For all its sprawl, The Argument maintains a brisk pace, with a White Album-inspired sense of irreverence that ensures Hart never gets stuck in place for long.

Throughout Bloodsports, Suede consistently strikes the balance between decadence and elegance that marked their signature work.

Heart is a valuable pop record for those of us whose cardiac muscle hasn't stained completely black.

Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper.... It's the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Radiohead hated being Radiohead, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Radiohead record yet.

Let Go's only plausible use is to forcibly expose us to mid-90s alt-rock in the context of today so that we might come to grips with just how damn crappy it sounds.

Even the dubious choice to make an official live album out of a lo-fi audience recording proves a good one. A little added echo goes a long way for Morphine's spare sound, and fills in the blanks far better than a crystal clear soundboard recording ever could.

Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary capsule capturing how he ticks.

LP is efficient, prickly, and noticeable, or not much like modern techno at all. That he is operating like this at the same time many others are is a boon, for us, so long as he keeps his blinders on.

Throughout the length of Ventriloquism, in Ndegeocello’s hands, no cover is ever mere lip service. A cover is an act of scholarship, an act of criticism, an act of intimacy. An act of love.

Across 11 tracks clocking in at 72 minutes, Romance offers a comprehensive yet concise survey of the best of Oneida’s vast and varied catalog--transfixing ambient loops, expansive krautrock jams, and even straight-ahead rock, while taking less time than ever to get to the point.

Haley Heynderickx may not have a garden just yet, but if beauty can cure uncertainty, this album should be enough for now.

Throughout this album, the band generally keeps within its sweet spot of familiar, wistful progressions complemented by Kim’s interior detailing. But that’s not to say it’s without brave moments.

It’s music for small rooms with weird lighting, old churches where you have to sit on a bench, graveyards where you are always standing under a tree. It is also poetic but in an extremely self-aware and twee kind of way, doing things like meditating on the difference between “dog” and “god” or describing a weirdly sexy interaction with a doctor.

Here they are weird and jagged and noisy, occasionally abstruse and often disarmingly melodic. It seems they’re only out to impress themselves, and that’s the sort of stuff that doesn’t burn up with time.

Pound for pound, The Louder I Call is Wye Oak’s brightest, most straightforward effort

Pulse and Quartet feel plucked from a vacuum, a place where flickers of dissonance yield to waves of redemptive harmony and where the chord always comes back to sparkle. In a world of increasing entropy, these are two too-tidy self-reflections, Reich on what made Reich great.

Despite the boundlessness of their instrumentation, Akron/Family maintain remarkable warmth... playing at restrained volumes that invite close listening.

Compared to 2017’s ken, a gothic-sounding record distinguished by chillier tones and pared-down lyrics, his masterful new album Have We Met sets a larger canvas. Produced by bandmate John Collins, the music is sweeping and bold and surprising.

The clean lines and easy momentum of It's the Arps are really refreshing.

As familiar as the music on I’m Terry will sound to anyone who’s followed indie music over the past three decades, they pull together so many different strands from that era that the result is too distinctive to simply be filed away with a particular genre. They also have a knack for making their idiosyncratic songs so catchy as to feel universal.

If Pissing Stars reflected the cruel, chaotic world that every new parent worries about bringing their child into, then SING SINCK, SING emits the fragile hope that the next generation will be able to steer toward a better future.

To say one of these albums is better than the other is basically beside the point-- anyone who buys one will certainly want the other, and both are fairly comparable as far as quality is concerned, anyway.

On Ratchet, an honest, earnest pop record, Shamir elaborates on the gutsy melodies of those early demos and singles and makes good on the hype.

Real Life Is No Cool isn't just the achingly stylish and neatly accessible dance record to end all that, it also constitutes a fresh new take on the strand of retro-futurism that Lindstrøm helped create.

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.

Mirror Traffic tickles that nostalgia without sacrificing maturity, discovering that "playfully relaxed" is a valid third route between "slacker" and "manic."

Overall, the half of Beyond Now that focuses on McCaslin’s original material fares far better, and should be sought out by anyone who wants another experience of the invention heard on Blackstar.

If anything, the album now sounds more like the masterpiece it felt just short of at the time, a work nearly on par with its more universally regarded, nocturnal sequel Automatic for the People.