It’s the clearest, most detailed record in their vast catalogue.

LONER is a singular artistic statement, from its unforgettable album art all the way down. It represents for her a major change--a change she totally commands.

The real feat of Cloud Corner is how well Anderson has learned to fuse the musical traditions she favors without drawing attention to the juxtaposition itself.

The matter of failed romance is central to Sour, a nimble and lightly chaotic grab bag of breakup tunes, filled with both melancholy and mischief.

Foxgloves fits the mold and goes down smooth. Even as he approaches 80, Hurley’s ability to synthesize different strains of American traditional music and twist them to fit his own idiosyncratic vision is as sharp as ever, and the effortlessness of it all testifies to many years of practice and refinement.

It’s a “breakout album” from an underground artist designed for the drama and spectacle of live performance as it is deep listening. But, more importantly, it’s soul food for those who know a better world is possible if we’re willing to fight for it.

The quality of the recording captures the glorious tumult in the band’s interplay, making it visceral and elemental.

The loose, intuitive instrumental interplay is crucial to the album’s charm. Often, songs feel as if they’re conjured from the air: Lyrics are rudimentary yet keenly felt; melodies drift into view only to evaporate shortly afterward.

Through written piecemeal between 2021 and 2025 (a period in which Presley focused primarily on his painting practice), Orange is by far the tightest, most cohesive record he’s made.

Whether a calculated retreat or just a natural maturation, the Horrors have found a sound more content with background and atmosphere, and it suits them nicely.

As the Love Continues comes off as a reminder of the emptiness of all things and the importance of finding meaning anyway. It’s a hymn to melancholy, and a strike against infinite sadness.

What comes up as a whole is this odd but endearing blend of plainspoken nonchalance and almost limitless musical eccentricity.

He's sad and pathetic and needy and yet somehow still smooth, which is sort of the central animating paradox at the heart of the Walkmen. They make these wounded, anxious songs, but they make them so confidently, with such unearthly rich-guy assurance.

Listening to the 34 songs of Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and The Ghosts of Highway 20 in sequence feels less like a chore than a long trip led by an expert navigator with good stories to share.

The Source may draw on Afrobeat and jazz to create something intricate and expansive, but the results are never contrived or academic.

Rival Dealer has some of the most immediate music from the Burial project, but it's worth noting that this is also a noisy, dissonant work.

The moments where things sound like they’re spilling over, bleeding outside of the track's imaginary lines, are when LP is most thrilling.

An echoey mix sometimes makes Shires and the players sound as if they’re performing at the bottom of a well—a drier mix would’ve drawn these tales of lust and abandon in sharper colors. But as producer Rothman has the correct instincts: They foreground Shires’ big voice.

It’s a musically varied and vocally impressive effort from an artist who continues to cut extraneous elements out of his songwriting, drilling closer to the core of his style.

Giant Palm is a holistic and distinctly contemporary work, always rooted in the landscape of the present, never coming across as postmodern pastiche. Bock is a deeply idiosyncratic songwriter, and Burton is thoroughly attuned to her peculiarities.

Yowzers is a tighter, more intimate affair, an invitation into the inner circle.

The lack of surtext makes Menneskekollektivet as conceptually rich as anything Hval has ever done. It is a statement about the beauty of slowing down, of not worrying about what you say and instead focusing on how you feel.

Eye Contact-- the group's latest album-- is Gang Gang Dance's finest, weirdest, and most uplifting statement yet.

There’s something invigorating about hearing two alt-country veterans take apart their tried-and-true sound and reassemble it slightly askew, and Scheherazade is not only their most modern-sounding record; it might be their best since Old Paint.

On Beyondless, Iceage reach for grandeur with more tenacity and suspending energy than ever.

it's more like an endpoint for devoted fans looking to connect the dots. As such, it provides a fascinating coming-of-age story of an artist who came into his own playing styles he knew he loved and others he only thought he hated.

The leap in range and ambition from their 2015 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power is huge: There hasn’t been a punk debut this certain and poised since Savages’ Silence Yourself.

The Dark Horse shares [the debut's] deliberate sense of pacing, precious attention to detail and hermetic sound-world atmosphere; the difference here is that almost every song builds to a crucial moment where the Besnards bravely step out of the shadows, and in the process, transform from being a merely good band to a great one.