The result is a thoroughly dazed album that conjures a daydream so immersive (if not always so idyllic), it precludes any intrusive thoughts. The instrumentation on Sundays feels sun-baked and toasty in its fuzzy beach towel of distortion.

Mountain Moves indicates that something better--something made by diverse but like-minded collaborators--might be able to come next.

Galás’ sense of dynamics is all the more moving when you sort of know how the song’s supposed to go.

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.

Carrie & Lowell Live--while highlighting the starkest, saddest songs Stevens has ever written--reflects that side of his personality like no other release. This juxtaposition makes it a compelling listen and a fitting companion to a deep, multifaceted record.

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

If lacking the conceptual heft of past releases, Wait for Love is a richer, more versatile experience.

There’s a lightness to Simz’ tender explorations of Black fatherhood, the failure of her community to help those struggling with mental crises, and the slippery loss of solidarity across economic divides on “Broken.” Sometimes the production’s soft edges can belie the bite of the words, but overall it’s a pairing that brims with possibility.

It's best to turn off those imaginary filters when you pump Limbo, and just let it be as entertaining as it clearly wants to be.

Here, Richard and Zahn have captured grief like a carved piece of obsidian—glossy, beautiful, and sharp.

For all its disjointedness, the album never wanders more than a few inches away from the sublime. It’s a document of a band knocking loudly on the door of greatness.

Until that last song, fun persists in the album's absurdly infectious hooks without being marred by concepts or meaning.

Hell-On is a record that can feel equally fragile and impenetrable, its songs like complex universes connected only by proximity.

His latest album, a collaboration with the saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and the violinist Ros Stephen, is again evasive, seeming at once defiantly old-fashioned and defiantly quirky.

For perhaps the first time in the Bajas’ catalog, there are parts of Inland See that can get stuck in your head.

For the most part, Sorcerer succeeds, moving their sound forward while maintaining their penchant for detours.

That's what's so great about it, though; save the Vaseline-on-lens Fleetwood Mac number that closes things out, there's nary a dull patch or an awkward spot to be found here, just a sublime (if sorta schizoid) trip through the warmest, spaciest parts of your record collection.

This is the sound of Simz reconciling with Simbi. And it sounds great. Cue the ovation.

Together also continues to emphasize the newfound clarity and purpose in Duster’s arrangements and production. There are still fresh experiments—like the kosmische synth swells that open “Escalator”—but this record is largely a refinement of the band’s sprawling, slow-paced sound, giving a little focus and momentum to their once-opaque instrumentals.

Armchair Apocrypha is ultimately another object of strange and unique beauty from this inventive songwriter and performer.

Across age/sex/location, Lennox refreshes classic R&B stylings for a contemporary audience, sounding at ease with herself as she offers up her sexiest and most assured music to date.

Molina still sounds rootless and displaced, but Sojourner triangulates a place that's as close to home as he ever seems to get.

And yet all these reworks and revisions stay in the general vicinity of the original album's tone of massive yet starkly open spaces, adding a few new facets but always staying close to the fine line Waiting for You treaded between bleak and euphoric.

It plays like the last record’s darker shadow. As with every DIIV album, it sounds timestamped from the year that punk broke, but the mood is heavier, louder, queasier. The guitars jangle less and brood more.

Under Stellar Stream is filled with such fertile repetition.

It isn’t fair that it took years of label mishandling to get here, but Tinashe has finally found equilibrium.

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

In a humbler, warmer, more openhearted way, Reigning Sound have risen above themselves--as well as the garage-rock idiom that spawned them--while spiritually hewing true.