As good as the remaster sounds, the primary attraction of this edition is its second disc, 11 tracks from Prince’s vault of unreleased songs, all cut between 1983 to 1984. ... The vault tracks sound like fully-formed Prince songs—animated, vibrant, reflexive, fluid, almost vehicular in their design and velocity.

The free-jazz vibe still makes for a visceral experience, regardless of whether not you can actually follow Quazarz’ path. They continue to eschew standard song structures in favor of free-flowing compositions whose direction is guided by instinct.

This time around, the edges of the Quazarz universe feel smoother, the ride less jarring. The low end is still intense, but it feels more like a deep tissue massage than a trunk-rattling rumble.

Need to Feel Your Love continues to dance along the line separating proto-metal and power pop, but leans more often toward the latter. Bassist Hart Seely’s slightly crisper production lets you better savor the jangly acoustic strums underpinning the power chords, while liberating Halladay’s singing from the payphone fidelity of those earlier recordings.

He is so compelling when he digs deeper into his psyche this way, providing more than superficiality, but there aren’t enough of these moments to sustain Issa Album, which is as basic as its title.

The new album finds Boris honing in on their most essential quality: their ability to wrest a kind of endless subtlety from thick layers of distortion and volume.

Exquisite as a great deal of Lifetime of Love sounds, it is not an album especially rich in emotional depth or apparent meaning. Its merits, not to be shrugged off, are nevertheless mainly superficial—the slight but definite virtues of a decidedly minor record.

While lacking the close mic’d intimacy of her early work, Out in the Storm is equally immersive, with songs that play like fiery exorcisms.

This is incredibly heavy music made light (joyful, even) by the zeal and power of its players. By plowing into, through, and ultimately out of the dark, Ex Eye is an ecstatic fusion--an exhilarating exclamation of defiance, no warning required.

For all the missteps, there are gratifying moments littered throughout. For the most part, the production, spearheaded by David “CDOC” Snyder, is patched together smartly and with regard to tradition.

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.

It’s been more than a half-decade wait for Chronology, but in a genre known for singles, Chronixx has produced a complete, solid album.

The momentum generated by “Mirage” and the equally limber funk workouts that bookend Boo Boo end up compensating for the tedious midsection of neither-here-nor-there experimentation.

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

Several of the new versions on Crime Rock just amount to tighter, better-quality recordings. In other cases, the changes are quite dramatic.

There's something more deliberately approachable about the melodies he uses here. He meditates in the spaces in between phrasings, allowing the more volatile segments to linger like light trails in your vision.

Many of the songs on the second half slide into each other in a forgettable jumble, but Grateful’s best songs are here, too.

More so than Forgiveness Rock Record, Hug of Thunder presents Broken Social Scene as a rock band making rock songs, a coherent montage rather than a patched-together highlight reel.

Again and again, Woodstock promises a protest but delivers a party.

There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight.

Neither reinventing pop nor changing the course of dance music, it’s a vacation of an album that doubles as the producer’s own stopgap until his next wave comes along.

As on Days Are Gone, its sheen is current and its spirit out of step. Beat by beat, Haim are the classic sound of heartbreak alleviated, if only for a moment.

Though the majority of B-Sides and Rarities can be easily found by those inclined to find it (the piano sketch “Rain in Numbers” is a hidden track at the end of Beach House’s self-titled debut, making it not much of a B-side or a rarity), the impulse to gather up loose ends into a cohesive package feels like a solid effort at future-proofing recordings peripheral to the band’s primary discography.

Wintres Woma is an album that makes itself easy to like.

TLC's letting-go is bittersweet and good, a sometimes somber, sometimes playful requiem for their time together (and with us).

Algiers have produced a record that is timely and necessary but also scatterbrained and messy, one that is so over the top it becomes a political melodrama, undercutting the issues it seeks to amplify.

Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful.

He surveys ideas on wealth and success with a confidence that makes even his most clumsy boasts about not going ham on the ’Gram seem sophisticated. Rap’s biggest winner coolly sustains his biggest losses.