The first third is playful if not quite memorable. ... But as “N” swoops down, with its slow, throbbing bassline, primitive drum machine pattern, echoing chimes, and flecks of flamenco guitar, you wonder if Lissvik might have pulled a fast one and gone back into an old hard drive to plunder some old Studio session, so dead-on is the sound.

Idle No More, released in 2013, was his first real adult album, with a real U.S. label and a sound that buffed away some of the rough edges but maintained that sense of the ridiculous. That charisma comes through on Murderburgers, his debut solo record and the first on his own Khannibalism Records (an imprint of Ernest Jenning Co.), although it’s more muted and even more mature.

As an album, PITH begins to drag towards the end, closing with a track rightfully called “Flatness.” But as a series of singles, its meld of ’90s grunge and early-’00s noise is delightfully strange.

The record’s strongest moments originate in its audacity rather than precision: Desert Window opens up the ambient ideas she’s perfected in the past into riskier, roomier territory.

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will--doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.

The band sounds something like 4AD's entire catalogue being chopped up and fed through a meat-grinder.

Behind his accented murmurs, Woolhouse fills out Songs with bolder strokes than the pale production of Life After Defo.

A Mineral Love bursts with cheerful, candy-colored falsetto funk, not unlike Ambivalence, while leaving out the crunch and glitch, letting the instruments breathe.

What a pity, then, to find the band more or less dozing off after their spectacular opening tantrum, drifting aimlessly in a space-rock black hole for the bulk of Interiors.

Forever misses some of Ventilation’s bite, even if the gentler tones are fitting given the new album’s themes.

Don't Be a Stranger, American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel's best record since 2001's The Invisible Man.

The soundtrack album Les Revenants contains not a shred of the terror Mogwai is capable of wreaking, and it works terrifically--it rarely comes off overly dramatic or leading, and matches the unsettling feel of the show.

The 2015 tape may have felt more revolutionary as a shift no one saw coming, but musically, BEASTMODE 2 has the edge. And in its best moments, the unknowable rapper lays his cards on the table, vulnerable in a way he’s never been before.

The record plays quick and dirty, with uncharacteristically crunchy production value and lo-fi aesthetics. ... Lyrically, LAS QUE NO IBAN A SALIR mostly sticks to Bad Bunny’s trademark sex flexes and party jams. But even in tossed-off mixtape verses, he retains a goofy charm.

The lust, greed, excess, and anxiety that they grappled with on PAPOTA are still there, but this time, the atmosphere doesn’t feel as friendly or accessible. Splayed out across Bulgarian folk music, trance beats, bruxaria atmospheres, samba, and even bits of nueva ola, Free Spirits feels dialed all the way up.

While Liminal is a testament to the Acid’s breadth of vision and production prowess--seamlessly incorporating everything from subterranean techno and avant-R&B to proggy sci-fi soundscapes and sad-bastard bedroom folk--its uniformly predictable pacing, with every song painstakingly built up from a pause to a pulse, grows wearing over a 51-minute stretch.

No envelopes are pushed on the quartet's latest, The Lucky Ones. But there's an increase in firepower that makes it their best effort in a while.

Roots and Crowns is bluesy and soulful without reverting to revivalist schtick, and experimental without relying on blind cut-and-pasting.

Portions of Shame, Shame might prove to be just a little too effervescent--certainly not a bad thing for a band with a track record that usually ran contrary. The important thing is that these songs hit more than they miss, occasionally with shimmering resolve and a couple of really big choruses to back it all up, often quite memorably.

Whichever end of her spectrum Lee swings toward--the harshly noisy or the hypnotically meditative--her sound always commands attention, making Ghil the biggest surprise in a career already full of them.

As with any piece of music that ebbs and flows this forcefully, you should listen to it loudly, and try to get swept away by it.

While it doesn’t break much new musical ground, and plays against Future Islands’ reputation for excess, The Far Field’s breathtaking sorrow is transformative.

The beauty of Death Lust lies in how Williams makes them all sound like part of the same continuum of disaffection, and how he approaches each mode with a pop songwriter’s ear for concision. Chastity's debut full-length is a brief album, with 10 songs clocking in at 31 minutes total, but the terrain it covers is vast.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me captures the messy, confusing headspace that precedes future growth.

A vibrant living record whose nervy, protean spirit pushes it miles beyond mere alt-rock radio nostalgia.

Underneath all the fuzz, there’s always been pop sensibility at work; Lightning Bolt riffs have been catchy in their own warped way since Ride the Skies. But at points, they allow those instincts to come into startling focus.

For every circuit-overloading workout like “Copy of A” and “Disappointed”, there are a number of tracks where Reznor reverts to the teeth-gnashing angst of old without the pig-marching blitzkriegs to back it up, applying undue pressure on the the songs’ brittle structures.

Choir of Young Believers have created a singular sonic world all their own.