Wonderful Rainbow delivers what Ride the Skies most lacked: Musical diversity.

From the driving blues line in “The Cowrie Waltz,” the lush soundscapes heard on “Ancestral Duckets” and “Bop for Aneho,” and the celestial soul claps that emanate from “Zane, The Scribe,” Georgia Anne Muldrow, once again, engenders her own Afrofuturistic realm, one that is heard, seen, and felt in the here and now.

New York duo Sepalcure nimbly incorporate current trends but arrive at a sound-- politely mysterious rhythms put to life by haunted vocal samples-- that's familiar and rich.

The album may be musing or abstracted, but that’s his hallmark, and blackSUMMERS’night is polished to a blinding sheen.

For all its violence, Back radiates warmth. Much of the beauty is due to the expanded instrumentation.

At once striking and enigmatic-- and artfully constructed.

Where Erotic Probiotic 2 was hypnagogic in spirit—drawing from ’80s pastiche, sports-television samples, echo-heavy harmonies—this LP foregrounds rawer, more physical elements, without sacrificing Brown’s booming, atmospheric textures.

In these early recordings, Elton’s passion and dedication pleads to be heard. Whether nitpicking intros almost to the point of nausea or infusing vitality into each syllable like a mad scientist, a young Elton is constantly straining towards vein-popping perfection.

Surprisingly personal and emotionally resonant, Ether Teeth is potent inspiration stretched perhaps too thin, but undeniably captivating in its moments of brilliance.

The recordings on One Hand Clapping are appealingly raw and in-your-face intimate, making the listener feel like the sole ticket-winner to a private Macca soundstage performance.

It's one of the strongest indie rock records of the year so far.

Whether he's channeling the energies of John Fahey or Tom Petty or even Bob Seger, Smoke Ring makes clear that the end result is his alone.

caroline 2 offers a profound listening experience. But it also offers a reminder that walking through the English coastline, chatting on Zoom, jamming with your mates for hours on end—these experiences can all be equally profound if you just pay attention.

Lil Uzi Vert made an event album, where the main attraction is flex raps and production that builds on its roots. Not even two years (an eternity in rap) was able to hold back Eternal Atake, an album that will be chased for years to come.

Beautiful, strange, and stoned, Hitchhiker lets us in on one of those nights.

It's hard to complain too much about such a brighter-day kind of record, and it feels like the perfect album at the perfect time-- released on Election Day, appropriately enough, as the ideal soundtrack for Barack Obama winning the presidency.

On Luminescent Creatures, Aoba’s exquisite and entrancing eighth album, she and Umebayashi further broaden their horizons.

The Dead C are lifers, then, who are too in control of their own sound to be detained by expectations--of their own music, of rock'n'roll, of their legacy at large. Armed Courage proves the longterm vitality of that sadly rare strategy.

It's major-key and resplendently colored, owing as much to Orange County skate-punk as it does to the Beach Boys.

Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted.

If there isn't a Deerhunter sound, there's a Deerhunter perspective that runs through their work, best summed up in "All the Same"—"take your handicaps/ Channel them and feed them back/ Until they become your strengths." The weird era continues.

What binds the album is slowthai’s soul: his meticulously drawn characters, his affinity for left-behind outsiders like the glue sniffers sampled on “Doorman,” and his impatience with a profit-motivated world where, as he once put it, “You’re competing constantly without wanting to.”

It's a record best heard loud, because the quiet parts can be very quiet, and its spirit lies less in melodies or even moods than in tiny details.

The more time you spend with Ambassadors, the more clearly that commitment and joy comes through.

This dense, claustrophobic album is discomfitingly of the moment: Sudan’s characters sprint through these songs as though movement is a survival tactic, a way to push forward as the world presses down harder than ever.

Each of Alter's twelve tracks are structurally slippery, shifting seamlessly from style to style in a way that makes it almost impossible to accurately map their paths. The subsequent mazes can be disorienting, but it's the most thrilling brand of dementia, as well as an acute reminder of the tension and balance true songwriting prowess can build.

With its inviting ambiance, unhurried vibe, and ebullient group harmonies, Time Skiffs readily conjures warm memories of AnCo’s late-2000s halcyon days. But the album possesses a personality and methodology all its own.

They've also outgrown the "garage," pushing things into the richer, more sophisticated outdoors.