Her songs remain as focused as ever, and she uses these other musicians with the same consideration with which she uses various techniques; nothing is simply spectacle. More than anything else in Williams’ catalog, Acadia is open to tangents, wild ideas, sudden realizations, and sustained moods.

Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this much command, this much power.

Dragon is as heavy in its lyrical concerns as any previous Big Thief record, and more ambitious in its musical ideas than all of them. But it also sounds unburdened, animated by a newfound sense of childlike exploration and play.

It’s no doubt a conservative record, maybe even a deeply unfashionable one, but much of its strength lies in the fact that it sounds different from everyone else out there.

With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.

Artistically speaking, Demon City represents a leap forward in terms of Crampton’s musical growth. American Drift was like a sumptuous glass overflowing, but Demon City is a wonder of concision, with songs that mostly fall under four minutes.

For 56 minutes Foxing alternately thrills and confounds but provides little in the way of catharsis.

Faithfull channels her body and mind’s ache into an album that’s her best and most honest work since Broken English. With Negative Capability, she reinforces our links by exposing her own broken places.

Flying Lotus has the notion that death should be the only limiting factor, and when he's put out a work that wrings beauty out of that very thing, what's the point of fearing anything?

I'm sure there are kids out there that think Basement Jaxx is great dance music, but the odds are, they don't know much about jungle.

For all of Brand New’s ambitions, it’s hard to recall a popular rock band making an album this crafty, this finely decorated without jettisoning the attributes of rock music.

Mostly, though, the Young we get here resembles the Young we already know: the one who we first met on his rootsy-yet-metaphysical 1972 breakout album, Harvest, then again later on Comes a Time, in 1978. ... When all is said and done, we’re left wanting more.

Shepherd feels like his most something album ever—his warmest, his most generous, possibly his most profound. It is his longest, for sure, lounging comfortably across four sides of vinyl, none of it wasted. It is a high note, fond and deep and sustained.

There are enough instrumental interludes and understated melodies here to make the record a grower, and it eases into the sunset for much of its back half.

It’s neither bootstrapping origin stories nor rock’n’roll fantasies so much as the grim realities facing Moctar and millions of others around the world that give Ilana its considerable power.

Vernon gives a soulful performance full of intuitive swells and fades, his phrasing and pronunciation making his voice as much a purely sonic instrument as his guitar.

The Past Is Still Alive’s fantastical yet sharply observed writing and revival of a more traditional sound feels like a homecoming.

It's also a meditation on a complex world, one devoid of the nostalgic innocence preached by the Mike Love-fronted Beach Boys of late, and its remastered, 2xCD Legacy Recordings release- the first CD release of the album since 1991--is astoundingly refreshing.

It’s post-protest music, made stronger for refusing to endorse personal solutions to systemic problems.

In many respects, Leaves Turn Inside You is the band's most ambitious, sweeping, and difficult outing yet.... I'm convinced that, if you've been following this band's development, the initial bewildered expression on your face will give way to total enchantment, and this new, boldly different Unwound album will have you in its grip for months to come.

Plunge is riskier than anything she has made before. It is sometimes harsh, often dissonant, frequently audacious.

There is a stubborn will to transcendence in these songs: a desire to leave the dissociative slough of the eternal middle. But the will-they-won’t-they friction between self-destruction and self-preservation generates its own kind of pleasure.

If anything, if the record has a fault, it’s that sometimes the non-stop restlessness can distract from the subtler aspects of the songwriting, but generally, Sampha is able to deploy the intricacies of his production style to great effect.

A lot of the weaknesses come down to the lyrics. .... His singing is the most unaffected element of these new songs: bold and melodic, equally clear and prominent in each edition.

Few MCs, on his label or elsewhere, are capable of firing in so many different directions and hitting this many targets at once without sounding out of their depth, but Q corrals the ups and downs of his lavish lifestyle into a deliriously entertaining joyride.

Have You In My Wilderness embraces the specific, rather than the eternal, and in her narrowed focus you can sense a palpable self-confidence and a hard-won precision.

What follows is surprisingly full and wide ranging, almost as much as the Bruegel painting that graces the album's cover.

Monáe has given us a pop record that feels gleefully youthful, perhaps even the album she wishes she could have had as a teen in Kansas City. The songwriting is precise if not always flawless.