How Many Times is an intriguing glimpse of an artist at the beginning of a skillfully carved path--even if it leaves you wondering what it was that made her cry in public in the first place, what makes her tears dry.

These songs aren’t just high-spirited, slightly goofy, and unassumingly clever; they have a lightness that is invigorating. They feel like proof that the fun-loving kid who went viral in 2016 hasn’t yet been entirely overwhelmed by the burdens of reputation.

Host proves the duo can reinvent themselves within a static framework; by revisiting the sounds of their ambitious, albeit thinly produced debut with bigger and bolder instrumentation, they’ve emerged from the afterglow of 2010s virality as a more robust and rooted ensemble.

Vocals play a prominent role in roughly half of the album’s songs, and while they sometimes work—UK trans activist Kai-Isaiah Jamal’s spoken-word poetry cuts powerfully through the moody “Human Sound”—they sometimes feel like Throssell is straining slightly for gravitas, pasting emotion on top of tracks that communicate plenty of it on their own.

While Free Company and Wayfinder were rife with wry one-liners and observations to offset the otherwise emotionally knotty writing, Art Moore is a bruising and remorseful record that aches without reservation.

Don’t Trust Mirrors is the snake’s head and tail: the project’s flash of inspiration and its culmination, the point where Moran lost her passion for the prepared piano and found it again.

The impeccable cool of Sadier's approach freezes out political engagement in lieu of a brand of fashionable leftism to match the sofa.

On Elastic Days, he’s somehow as accessible but elusive as ever.

These records, steeped in reference and atmosphere, draw on memory but, being so textured and tactile, they bring the focus back to the present moment.

There’s no chest-puffing here, no braggadocio; this is only the very sincere statement of a person doing his best to work through the worries of living and share any delight he’s stumbled upon along the way.

It's a kitchen sink-like flood of sound, always on the verge of resembling a gigantic curveball being forced down your throat, but with Vibert pulling back from the humor brink at all the right moments.

Diehard fans of Goldfrapp will no doubt find something to love here, but for the rest of us, it’s a thin record that doesn’t do much to prop up its skeletal frame.

In Future Teenage Cave Artists’ hectic, crammed-to-the-brim structure, Johann Sebastian gives Deerhoof listeners something they have been methodically denied: space to process the music.

Whatever Actually, You Can may lack in pointedness, it makes up for in raw energy. Yet with all of the intensity and musical bedlam at work here, the brief sections of calm somehow resonate the longest.

It's not that Tribute To isn't on some level deeply felt, but it's just not deeply considered, and while it's nice to hear James focused and playing to his strengths after the scattered "Evil Urges," his tribute eventually loses the one thread it sets out to carry on its cover.

On their first full-length collaboration, Late Night Endless, the two draw on their formidable pedigree, yet at times the album feels cluttered with sound.

Holy Fuck have carved out a unique and identifiable sound of their own, and as the band itself has solidified, it's made their identity even stronger.

Man’s Best Friend is so committed to the part that it begins to approach self-parody—“I bet your light rod’s, like, bigger than Zeus’” is not Carpenter’s best work—but mostly it’s sublime.

Fortunately for the diehards, Hypercaffium Spazzinate is devoid of the stylistic overindulgence or inflated self-importance often associated with hiatus-ending efforts.

Even those accustomed to Sloan's effortlessness will find the first half of Parallel Play almost flawless. There's still little in the way of artifice or innovation, but it's still easy to admire the architecture.

"Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.

On Seven Psalms, the speeches are the main event: The fact there is music playing at all seems largely incidental. Cave is a much more reliable narrator this time around, ditching the previous album’s flashes of mania and hilarity in favor of solemnity and sobriety.

Compared to Morrissey's oblique but resonant lyricism, the Jarmans deal in provocative sound-bite slogans, but the Cribs prove themselves worthy successors to a lineage of cheekily erudite Britpop that spans David Bowie through to the Smiths to Pulp.

It is his most personal record, but not because it's bare and raw, but because it's surreal and dreamlike.

Even when their songs pass muster, the performances feel ineffectual, which makes long stretches of Venus on Earth drag semi-miserably.

For all Madlib's eclecticism and supposedly short attention span, his work here sounds focused and sharp. The beats aren't wasted here by any means, but a different crew could have brought out even more potential.

The North Borders is not a bad album--for the most, it’s as inoffensive as those decade-old chill-out compilations--yet a frustration persists because Bonobo is better than this.

Primal Heart is a collision of hard electronics with light sprinkles of au courant R&B making for Kimbra’s most mainstream statement yet. ... However, her most ambitious efforts don’t quite reach their apex, causing her somewhat cocky assertions to land flat.