Whatever the actual year 2020 will hold, for now, Pavo Pavo's escapism feels cozy, uplifting, and wholly appropriate.

The integrity of Richard's voice provides the through line, which is often caught in ghostly tangles of itself or locking into prismatic harmonies, similar to how Prince or D’Angelo treated their voices.

Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth.

Few artists could assemble a group of musicians like that those found on Hubris at all, but Ambarchi lets everyone do their part, then fade into the background. It's the difference between hubris and vision.

Unsurprisingly, this is heavy listening.

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.

MC4 falls short of Wave Gods, but is a leaps-and-bounds improvement over Excuse My French.

The album isn’t quite the overwhelming achievement that Ten Freedom Summers was, though the refined ensemble playing of Smith’s newly convened “Golden Quintet” is consistently ravishing.

Its twelve songs–the vast majority of which extend well past the five-minute mark–fall into two categories: galloping nods to Ride the Lightning, of which the first disc is primarily composed, and doomier mid-tempo cuts à la Sabbath, which make up the bulk of the second. The LP’s highlights--“Hardwired,” “Moth Into Flame,” “Atlas, Rise!” all fall into the former camp, front-loading the record with fire. The second disc, by contrast, is a slog through nondescript, uniform chug, devoid of dynamics or instrumental nuance.

He’s almost literally stopping to smell the roses, and the result is an album about growth and development, about the virtues of taking your time rather than the crutch of constantly sprinting forward. In the process, it advances Bachman’s oeuvre significantly.

More limber and fiery than ever, the band has risen out the experimental cul-de-sac with a riveting work that should appeal to both its expected audience and to new fans who might have otherwise dismissed this style of music as too antiseptic for their liking.

Highway Songs ultimately feels hopeful rather than weary, upbeat rather than defeated.

No Waves stands as a memorable document on its own and a hopeful harbinger for new material to come.

Thankfully, Marching Church’s sophomore effort scales back the melodrama and ramps up the discipline: Rønnenfelt and company are focused on verses and choruses and dynamics, rather than self-indulgent noodling--and in the case of this album, a little bit goes a long way.

If A Weird Exits was Thee Oh Sees’ Thanksgiving feast, An Odd Entrances is Friday’s turkey and stuffing sandwich--hardly a destination meal, but plenty satisfying in its own way.

Madness is a spacious and satisfying record: what it lacks in standout moments, it makes up for in coherence.

One of Speedy Ortiz’s strengths is that beneath all the instrumental layers, there’s a narrative puzzle to unpack. Sad13’s Slugger solves its puzzle for you, but in the hope that you will be able to go at it alone in the future.

We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service is all just beats, rhymes, and life. Nothing about this feels like a legacy cash-in; it feels like a legit A Tribe Called Quest album.

Unfortunately, their sun-zapped slacker outlook drags them back, miscasting themselves as a modern-day answer to hollow, overly attitude-conscious acts like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Even though a release like Lady, Give Me Your Key unearths never-before-heard material, it still doesn’t reveal anything new about the mercurial man.

Rocky consistently entertains without delivering any one-liners, and the album is sequenced to mask some of the lesser members’ weaknesses. Cozy Tapes stays true to its name.

Too much of Long Live the Angels just feels turgid.

For all its wrath and fury, Devil Music feels safe and predictable. It’s a hell of a party, but it’s one we’ve been to before.

Scott Morgan has made a career of showing us waters and watering places. With Monument Builders, we are finally invited to drink.

Ultimately, though, after making such an indelible and unique contribution to the language of modern heavy rock, Hamilton continues to show that he's hemmed-in by the style he invented.

The rhythms on HERE represent a departure from her previous efforts and indicate a willingness to experiment with her sound but the lyrics, which rarely betray a sense of adventure, cancel out most of this good work.

Don’t mistake their expanded palette for a lack of focus: as always, Darkthrone keep these eight songs’ latent chaos on a tight choke-chain, timing the hellish tremolo riffs as carefully and slowly as an October surprise.

Trap or Die 3 offers real reminders of Jeezy’s greatness, then, something Church in These Streets couldn’t claim. But some of these songs just sound terrible.