Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.

Business Casual is fierce and competent, and evinces the rippling of powerful musical muscles. But its affectations are so grating that it's tough to make it through it all in a single listen.

As the album progresses... Farrar's lyrics become increasingly stilted and veiled, reverting to the forced wordplay and disconnected evocations of his most obscure songs. In the past, this tendency toward purple opacity could be excused, but on Okemah it hinders Farrar considerably.

Walker understands her strengths as a storyteller, and on Still Over It, she’s at her most commanding when she sings for herself while evoking the pain of other women who’ve been hurt.

Walking Like We Do has moments of thoughtless escapism—and a couple of earnest bum notes—but it comes into its own when it blends humor with darkness, suffusing everything with gentle, sarcastic nihilism.

Don’t Be a Stranger is a charming collection by a confident and competent group of musicians, but its drawback is its same-ness.

There's no denying the Joy Formidable's passion, vigor, and pop smarts; it would just be easier to appreciate those qualities if The Big Roar didn't so often sound like a big blur.

It’s exciting seeing how they’ve learned to play off of each other’s energy. It’d be easy for Uzi to coast and phone in verses after the year he’s had so far, but he’s shown no signs of slowing down.

The Skull Defekts make fine music on their own, but they sound more alluring and entrancing when their wagon is hitched to Higgs.

An encouraging but ultimately disappointing contemplation of time's ceaselessness, love's promise, and Harvest-era Neil Young.

At its best, angel in realtime. so convincingly sells his grand vision of the world that it’s easy to accept the grandiose production, too. The whole gambit is so outsized that, even when it only kind of works, it feels like a victory.

Arbor Labor Union have taken a respectable leap toward realizing the throbbing cosmic Americana that clearly rings in their souls.

He seems perfectly content to let these small-wonder songs shuffle out unobtrusively into the world, and it's come to feel like a comforting spot to return to every couple of years or so.

Screaming Females’ entire existence has been a rare testament to consistency and, despite being five years in the making and inspired by a devastating breakup, Desire Pathway can’t help but be their most consistent album yet.

For all its wrath and fury, Devil Music feels safe and predictable. It’s a hell of a party, but it’s one we’ve been to before.

By the end of Animal Nature, Escort proves it’s gotten craftier and has found a bit more clarity, and they hit a nostalgic sweet spot that will never grow old.

The wide-ranging production often makes it easy to ignore the rough spots. Classy instrumental interpolations (Chris McClenney and Erick the Architect’s piano-led strut on “The Baddest,” every Statik Selektah beat here) sit next to glossy boom-bap (Chuck Strangers’ “Wanna Be Loved”) and crossover beats (Mike WiLL Made-It’s “Cruise Control,” BBEARDED’s “Welcome Back”). It’s a testament to Joey’s growing ear that he sounds good on all of them.

While the best work of the Clientele created worlds, The House at Sea charmingly aspires to being a photo album, something to inspire your own travels rather than serve as a substitute for them.

When he’s not wasting time trying to glower, he proves himself surprisingly versatile. ... There are a lot of guests on Hollywood’s Bleeding, and all of them sound engaged.

Musgraves’ album summons up the mid-’60s era nostalgia of A Charlie Brown Christmas, gliding naturally from her established Western-swing throwback aesthetic to kitschy exotica and vintage pop, with an expertly curated song selection that leans on campy novelties, classy standards, and a stocking’s worth of originals.

Rather than feel tacked-on incongruities, the three Rave Tapes remixes found on the EP’s second half provide a welcome, unpredictably outré counterpoint to the linear songs heard on the first.

There's still a sense of discovery, now paired with playfulness.

It’s wish fulfillment as transportative as any of the prog fantasies White Reaper’s idols put to tape. On You Deserve Love, the risk and rewards are lower: White Reaper aspire to be a very good American band.

The run of “Milkweed,” “Detritivore,” and “Aqaba” is quintessential Shearwater in both their titles and the tendency to let the middle of their albums coast by like a warm, welcome breeze.

It's no great discredit to the album to say that Kaleide peaks with its first song. The remaining material rarely pushes Harkin to the dramatic heights of "Still Windmills", and the singer is guilty of leaning too heavily on vague metaphors. But Goodmanson's unfussy production is the ideal complement to this young band's fidgety energy.

At times the honesty on Watch This Liquid Pour Itself might be its worst fault, but it’s usually its finest quality.

The new songs, meanwhile, feature a return to form for Belle and Sebastian, whose more recent releases have ventured away from their trademark style of “puckishly depressed” and into explorations of the dancy, the jazzy, and, occasionally, the kinda bad.

That's ultimately what Stoltz brings to the table with Double Exposure--moments of pop greatness, but also overlong tracks and too-generic delivery.