It’s hard not to tumble into Crushing’s vast emotional depths and look past everything else that makes the album exquisite, but lyrics like this showcase just how clever Jacklin’s songwriting can be.

The thrills of The Path of the Clouds are far richer than most true crime fiction, but like the best examples of the genre, it leaves you breathless.

The record’s best songs, like birth, feel hard-won and revelatory—journeys that might take place on a single physical plane, but expand psychically outward, broadening the spectrum of beauty, personhood, and existence.

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava stakes its claim as the band’s most agitated yet fiercely funky record.

Dance Fever is as propulsive as any Florence and the Machine album, but its momentum sometimes feels unearned.

While some will complain about Boards of Canada's failure to cover new territory, the rest of us will delight in what we see as a very accomplished album packed with great music.

They manage to cut down some of the weight of the sung pieces, casting them in a more unique light, while giving San Fermin much needed tension and even a bit of violence.

There’s little of Future’s jadedness. If in the past Thug has made everyday experiences seem chaotic and formless, his achievement here is distilling the murky waters of young love and lust into vital, undeniable pop.

There are a few dull moments, like “Conventional Ride,” which explores how it feels to be the object of other people’s sexual curiosity. ... Any Human Friend reaches its high point with the quietest song.

Nested in Tangles is so powerful because it’s about what comes after those mommy-and-daddy issues—about enduring, as she puts it in that prelude, “fault lines that were never my fault” to become something better.

Juxtaposing elegant chamber folk against the discord of lives out of balance, it’s musically more delicate than even her soft rock models.

Eschewing pretentious unpretentiousness for unguarded passion, strict 77-82 influences for the classic rock stop on the FM dial, calculated instrumental inadequacy for guitar solos that are less technical flaunting (looking at you, Malkmus) than skillful, noisy exorcisms, Ted Leo makes a sound filled with so much authentic abandon, the British mags probably can't handle it.

X 100PRE reveals an artist both proud of and unafraid to tell the truth about where he comes from.

The Age of Immunology better highlights the individual personalities and nationalities that inform the group’s unique alchemy.

Few people would dream up an album as endearingly obtuse and gleefully dysfunctional as Yellow, let alone have the skill to realize it.

There’s so much musical and personal inspiration colliding at once, you can feel the passion even when you can’t quite crack it all.

More than a side project or a solo moniker now, Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? joyfully cements the Soft Pink Truth’s era as a band—and one that throws a hell of a party.

trip9love…??? is tender as a bruise, the kind of bruise you press down on now and again, just to confirm that it still hurts—and to take secret pleasure in the ache.

Memorable tunes and unforgettable phrases erupt like brush fire over the course of 47 minutes, the mood migrating at a moment’s notice from insouciant nihilism to full-blown rage to radical empathy.

While there are a few selection missteps overall, the first disc in particular makes for a great initiation to the Radio Dept.'s previous work. And that there is the opportunity to re-introduce this long undervalued band is something to cheer in itself.

Brisk, 47-minute runtime aside, Post Self is a daunting listen, as well as an essential one, even by Godflesh’s sterling standards.

As tempting as it is to imagine Baker fully unleashing in one direction or another, the studiously crafted messiness captured here still feels like a compelling next step.

Coquelicot, like most Of Montreal albums, is at times sublime and lovely, at times infuriatingly catchy, at times simply infuriating, at times overly twee, and at times seriously fucking scary. What sets this record apart from its predecessors, though, is a level of intricacy and detail that Of Montreal have never previously attained as a band.

They're still doing what they've always done, but Fantasy Empire is the best they've done it in a long time, and the new sheen makes everything seem magic again.

Like Punken before it, Brandon Banks is a major leap in craft and style as well as refinement of his self-image.

It’s an accomplished record that, given the variety of Jordana’s catalog, feels short on surprises; having mastered the nuances of production and songwriting, she’s still finding ways to make her voice ring clear. Yet her melodies are dynamic, her ballads immune to adolescent melodrama: the toughest hurdles are behind her.

There’s nothing reserved, nothing toned-down about this record. Though she seldom sings above her speaking register, it’s the proverbial strength of Shygirl’s voice that gives Nymph its undeniable power.

Fascinating as it is to hear the full text of these articles aloud, the prose doesn’t have quite the same supple musicality as previous Richter sources like Franz Kafka’s journals or the letters of Virginia Woolf. After a few times through, the primary text of Voices starts to take on the rigidity of an employee conduct handbook from HR.