It makes for a fascinating listen, one filled with catharsis and inspiration. Rae doesn’t directly mention her past struggles, but her light permeates this record, leaving a shining example of strength and perseverance.

Despite its faults and flaws, it mostly scans as two talented musicians just having a good time.

Not only is the trop-house she's mocking low-hanging fruit, but throughout Ancestor Boy, it's never clear where precisely she's coming from, literally or artistically. Her perspective is blandly adrift, tethered to neither a point of origin nor a destination.

Because the album’s scale and ambitions are modest, some of its songs blend together. ... Still, the individual songs are strong enough that obsessing over their similarity feels like nitpicking.

After spending decades creating music out of undiscovered noises, William Basinski lets his hair down on To Feel Embraced.

Despite the pensive lean of Howerton’s lyrics, 90 in November is decidedly a pleasure listen.

It’s a shame this album suffers from the same bloat that befell other recent Dessner projects: The last eight tracks on their own would be the band’s most rewarding record.

For all Not to Disappear’s forward strides, something remains of the debut’s pallor, and with it a niggling suspicion that, despite their commercial inferiority to the xx, Florence and the Machine, and even Foals, Daughter have no spicy condiments for those groups’ bread and butter.

Newman's melodic gifts continue to serve the emotional core of his songs well, but he pulls his punches with opaque lyrics and too many wheelhouse-sticking power-pop cuts that keep Streets from achieving the impact it could have had.

An intimate, intelligent, and always transporting cycle of songs that sends VanGaalen closer to his own voice and, in the process, closer to us.

It's not clear what Tanton wanted this album to be... It's a loose collection of whims and desires, unrolled over vast expanses of terrain that Tanton could survey for a while to see how they fit.

RAA don't have the element of surprise like they did on the originally self-released Hometowns, and it doesn't slowly ingratiate the way Departing did, but Mended With Gold proves Edenloff's songs of lost love can sneak up on you even when the music hits you square on the chin.

Yes, Virginia doesn't have the expressive range of the Dresden Dolls' debut.... But what is here is frequently engaging even if-- for a band that thrives on discomfort-- the record sometimes gets a bit too comfortable for its own good.

It’s fascinating to watch Shakira take big swings and extend her dominance, but there’s a little piece that’s missing: some small token to show what made her such an icon in the first place.

Quit +/or Fight may lack the immediate melodic punch of the band's debut-- it forsakes pristine strums for skewering electric guitar and scrappier arrangements-- but what the record sacrifices in warmth, it makes up for in atmospherics.

Electric Arguments holds onto an original Fireman ideal: to make Paul McCartney sound less like Paul McCartney. That it does so within more traditional pop-song presentations-- while steering clear of McCartney's usual preferences for piano-pounded rockers and string-sweetened ballads-- is the ultimate testament to its success.

The Messthetics is a carefree, low-stakes endeavour for its participants; recorded live off the floor in Canty’s practice room, the album captures two old pals communing with a new one, exploring the potential of their developing dynamic and sculpting ideas into song-like shapes.

Ashnikko’s latest mixtape, Demidevil, is a showcase for her newly refined confidence, a step towards the pop powerhouse she’s capable of becoming.

Everything is in service to her voice, which mingles sensuality and menace, soothsaying and foreboding.

Hersh produces the record herself, and she doesn't do her compositions any favors.... Still, her voice has that edgy intimacy it's always had.

A motley assortment of Sonic Youth nods, acoustic entreaties, and cloying pop-rockers, Ranaldo's opportunity to step out of the Sonic Youth shadows and into his own proper spotlight is mostly a miss made of mediocrity.

Self Worth is a relentless album that never really pulls back, but maybe that’s a function of survival for Mourn, who will probably always write songs with teeth bared. They’ve straightened and polished them on Self Worth, but their bite remains formidable.

The most enjoyable High Llamas record in over a decade.

These are longstanding punk tropes boiled down and Vig-ed up, removed of their typical dirt sheen and bolstered by a couple extra guitar tracks.

In their own way Moore and Paterra write catchy music. That their tastes position them as soundtrack-buff outsiders at the fringes makes the cohesion, listenability, and passion of Shape Shift that much more of a triumph.

The record itself brims with endlessly replayable details, some goofy and some poignant, both in frontman Alex Turner's always keenly observed lyrics and in the band's ever-proficient music, the latter of which ranges here from muscular glam-rock to chiming indie pop balladry.

It's a strong mode to be in, but 7 Days of Funk doesn't change or challenge things--it's a brief LP, even accounting for bonus tracks, and with everybody firmly in a comfortable lane there's not much surprise.

Unfortunately, the lengthy center of this record is a brick of brooding, mid-tempo dullness.