tone that defines her performances on this album.

Catamawr Yards, then, gets better as it gets more adventurous, and it gets more adventurous as it leans more on that backing band.

To those without the stomach for Joakim's waywardness, Milky Ways will often sound as much during the course of a listen. For those who are feeling adventurous but forgiving of the same, Joakim is a worthy companion.

Like its older sibling, the songs on Cistern exist independently of each other. The nine tracks feel connected only by the fact that they share the same space on record, more like a collection of long takes rather than a movie.

May disappoint fans hoping that the muted reception to Frankenstein might inspire the band to shake things up, but Laugh Track does fine-tune its predecessor’s approach, albeit subtly.

It’s unabashedly geeky, restless, and stuffed with enough Barnesian minutiae to satisfy even the most dedicated fan. The uninitiated, however, may need to study up on their lore before diving in.

Like an untethered spouse suddenly separated from a longtime love, Elliott seems a bit lost somewhere between her intimidating past and her newfound independence.

Principe del Norte across as genial, charmingly rumpled, and totally unflappable.

EarthEE makes one think more than feel.

The band that brought the funk to punk isn't in much of a dancing mood here.

Frustrates as much as it entices, even more so than the Mikael Jorgensen & Greg O’Keeffe album, its older spiritual twin. ... For the third album in a row, Jorgensen has proven himself to be masterful at carving arrangements so that all the parts work in tandem in a perfect balance between form and function, not a skill to be taken lightly or under-utilized.

There is still some great music on God Forgives, but it is somewhat overshadowed by higher-profile misfires.

This is ultimately a transitory record, its gate-crashing momentum tempered by songs that feel like holdovers from Gauntlet Hair’s more whimsical debut. With Stills’ crisper production cleaning up the band’s formative psych-pop splatter, the album’s more sanguine tracks.

DEP is still struggling to re-establish a unified and compelling sound, and their newfound penchant for melodic exploration seems out of place amid the album's most inspired thrash moments.

Pazner knows this stay-out-of-the-way tactic well, and the Olympians make their toughest tricks sound effortless because of it.

Smith’s work here is more lucid than anything he did on the last few Fall albums or his guest appearance on Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach.

Sometimes what seems like a forward move turns out to be a lateral one, and right now it's an open question whether Delt’s more professional environs were preferable to his messy charm.

Bint's mostly relaxed and easy approach teases out enough pleasant moments on Into the Trees but rarely offers a resolution.

PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO succeeds, much like its predecessor, largely thanks to Brathwaite's aptitude for mood.

Sadly missing here is Ash's sense of vulnerability, a key element to their charm.

At the very least, some excellent songs lurk among these 12 tracks, and there's enough potential for debate about which are which to make The Eternal worthy of Sonic Youth's singular canon.

On Need Your Light, they finally hit the sweet spot.

Despite its faults and flaws, it mostly scans as two talented musicians just having a good time.

Though several of the songs on Care are extraordinary, others are superficial, failing to deliver on the depth that has been such an essential part of How to Dress Well’s appeal.

Dusk to Dawn has moments of real drama and surprise, as when a klaxon-like siren cuts sharply through interstellar glitter on Part III’s “Thoth,” or when the AI voice of “Solitude” poses the alarming question, “Why even wear a heart/When you could store it in a chest freezer?” But seemingly every interesting transformation is counterbalanced by slow changes, like the glacial “Indecision.”

With Raft, he drifts past all of the above touchstones and ventures a bit further out, with each of the album’s seven tracks delving deeper into the 74-year-old musician’s idiosyncratic sound.

Yours, Dreamily draws spirited performances from its players, but works best as a one-off event.

Apart from some missteps—like the excruciating Finneas-produced “i still say goodnight”—i used to think i could fly soars with confidence, a record that remains absolutely sure of itself even as McRae’s emotions vacillate between bravado and self-immolation.

Though this album is a beautiful, well-executed listen, Blu will only really be fulfilling his potential when he starts looking toward the future again.

The album is presented as a consumerist critique, intentionally blurring the line between artist and product, but the quality of the songs varies too widely to pull off an actual concept album.

Self-serious and wildly inconsistent (in both ingenuity and style), 29 is hard to swallow without acknowledging and appreciating the record's overarching storyline: getting through your twenties is way hard.

Not only does it uphold the myths of baby boomer greats like the Byrds, Neil Young, and Simon and Garfunkel with a staid type of reverence, but it also piggybacks on the legacy of one of Beck's best records. It's the sound of a rule-breaker dutifully coloring inside the lines.

