The songs are moody and dark, with clear moments of guitar solo-driven catharsis.

At its core, $oul $old $eparately is a full-circle exhibition that allows Gibbs a minute to rest on his laurels: His comfort zone is whatever studio he finds himself in.

Wild Smile is wild indeed, the band's aesthetic and feel summed up perfectly by the cover art.

Inferno shimmies with the vigor of a man who can keep this up so long as the tunes, one a year if necessary, keep coming. Just don’t press him. As “One Bird in the Sky” reminds listeners, “I eat only when I eat.”

New Build's arrangements are impressive and uncomplicated throughout.

Dijon is in her element here, eager to expand house music’s limits. For every pulse-racing dance breakdown, there’s a surprise.

You still never know from one song what might appear on the next, or even where the song you’re listening to might go, and it keeps the music fresh even when it’s retreading hallowed ground.

You’d have to be in a particularly loose frame of mind to listen to it top to tail; but there is enough of the Beach Boys’ singular genius—perhaps the expression in pop of a musical mind pulled to and fro by the heavy weathers of psychological torment—to deliver. This is the Beach Boys at their best, their worst, and most frustratingly human—just like we want them to be.

There's power in pauses, silence, and empty space, these songs affirm, and small doesn't have to mean slight.

Even as its mood slides from pensive to morose to quietly exuberant, this remains throughout one of the more enjoyable experimental releases this year.

While Pangaea and Hessle's peers have resorted to mealy, house-music gruel (Hotflush) and thinly veiled populism (Hyperdub), Release offers willful, self-conscious antagonism of the purest variety.

Regresa maintains their brand of tropical synth pop, but while their first records could be cheeky, poking fun at Latino machismo, this LP probes deeper questions of life and identity.

The album may not shock the singer’s die-hard fans, but Broken Gargoyles is a moving, painful listen and an ideal access point for the uninitiated.

Religious music was never a hot button issue, and at no point does this, Moore's latest, feel like anything other than an honest expression of love.

They returned with a successor that takes what worked on their previous album and pushes further in every direction. False Lankum sprawls, dense with ideas.

Yannick Ilunga feels like pop music's future--borderless but deeply rooted, challenging but pleasurable--and La Vie is strong enough to have earned Ilunga the right to call his revolution whatever he wants.

Illegal Moves is just as powerful a statement about the urgency of the times and the reactions we should all be having, because being entertained doesn’t have to mean being disengaged. That Sunwatchers make their calls to arms sound so fun doesn’t diminish that power--in fact, it just might be the most important part.

The Body has always been obsessed with feelings of consuming futility, and in kicking free of conventional structures and following Wolpert's lead, they've come closer than ever to their truest selves on record.

It’s both solipsistic and psychedelic, urging listeners to travel into their own depths and welcome the joy and despair they might find there.

While the shift towards tempered indie rock often robs Holy Ghost of the instant gratification of early MoBo, there isn’t a single clunker lyric that was wedged in for the sake of cleverness.

It’s austere, formidable music, but by fitting within a tight 40-minute package, it endears itself to listeners who might not know much about drone music.

The union of players and material inspires a new synthesis: the sound of Iyer consolidating strengths and discovering some new ones as he settles into the vibe created by his most potent band yet.

Former Things is packed with Campbell’s busy, weaponized arrangements. The lyrics, too, are deliberate and dense—she’s one of those uncommon songwriters whose words work equally well on paper.

Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) is the far warmer of the two works, despite titles that allude to Iceland and Saturn’s frozen moons. In its most mesmerizing moments, Hassell slips into memoirist mode, allowing old tropes from his past to flicker back to life.

Thickfreakness isn't quite their debut, but it's still a powerhouse, even exceeding its ancestor in total spectacle. Raw rock grandeur as so frequently conjured up on this album is hard to come by in any capacity; if that means having to overlook a few minor flaws, it's worth it.

Putting the Days to Bed is a solid effort-- a step in a promising new direction.

Like their best, "SNL"-aired material, these songs get better as they go on, mostly because of the way the lyrics carry the joke to its logical and grotesque endpoint.

Tucker’s titanic vibrato and ferocious conviction are the anchors of Little Rope. She has audibly risen to the occasion, in every note, to support her friend.