The Trip feels like an expansion into new territory. Without Gane and his spacey-cool affectations, Sadier is free to revel in warm, rich balladry.

Herndon and her ensemble displace the human voice from its usual setting just enough that it startles the ear. But that displacement allows you to hear voices as if for the very first time, listening ravenously for proof that out there in the unknown, someone besides yourself exists and is singing.

Are We There may be her most present-tense album to date, her most immediate and urgent--the peak of a steady upward trajectory.

Snaith’s principal strength remains his skill as a musician and producer. He’s got hooks for days, and you could heat a single-family home by the warmth of his chord progressions. Virtually every song has some little detail that makes you lean in closer.

WOR$T GIRL is most successful as an argument for Slayyyter’s abrasive style, but the record also contains some of her most painfully and finely rendered human emotion to date.

As immersive and deep as the lake around which it revolves, Meshes of Voice adds a new dimension to the output of both its makers.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

Write About Love is a grower -- the sort of record you need to play repeatedly, listening to how it fits together, before it can really ingratiate itself.

Kylesa's lyrics lean towards the abstract and personal. They avoid grand gestures or obvious themes that allow for easy grasp. This time, though, grasp is almost moot. The band has etched light, dark, sky, and earth so deftly onto wax that it vibrates the very soul.

History and transformation are, understandably, recurring themes in the new lyrics on Change Becomes Us, and it's a treat to have this missing link in the Wire story repaired, even if it's as much an anomaly in the present moment as Document and Eyewitness was in its time.

Out of Breach is less suited for a fucked-up dance party than just for being fucked up.

The sweetness of their gaze only makes the melodies on case/lang/veirs seem more familiar, resonating deep within some distant memory while still sounding fresh. The hooks are mostly vocal-led, but producer Tucker Martine and the small band of players (including Glenn Kotche on percussion) color them perfectly.

Will may at first seem small, private, and modestly appointed--just a room with a piano, a synthesizer, and a looping pedal--but once you settle in, it feels as vast as the universe in there.

While Pink should not be conflated with a proper follow-up to There Is Love in You, even as a singles comp it suggests that the undergrad producer circa Rounds is now post-doctorate, and Four Tet is capable of going deeper and expanding higher than almost anyone else out there.

Zoo Psychology's refrains are faster, shorter, and more efficient than ever.

It’s just a meticulous document of a band whose hedonism kept them from restraining their absurd level of mastery. So here: have Zep as they both wanted to be and eventually were.

Post-War isn't perfect, but it's all the more listenable for that fact.

These beats are bespoke. The rapping has never been better either, with the music tailored to wring maximum tension out of each bar.

Sky Burial will likely land as one of the year’s great breakthroughs for a heavy act.

For the second time in one year, both on a large label and on their own, they've released a record ruthless and rewarding enough to animate that image.

The Secret Machines create songs that are just as spacey and concept-heavy, if not quite as quirky, as those on Yoshimi and The Sophtware Slump.

What at first seems rather silly actually proves to be quite purposeful.

Think of Sports, then, as a freshly taken Polaroid with a lit cigarette stuck straight in the middle of it-- a burning hole bridging the distance between then and right now.

A formula ain't necessarily a bad thing: Think of it as a carefully considered training technique, designed to flex and strengthen certain sonic muscles in aid of achieving ever more impressive results.

What’s astonishing here is the way they manage to forge a sound nearly as rich and original as that of America’s most blunted.

While Elwan may not herald any grand stylistic breakthrough, it does manage to synthesize some of the group’s most recent experiments in a way that helps distinguish it within their overall catalog.

Feels like music I've been subconsciously craving without even knowing it exists.

Eternal Turn of the Wheel is as captivating as most any stretch of black metal you'll hear this year, even if it possesses a lifetime of questions that deserve to be asked.