Oh No knows just what he's got to work with on this album, and in finding every angle he can for an incredible array of source material, he's made that much more of a case for his own style, too.

Pinch & Shackleton is a welcome return to each artist's peculiar roots.

At its core, this is a record about accepting and even embracing the smallness of human life, and how difficult that can be, given our damnably innate sense of adventure, ambition, and restlessness.

Across age/sex/location, Lennox refreshes classic R&B stylings for a contemporary audience, sounding at ease with herself as she offers up her sexiest and most assured music to date.

Impermanence is a symptom of transformation; on Iris Silver Mist, Hval extols this reality, inviting us to seek out the beauty in each stage.

The resulting psych-folk arrangements are wandering and iterative. These songs are less inclined to tell a story from start to finish than transport you into a space of pure feeling.

Anna Calvi has found her voice with her third album would be reductive; both literally and figuratively, her voice has always been crystal clear.

Shellac go straight for your throat and don't loosen their grip until the bitter end.

This might not be the most inviting sound world to contemplate, but Johannsson's confident touch with it is powerful, and The Miners' Hymns creeps into your consciousness like a musty attic draft.

This time around, she takes on more sinister hues and foreboding melodies. It’s a gripping transformation, one that illustrates the full range of her gifts as a composer, and reveals a darker side of her era-blending music.

While she has a reputation for making familiar songs sound utterly new, here she finds a way to make Bramblett’s songs tell her story, to let them speak for her. She rewrites his songs simply by singing them.

Forsyth’s lyrics have never been sharper, or stranger.

What’s left is an album with an excess of initiative but not enough follow-through, a record that takes on so much it risks burning out. In the end, the little girl at the center of the album gets swallowed by her own vision.

The Rite should elicit gasps, not cock eyebrows—the latter of which is the most extreme reaction the Bad Plus manage to provoke.

Instead of hiding his bootleg-bred quirks in anticipation of the big-budget spotlight, he distills the myriad metaphors, convulsing flows, and vein-splitting emotions into a commercially gratifying package that's as weird as it wants to be; he eventually finds his guitar but keeps the strumming in check.

Guided by a more mature sound, Infinite Worlds is the rock music we need nowadays, when it seems like home, wherever it might be, is getting farther away.

While her recent records have used their sprawl to navigate a wide array of styles and moods, she now finds a range that pulls her into focus. It is roots music, bursting from the ground, changing form in the light of day.

There are ways to hear this album as both damning or redemptive, depending on the perspective. But it is never sanctimonious, and it is constantly breathtaking.

More so than any identifiable influence, More Than Any Other Day is ultimately defined by its unsettled, restless spirit; this is an album that treats panic attacks and adrenalized ecstasy as two sides of the same pounding heart, with its simultaneous transmissions of joy and fear, discipline and chaos, comedy and tragedy.

Even though you know just what you should be getting from an album like this, Lee Fields & the Expressions play like the stakes have never been higher: they lay it all out there, put it on the line, and make damn well sure you feel it.

On Any Shape You Take, De Souza commits herself to being undone, to experiencing the terrible feelings and the beautiful ones. Even when she’s fucked-up, there is something ecstatic in her attempts at loving, her hunger to absorb all she can from life.

On One Day, Fucked Up sound freer and more purely happy to be making music together than they have in years.

These are angry, sad, hopeful songs that offer catharsis and solidarity. This mixture—of pulsating brains and jangling nerves, beating hearts and open minds—may be the closest we get to the essence of Stereolab; and in this, Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a laudable comeback.

The songs may be catchy, but their intricacy and thoughtful storytelling makes them stick. And for its impressive sonic sheen, the album's skillful restraint makes it sound better with every spin.

Nearly every highlight, however, feels hermetically sealed--produced in a vacuum and unable to feed into or connect with the others. It turns Song for Alpha into a catch-all for Avery’s disparate experiments, something that less resembles a fully realized album than a dynamic, robust playlist from a seasoned DJ taking a break from the road.

The Body's story is just vague and gruesome enough to be weirdly terrifying, totally Orwellian, and grander, louder, and more electrifying than anything the Thermals have spit out before.

The cacophonous, vexing, endlessly fascinating The Collective represents the experience of logging off and finding that your perception of the real world has been forever altered. Few are better equipped than Gordon—who, at 70, is still cooler, smarter, and more fearless than most—to guide us through.

That's just about a half-hour shorter than 22 Dreams, but the disc in turn is twice the fun.