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.

These songs contain a newfound lushness, an O’Rourke-ian vibrancy that allows each instrument to express its particular tonalities to the fullest.

However exhilarating its discrete peaks, May Our Chambers Be Full is one of those common collaborations that’s more notable for what it says about those who made it than for the new material itself.

Its hypnotic, steady pulse distracted you from the fact that they sang about wanting to die. That overactive death drive persists on yeule’s second album, Glitch Princess, elevating relationship troubles into Shakespearean psycho-dramas backed by soundscapes massive enough to contain them.

Water Made Us is dextrous and steady. It conjures a profound sweetness from ordinary musings and takes the guile out of relationships.

Hell-On is a record that can feel equally fragile and impenetrable, its songs like complex universes connected only by proximity.

At its best, the music of Romantic Piano approaches the promise of that sentiment, speaking the feelings that words cannot.

SABLE, distills the familiar pleasures of Vernon’s extraordinary oeuvre while providing a singular magic all its own—one of refinement and maturation, of clarity and confidence.

After that opening suite--“Pure Comedy,” “Total Entertainment Forever,” and “Revolution”--the music settles into a tonal plateau. Even the most gripping songs unspool with acoustic leisure, and they can be long and lofty trips.

Not surprisingly, Art Department are at their lachrymose best not when trying to uncover house's absences, but when redrawing ever more finely what was always already there.

Many of the tracks on his last album felt like sketches—the kernel of an idea, abandoned quickly. The same sensibility holds here, but even the simplest idea is stretched across a much bigger frame, to six or seven or even eight minutes. That’s important; you need the time to sink into these things. After a spell, you can’t say whether you've been listening to a given piece for two or 20 minutes.