Like Power's best work, Dumb Flesh moves you when it literally moves you.

Recorded in the London studio that Al Doyle set up during the pandemic, it’s the first Hot Chip album to be written from scratch by the full band all in the same room, and its sound reflects that pooling of energies, full of exuberant dance rhythms and arrangements that burst at the seams.

What makes this record so refreshing is its unabashed ambition, the sound of a band rejecting indie-darling complacency for riskier, more mature territory. And the gamble more than pays off.

Amid slashes of industrial noise and chilling silences, the two artists take turns offering similar surreal speeches about gazing up at a black airplane, a pitch-black sky, vomit, and a bird of paradise--sinister appeals to the unknown, to the unavoidable end times. These interstitials give Isa a dimensionality that seems to break a fourth wall of the record.

The Coathangers' latest finds a notorious must-see live band finally capturing some of the energy of its shows on record.

Like all of Cohen's albums, Popular Problems sounds slick but slightly off-kilter, like someone trying to imitate music they've read about but never actually heard.

A meticulous assemblage of sequencers and synthesizers, drum machines and aleatoric percussion, small beeps and tectonic booms, Light Divide refracts and then reorders moody electronic music, creating more of a mirage than a mere collage.

The new album is hardly a huge leap from Elephant Shell in most senses, but it does find TPC reaching out, growing more comfortable, and letting loose.

The resultant record [Toy] is a mixed bag. Bowie and his band gel well. ... But these seasoned pros often fail the material, losing the ramshackle charm of the originals. ... The 1990s albums reissued here, however, tell the story best.

If there’s a weakness with Blind Spot it might simply be its brevity, or perhaps the marked absence of the kind of swaggering sonic guitar bombast the band unleashed in old songs like “Sweetness and Light” or “Superblast!.” Regardless, Blind Spot feels like an assured--albeit somewhat tentative—way for the band to dip their toes back in the water

If the album makes for an occasionally uneasy listen, that only speaks to its authenticity: Anyone who’s ever lain awake at night wondering where their life is going will feel a cringe of recognition in these songs.

Another in a line of accomplished, eternally pleasant and intermittently brilliant Stereolab records.

On Universal Credit, he proffers downbeat tales that invite empathy, and they deserve, more than anything, to be heard.

Dialing down his avant tendencies has given Moiré a fresh perspective and helped tame his music, for better or worse.

Fancy Some More? feels like a rowdy, well-earned celebration and reaffirms the main ideas PinkPantheress has gestured toward for much of the year: Heavy reference doesn’t inherently go hand-in-hand with a lack of ingenuity.

Where club culture mythologizes a circuit of endless nights and after-parties, Passed Me By suggests physical and spiritual exhaustion, Sisyphus collapsing beneath the dead-eyed twinkle of the disco ball.

It’s the duo establishing themselves, knowing they have some limitations, but capitalizing on what they do well.

By some miracle, the 24-track behemoth works on its own. It’s frequently beautiful and shockingly consistent, given the range of artists involved, and almost every artist brings their best efforts.

It’s a scattershot travelogue, idealized and hopeful, bright with giddy pleasures, welled tears, and some of her best-ever songwriting.

If the bulk of the album is for the car, the bar, the social occasion, then moments like ["Today"] are for headphones, bedrooms, intimate and solitary states. The presence of both increases the breadth of this assured LP, and establishes ILYBICD as being no longer a band to watch, but a band to listen to.

The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on this lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality, proving along the way that back to business doesn’t have to mean an absence of fun.

The new Rainer Maria is slower, heavier, and more methodical than the old one. They swing less but land more blows.

On Poison Season, you can occasionally detect the dismaying sound of indie rock's greatest intellect second-guessing itself.

What frustrates about The Beautiful Struggle is that its flaws are purely musical: Kweli remains the fist-raising visionary who burned "The Manifesto" at the Lyricist Lounge with the same fiery pen that blazed "African Lounge".

As a showcase of a seasoned master in his element, Silver Age's bounty of direct, distorto-pop hits measures up to Mould's gold standard.

All of those tracks work because they’re never played as straight genre experiments; they all sound first and foremost like Woods songs, even when they draw from a different vocabulary than any that came before.

The record stretches deeper into a pool of contemplative, ambient-leaning pedal-steel records that’s expanded significantly since Balsams. Based in Oakland, California, Johnson makes inventive use of both space and place on The Cinder Grove.

With Let’s Turn It Into Sound, Smith turns her music upside down, shakes out her assumptions, and lets the pieces fall where they may, all in the interest of finding new connections between things that were never meant to go together. It’s a leap into the unknown, and her excitement is infectious.