Blackheart is the singular, visionary work that she's been hinting at since she struck out on her own post-Diddy in 2011.

Alice Bag feels like effortless self-expression that simply needed an outlet.

It’s utterly maddening, and to get lost within it feels like the past calendar year: undifferentiated, infinite, and delirious.

Open Arms to Open Us is adventure writ large, a rhythmical hymn to boundless possibility.

On Multitude, his primary theme is care—and how humans use and abuse one another as they seek comfort and turn a blind eye to inconvenient truths if it means getting what we want. He embodies these fables through a litany of rogues, often told with piercing humor.

Like Scott-Heron’s last classic, This Is Brian Jackson is a salient reminder that great artists, no matter where they are on their journey, can rediscover themselves.

THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY! is a romp of a record, even if it feels front-loaded with bangers—like Addison Rae earlier this year, the album is slightly overshadowed by its hot streak of singles.

It might seem counterintuitive to call Chemistry a grower: From the first listen, it's both pummeling and riveting.

Shaw’s real strength lies not in her surrealism but in the way her best lines reach toward eternal truths about the small ways humans survive, like the arrival of a shoe organizer in the mail distracting her from the dysfunction of late-capitalist rot.

Vulnerability has powered Tomberlin’s music for years, and “Collect Caller” aside, these songs are sweeter and more inviting than anything she’s done before.

Simply put, the playing is more ambitious and varied on Goodness than on Home, Like NoPlace Is There, an album where the narrative drama manifests into some of the rawest anthems of unhinged youth and crippling self-loathing recorded this decade.

Spend enough time in it, and you will sense that intelligence, fleet and mysterious, moving just beneath the surface. Something is alive in their work, and it feels like it’s always rounding the next corner, just out of your reach.

Yes, the Brothers still overuse lyrical gore the way the Evil Dead series did Kero syrup, but their sonic pace and intensity has somewhat slowed.

On a lyric sheet, Titus Andronicus may appear to espouse the sort of wrist-cutting histrionics emo's typically lambasted for, but the magic lies in the band's oddly enthusiastic grass roots delivery.

Even when Mannequin Pussy venture to truly dark places, Patience is such a pure joy to listen to. In its biggest moments, Dabice’s raw edge is matched by equally colossal riffs, explosive energy, and surging momentum. Patience, is without a doubt, one of the year’s strongest punk rock records.

There's a good album underneath all the filler-- probably the Eels' best since Electro-Shock Blues-- but it'll take some editing to excavate it.

You don't judge a compilation by its hits alone, and it doesn't take long to find the set's weakness: sequencing.

The most striking improvement is her singing. She's a stronger vocalist, her almost-plain tone rising into higher registers, and her usual range has grown more earthily gorgeous. But more than anything, she demonstrates a new expressiveness.

Every track on Dongs of Sevotion is chock-full of some of the most poignant, disconcerting lyrics you should ever have to hear.

The songs are decent, the singing is stunning.

Had Cult of Luna attempted to make the same record six times during the last decade, maybe they would have condensed it into a tight 30 minutes by now. That would be neither captivating nor interesting, though, and Vertikal is quite often both.

In 2017, the challenge for a veteran metal act is to not relentlessly innovate, but to mine any small new parts of their sound. Kreator and Immolation have proved successful in this regard already, and Obituary, while sticking closer to their roots, have also proven their vitality here.

In trading the adolescent kick of Secaucus for ripened resignation, meticulous refinement for crippling maturation, they have realized their magnum opus.

The tracks, and the arid stare their grooves perpetuate, are like crop circles drawn into the UK hardcore continuum: functionally new, eerily primeval.

If The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte reaffirms Sparks’ status as rock’s most reliable fabulists, the album’s grand finale brings forth an uncharacteristic introspection.

[Finn] not only has a commanding, rousing voice but he also says something worth hearing, displaying gifts for both scope and depth that are all too rare in contemporary rock-- indie or mainstream.

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.

A riveting debut from two artists whose music pokes you in the side as often as it makes you move.