The adherence to krautrockin’ repetition remains, but the proto-punk engine has been replaced by electronic loops and glacial synths. Suddenly, a band that once sounded most at home in strobe-lit basement dives now sounds primed for a late-afternoon slot at your roving summer festival of choice.

On the whole, though, the women Craft expends so much breath obsessing over drift in and out of his songs like cardboard cutouts from a bygone era, there to be lusted after and then blamed when they don’t fit into his fantasy.

It’s easy to indulge a reverie when it’s a vivid one, and Messes invites you to lose track of time for awhile with it.

Lionheart is brought to life by McEntire’s soulful voice, by a sweeping Nashville sound, but more so by a deep sense of conviction.

With Open Here, Field Music rises to the challenge with a set of newly crystallized talking points, offered up along with a glorious mess of noise.

Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

Khruangbin’s takes this new mode of listening and injects its own singular and developing personality into the playlisting of modern music.

Follow Them True, Stick in the Wheel continue their attack. About half of the album refines the acoustic folk sound of their debut, with lyrics emphasizing the pride of craftsmen and laborers as well as the desperation driving the poor.

Love Jail goes beyond a mere glance in the rearview mirror. It sounds vintage, but it feels current. Dommengang find some potential for escape in this music, some freedom in that absence of a destination.

P2 shows a man who is patient and relentless in honing his craft, getting closer to the debut with each track.

Oh My feels like a pocket-sized chapbook set to music: some songs inspire, some feel thin. When NADINE’s strange poetry does convince you to dog-ear a song, though, returning to it feels as creatively refreshing as when you heard it for the first time.

It’s still a joy to hear the Migos rap, which is why it’s especially depressing that Culture II ultimately feels like a drag--a formless grab bag compiled without much care.

Total Control make an EP of curveballs sound puzzlingly coherent thanks in no small part to their fine craftsmanship.

It’s a pleasant oddity in the Shins’ catalogue—neither a dazzling reinvention of the original release (see: Massive Attack V Mad Professor’s towering No Protection) nor a hastily-assembled insult to the band’s creative work .

Perhaps they figured dark times call for bright music, but this overly polished record often feels like a missed opportunity.

No Age’s name seems self-actualizing. And in their psycho-candied sound, which has progressively gotten better, they still know how to locate the timeless, fever-pitched feeling of a beginning.

By the end of Vessel of Love, it is apparent that an interest in reggae is far from the only thing Cook learned from Ari Up, or the most important thing. She learned to find her voice and make it heard.

This is a band that absolutely revels in the possibilities suggested by its obsidian thrills, no matter the potential changes in the audience’s size and scope. Down Below is about death and hell, sure, but it’s proudly, defiantly not meant for an underground anymore.

For an album called The Time Is Now, David spends too much of his time looking like he's trying to catch up.

Freedom’s Goblin is ultimately a celebration of Segall’s aesthetic and emotional freedom--a definitive capstone to the first decade of a scuzzy, heartfelt songwriter nonpareil.

Calexico have made records that sound like this one before, but they’ve never made one with quite this much fight in it.

While Marble Skies doesn’t always quite get there, the planets it frantically orbits while awaiting touchdown are worth the journey.

Across 12 songs and 74 minutes, All Melody functions as a single, cohesive piece of music, with recurring themes interwoven throughout. It’s easy to get lost in the album and then, hearing a familiar motif, come up short, as if turning a corner in a long hallway and wondering if you hadn’t passed the same spot just a moment ago. It’s a pleasantly disorienting sensation.

There isn’t a moment where Perico is upstaged, and his immediate charm is in the stylish near yelp of his rapping voice, the way he struts over a beat. He seems to always be at the top of his register, but he tucks a deceptive range of perky melody into each verse and hook. All of this plays out over a sleek G-funk backdrop, with plenty of playful nuance in the production.

There are brief glints of enlightenment to be heard here, but more often than not, Laraaji’s makeshift songs come across like daily affirmations as heard in a hotel lounge.

It’s frequently a difficult listen, and not for the reasons Garbus intended.

Blue Madonna’s main value over replacement synth-pop is his falsetto, capable of reaching a glam-rock frenzy but constrained in songs that never quite allow him to go there.

Between Two Shores was cobbled together out of songs left over from past sessions and home demos. This helps explain the album’s lack of focus. What’s missing is a singular idea for a listener to rest her headphones on. Instead, we get a hodgepodge of sentimental tunes that aren’t quite parallel, perpendicular, or adjacent to each other.