The resulting sense of chaos redoubles Boris’ wrath and gives it a welcome depth, the sense that it’s here to stay because it’s been here all along.

The album is lush and oblique—an approachable standout in two daunting catalogs.

Tasteful and slick, approachable and antiperspirant, less oceanic ecstasy than the pool party of the year.

The group effort renders Humanhood’s songs lush and circuitous, seemingly propelled by an internal logic that’s being pieced together as you hear it.

For those new to his work, The Hex serves as a fully realized glimpse of the universe he spent his career mapping. But there’s also a sense he’s speaking directly to a select few.

The groove takes precedence over the words, and Murphy gives his studio meticulousness over to the energy of the group. The synths run bright and juicy. The bass sounds like it could knock you out if you stood too close. The drums hit fast and sharp. Murphy slips from his throne as record-geek auteur and dissolves into the group--one musician among many, and better for it.

It is the clearest Dean Blunt has ever sounded and one of his most thrilling releases to date.

The disc is enhanced with gleefully absurd, marginally interactive cartoons, and packed with that Eisenhower-era zip-twinkle.

The combination of the music's essentials-- jackhammer riffs clipped from punk and metal, mid-tempo beats from hip-hop and electro, and supremely catchy sing-song melodies-- is striking on its own, sounding remarkably fresh and unlike anything else right now. But an even greater source of the record's appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential.

Out Hud also back up their flash with remarkable substance, setting their music apart from anything as one-dimensional as standard club offerings or moody trance cuts.

They aren't inept, amateurish or even exactly boring, but their parlor music takes a slow and emotionally neutral path that almost fights against engagement.

Our Endless Numbered Days is cleaner, more diverse, and generally sparser than its predecessor, and, given the apparent limits of Beam's former setup, it's also an astoundingly progressive record: Beam has successfully transgressed his cultural pigeonhole without sacrificing any of his dusty allure.

The songs are the most intriguing ones to emerge from this Wyoming project thus far. ... A lot of the energy that "ye" seemed to be gasping for fills the lungs of this project, and it’s humbling to consider how much this material might have enlivened West’s own album.

A triumphant counterpoint [to YOL2]--a record that feels like pure, reckless release.

As a culmination and refinement of everything the National have done over the past decade, Trouble Will Find Me couldn’t be granted a more fitting mission statement.

Only a interpreter as shrewd and tasteful as Loretta Lynn could find the inherent commonalities in these songs, and make a grab-bag late-late-career album like this feel not only emotionally grounded, but like a powerful choice.

Letter to Self is a bracing, frantic record designed for both thrashing mosh pits and solo meltdowns, best heard with the volume turned up loud.

While What We Drew is more internalized than past releases, it is not conflicted; rather, Yaeji finds clarity in vulnerability, in the pendulum swing of her humanity. Crucially, the mixtape doesn’t turn its back on one of Yaeji’s strongest traits as an artist: Her music has always been deeply social, and now it is more gregarious than ever in its gratitude for those around her.

For all of her self-flagellation, Teitelbaum is far more potent when she’s pissed off.

She’s an outsider claiming a piece of the mainstream for herself without sacrificing what makes her music so special.

There may be a lot of theory, artistic experimentation, and new forms of inquiry on this album, but typical of Lange’s work, it’s carried by pure beauty, the sort of diaphanous songwriting that makes the noise of everyday life fall away.

Its vivid imagery, anthemic arrangements, and unsuspecting listenability position it as hardcore’s Carrie & Lowell: an autobiographical tragedy that soars in spite of an overwhelming urge to succumb.

More than ever, DEP have songs. They're also the band's most colorful to date.

while other young UK-based electronic experimentalists like Floating Points make it onto the mix, Thomson's heavy label love is a reminder that he's constantly one step ahead of the game.

On their best album yet, Hiatus Kaiyote shine by building an architecture around these emotions, coming alive when they allow themselves to be more than just a great band.

Dust is a dense and heady record, and from certain angles can seem intimidating, even impenetrable. But between the clever track sequencing and a handful of irresistible outcrops of groove and melody, Halo provides plenty of footholds to cling onto while you acclimatise to her lawless universe.

It’s a short album—six songs, 33 minutes--but a substantial one, a deeply personal work that takes us inside the mind of Animal Collective’s most mysterious member, while restoring some of the patience and mystique that’s been sucked out of that band’s recent, more spasmodic work.

Cardinal feels like one big determined push outward, an album-length fight against solipsism without losing your sense of self in the process.