Its hard-psych is ugly, alluring carnival music that warps and melts before us just as we begin to trust it. Through it all though, there’s an undercurrent of humor and fun; Turnbull’s active imagination stretches out for miles and he comes across as a twisted visionary on his most accomplished album yet.

Further Out does successfully sound genreless despite being referential of a half dozen genres at once and is presented as a continuous listening experience.

Most impressive, though, is that Hecker has built for us this make-believe area to inhabit, to explore with him. While there's a bit less room in this space than those he's constructed before, it's still very much an achievement, and one to be celebrated.

Jericho Sirens releases the pause button as if Hot Snakes had been locked in freeze-frame for the past 14 years, instantly thrusting them back into action.

It is one of the most intimate records in her catalog, and the entire band seems locked into the introspective intensity that marks her best songwriting.

Antenna to the Afterworld may have all the dressings of science fiction and fantasy, but like many great works in those genres, it's a strong, emotive character study.

Live at the 12 Bar, unlike much of Jansch’s catalogue, isn’t perfect. You hear mistakes, clumsy knocks at the microphone stand, and even his breath as he plays. But mostly, you hear this master traversing a musical map of his life, hard times and all.

The Beets' newfound focus on recording quality could have easily highlighted shortcomings, but instead, the band found a way to broaden its sound by recruiting a member who exponentially adds to its worth.

There are no unexpected detours or superfluous tangents, just 10 songs of sweet resilience delivered by a voice of seemingly effortless expression.

Spend enough time in it, and you will sense that intelligence, fleet and mysterious, moving just beneath the surface. Something is alive in their work, and it feels like it’s always rounding the next corner, just out of your reach.

Hormone Lemonade is the work of a band who couldn’t write a bad chord sequence if they tried, allying rare melodic nous to dazzling rhythmic instincts. Rather than being trapped by his past, on Hormone Lemonade Gane draws upon it in brilliant new ways.

The Highwaymen have often been called country’s best supergroup, but the Highwomen are better. They do here what the men never could—stretch the notions of what country can and must become.

Between Nao’s lush voice and the album’s glossy production, it’s easy to get lost in Saturn. A worthy successor to For All We Know, it homes in on a specific, if occasionally ham-fisted, conceit while expanding on her sound in clear, vibrant ways.

ANTI is a rich and conflicted pop record, at its most interesting when it’s at its most idiosyncratic.

2011's A Thousand Heys, was a solid take on 90s American indie, but a bit too beholden to its influences. Ores & Minerals fixes that and adds a lot more.

There's a striking physicality to these songs, and Guy Fixsen and Ash Workman's production makes every tambourine beat hit with the clarity of a shattering window.

Sometimes it feels like they're playing two different songs, working from two different ideas. There's no steady view of the horizon anymore. It's disorienting, but charming, to hear their parts blend, settle, and separate over and over again.

Just like last time around, Avatar is something for the plebes, the purists, the dabblers, and the old heads all at once-- a crossover in the best sense of the word.

From a less confident artist, her writing might sound trite, but vocal experimentation is Fohr’s strength. The malleable and arresting delivery at the album’s core pushes the music forward, often reinventing itself mid-song.

Pile could have remained in their amorphous realm of rock, but they needed to grow up. Here, as musicians, they did.

An intimate, intelligent, and always transporting cycle of songs that sends VanGaalen closer to his own voice and, in the process, closer to us.

Subject: Matter might be Sandman's best work yet.

As Durk grapples with leaving his old life behind to create a better life for his sons, he creates his most gratifying and moving work yet. Lil Dirk 2X seeks rehabilitation but finds evolution.

It’s a little unsettling to hear an artist so fixated with death on her debut, but on Pohorylle, such gravity feels earned, even natural.

They sound more inspired here than they have since... well, since they played these songs the first time. New album please.

Not only do they add urgency to familiar psychedelic rock templates, but they pay just as close attention to the quiet moments as the raging ones--each track on their self-titled Thrill Jockey debut displays a careful layering of sounds and atmospheres.

They're this close to being a rock band while still sounding like their weird selves, which makes this their most accessible album to date.

Via a confluence of experience, ambition and glossy production, Engine Down have arrived at a palatable music that, with a little more refinement and promotional support, could cement their place in the mainstream cultural canon.