Iit confirms anew that Big Business remain a band without comfortable genre quarters, as indebted to power pop and psychedelic rock as they to sludge or stoner metal.

These songs are both more urgent and exploratory than the last albums by either band, though they were both very good. There’s a real sense of shared wonder here.

Trading layers of mood and melody and meaning for layers of Pro Tooled artifice, French Kicks have razored off the bullshit, leaving a core of beguilingly honest tunes.

The whole album is so impressionistic and free-floating that you'll likely hear something else, as Delt intended.

While it’s a quieter record than its predecessors, and her ceaseless questions and lacerating self-doubt would seem like the opposite of asserting an artistic identity, Shelley’s absence of imposition only emphasizes her enviable patience and burgeoning tenderness.

Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary capsule capturing how he ticks.

It doesn't take a lot to make old technology sound damaged and creepy. But taking the next step and making that creepiness sound appealing is what makes Maniac Meat the feel-weird hit of the summer.

Self-absolved from their roles as alien emissaries and newly loaded with personal responsibility, they seem entirely recharged now, a veteran outfit bailing on one mission to start a better and more approachable one.

An Inbuilt Fault becomes a faithful companion for anyone emerging from the trenches of an existential crisis—it’ll loom on the outer edge of your worst days.

It’s the vocals that provide the color. Nate chops them like confetti, stretches them like taffy, explores every crevice of their contours. ... It sounds complicated--from a technical standpoint, it is complicated--but the results are surprisingly easy on the ear.

That ecstatic sense of possibility—of being many things at once, of following your impulses in all directions, all the time—is the animating force of Virgin.

Staying on just this side of a Corona beer commercial, it sounds like a continuation of Bergsman's realizations carried over from East of Eden, in that a change in latitude brings about a change in attitude.

Keeping up with it requires careful attention, though unpacking it hardly feels laborious. Just don’t expect Ava Luna to do any hand-holding for you throughout the process.

You couldn’t say that WOW is about anything. Instead, it’s defined by its aesthetic cohesion, a beautiful sense of formal seriousness that holds court over the record’s surrealistic menagerie.

Beach House the EP succeeds where the mixtape Beach House 2 didn’t, further commercializing Ty’s sound without sacrificing the meat and potatoes of it, the foul-mouthed, sex-positivity of Ty’s quixotic bedroom capers and the production’s precarious balance between slight, house-informed ratchet music, trap and densely arranged traditional R&B sounds.

Out My Feelings doesn’t have the rawness of In My Feelings, but its production is impeccable where that one was spotty, and it soars when Boosie reminisces on his pre-rap days or makes statements in line with Black Lives Matter about the murders of unarmed black people by cops.

As ambient music, radio play, fetid sustenance for misanthropic shut-ins--it is a singular piece of work, and a bold step forward for Rabit’s inky aesthetic.

Most songs are stuffed with diverging melodies and dense instrumentation. But Dupuis is such an adept songwriter and accomplished singer that the excesses are part of the appeal.

Even if you don’t track all the references, Sleaford Mods’ sense of fatigued resignation resonates. UK GRIM is their most varied album to date, but they don’t want to dull the shitstorm’s stench—they’re just here to blow off the steam.

An exhilarating but disorienting ride.

As she reimagines the through line of modern-day romance and heartache in jazz, Salvant is at her most versatile and expressive on Dreams and Daggers, choosing songs that wholly capture and embrace the full spectrum that is love—from the initial yearning to the relentless ache and betrayal.

A constant through Linkous’ catalog was the pairing of his most optimistic lyrics with his saddest melodies, giving the sense of a constant battle to transcend the darkness. There’s a similar quality at play in these songs, where the heaviest, thrashiest performances are also the most beautiful.

V is relentless in its intensity, but allow yourself to be swept into its icy, alien atmosphere you’ll be utterly awestruck.

None of these songs would have the same effect if rushed, which is what set Big Ups apart from many of their peers.

Saint Etienne have been "back" before, but this time-- this time it sounds like they're really back.

Though its songs are lightly augmented with overdubs and outside voices, as well as the faintest outlines of orchestrations from Eyvind Kang, Eucalyptus retains its air of bedroom intimacy.

For all of CHROMAKOPIA’s hitting-your-thirties ego death confessionals, it’s the braggadocious, Cherry Bomb-sounding tracks that really hit.

It gives clarity to what’s so magnetic about their creative partnership: that, in the grand wilderness of America, these two unusual musicians found each other at all.