The relative warmth and light here gives the music a nostalgic cast, which was at the heart of what made Endless Summer so memorable, but Bécs also possesses an added layer that doesn’t necessarily work in its favor. Fennesz once illuminated the beauty of a digitally scrambled memory, but Bécs is a memory of a digitally scrambled memory.

This is no garden-variety chill. It’s lush and heady, and shot through with an undercurrent of wistful contemplation, but none of it sounds like an exercise in presets, whether musical or emotional.

For all the guitar pyrotechnics, Western production, and reggae infusions, Azel never sounds like anything other than a sublime iteration of desert blues.

Her voice has matured to a fine saw-toothed rasp, and carries with it the echoes of every hard minute through which she's lived.

Lianne La Havas streamlines her impulse to blend styles, while still taking the time to nod toward pioneers.

On 2020, the arrangements are proudly inorganic as they lurch and blast, sputter and break. The long-form structure of the record feels more like a short story collection, and taking it in front-to-back can have an overwhelming, exhausting effect. But unlike the sometimes hopeless characters in his songs, Dawson can wield this glut of information in his favor.

Salvant has found a fine match in Fortner, a New Orleans native who has played with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, and Paul Simon. He doesn’t accompany her so much as join in the conversation she’s having with these songs, occasionally even arguing with her about them.

A brief and blistering collection that finds their dark arts at full power.

Liars and Prayers' success is owed as much to the band as its leader, but in the end, there's still no doubt about who's working on whose watch.

This is DeMarco’s most direct and confident expression ever—OK with being a little sad, happy to have the chance to get over it.

The band acquits itself amazingly well, mixing in a few originals with a well-chosen selection of Golden Age songs, folk tunes, and Azmari troubadour songs.

Neither the melody nor the ambience overwhelms the other. It's easy to hear the silky, billowy tones through the dying-battery distortion, but hard to picture what they'd sound like without it.

The Naked Truth may be better than 80% of the other rap albums to be released in 2005, but that don't make it another Ready to Die.

Though this EP plows a narrower row than Judges, Stetson still manages to show us two very different aspects of his visceral minimalism.

Goes West feels less conceptually united than any of his work—more inspired by the contemplation of history than history itself--but this searching quality adds to its honest, meditative power. Many of the songs feel like visions left intentionally ambiguous, and the record is bound by a pensive, permeating calmness.

(a)spera is the sound of a musician accomplishing the challenges she has set herself, both musically and communicatively.

It's a soft but sinister set of songs-- the Bay Area's answer to the Velvet Underground's self-titled record. Where Sic Alps were once wasted and wobbly, they are now stoned and serene.

At its best, the music of Romantic Piano approaches the promise of that sentiment, speaking the feelings that words cannot.

Live From KCRW is distinguished not just by its loose, casual vibe--with Cave good-naturedly honoring audience requests, provided they’re “on this very short list”--but by its welcome variations from the standard Bad Seeds script with a healthy selection of deep cuts that don't get aired out that often.

A gorgeous, unassuming little record, it is Silver's most sophisticated virtual environment yet; disappear into it for a while, and you may come back with a newfound appreciation for sounds you once thought irredeemable--yes, even slap bass.

If the intellect on Hellfire is feverish, the emotional temperature often dips to morgue levels; their music is better equipped to comment on emotion than to feel it, or express it. They continue to get over, as they always do, on pure conviction, riding the knife’s edge between clinical precision and crazed abandon.

Somehow, they’ve retained all the messy spirit of the vintage classic rock they venerate. That It’s Real feels so exciting and alive only shows how thoroughly they’ve absorbed the lessons they’ve learned.

Ambient music is sometimes associated with reverent stillness, but one of the best qualities of The Blue of Distance is its constant, pulsing movement.

The rest of the band obviously knows that McEntire is the showpiece--songs like "Those Girls" show that they do, setting up her big moments with subtlety and understatement--reminding us that the real power is in restraint.

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

There is a sense of limbs and lungs stretching, followed by the triumphant punch through to a higher plane.

The hour-long album honors all the work he’s put in and looks back at all he’s achieved, but it also looks forward to all he has yet to build and all those he can still inspire.

H.N.I.C. Pt. 2 makes for a much more complete and visceral portrait of an incarcerated man than the most precise and technically sound record could possibly manage.