The taught 12 tracks mark the producer's most diverse and song-based work yet.

Like much of People of the North’s catalog, Era of Manifestations comes across as an attempt at extreme therapy; I secretly find myself hoping the band never quite finds the peace that its raging towards.

Number 1 Angel is best at its most vulnerable. ... The other novelty of Number 1 Angel and Charli’s past work is that it showcases, and is largely stolen by, a lot of guests.

Even removed from the context of the live performance, Tissues remains charged with resonant beauty and keen-eyed focus, despite the pervasive air of disquietude. Its duality never strives to pull itself apart.

The biggest critique is that as an album, This Gift is perhaps too far in the red too much of the time, but even that complaint is tempered by the fact that the ride is so good

High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

What torpedoes Build a Nation is the heavy cream of reverb and echo that drowns the vocals.

Without outside direction, however, Dr. Dog quickly go back to their old ways. Afrobeat specialists Antibalas provide the horns on B-Room, but their talents are wasted on songs like "Long Way Down", the beginning of which sounds like the Wayne's World dissolve tuned to a baritone sax.

Whether autobiographical or artistic, As If Apart is a powerful, exquisitely realized journey, the sort of bummer that sounds strongest in that alien hour between when you’re supposed to fall asleep and when you should be jerking awake.

Let's just say Tower of Love isn't out to offend or challenge or discomfit anyone. But the album's less simplistic than it comes on, obviously, its snugly melodies decorated with snaking structures and surprising instrumentation.

Even with its increased focus on classic-rock virtues, the album isn't really a collection of riffs and wails and choruses; it's more a muscular sort of vibe-out-- badass ambient music, if you will.

Ultimately, it's the dynamic between melodic resonance ('Young Diamond') and found-sound obfuscation (the four minutes of 'You Are a Force' are pregnant with stay amp hum) that defines a debut that I'd call "promising."

Even more so than their promising debut, Staring at the X proves them to be a commendably ambitious band with the chops to carry out even their most far-flung ideas.

59.59 could use a few more fiery moments like these; as the album settles into its more temperate second half.

They’re the sort of tunes that the Keys can pull off with ease, as satisfying as a perfectly tossed curveball landing in a beaten-up catcher’s mitt. But they also make you wish the Keys didn't spend the rest of Dropout Boogie lobbing underhand pitches right down the middle of the plate.

As producer, songwriter and persona, Dear has come into his own with Asa Breed, a bootstrapping album that not only reveals the miles walked, but an ambitious road map ahead.

This mix might not help the Rapture pass every test of the best club DJs, but when it comes to maybe the most important one--the ability to make clubbers push their way to the booth and breathlessly ask for the title of that amazing cut they just dropped--they've done their studying.

While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs.

Corrosion of Conformity does overstay its welcome with a couple of second-rate tracks, but overall, the album manages to both recapture Animosity's feral energy and reach compositional peaks that the 1985 versions of Dean, Weatherman, and Mullin couldn't have accessed.

These lush arrangements seem content to simply drift by, never truly engaging the listener, and making it difficult to fully appreciate the album if you aren't in the mood to be put under.

Every track is memorable, though rarely on a musical level.

Sometimes erstwhile obsessiveness can lead to revelation, but beyond the fancy engineering, I don't see much of that here.

This is a great album to throw on when you need something to enhance the mood or otherwise fill the air when working on something else.

Neil Young set the template, but Tillman puts his stamp on every note, wringing bare-bones poetry from evocative couplets.

Milwaukee at Last!!! only seems broader than it is: Almost every track, it turns out, is from Release the Stars, and the audience doesn't seem to mind.

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.

Anno has the feel of a speed-dating workshop. You can’t deny anyone’s enthusiasm or ingenuity in the venture. But, looking at the results, you can’t help but wonder if everyone’s energy was best spent elsewhere.

Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package.

CHORDS is a strong, occasionally astonishing next step.

It can feel like discovering an old roll of film in a vintage camera, or like going to a dive bar and messing around with the jukebox. While it aspires to be the heart on your sleeve synth pop of the past, it’s most successful as mood music to soundtrack the present.

An unshowily eclectic record warmed by the glow of new love, is the group’s third and strongest album since signing to Fire Talk in 2021.

Let's hope Magic Chairs is as much terminal as it is transitional, meaning that next time, they'll get all of that grandness right.

Mulberry Violence isn’t ugly music by any stretch--all of the bleeding, shrieking noises are undergirded by rich chords, and Powers drops little moments of untouched beauty for us to get our breath.

Probably Rostam’s most compact and thematically cohesive project, with almost all of the nine tracks on the 30-minute album leaning toward folk and Americana. After the explosive energy of the first two tracks, things calm way down.

Streten explores his sonic palette with varying degrees of success on Flume.

