The resulting sense of chaos redoubles Boris’ wrath and gives it a welcome depth, the sense that it’s here to stay because it’s been here all along.

Loom feels like the first time that Gateley’s technical prowess and songwriting are fully on the same page. The album may be rooted in loss, but Loom’s success lies in the clarity of vision that she has found.

Throughout Free at Last, Freeway displays a deft ability to play the foil to less exuberant MCs, with the exception of a firebreathing Busta Rhymes cameo on 'Walk With Me.'

Paradise challenges its listeners to emotionally engage with their surroundings in hopes that they develop a conscious understanding that there are consequences to our daily conveniences.

Forth Wanderers, their Sub Pop debut, feels like the end of the montage and the beginning of something real.

There are moments on Lust for Life that, while less successful on a pure songwriting level than some of Del Rey’s more focused work, are fascinating distillations of what a Lana Del Rey song mean.

Listening to Smoke & Fiction in the same sitting as Los Angeles or Wild Gift, the lasting impression isn’t how they’ve changed over the years, but how much of their original spark they’ve sustained.

Kudos is considerably more laid back and vibe-heavy. The guitars still jingle-jangle, just with a little more economy.

The result is oddly refreshing: an artsy, accomplished band turning their second album of the year into a pulpy slasher flick.

On Mykki, her assertiveness never wavers, whether diving into top-shelf hedonism in the club bangers or keening to find love past carnality in the ballads.

Closing In is a classic guitar-driven heavy metal record. It's a throwback to early 80s thrash, the era before speed often became a substitute for creative ideas.

The MUSIC that does exist is somewhere in between, a flawed, contradictory, inflated, loud, exciting, mainstream-ified, uncomfortable, nostalgic event, but one that is still fixated on the music above all. It might go down as the purest distillation of Playboi Carti.

Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

On the evidence of Mr. Impossible, they still sound like no one else and they're still thinking hard about music and texture. When you're craving something trashy and tripped-out in this very particular way, they still deliver the properly damaged goods.

At their best, these songs share the self-scrutinizing intimacy of Elliott Smith and the imaginative melodic intonations of Joni Mitchell, two of Glaspy's most obvious influences.

Love it or hate it, the precious, nasal vibrato Oberst affects is the tie that binds all these varied tunes together in the end, and in most cases, it compliments the music admirably.

Front Parlour Ballads offers the traditional Thompson mix of lush folk beauty and cruel knife-twisting lyrics.

With Stonechild, Jesca Hoop complicates centuries of feminized folk music by singing about the ugly, violent aspects of motherhood. Stillbirth, spousal abuse, sexism inherited from mother to daughter—all claim vignettes on this record of electro-folk, seeking, much like Love did, to render motherhood in fucking intense terms.

The album sounds exactly, defiantly like Mariah, acknowledging her place in the pop ecosystem both implicitly and explicitly without chomping at the bit.

The pace is unhurried, and Gibson offers a cathartic tale of loss and redemption, set against a gorgeous sonic backdrop. She sounds newly confident, invigorated, and free.

Sincerely plays better as a whole rather than as tracks excerpted for a playlist, which is fine, though “Sugar! Honey! Love!” and “Daggers!” rank among Uchis’ most lived-in tracks.

It's remarkably cohesive both in mood and style: energetic but never wanton, bittersweet but never wallowing.

There's no romance in the songs where the duo confront their demons (Barât has also struggled with addiction and depression), but they're still full of fight.

For anyone who enjoys a thoughtful singer-songwriter record with adept, minimalist instrumental backing and a powerhouse vocalist, Echo the Diamond is a worthy listen.

An album’s gotta end sometime, but these songs, two of the record’s most propulsive, seem to grab us by the arm to yank us into the shimmering neon starlight--and then it’s all over. If it’s good enough, the audience will linger through the credits. King could let it linger a little more.

In evoking Lynch and Badalamenti, Xiu Xiu have made one of their most beautiful and listenable albums, one that highlights everything the band does well while shaving down the rough edges that often turn away foes and friends alike.

River runs so well as a unit that, unless you’re able to spot the tunes or sleuth the liner notes, you likely won’t detect that Bachman didn’t even write two of these numbers.

On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist.