A charming batch of stripped-down rock songs that isn't as fully realized or inventive as last year's Guerrilla, but still makes a damned enjoyable listen.

Many slower outfits-- Low, American Music Club, Codeine, et al.-- are sometimes pinned with the theory that if you've heard one of their albums, you've heard them all. Such is no longer the case with the Red House Painters.

Sometimes bludgeoning, always regal, Blue Cathedral is a calcified, hippified holy place.

In short, it's fun and functional, yet disposable.

It continues Björk's run of releases that sound nothing like their predecessors, yet is, as ever, particular to her.

The lyrics are elusive at first, darting behind fast-moving songs and delivered in impressionistic, conversational bursts that recall the delivery of Joni Mitchell. But the fearless generosity behind them communicates itself loud and clear, and it's a spirit that animates the entire album. With it, Spalding has once again redefined an already singular career, dictating a vision entirely on her own terms.

Shygirl’s voice carries a bit more over the muck; the production is bolder and more focused, like throwing a sharpened knife at a wall rather than a smattering of darts.

The occult themes and enigmatic samples would be irrelevant if the experience of listening to Inferno weren’t so scintillating. But the elevated subject matter seems to have animated Eoin and Sandison, too; everywhere you listen, strange and thrilling things are afoot.

There’s constant movement here, and while everything is lovely, nothing lingers too long or lends itself to stasis.

Oldham long sounded like he had wisdom to share, and he sometimes did. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You overflows with it.

Albarn plays the part of heartbroken confessor, but these meticulously polished songs conjure something more real than anguish: the dulling of losses, the warm aura of midlife decline, and the fading belief, with advancing years, that crisis serves to raise the curtain on your next act.

The songs, performed almost entirely on the piano, predicate a world undergoing permanent, devastating changes, but they float with delicate sensitivity. They add more nuance to a body of work that already teems with vivid detail.

It's hard not to feel conflicted about Apollo Kids. Unlike Ghostface records that presumably get unfairly judged by the standards of his best work, it's tempting to overrate it due a general relief that he didn't try to make Ghostdini again.

Cancer 4 Cure's closest analogue may be Portishead's Third: the textures and tones are distinctly different from past releases, but it's unimaginable that it could be made by anyone else.

At times, these songs go on for a bit too long. A bigger obstacle is their lack of variety. But ultimately, these complaints are for an album packed with huge hooks, which all sound great when you play them really loud.

Almost half of the first CD is made up of Cline originals, and these pale a bit in comparison with the surrounding material. Though thanks to its sly and measured embrace of the experimental, Lovers still has all the originality it needs to endear.

Cabral explodes our ideas about texture and terror on Mazy Fly as she snuggles into a deeper connection to her own songwriting, making an album that connects on a more concrete wavelength.

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.

These eight songs grapple candidly with [family loss], but, like the music itself, the words don’t wallow. Instead, Pallbearer use these tragedies to revel in being alive, or to answer the “gnawing doubts that I ever learned to live.”

At its core, the LP is a straight-up flex, the work of an artist who has learned to distill his many influences and experiments into a coherent, singular vision, and Vynehall himself is the protagonist of this particular tale.

Lambert sings about the one who got away, dreaming of a day when they will be reunited. Randall strums his guitar and joins for harmonies with Ingram every time the chorus rolls around. They are singing about better days ahead but they’re making the present moment sound pretty good, too.

Whether he’s falling in or out of love, going out, or reflecting on the night before, Sivan sounds more credible than ever, pairing a newfound swagger with a heady rush of emotion.

Although Cool World doesn’t stomp with the same weight of God’s Country, Chat Pile’s stylistic experiments pay off.

Murphy once again shows off his encyclopedic knowledge of all things post-punk and zip-tight. But he's also swimming up some serious stuff himself, including Eno and David Bowie's sacrosanct Berlin trilogy. And against his own prediction, it's far from horrible; it's actually pretty perfect.

Bejar's essential complexity ultimately feels human.

The end result is akin to Norman Smith and DJ Shadow sitting in on a RZA-produced session-- spry, voiceless prog-hop by any other name.

No Age’s name seems self-actualizing. And in their psycho-candied sound, which has progressively gotten better, they still know how to locate the timeless, fever-pitched feeling of a beginning.

The sprawl, the surfeit, is the point. You need plenty of room to summon a mood as widescreen as this. It’s a long way from the summer sun to the dark embrace of the universe, and on Once Twice Melody, Beach House are determined to cover the entire distance.