The tape is a short, sweet, and potent mix of what Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs, and producer Alchemist do best. It is also an example of the good that can happen when seasoned vets link up and operate under the radar and outside of the major label system.

This teetering restraint masks the true weirdness of Space Is Only Noise. I could understand someone finding the intensely self-contained Space a bit claustrophobic, but the album is most rewarding when you just grab a seat at the table.

I can attest that the music really does move forward similarly to my own metabolism, gradually building, holding a modest climax in the middle, and ending on a long, fluffy comedown. [Review of UK release]

Despite the cries about careerism, they rarely settled into one spot for long, and even when they were correctly perceived to have done so--about one half of The Great Escape really is a Parklife retread--they were still spreading their collective wings on album tracks and B-sides.

On his latest album, God Save the Animals, he wrings strange beauty from our non-human companions, grappling with innocence and its discontents through their saucer-eyed stares. God Save the Animals stands out for its moments of sharp lyrical simplicity.

Fontaines D.C. are fueled by neither IDLES revolutionary fervor nor Shame’s festering disgust. They’re not raging against the current state of affairs as much as lamenting the local communities and culture in danger of being steamrolled by the march of modernity. As such, Fontaines D.C. are very much a post-punk band reclaiming a certain pre-punk innocence.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

Bakesale add-ons will mostly be of value to those who loved Sebadoh's first few years of all-over-the-place wildness, but it's not as if their second-disc inclusion can dull the parent album's punch.

jj's full-length debut is as easy to enjoy as whatever the last CD was you brought home with a giant cannabis leaf on the cover. They're as naive as they are cynical-- or is it the other stupid way around?-- and they manage to be pretty, touching, funny, and motivating, in different ways, in all the right places, for nine songs lasting 28 minutes.

Their music stands now as both a crucial piece in the roiling Seattle scene and as part of a noise-rock continuum that includes like-minded outfits such as Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers.

While much of the instrumentation is thoughtful (the Iranian-British electronic musician Ash Koosha contributed to the delicate “Snowblind” and the raging “Submerged”), nothing is as potent as Tagaq’s voice.

The one new track is “Devotion,” a showstopping slab of new-wave twinkle. Outside of a killer opening punchline (“I don’t feel emotion/It completely takes over me”), it’s uncomplicated and blissful, a portrait of codependence that begs to be read as a you’re-the-real-stars diva move. It’s a victory lap, and I don’t begrudge it. But Hot Chip are far more compelling when they’re navigating the course.

While Elwan may not herald any grand stylistic breakthrough, it does manage to synthesize some of the group’s most recent experiments in a way that helps distinguish it within their overall catalog.

The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold.

Like so many country albums, especially recent ones by Monroe's friend and bandmate Miranda Lambert, The Blade could be stronger if it was more streamlined and sequenced with some kind of overarching narrative in mind, but that's almost beside the point when the album sounds so damn good.

It’s Great to be Alive! is the sound of a veteran band in complete command of its back-catalog.

elela’s music is hydration for the soul, seductive and relatable even as she continues to refine and evolve her sound. You can be drawn in by Raven’s all-encompassing atmosphere, but it’s even better to lose your whole self in it.

The frequent spoken-word interludes would feel less performative at a live show, but often take you out of the moment on the record. It seems RAYE is unwilling to leave anything on the cutting room floor, even if dialing back the razzle-dazzle could forge closer connection to the music. But the peaks often justify the adventure.

The project’s raw immediacy initially suggested it might be throwaway, a palette cleanser before White resumed his usual studio tinkering, but its triple-octane riffage and seething, sticky hooks pointed to something more lasting and substantial.

Black Sheep Boy creates a roomy and natural showcase for Sheff's high-wire vocals, and as a result, it may be the band's best album.

Leave it to VHÖL to find another dimension to the ever-bountiful combination of hardcore and metal, where the cerebral and the primal stomp heads next to one another.

Using words and noise to create mantras and blow them up, Every Bad is the inspired result of a rock band finding itself in 2020, inhabiting many ways of being.

A record of achingly gorgeous dance-pop that captures both the joy of nostalgia and the melancholic sense that we're grasping for good times increasingly out of reach.

Lifetime is marked by aesthetic and personal conflict, and while it doesn’t uncover easy resolution, its beauty (and it is a remarkably beautiful record) derives in large part from the acceptance, or even embrace, of those conflicts as what generates a lifetime’s meaning.

Throughout, Satin Doll warps these standards delectably, leaving you pleasantly dizzy.

Cosmogramma is an intricate, challenging record that fuses his loves-- jazz, hip-hop, videogame sounds, IDM-- into something unique. It's an album in the truest sense.

Working mostly chronologically, this set flows so that you feel you’re riding alongside him.

For all of CHROMAKOPIA’s hitting-your-thirties ego death confessionals, it’s the braggadocious, Cherry Bomb-sounding tracks that really hit.