Somehow, they’ve retained all the messy spirit of the vintage classic rock they venerate. That It’s Real feels so exciting and alive only shows how thoroughly they’ve absorbed the lessons they’ve learned.

Elseq feels like an advancement of the duo’s recent live sets, offering a similar ratio of rhythm to noise and order to chaos, but a richer palette of sounds.

Mostly, En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog offers driving, instantly catchy songs that would sound excellent blaring from beneath a laser show, some ferris wheel spinning in the background. The destination is almost too familiar; before, Dungen often led listeners down a thornier, less trodden path. The preferable voyage will depend on who’s listening.

When Wainwright falters, it's for familiar reasons, usually some combination of overindulging and oversharing.

Nux Vomica retains its predecessor's flair for the grandiose, but repositions the Veils as purveyors of a gothic Americana, inhabiting desert-stormy vistas that are just expansive enough to house the band's most valuable asset: Andrews' magnetic, outsize persona.

Sixteen meaty songs strong, the album is part slightly-fictionalized tour diary, part rumination on unrealized success and finding fun in the day-to-day.

At their best, these songs share the self-scrutinizing intimacy of Elliott Smith and the imaginative melodic intonations of Joni Mitchell, two of Glaspy's most obvious influences.

The best moments here are the most direct, the least demonstrative.

Sons & Daughters are far from perfect, but The Repulsion Box is an energetic, sometimes thrilling record by a band slowly but surely carving out a unique niche for themselves.

That Eyehategod exists at all is a miracle in and of itself, but the fact that it is so damn great is simply extraordinary.

There’s no disco excursion on Daniel—they already pulled off that trick on 2020’s The Main Thing—but it’s the cleanest and leanest album they’ve ever made.

Some moments on Moonbuilding show the Orb, if not regaining their form, then offering up decent ambient music. But elsewhere they revert back to a formlessness that's devoid of their quirky stoner persona.

If new album The Maginot Line... is decidedly less sentimental or cohesive in tone than its predecessors, it's all the braver for it.

Eternal Turn of the Wheel is as captivating as most any stretch of black metal you'll hear this year, even if it possesses a lifetime of questions that deserve to be asked.

The lyrics don't match the usually upbeat sound, and that disconnect helps make the band even more interesting.

It might be their weakest album, but Presence is among the most special; none of these songs sound like they could have come from another record.

At a relatively brief nine tracks, the record is a perfectly paced blast of dark pop that deftly reflects Fortune’s growing prowess as a songwriter.

Victorious is filled with moments that give you glimpses of the club in heaven, but like the afterlife itself, it’s always out of reach, distinct only in brief flashes and in feverish moments.

Another brisk half-hour of barbed power-pop tunes that sting so sweetly that it’s only after the fact you consider you might need a tetanus shot.

A sense of cosmic ambiguity permeates Bad Witch. These are neither his most inviting new songs nor his most immediate, but they rank among his most urgent.

Her songs, stuffed with information and emotion, act as an extended reminder to appreciate the gentler things the world has to offer--proof that even in the tremors of everyday life at its most confusing, kindness, calm, and empathy still have ample room to grow.

Hardcore will never sound or feel as satisfying on record as it does coming from a stage, and experienced from within the pit, enveloped in the release of sweaty rage and other explosive emotional detritus. But the songs have to come from somewhere, and So Unknown, which bottles that rage and passion with a bit of funk, is a decent place to start.

Museum feels like a transitional statement—a small but powerful reflection on an era when everyone and everything ground to a halt. But at their best, these songs also offer hints of how Ákadóttir might start moving again.

Love Letter is mostly poised, polished, and lush beyond belief.

There's nothing truly transgressive or illuminating or innovative about Last of the Country Gentlemen.

While The Fool doesn't fully capture their brain-melded performances, it's a worthy simulacrum.

As the Gizzard’s two releases this year respectively prove, they’re not afraid to push their sound to its most playful and punishing extremes. But it’s always been more thrilling to hear them excavate the uncharted territory in between.

The way Roberts' often high-pitched brogue wraps itself around sentences is pretty as hell; his voice has never sounded better, nor has it been recorded this clearly before.