Home Everywhere has every element needed to make a great Medicine album, only they’re deployed in gangling spasms and obsessive over-processing. If only they’d edited themselves a little more--or a little less.

Offering passes that test, it’s both an “important” jazz release and one that’s actually enjoyable to listen to.

He’s constantly halving the distance to his target, getting closer but not quite getting there. But those infinitesimal improvements on Hell Below--indeed, the very places where it remains static--show, in some ways, what that Ideal Album might look like.

Sounding like nothing else and answering to nobody but its creators, Run the Jewels 2 is in a class by itself.

This streamlined set, Start Together, captures that dichotomy, archiving the Sleater-Kinney canon with care: from the ideological-punches of thirdwave feminism to their post-riot grrrl classic rock revisionism, all seven albums have been remastered and paired with a plainly gorgeous hardcover photobook, as well as the surprise of a reunion-launching 7" single.

Oozing Wound have matured without losing sight of the frayed ends that make their music interesting.

Ruins has a vivid sense of place.

Marigolden fares best when it loses the florid similes and addresses character and story.

His last record boasted that he was the Trouble Man, but with a clear mind and fewer visible burdens, Clifford Harris has produced his most thoughtful and substantive record in years.

The lack of palplable passion on Nobody Wants to Be Here is, once again, somewhat disappointing and even more surprising.

Burnt Offering has its own kind of subtlety, and most of it is in the interplay between meter, genre, and mood.

Sound of a Woman fails to spark, as its homogenous textures blend together to rob this music of the personality and emotion it has when done right.

Soused is compelling, almost inherently so, but it’s not a classic.

While the band may have struggled in the past to reconcile their post-hardcore roots with their art-rock ambitions, more often than not, IX marks the spot.

The Best Day proves to be not so much a revelatory, introspective antidote to Moore’s best-known band as a serviceable, equally high-voltage substitute for it.

One thing he is remarkably good at across his body of work is letting in disarming moments of vulnerability, where he pulls you in to spectate upon the wreck of his life. On Phantom Radio there are just a few too many times when it's all dressed up in unnecessary complication.

You get the sense that pretty much any style could be Ware’s if she commits to it, but for now it’s nice to hear her explore a level of sophistication as her star continues to rise.

Meatbodies don't just blindly hit peak after peak, shredding toward the high heavens uninterrupted for a full album. They pull back and indulge their more psychedelic inclinations, letting Ubovich's voice shine, lilt, and echo over steady acoustic strumming.

I’ll Be the Tornado is as accomplished and confident as a band can sound while sorting their shit out in public.

They can be a bit one-note sometimes, but that doesn't make them any less beloved; without their ribaldness, the world of heavy music just wouldn't be as fun.

AWVFTS adapts, making ATOMOS louder and more mobile than its impeccably tentative predecessor—more volatile and disjointed, with basses you can feel in your body because this is for the body.

Trick is nice with atmosphere, but largely a non-entity when it comes to hooks.

Otherness isn't just less immediate than other pop music; it's less self-aware, and way less fun.

It’s a warm, deeply rooted, familiar statement indicative of a real, earned connection.

As a whole, Bestial Burden highlights Chardiet’s ability to re-draw the boundaries of her own artistic approach, ripping out its guts and creating something new out of the decaying remains.

Only the spirited, psychedelic chug of “Spitfire” and the handclap-catalyzed go-go of “Hey Now” come close to clicking with—let alone recapturing—any portion of the band’s former glory. The remainder of the record is filled out with either bland mediocrities or downright embarrassments such as “Flying Like a Bird”, a sappy ballad that sharply delineates every weakness Inspiral Carpets has, from a dearth of energy to a lack of melody.

Thomson's lyrics are at once Single Mothers' main attraction and--for some listeners--their presumptive sticking point.

While the band have reined in some of the volatility that made those introductory singles so exhilarating, there’s a cool consistency and newfound accessibility to Absolutely Free that makes it an easy, enchanting front-to-back listen, the songs locking together to form a smoothly contoured album arc.