Nothing on these songs sounds the least bit rote or comfortable, and that’s remarkable for a band so far into an unlikely career.

Yaral Sa Doom’s production frames those sessions as a beautiful dream. The gleeful disbelief, the happy hunch that things are not as they usually are, dizzies up the record just a bit, pulling it slightly out of time and space—all while staying close enough to terra firma to not lose sight of where it came from.

Deep Fried Grandeur has a certain shelf life, but then again, the spirit of its origins was all about bright, short-lived sparks. You savor the brief chemistry, and then part ways, remembering it fondly. Above all, Deep Fried Grandeur is just a joy to visualize.

As passionately as All of Us Flames dreams of escape, it’s bound to a dystopian reality, where even the dreamiest, most abstract songs aren’t immune from fear.

Their career arc since 2001’s Beautiful Garbage suggests that wobbly songwriting is as much a tic as their masterful studio expertise. The cult still thrives, and we’ll happily settle for Let All We Imagine Be the Light—until the next album.

Co-produced by the band and Josh Evans, it’s filled with all the markers of cerebral, studio-born rock music: drum loops and programmed synths, swirling keys and fretless bass, wide dynamics and spacey textures. For the first time in a while, the winning moments are the slower cuts. ... The artistic rejuvenation that Gigaton aims to provide still seems somewhat out of reach.

A Man Alive's great virtue is that Nguyen can still sound like she's having the time of her life even as she's recounting the darkest moments from it.

The album probably doesn’t need to be 100 minutes long. Its length might have worked better if he had more neatly divided its 18 tracks into a right-brain and left-brain side, rather than breaking up its flow by zigzagging between satin-finish soul and misted minimal house. But the few surprises scattered along the way that make its unpredictable course feel worthwhile.

Sun’s Signature is among Fraser’s most illuminating and eloquent music to date, the work of a flesh-and-blood person rather than the chimerical Cocteau Twin of myth.

Spontaneity is a live band’s great asset, and that’s hard to convey in a recording studio, but the record is endearing and absorbing even when it stumbles.

Power and Hung have made either the year's most introverted party album or the most expansive loner's album; either way, there are few albums this year that offer this much space to get lost in.

Any live show will inevitably have crests and valleys, but besides these specific performances, Okonokos disappoints on a more general level: It too seldom sounds like an actual live album.

MADE might be a small album, one that never musically ventures outside Scarface's comfort zone, but it's a heavily personal work from someone with a whole lot to say.

Rising Down isn't always an easy listen, but it's an exciting one, and its abrasiveness never gets in the way of a good throw-your-hands-up beat or a well-crafted lyric.

The first disc, a June 2005 concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, starts out lifeless, with little variety in Smith's voice or Shields' metronomic guitar. Halfway through the hour-long performance, things pick up, as Smith yells fervent imperatives over shimmering waves from Shields' amp.

This is the rare album that reveals new depth within a catalog that already seemed so deep and ruminative while proclaiming rather unlimited possibilities for a band nearing the end of its first decade.

Black Tusk's combination of sludge, rock, hardcore, and death metal remains fluid, fertile, and most importantly, full of life, in spite of the tragedy that threatens to define it. Far from funereal, Pillars of Ash has plenty of love for good ol' heavy-metal melodies.

Though often framed as the band’s discovery of R&B, Sunshine Tomorrow reveals Wild Honey to contain almost as many connections to brother Brian’s sad-boy masterpieces and psych-pop as it does to the surf-rockers of yore.

This music is so bluntly fatalistic—in idea and execution—that it feels life-affirming to experience, as cleansing as scalding water. The Body have embraced that sensation since finding it on their 2010 breakthrough, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood. On I’ve Seen All I Need to See, it is mercilessly distilled and efficient, reminding us there’s no time to waste.

Mythopoetics advances Half Waif’s tendency toward plurality of voice.

BADBADNOTGOOD are known for turning tradition inside out, but Talk Memory is not just their finest album—it’s evidence of the historic appreciation that roots their reverence.

But for all the softness telegraphed in her music, Allen’s third album Eight Pointed Star is spiky and hard to pin down, its familiar environment camouflaging lyrics that can be vivid and fantastical.

The best songs on In Times New Roman… are hiding in the back half, resulting in an unusually lopsided experience.

Despite Price's best efforts to infuse these songs with motion and finesse, Confessions never quite reaches its earlier heights after "I Love New York". When Madonna actually starts confessing, the album loses its delicate balance between pop frivolity and spiritual gravity.

Blitzen Trapper are no longer talented jacks-of-all-trades, but a master of one, and Furr is proof that this already-great band gets even better as they define themselves more specifically.

Works is a crisp, punchy-sounding record, not far from the unfussy, live-in-a-room feel of early triumphs like Prairie School Freakout.

It’s evident that Walker is talented and brimming with ideas--and there are moments on this record that mark the best music he’s ever made. But he needs to get a better understanding of his strengths if he wants to become more than just another nifty live-guitar throwback.

Black Sea is positively huge while also being much more accessible. You get a sense here of how far Fennesz has come, how far his music reaches, and the unexplored possibilities that still exist.