One of the most inspired folk records I have heard in a long time.

It’s hard to point to any weak points on black british music, but a few songs feel less distinct: the breezy Afropop of “S.O.S.” sounds a bit anonymous next to the rest of these songs (admittedly, it also sounds like a potential hit), while the submerged sound of “Tiger Driver ’91” veers uncomfortably close to Drake territory.

The Heart Is a Monster contains no less than six ambient interludes. A whole separate album in that style would've been nice, but even in truncated form the interludes cast Philip Glass-ian shades onto the other songs and suggest that Failure's creativity is far from exhausted.

Young, earnest, eerie, and overzealous, Von is a unique, almost belligerently unaffiliated piece of music that unsubtly blazons its idiosyncrasies.

A superbly refined collection of songs, carefully crafted and smartly cast. It doesn’t have the longer thematic crescendos of TC, but is even more ruthlessly listenable, stacking hooks on top of hooks and flitting between an array different, pop-viable aesthetic frameworks.

The works are raw and technically poor, but the bitterness and hatred they express is overwhelming, illustrating how base feeling, when expressed with such belief, can overcome any window dressing put up around it.

Show Me How You Disappear is bigger, brighter, cleaner, more ambitious than anything she’s done.

It's a thrilling look inside his brain, a microcosmic version of this peep under the hood that Battles have allowed with Dross Glop, showing off the constituent parts that now make their machine a smooth, assured, and always giddily exciting ride.

Chasny has distilled all of his impulses and obsessions-- slow drones and brisk picking, solemn mumbles and cheery riffs, ponderous lyrics, and ruminative instrumentals-- into 43 muted, marvelous minutes.

Takeshi, Atsuo, and Wata have reflected abstract magic on W. Like a port in a storm, the foundations may occasionally shake, but, for the duration of the record, it feels like the safest place to hide.

Rainsbury, Bailey, and Law showed long ago that they could draw a crowd with a bold gesture, but Seabed's appeal after multiple listens is in its details.

Carousel Waltz drives a pretty flat road, without the peaks and valleys of their previous work, but that suits the grounded emotions and realizations they're addressing, skirting the line between the unaffected and mundane.

Sure, there's no avoiding the fact that some of these songs are appearing for the third time. The nagging "what now?" question isn't going away. But it can be filed away for later.

If the listener isn't eventually caught in swoons, at the least he will respect the degree of Lerche's refined artifice.

Forget Yourself is no small resurrection, and though it owes a great deal to The Church's traditionalism, that's nothing to apologize for.

The Omnichord Real Book is no less assertive, yet feels energized by grace and understanding.

This time they’re turning abrasive guitar chords and the dim roar of shoegaze feedback into weighted blankets that salve. The cacophony is consistent, but Robber Robber prove they know how to navigate it with a controlled burn.

If there’s a way in which UZU falls short of the band’s debut, it’s in the recording itself, which is a bit hazier this time out and consequently robs the music of some of the direct, visceral power it had on Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. That said, the songs and performances are good enough that it nearly doesn’t matter.

Each of these tracks is indeed summery in its own way, as is most of There’s a Dream. But there’s one thing that neither this collection nor Hazlewood ever forgets: The brightest sun always casts the darkest shade.

Beside Myself is dramatic and daring, the agreeably messy sound of the kind of radical freedom that might not change our sinking world but can liberate the willing mind.

Another very good album from a band that consistently turns out good work while charting its own path.

The results make for an inspired evolution of his sound, with Blake occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror as he moves in a new direction.

Small Turn's greatest strength is also its primary flaw; they do this particular sort of downtrodden as well as anybody, but given all they're capable of, it's a shame that they limit themselves to such a small sonic palette. Still, it's yet another curiously strong record from one of today's most interesting bands.

On No Shouts, No Calls, the Krautrock-esque sonics of the band's last album have been fused with The Power Out's flair for continental pop, but it's the guitars that sing loudest.

The sprawl, the surfeit, is the point. You need plenty of room to summon a mood as widescreen as this. It’s a long way from the summer sun to the dark embrace of the universe, and on Once Twice Melody, Beach House are determined to cover the entire distance.

The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds--more guests, more genres, more producers, more life. It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years.

Who Killed...the Zutons is an unexpectedly impressive start, consistently showcasing off the band's dynamic songwriting and penchant for weird, sprawling throwdowns.

It's an album that draws its strengths from the simultaneous expression of sympathy toward the people in the songs and anger toward the shit they've gone through.