It's a complete piece of work, and one that serves as a commentary on the intersectionality of art and fame by someone who has recently acquired a new level of notoriety. But the sacrifice here is the personal flair that gave her previous album a spark of creativity and set it apart from the songs she had already been writing for other pop stars.

It's the sound of innocence, like night-long basement parties spent listening to cheesy 80s rock records: derivative in a naïve tributary fashion, while still glimmering with songwriting promise.

On Barn, as on many recent predecessors, the tunes meander along the most obvious routes of the chords that underpin them, rarely going anywhere in particular, and almost never taking the sorts of audacious twists that might lodge them in your heart and mind. This doesn’t appear to be a case of Young losing his touch, but the result of a deliberate decision to prioritize immediacy over craft.

Amid Find Me’s otherwise downcast worldview, “Love Captive” lets in some light.

As impressive as Frost’s music is, he seems always a bit too eager to impress, a sure turn-off. It’s less a matter of the parts Frost writes, which are often lovely and/or awesomely grand, and more in the way he frames them.

Deeper Well is sympathetically fame-agnostic and focused on steadying Musgraves’ axis, but its emollient balms also aren’t particularly satisfying when you know what she’s capable of.

The eight songs on the new record are all original compositions written and developed over the past six years, yet there’s no mistaking it for anything other than a Cabaret Voltaire album. While not as pulverizing as the group’s early recordings nor as sleek as the techno and house-inspired work found on 1993’s International Language, it blends the various eras of the group into a mostly satisfying whole.

Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy.

Victim of Love is ultimately a less successful record than No Time for Dreaming. For one, Bradley seems less connected with this set.

Although Doja clearly envisions Vie as her poppiest album, with ’80s pop as her aesthetic of choice, the record is most interesting when she’s ignoring such distinctions rather than embracing them.

This album may not be their most compelling release to date, but it remains the work of two uniquely complementary musicians set on an ever-evolving path.

Discipline & Desire--the title’s a tip-off--is aloof and commanding, with an expertly honed sense of how far to take the tension it builds before offering relief.

Women's Rights is an album created entirely for the moment, which keeps the spirit lighthearted even when they're dealing with heavy-handed subject matter.

Ruff Draft still feels like a limited-edition collectors-only curiosity.

Perhaps when performed live these songs will accrue the desperation and dynamism their studio versions lack, but for now The Silver Gymnasium too often makes the act of remembering sound like a consequence-free undertaking, as though certain horrors are too far in the past to do us much harm in the present.

The only outright misstep is “Cocoon,” where a generic 2010s-indie rock arrangement flattens some of the record’s most intense lines (“I’ve become a taxidermied version of myself”). Throughout the rest of the album, the production only elevates her writing.

The tracks vary greatly in span, but beyond that there’s not as much of a dynamic as on prior Jesu full-lengths.

Thankfully, it's not just dour missives and desolation--there's life in these songs.

If you're striving to restore faith in a world of "prophets, pimps, angels" and "whores," you gotta do better than Sarah McLachlan melodies and a rented Haitian choir.

These arrangements may help give definition to a tune as fragile as Vernon’s “Dedicated” but, more than anything, casting these recent songs in the same light as “Touch a Hand” or “Let’s Do It Again”--a number one hit for the Staple Singers back in 1975, but rarely remembered as well as “Respect Yourself"”--helps shift the focus to how Mavis still sounds mighty as ever.

DaBaby’s charm gets diluted; he sounds measured and restrained, not words typically associated with DaBaby. This is music to bob your head at, not lose your shit to. Ever the savvy marketer, DaBaby does manage a few highlights that seem packaged to go viral.

A great deal of Death Set's charm lies in how their toothsome double-guitar attack is deliberately undermined by their tinkertoy beats and new-waved keys; when the band try to overcompensate with the aggro.

In essence, Overjoyed is the sound of the Fairs playing along with themselves, or at least the sweet, weird boys they used to be--not always with as much spark or chaos, but mashing up the fruits just as gleefully.

Despite its sprawling architecture, the album is one of the band’s most consistent, unified works.

Since the memorable tracks on Metalmania are so good, the tracks that don’t quite rise to the occasion feel all the more frustrating.

Unfortunately, the duo's apparent ambitions to be something more hold it back from reaching serotonin-peaking heights (like Carly Rae Jepsen's E•MO•TION).

Even when the music intentionally plays dumb, Bentham and Nardi are clever lyricists, and Higher Power could almost be a narrative concept record about salvation if you play it out of order.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, The Ways We Separate still leaves its mark.

Its flimsiness usually finds a way to sound purposeful, and that makes Aqueduct's personal, cerebral pop worth coming back to.