It’s as if the goal of Honestly, Nevermind is anonymity—inoffensively, sort of fun music that simmers in the background all summer and beyond.

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 not that there's no room for such studio nuance in the Avetts' music, but it gives I and Love and You a quotidian sheen, making their signature sincerity seem sappy and much less special.

The compelling yet skimpy new material feels mostly like an occasion for the remixes, some of which are actually quite worthwhile.

For an album that presents a more assured, swaggering Black Mountain, it's a minor disappointment that Wilderness Heart doesn't so much climax as gradually wind down, without a show-stopping finale to crown the victory lap. But even in their quietest moments, the band can still leave you unsettled.

At times the honesty on Watch This Liquid Pour Itself might be its worst fault, but it’s usually its finest quality.

Jumbled presentation can dull the impact of even the most sincere music, and Rico’s skill and imagination can’t save songs like “Black Punk” and “Dance Scream” from the filler bin. But beneath the technicolor pileup lies some of Rico’s most vicious (“Vaderz,” “Gotsta Get Paid”) and most sensitive (“Skullflower,” “Easy”) material yet. With a little finesse and better sequencing, it could’ve been greater than the sum of its parts.

These songs bend and stretch like they’re toying with psych pop, even though the music is still delivered through Frankie Cosmos’ now-trademark minimalism.

In theory, Boredoms furthering their psychedelic side should be fantastic, and I have to admit that for sheer orgasmic sprawl, few bands have much on them. However, at a point, sprawl becomes tedious and indulgent-- and I never thought I'd say that about Boredoms.

Time has allowed Nada Surf to uncover the truth in the trite, but it has also eroded some of the band's personality.

In an attempt to be taken seriously, they've sacrificed too much of their effervescent appeal--after all, enthusiasm and artfulness need not be mutually exclusive.

At two hours long, The State Between Us ought to waver in focus or intensity, but Herbert has never sounded more at home. Safe in the knowledge that most British people, for better or worse, can’t help but engage with the subject, he taps into a small, honest hope that would be inexplicable as a thinkpiece.

This is the album that might’ve better earned the title Everything in Between, as the songs are composed of scraps, MacGyver tricks achieved with contact mics, bass guitars, and doctored amps. Occasionally, the effort manifests in notable progress.

An album of unapologetic straightforwardness, Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise.

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.

Post-rock's forte is letting instruments speak for vocals. Russian Circles speak articulately, but could stand to roar a bit.

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.

Once the allure of hearing Grace so stripped down wears off, the record begins to sound like what it is: glorified demos for an Against Me! album we'll never get to hear. Even at its most vital, Stay Alive never escapes the sense that the pandemic has one again cheated us out of something better.

It’s still a fundamentally flawed album, and those flaws were symptoms of a larger ailment within the Band. Perhaps that explains the overriding nostalgia on these songs, that sense of having something beautiful and essential. Cahoots is a eulogy for a Band that was already in the past tense.

Shine's lingering impression is that of several talented cooks crammed into a tiny kitchen, each crafting something delicious with little regard for the meal as a whole.

Here, there's a sense of picking at a strand of inspiration and seeing how it flows toward a form of endgame, albeit one that still prickles with possibility.

As ever, Hornsby’s wistful, elegant melodies are the main attraction.

Famously Alive is a beautiful mess of squelchy psych-pop—emphasis on pop—that feels in conversation with the band’s abrasive, dissonant past: As Guerilla Toss turn a new page musically, Carlson turns one of her own.

These are crisper, brighter, bolder songs, retaining Beach House's sense of elegant decay while sweeping up the debris.

Lynch seems comfortable here, scattering out another set of question marks, his unassuming approach etched in just a little harder with every passing release.

I Hear You strikes a frustrating standoff between these two versions of Gou: It lacks the authentic quirkiness of those earlier hits, yet never lets loose the confetti cannons and fishbowl cocktails promised by “Nanana.”

In its best moments, Small Talk is pleasant background noise. .... The good news is that the songs don’t get worse from there. The bad news is that they stay almost exactly the same. Each track sways into the next at a similar tempo and with similar intensity, which is to say none.

A quarter century later, her same old razzle-dazzle feels a little repetitive, yes. But it’s also an insistence that the room we found can swell even bigger, that even in these dark times there’s humanity and humor at the heart of it all. Can’t hear that enough.

I'd say Fading Trails is the best Magnolia's done, unless you count the nominally Songs:Ohia-made Magnolia Electric Co., which I do, and which is still the best Molina product out.

Although Business ultimately ranks as yet another less-than-legendary offering from a living indie legend, its shortcomings are much more nuanced than typical Pollard releases.

