Singularity is ultimately grounded in the personal, not the cosmic, which is what makes this head music so rich.

Her early folk tendencies and pop structures served a similar purpose, a means to explore the off-kilter rhythms and ambient melodies that lulled her into a trance as a child, pulling us in along with her. Halo suggests a self-realization that is often breathtaking.

The second Bangs & Works is a marked improvement over its predecessor.

It’s substantive enough to warrant its extended genesis and boost Sleep’s legacy, not just reaffirm it.

Here he and Godrich have perfected a sound of their own, one that doesn’t take Radiohead’s achievements as its primary unit of measurement.

Where Malkmus’ solo work has sometimes walked the fine line between too detached or too self-satisfied, the record cartwheels over it with the assurance of an artist who’s correctly assumed that so long as he’s enjoying himself enough, others will too.

There is a unique magic to the sounds of the Sahara. Imidiwan captures that magic with skillful grace.

Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted.

The officially released version of Extraordinary Machine remains a decent-to-good album, one that showcases Apple's considerable vocal and key-pounding talents.... The shame of it all is that Apple, after six years of silence, could've made a more definitive, progressive statement rather than something familiar and similar-- and we've got the bootlegs to prove it.

Black to the Future is highly accessible, politically engaged jazz that’s more focused on communication than individual experimentation.

More often than not, All Nerve is a satisfying listen because it lets the Breeders dig into their reasons for being drawn back into each other’s orbit--including the left-of-center hooks, the withering poetics, and the shared prickliness toward meeting outside expectations.

The lyrics are wrung out with the same shaved-down discipline as the music, where nothing ever topples over into over-wrought emoting. Despite this rigid adherence to restraint, much of this material proves to be emotionally affecting.

Paradise may forever be lost, but this elegant elegy is worth many returns.

If in places the album feels somewhat transitory—a sequel to Debris, rather than a new statement in its own right—it lands with a grace and power that’s hard to deny.

Throughout Sometimes, Forever, she and Lopatin expand on the ’90s palette that has characterized previous Soccer Mommy releases. Bolstering the lingering imprints of Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, and Sleater-Kinney is a healthy dose of Loveless worship: glide guitars and tendrils of haze.

This vulnerability World Wide Whack puts on display is truly affecting, but for a convention-busting artist as Whack, her directness feels strikingly ordinary.

There’s electricity in this music—literally coursing through guitar pedals, samplers, Eurorack modules, and the DAWs used in post-production, but also between the five musicians themselves.

Even as its canvas stretches wide enough to accommodate the aggressive and experimental extremities of the Sharp Pins sound, Balloon Balloon Balloon is ultimately a showcase of Slater doing what he does best: filtering Beatles-‘65 joy through Beatles-‘66 drugs to hit the sweet spot between winsome and whimsical.

If Double Negative was a thrilling and uncertain expedition, bringing an alien landscape into focus for the first time, HEY WHAT demonstrates Low’s newfound mastery of the terrain.

Rips mostly finds the band walking away from Timony's established voice and pushing toward something more direct and energetic--embracing the past, but also blowing things up and starting again.

It feels like he’s constantly remixing himself, taking apart ideas from as far back as his 1978 debut Earthquake Island and using new technology to augment and re-contextualize them for the present era. In a perfect Fourth World twist, the music remains entirely grounded in the now while also sounding like it’s been floating in the cosmos for eons.

Their latest is their most consistent yet, and it stands among their best.

The reverence is understandable, but you’re left wondering if it stymied bolder invention.

Time and time again, Premonitions delivers on that promise as Folick shares her inspiring vision of an ennobled world.

It is easily the most solitary record Simon has made since his early solo work. The restraint is the point; just as he’s found inspiration in wide-ranging rhythms and textures from around the world, he now seems thrilled by just how much quiet he can conjure.

Pretty Toney far surpasses 2001's Bulletproof Wallets, finally finding the missing link between street cred and commercial respect.

The more anthemic crowd-pleasing numbers littered throughout The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree boast such endlessly repeated refrains as "Hey/ It's the Sun/ And it makes me Shine," which lose a lot of their appeal when taken out of their natural habitat (the live setting) and placed between your headphones.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a bold and inventive work, brimming with ideas and sublime moments of brilliance. But it's also unfocused and top-heavy.