Baird's voice sounds as potent and icy-clear as ever.

The album's second half is slightly more abstract than the catchy pop that precedes it, but these moments are tempered, causing the record to feel more focused.

As exhilarating as Fourteen Autumns is at its most anthemic, the vividness of the lyrical themes ultimately carries the record over.

On one hand, Dear Catastrophe Waitress ranks as one of the most delightful surprises of the year, although that's primarily because I'd completely given up on them. On the other hand, it's a very flawed record that at its quirky worst features harmonies so brow-furringly cheery they'd be comfortable amidst a cruise-ship revue or one of Up With People's halftime routines.

Experience can be a crutch, an excuse to tread water in comfortable waters. But Popular Songs wears its age well, a calm but firm reminder of an indie rock perennial it's all too easy to take for granted.

Pixx is at her sharpest when her doubt and discontent are animated by something more acute.

Carla dal Forno is willing to provoke listeners on a number of levels without spoon-feeding them. With You Know What It’s Like, she manages to do so on her own terms, in a way that feels both distant and inviting and rewards the listener’s willingness to sit with the ambiguity in between.

One of the year’s best and most urgent metal records, Head Cage is a fitting counterpart to another essential bit of 2018 heaviness, Thou’s Magus.

Diet Cig’s debut is almost entirely made of other people’s gestures hastily collected and cheaply executed.

Because Toro Y Moi is so closely linked with the likes of Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Memory Tapes, it's tempting to read into the success of Underneath the Pine as some predictor of those bands' collective staying power, or a direction others might take. But Bundick seems to be following nothing but his own internal compass.

A more immediate, less cerebral album than you'd expect from such a green musician.

Raw Money Raps is immaculately constructed as identity crises go, and there's an uncontrived honesty that feels more like someone working through a multifaceted outlook on life than testing his options for which crowd to play to.

The album is best when it’s at its broadest.

Wedded to the percussion-and-singer-plus-accompanist format, Barnett sounds marooned. It’s her least interesting album.

Whatever actual healing powers she may be channeling probably depends upon the patient; nevertheless, Kelly Lee Owens presents an artist with an unusually focused vision of what music is capable of.

It’s all fittingly scathing, but there’s whimsy under the surface, especially in Dwyer’s berserk vocal performances. His taunting, sneering voice cycles through loose impressions of iconic punk singers—Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Ian MacKaye, Johnny Rotten—without ever assuming a final form.

I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone curls into dark corners, exploring the depths of desperation and self-loathing that Chastity Belt only hinted at on their last two albums.

Future raises the stakes considerably, leaving the band's musical talents to play catchup with their new material's epic-sized dimensions.

On the sequel, Curren$y and Ski go even further with that central idea, pushing into sleepy, smooth funk territory that fits Curren$y's rap style perfectly.

The dilution of purist fidelity makes Here Be Monsters one of Langford’s least focused albums in recent memory, but it also ends up as one of his richest.

Part of the revelation of Boots No. 1, then, is witnessing Welch’s music made mortal, to hear her navigating her many influences with a young artist’s enlightened uncertainty, and to hear imperfect recordings that may not necessarily conjure universes on their own accord so much as they recall old-fashioned country music that’d sound at home on the radio.

The Marriage of True Minds hits harder and feels more joyfully physical than anything Matmos has done in years.

Despite Friedberger’s singular phrasing and voice, there’s something inviting and comfortingly familiar about Personal Record’s approach to pop melody.

For all its grandiosity, American Idiot keeps its mood and method deliberately, tenaciously, and angrily on point.

Fortune packs a subtle yet undeniable emotive force whose impact can linger long after the projector has gone dark.

At eight songs and just over 40 minutes, Filo is a fine thank you to friends--human and machine--who’ve stayed true over the years.

Perhaps an entire project of shapeshifting arrangements would be too personal for comfort, a too-clear window into Thornalley’s mind. For now, he seems content to keep us at arm’s length, his exquisite music a shield against the vulnerability of really being seen.

Saint Etienne never identified as Britpop, and fair enough. But with Home Counties, they give us a glimpse of what cutting-edge ’90s pop could have become if it had evolved into adult music with a more earthbound point of view.