Even though the tempo barely tops 100 bpm, all the far-flung fusions of Asian pop, Nigerian reggae, and Korean boogie leave Khruangbin’s set feeling a little like a busy touring schedule on the international festival circuit: both awe-inspiring and exhausting.

Mura Masa is best when he sticks to the script and cranks up the heat.

This isn't the kind of stuff you're going to walk around humming. It's too weirdly shaped to really abide in you--you have to be willing lose yourself in it instead.

The album falters in spots because of the disparity of its urges. Age Against the Machine seems to want to ease Cee-Lo back into the Goodie Mob’s world while not-so-gently tugging them into his.

Fifty percent of the lyrics are bad (“Back on my bullshit, devil emoji”) and the other 50 percent are also bad, but then they get stuck in your head and ultimately turn good (“Tell me your darkest secret shit you wouldn’t even tell Jesus”). ... Death Race For Love feels like the real Juice WRLD, wearing his influences and heart on his sleeve, putting his ups and downs into the music in real time.

Though these solo works are not as fleshed out nor quite as transporting as the highlights of Red Hash, they provide a fascinating document of a young songwriter finding his voice, and leave behind lingering questions about what might have been.

It's all vaguely familiar, but Lytle's fine-grained production pops a freshmaker or two into the mix.

Where Julia filled almost every available space with either emotional fullness or palpable absence, City Wrecker feels pinched and constrained; the former was a drain to listen to in the best possible way, while this new one only occasionally breaks the skin.

Mr. Beast's shortcomings lie not with what's present, but with what's missing. Mogwai are capable of tremendous beauty, poignant gloom, and ear-splitting sonic pyrotechnics, but only transcend when they combine each of these elements. Here, they rarely give themselves enough building room to conjoin these moods and styles.

What we get is a pretty good modern R&B album, but it’s also one that feels just a bit fossilized.

There is something profoundly lovely about seeing Stevens safe in such a strange, adventurous effort, supported by Brams and the rest of his found family.

It's startling to realize Pickpocket’s Locket is the odd Carey Mercer release you can almost mellow out to. Once you delve deeper than the pleasant aesthetic, however, it's hard not to wish for a few more distinguishing moments to hold onto.

When Corey is at his most inventive, Injury Reserve feels remarkably fresh and singular. ... Too often, though, Injury Reserve gets stuck between its experimental urges and its pop ambitions. In searching for a happy medium, it’s never quite noisy enough or quite catchy enough.

DJ-Kicks has long given reign to both dedicated DJs (Nina Kraviz, Seth Troxler) and artists who are better known as producers than disc jockeys (Nicolette, Erlend Øye), with frequently brilliant results. Vynehall’s mix sits firmly within the latter territory: more selector sensation than DJ spotlight, but still an impressive showcase of the producer’s ear.

It's a cushy listen, if not only always distinctive, particularly since the shorter tracks often amount to a cooled, deep-blue gelatin that holds the previously released singles together.

Damage is a far cry from the stripped-down screech that made these guys famous. In its contrast, it calls out everything the Blues Explosion once was and now isn't.

As with The Things We Think, it feels like the sound of a curious band still working out how to make music as distinct as its influences; whether lyrically or sonically, they come across as either unknowable or proudly workmanlike.

While some of the album's songs are terrifically cloying, I can't call it a disappointment; it's more a case of diminishing returns.

On its best songs, he trades his breezy pop chops for earnest, soul-seeking Americana.

It’s triumphant music for the hyperactive, plural city; it’s confrontational as a means to achieving communality, with no particular loyalties except to an anonymous, shifting collective of people who all want the same thing as Young Fathers--to be one thing, then the next, then the next.

There’s a thrill in watching a talented artist reach beyond her comfort zone, but the result is disappointingly flat. When she’s in her element, though, she’s singular and sparkling.

The album's ambition is rich musical diversity, but it sounds less adventurously eclectic than simply scattershot, less assertive than merely restless, eager to try anything but not always sure what works and what doesn't.

Peter Buck is likely a fans-only effort, but one that showcases a low-stakes spontaneity and a renewed sense of possibility.

Despite Weird Drift's genre-busting ambitions, the album feels humble and unpretentious.

It's an intermittently thoughtful album, but one that doesn't stray far from offering process-laid-bare insight into the beautiful pile-up that is Gang Gang Dance.

Remember the old Chris Rock bit where he ate broccoli and cheese for the first time as a kid and thought he'd want nothing but that for the rest of his life? Replace "broccoli" with "Jesus" and "cheese" with "Mary Chain" and you're getting close to the charmingly monomaniacal focus Stagnant Pools bring to their debut, Temporary Room.

Out Into the Snow is another solid entry in a long career for Joyner, and it seems his place as the dark observer on the indie world's fringe is pretty well set.