Thirty years ago, indie rock was rife with records that sounded like Moot!, and the bands of that era inspired successive waves of followers. But today, an album like this, coming from a context like Moin’s, feels radical.

It’s a scattershot travelogue, idealized and hopeful, bright with giddy pleasures, welled tears, and some of her best-ever songwriting.

He’s finding new aural and emotional textures within a familiar genre. Those fresh sounds are married to the sturdiest set of songs Strings has written, with defined melodies distinguished by flashes of empathy and wit.

Implosion brings out the best in each artist by highlighting their differences: Martin’s music comes off heavier than ever, while Fiedler’s fidgety rhythms are all the more dynamic.

Lavender Networks is a step up on the “approachable” scale—even if it still has enough ideas for a dozen albums by a less adventurous artist. It’s a (relatively) digestible, catchy release that seems destined to invite more people into Marcloid’s digital dayglo world.

Crooked Wing promises to be a career highlight, then doesn’t quite deliver. Its first half is consistently astonishing, but its final third dips a little too far into the cryptic and lugubrious.

Nonagon Infinity is overstuffed with so many stomach-tossing thrills that you’ll actually be jonesing to ride the roller-coaster all over again.

Expect improvisation and Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1974 will disappoint. Novelty, though, it’s got—Ferry sounded like no singer in rock.

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.

More goes big and mature with lusher, sometimes even baroque arrangements to surround Cocker’s voice—a voice that’s huskier, more leaden by time and gravity.

Between Nao’s lush voice and the album’s glossy production, it’s easy to get lost in Saturn. A worthy successor to For All We Know, it homes in on a specific, if occasionally ham-fisted, conceit while expanding on her sound in clear, vibrant ways.

Still Brazy solidifies YG as a torch-bearer for west coast gangster rap.

Lanegan all too often prevents the audience from seeing the artist that lives behind his dour exterior. Gargoyle is most engaging when it invites glimpses, however fleeting.

The Avalanches are all about feel. And Wildflower, though it misses some of its predecessor’s thematic unity and from-nowhere sense of surprise, has that feel in spades.

The album starts to wear thin by the homestretch.

Faking the Books is a confident stride in the right direction, and proves that, even within the confines of a tired concept, a great hook still goes a long way.

So while this may not be a great album or even a top-tier Beastie Boys album -- I'd place it somewhere between Hello Nasty and the inferior 5 Boroughs, neither of which can touch those first four -- anyone who cares about these guys will be glad it exists.

Though many of the songs convey images of earthiness and of dirt, there's a beauty that helps the collection soar above the ground.

This is incredibly heavy music made light (joyful, even) by the zeal and power of its players. By plowing into, through, and ultimately out of the dark, Ex Eye is an ecstatic fusion--an exhilarating exclamation of defiance, no warning required.

Rarely do the Mekons get quite as loose as they do on Deserted, alternating between arid, nocturnal atmosphere that seems to emanate from Susie Honeyman’s fiddle and moments of near hysteria, as though their sun-baked brains have gone haywire. These songs take their time to wander about, even getting lost in the vast expanse--sometimes a little too lost.

Whatever the Weather dazzles by pulling you towards them with the gentle confidence of an outstretched hand.

If 2020’s Anime, Trauma, and Divorce was an unflinching examination of all that he’d lost, this album answers the question of what remains. ... By looking even further in the rear view, through all the years, all the bars, and all the trauma, he seems to have returned to his original sense of self. Even as he grows, he’s always been exactly who he is supposed to be.

The shared characteristic that unites all four releases, though, is McCraven’s uncanny ability to alchemize hip-hop from jazz, structure from freedom, a collective effort into a singular vision.

It’s triumphant music for the hyperactive, plural city; it’s confrontational as a means to achieving communality, with no particular loyalties except to an anonymous, shifting collective of people who all want the same thing as Young Fathers--to be one thing, then the next, then the next.

“Leave the Door Open,” “After Last Night,” and “Smokin Out the Window” are among the highlights, slathering elevated technique—all those key changes—with satisfying molten cheese.

Black Encyclopedia of the Air is another withering salvo in Moor Mother’s lifelong war of attrition, expertly disguised behind the shadow of a white flag.

Fennesz may not care much if he surprises us, but he never runs out of ways to get us.

Though the band more or less commits to replicating their studio arrangements, their attention to detail (the whining synth harmonies on “Where I End and You Begin,” the melodramatic backing chords of “Sail to the Moon”) feels grandly ambitious, rather than stodgily clinical. At least several songs feel greater than the sum of their already formidable parts.