While Ultima II Massage starts off with material that's heavier and meaner than anything he’s done previously, the lighter sound of the album's back half can't help but come across as a drop in ambition, turning down the volume on what could've been the most dynamic Tobacco record to date.

All together, it sounds like a poorly organized collection of demos and ideas.

[This collection] is too varied to be streamlined into a single influence-- but at least it transcends the nostalgic idea with which it starts, making the idea of the band taking these ideas and running with them a pleasingly feasible one.

Their refusal to let the record resolve itself into something that can be easily sorted or explained makes it easy to play it on repeat, trying to find a new angle to approach it from.

The production is dense, thin, and minimal, the guitars and drums pushed tight to give all these lyrics extra oomph.

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.

Bridgers’ songs are so devastating because she plays both hero and villain, creating a Möbius strip of virtues (like selflessness) that twist into flaws (like savior complexes). Rarely is there a feeling of catharsis or righteousness, especially on Copycat Killer, where the paralyzing angst and introspection feels so stark. Yet the EP ends on a quietly hopeful note.

The diaristic nature of the music, and the blunt force with which it is delivered, showcases Demi Lovato the person and sidelines Demi Lovato the artist. It is an unenviable position: to have a story so harrowing that the emotional catharsis we feel in real life overshadows what she wanted to create on the album.

His third solo album attempts to balance reveling in his newfound elevated celebrity and retaining the tortured persona that relishes in recounting the gruesome details of his journey. This produces some missteps, but the 31 year old cuts through the glossy excess with clarity and lyrical self-assuredness, producing enough sterling moments to show that he’s still a star worthy of fanfare.

Of course, in due time--maybe it'll take years--8 Diagrams will sink in as a compelling, well-regarded album.

Bands like Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500, Spiritualized, and Slowdive will come to mind, but this is neither pastiche nor homage.

Murder of the Universe may be built from the band’s now-familiar krautpunk battle plan, but their ability to execute outsized architectural complexity at manic, warp-speed velocity is no less astonishing.

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 word "Hypnotic"'s overused, but the band's spatial know-how and rigorously muted flourishes are more than deserving of the accolade. It's well-deep, blossoming ambiance.

At its best, Giving the World Away locates the edge between noise and melody, carving out a pop core amid seemingly structureless arrangements. ... Occasionally, the deluge of instrumentation grates. ... Despite its flaws, Giving the World Away marks an exciting evolution for Hatchie.

Complicated arrangements and gorgeous melodies reveal themselves to you as rewards for your patience. Over time, even the alien voices begin to sound natural, even inviting.

Futures is like a rotten onion, revealing layer upon layer of foulness.

Mazes is an exercise in accessibility and concision, using familiar, melodic pop templates to support their drone and krautrock tendencies.

For the most part, it settles somewhere unusual, if not original.

Walk Thru Me’s idiomatic alt-rock composition feels too stable to properly channel it. At their best, Barlow and Davis wrestled with seemingly opposing interests in the primal and futuristic: After a long period of inactivity, they’re still finding their footing in the present.

What makes these weak attempts at earnestness all the more disappointing is that the music is great.

Some of their more conventional tracks may pale a little in comparison to their newer aesthetics, if only because their evolution has been so slow and protracted.

Throughout Post Traumatic, you can sense how unmoored Shinoda is without that spectacle. His chest doesn’t puff out as far as it did on Fort Minor. His compositions don’t detonate like his best work for Linkin Park. His bandmates aren’t there to lift him up when he falls short. He sounds abandoned.

Her delicate pipes may consign her to small sketches and close studies, but Merritt's at least proven with See You on the Moon that she has the lyrical goods to deliver intimately pleasurable, deeply felt folk-pop.

It’s hard to hold onto anything concrete, musically or lyrically, here. The album’s 10 songs are much more thematic, sensory, and impressionistic. ... [Vernon's] voice--one of the most expressive baritones in indie music--is the showpiece throughout.

The result is an album that creates its own world, one it feels like you could reach out and brush with your fingers.

This isn't a record, it's a portfolio: it's noisy but catchy, it lets them try out different styles, and it makes you give a good goddamn.

By this time, though, even Frank may be chafing at the limitations of their bar-band sound, staunch as he is in refusing to do overdubs or even edits in the recording process. Fortunately, there are just enough tweaks to that process this time out to enliven the resulting album, making it his most diverse and listenable since Teenager of the Year.

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.

Changing of the Seasons feels like the record where Brun's lack of range catches up to her.

It’s a fully-formed offering that seamlessly balances her more rugged raps with pristine pop songs (sculpted in “Body”’s image) and tender slow jams.

Broken Equipment often sounds like a band weary of having to make the same points they’ve always made but then doing it anyway. They shine best when they write about love, when their vocals go beyond sing-speaking, and when they blast the overdrive on their midtempo punk riffs.