While Sulphur English is their least welcoming album, it is also their most rewarding. ... They’ve delivered a cohesive vision of internal destruction, all the more explosive for everything they’ve left behind.

It's the first good 2002 album I've heard.

Whether you treat it as background music, incidental listening, or a two-hour magnum opus, Themes for an Imaginary Film is a well-rounded portrait of a key figure in the American electronic music landscape.

Thundering, itchy, pneumatic new record.

While Long only uses a steady beat and some deeply resonant chords to convey this revelation, he nevertheless moves like a poet to unearth that heartening sense of truth here.

Gone is the chipper ukulele of w h o k i l l and BiRd-BrAiNs; Nikki Nack signifies maturity while still allowing room for Garbus to do zany things.

Atlas derives its power from the tension between broad expanses of formlessness and sudden eruptions of destabilizing beauty. To me, this tender, elegiac album sounds like deathbed music—a flash of rapture while everything fades to black.

I'd never wanted Calexico to change, but the new direction suits them well, proving that even in the face of radical metamorphosis, they remain as stunning and distinctive as ever.

On Your Own Love Again has more earnest moments, but its unadorned emotional uncertainty is profound and relatable.

Even if it doesn’t have the same cultivated mystery or incapacitating demands of Agaetis Byrjun or ( ), Kveikur is every bit a return to form, tapping into its predecessors’ bottomless emotional wellspring for a Sigur Rós album that can be listened to casually or intensely.

Being from her country means contending with the legacies of some of West Africa’s most internationally successful artists; at this point, I’d say Traoré fits comfortably alongside her forbears.

Memorable tunes and unforgettable phrases erupt like brush fire over the course of 47 minutes, the mood migrating at a moment’s notice from insouciant nihilism to full-blown rage to radical empathy.

Admittedly, some parts are easier to admire than they are to enjoy. But stick with Sisterworld as it builds, let it seep into your brain while you wait for its bulging seams to burst, and you might find yourself unable to turn your ears away. Eventually, Liars' commitment to their own creepy cause proves contagious.

Process carries with it the possibility of Yvette evolving into something even more ambitious and imposing.

As always, that mystery resides in the sounds he manipulates. No one else sounds like Phil Elverum.

What a Time to Be Alive’s rage feels visceral because of age and experience and exhaustion, not despite it.

Goodbye Bread is filled with such rich, breathtaking moments, and Segall, who plays every instrument here, sounds as though he's savoring every part of process.

What makes How I Got Over work is its sense of purpose. After the jaw-clenching stress rap of their last two excellent Def Jam releases, Game Theory and Rising Down, this record operates as a slow-build mission statement on how to overcome.

Three records into his return, on the most Spartan cut of the bunch, James is sounding more energized than ever.

I’m beginning to think it’s one of the smartest records-- musically and lyrically-- we’ll hear all year.

Primal Scream have always understood the power of a groove and a lyrical grenade. Their entire career reaches a melting point on the raw, caustic Exterminator.... The album has its shortcomings. "Keep Your Faith" and "Insect Royalty" dip a bit too much into the more sentimental song-based style of the last record, Vanishing Point, and "Swastika Eyes" needs no reprise. But the fighting spirit keeps Primal Scream ahead of the pack.

All Hell is a subtly clever record that pits one type of music that strongly evokes one era--here, country music--against another, namely this decade's sample-heavy culture.

Vernon gives a soulful performance full of intuitive swells and fades, his phrasing and pronunciation making his voice as much a purely sonic instrument as his guitar.

Under and Under dispatches the charge of repetition and "samey" songcraft very quickly.

Freedom’s Goblin is ultimately a celebration of Segall’s aesthetic and emotional freedom--a definitive capstone to the first decade of a scuzzy, heartfelt songwriter nonpareil.

With soil, serpentwithfeet deeply engages with the complex membranes between the self and a loved one, the self and the world. Few albums attempt this much nuance in articulating love; Wise’s success in his ambitions feels like a gift.

Her boozy, morning-after croon is still gorgeous, but now there’s elements of Puerto Rican bomba and salsa, son cubano, doo-wop, and even the spoken-word poetry of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe she haunted as a teen. Her band has gone through a variety of lineups, but this one feels like a clean slate.

It’s a joyful noise. This is one of the more uplifting records of experimental music in recent memory. There’s something about how Orcutt and Corsano push each other that leads to work that pulses with the life force—these pieces bring to mind sunlight hitting a maple leaf, cells dividing under a microscope, a deep thirst quenched.