Harmonicraft is not without its moments; its just that, sometimes, spans of monotony and predictably make remembering or caring for those moments more work than they're worth.

Laughter in Summer serves as a summary of Copeland’s career, but it’s also a portrait of the artist in his last act: confident, generous, and unafraid.

It’s not necessary to know the originals to enjoy his interpretations, but it allows you to appreciate them more.

This album is a vital addition to the Congotronics series, and anyone who's enjoyed the series so far needs to hear it.

Aviary ultimately has the effect of looking through a new friend’s bookshelf, accessing the wild particularities of their mind.

Crooked Man’s overall vibe is the timeless aspiration of people who share great parts of their lives on dark dance-floors. All these songs boil down to the idea of community and its desires and rules, a set of signposts to keep the party going in the right direction.

Though Elysia Crampton blooms from big, propulsive drum patterns, the kind that must be played by a group of musicians and not an individual, it also conjures a sense of profound loneliness.

Unlike the spiteful divinity that stalks these songs, Hayter’s music is full of reverence and empathy for our most challenging task: to be human.

My nervous system just can’t endure 17 tracks of uncut Jens at once; it’s a giddy squee! sustained for 80 minutes. But it has variety and inspiration throughout, and it works great when taken in two chunks, one spinning a relationship together and the other gently tugging it apart.

Even if it holds the most value for the Neil obsessives interested in the small differences, Live at Cellar Door provides another glimpse at a darkly formative time in his long career.

Their self-titled debut EP for Warp and LuckyMe spans 16 minutes of some of the year's most brazen, positively huge hip-hop sounds.

I’ve Been Trying to Tell You feels passive, lost in nostalgia for an age it hasn’t fully reckoned with. Bet it sounds gorgeous on the radio.

The songs here aren't necessarily breaking new ground stylistically, but that really isn't what matters. At this point, Mould clearly has nothing left to prove.

A direct thematic line runs from the album’s first full song, “Appointments,” to “Claws in Your Back”’s riveting finish.

The Bible is a willfully abstract record, but for its many experiments, Wagner and company bring an intense focus to these songs.

Swimming hinted at an artist who’d finally cleared his mind and found his footing. Circles provides some resolution and helps finish Miller’s final thoughts.

The downside to this is that she sounds like she’s on her best behavior; the songs stay awfully polite and sprightly for someone who’s so good at sounding sinister. The upside is that underneath that dress, ready to impress strangers, Holly’s still pretty near top form.

Replace crackling vinyl and subwoofer bass with somber piano and mournful cello, and all you're left with is... well, a pretty goddamn miserable woman who happens to have a great voice.

Filled with personal memories, affirmations of self, and gazes of society’s racial strife, HEAVN is a singular mix of clear-eyed optimism and Black girl magic.

After two releases filled with high-concept fusion, some listeners might be hungry for solos that hang around longer and aren’t so beholden to the mood of the production. Adjuah delivers exactly this on The Emancipation Procrastination.

Throughout WARMER he downplays lyrics that a lesser songwriter would have mined for misery, but these songs are no less moving for that understatement. Sometimes it’s the heaviest sentiments that call for the lightest touch.

The 2004 session at Maida Vale favors songs from 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound; there are hints at that record’s more extemporaneous approach here. ... The second session, recorded with a live studio audience shortly after Peel’s untimely death, feels like a funeral procession cut with an air of irony. ... As far as Shellac songs go, “The End of Radio” is a postmodern masterwork, balancing Albini’s nihilism with an evergreen critique of the centrality of mass media.

It’s a break-up album, less focused on wordplay and punchlines than universal truths. And while her songwriting continues to avoid the obvious path, her arrangements decidedly do not. ... The best moments are when Clark fights through the heartbreak to find her own footing again.

King Woman’s ability to outdo themselves continues apace, and the bar continues to rise each time Esfandiari sheds her skin anew.

There are no real songs to speak of—just scenes, which flow together as seamlessly as fields glimpsed from the window of a moving train. The album is clearly meant to be experienced as a single piece of music, and the pacing is immaculate.

Emma Maatman’s vocals are the real standout on Free Energy, and one of the band’s most successful adjustments is pushing her gorgeous, expressive tone to the fore.

The forward movement of July can be entrancing and propulsive.

There is no moment where Brown grabs your lapels and demands you to feel what he’s feeling, whatever it may be. He has called uknowhatimsayin¿ his “standup comedy album,” and the mastery on display is that of the comic going out there and killing. But the best-loved and most enduring comedians left their own blood out on the stage, too.