On Purge, Godflesh strike a balance between communal vulnerability and seething hostility that makes for the most inviting entry in their late career.

As with past Rouse efforts, Nashville is always pleasant, if unexceptional.

This is arguably Oldham's most austere record to date, but there's much to dig into.

Hudson can definitely do tweaked, but he has work to do before being transcendent.

This band is at its best operating at the edge of kitsch and excess, as with the “Monster Mash” voice inexplicably mumbling over “Bobby’s Forecast.”

It’s Eitzel’s heaviest album, but it’s also, in a peculiar way, his sweetest.

Calvi’s synthesized enough musical styles for at least three artists, and she’s clearly got ample chops to pull any of them off. She’s born to make a grand concept album one day. What she needs now is that grand concept.

Ruins has a vivid sense of place.

Versions, presented now as a complete overhaul and re-imagining of Cellar Door, nudges their Balearic soft rock tendencies back toward their dubby fundamentals, offering drastically warped takes on that underwhelming album.

As welcome as it is, the Party of Five disc winds up emphasizing the curious nature of Up, as the point where interpersonal tensions collided with broader cultural shifts.

Saya is more of a restoration: filling in the cracks of Gray’s music, redrawing her in bolder shades and more vivid hues—indigo, flesh tone, spring green.

It's a scary, difficult album, but one well suited for our times.

While never able to fully grasp the Japanese sounds they adore, Visible Cloaks nevertheless have created an album along the axis of Fennesz’s Endless Summer and OPN’s Replica, an abstract electronic album that’s readily accessible and an immersive listen.

She makes even the most immovable feelings open up with just a little time and space.

Intra-I is the soundtrack for a new generation of music lovers to grow with. Cross hasn’t just connected his instrument with the soundsystem culture that informs his music, he’s made it an integral component of that tradition.

The album-closing title track, which charts weird new territory not just for MGMT, but in some small sense, for pop itself. .... is, in other words, the perfect thematic conclusion to an imperfect album. And more to the point, it just hits.

The Universal Want troubleshoots wisely—keep the tempos at a brisk jog, dabble in Afrobeat, Motown, and cinematic soul rather than prog, and watch the clock. Whereas Kingdom of Rust felt like twice its hourlong runtime, Universal Want is Doves’ first filler-free album, floating by like a warm breeze.

A Ways Away, O'Neil's fifth solo album and first on the K imprint, draws together her considerable experience as a producer, singer, and songwriter in a fleetingly beautiful 36 minutes that washes over the listener in an introspective haze.

Deforming Lobes’ closest antecedent would be The Who’s original, equally compact Live at Leeds, where the purpose is less about highlighting the set-list staples than showcasing the band in their most primal, exploratory state.

Glaring errors keep Love, Damini from reaching the heights of Burna Boy’s prior work, but his intentions are admirable, even when the execution goes awry. Modern Afropop is the poster kid for good times, but with this ambitious yet flawed album, he reminds us that it can be a space to work out much messier emotions.

It’s an almost self-consciously busy-minded album, chockablock with ideas and sounds, all colliding violently and sometimes brutally.

Compulsively listenable.

He not only has an impressively deep knowledge of traditional song forms, but takes liberties with the country's past in order to document his own personal present.

It’s not hard to hear City Music as a lament for lost innocence, a pledge to maintain optimism and humanity at a time when those qualities don’t just feel like vestiges of youth, but of some better civilization that’s rapidly disappearing. In his best album yet, Morby makes a prayer out of the squall.

Though treading familiar sonic and thematic waters at the start, On the Water really comes alive midway through.

The group's obvious enthusiasm for the project is contagious, and together they add another memorable benchmark to Chasny's formidable body of work, clearly having a fantastic time while doing so.

Death in Vegas wants to be a scary rock band. As such, they've crafted a scary album with scary guitars, scary beats, scary distortion, and scary Iggy Pop. But Death in Vegas isn't even a rock band. It's two pasty English DJ-type guys and some session musicians.

While Vanderslice's observations and commentary sounded fresh and fierce two years ago, the same essential message run through similarly sounding songs this time around rings hollow.