Where his solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, was a relatively subdued, Welsh-only affair, its successor takes unseriousness as seriously as any official Furries effort.

It would've been easy to let The Sound cruise from there, filling it with solid also-rans. But the energy level and commitment continue unabated.

Liturgy have always brought a proggy, sprawling ambition to their music, but rarely have all the pieces locked into place so elegantly. 93696 can be pulverizing, but it’s also gentle, and amid the brutality lie some of Hunt-Hendrix’s prettiest and most ornate songs yet.

In a couple of decades, when you're looking for an instant hit of what electronic pop felt like in 2011, you'll be able to throw on Glass Swords and get a dose of that feeling in its purest form.

Her voice, raspy and harsh against the gently ringing acoustic guitar, makes you expect a gloomy, even maudlin disc. But that can distract from what makes it great: its ambiguity, the way she expresses herself in such strangely personal terms yet never settles on an emotional tone.

A huge success, a fresh-sounding record that doesn't feel too obviously indebted to anything that's come before it, much less like anything Out Hud have made before.

On Something About April II, Younge emerges as someone more interested in creating new classics than new samples.

With regularity on The Car, Turner will begin an idea that he does not finish, or he’ll introduce something totally different just when you start following along. He has become a master of turns of phrases that don’t necessarily cohere but still feel right.

His sparse yet driving music and the trenchant visual work accompanying are noteworthy elements of Allen’s four decades as an artist, but what stands out in revisiting Juarez now is the stunning poetry of the lines themselves. Allen’s words are a piquant kick throughout: raunchy, pithy, and richly redolent.

Defying all bureaucracy, borders, and strife, this concert and this orchestra proves that art at its very best is a grand gesture of empathy above all.

Being Funny is as sincere as the 1975 have ever sounded, and also as hopeful. Without the thematic discursions and stylistic detours of past records, Healy’s glamorous love songs finally take center stage, their message as convincing as ever.

The band have finally mastered the monstrous proportions of their diffuse talents and arranged them in ways that are wholly satisfying and distinctly unique.

Marnia isn't the single touch that shatters, it's the long, steady stare that gives way to embrace.

The result is a captivating, dizzying record by a band aware that they can do anything--so they’re doing it all.

Light Up Gold finds Parquet Courts looking to breakout through any available means: intense reflection, resin hits, or rock'n'roll.

It’s a remarkably assured statement of purpose.

Scott fully inhabits her loudest moments by inching towards post-rock and synth-rock.

Way's most compelling moments on Sorry are those in which she's particularly hellish, strong, and lyrically bold.

Rejecting escapism and celebrating invention, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is equally compelling and uncompromising. The music and the feeling of being absorbed in it is its own reward.

Me First proves to be a remarkably consistent and memorable listen.

He went big on HELLMODE by going smaller. It’s the prettiest album he’s ever made, but it still gets you riled up. That level-up is most audible in HELLMODE’s punk-rock tracks, which offer a dialed-in but not dialed-back tone.

Mushonga glides effortlessly between synth pop and dubstep, interlacing flute samples and vocoder flourishes without gilding the lily. Here, the intricate details embellishing her music do more to enrich the whole than draw attention to themselves, just as individual stars complete a constellation.

The subtlety of their music, and the underlying confidence that brings it forth, lies at the core of their appeal.

Rossen brings to this EP the meticulous craftsmanship we've come to expect from his work, but in Silent Hour he's created something rare: a rendering of isolation that feels sincere but never maudlin.

Let Me Do One More is full of high highs and low lows, but thanks to Tudzin’s extensive experience as an engineer and producer (Pom Pom Squad, Weyes Blood), the two extremes—and they are often extreme—are meticulously balanced.

When you view the tracklist for Springsteen on Broadway and evaluate it from the perspective of one night’s performance, it’s an impressive list of songs. But when you look at it as representative of a body of work spanning four decades--which this production decidedly cannot escape representing--it is a more than suitable tribute to what Springsteen himself refers to as both his service and his “long and noisy prayer.”

Y Dydd Olaf is a crucial minority language record, but Saunders' beguiling melodies and execution also make it one of the best British debuts of 2015.

Gold Record captures both sides: The yen to collapse the spaces between people, and the acknowledgment that some spaces are too cold to cross.