The record demonstrates something Kamaru senses more easily than the rest of us, which is the richness and drama of everyday sounds. Natur helps us hear what he hears.

As much as it can sound like it stands alone, Bish Bosch is part of a tradition of music that tried to find new ways to articulate that same old misery.

Darnielle's characters are back where they know best.

For all the credit given to Luger-- who, in fairness, has upped the bar for rap producers competing with the post-Tunnel nightclub gangster aesthetic-- it's Waka who gives this record its frenetic intensity.

Gordon’s most impassioned singing on the album helps here, too, but it’s the pair’s frame accuracy that makes the track so dramatic. The results are far from predictable, but they serve as further proof that Body/Head are fully in control.

Forgoing their usual evocative song titles in favor of a suite of numbered pieces that often flow into and out of one another, Dirty Three have made not only their most absorbing album but also the one that’s most open to interpretation.

For all the ideological intent fuelling the Wild Flag mission, the band rarely sacrifices the rock'n'roll fun-- they no doubt deliver that elusive black-and-blue, but it's a hit that feels like a kiss.

Baroness convince their disparate influences to gel beautifully without lapsing into the homogeneity (or self-indulgent drudgery) that remains a common defect of long, proggy albums. The second half is noticeably quieter and spookier than the more bombastic first half, easing down gently into more melodic and even acoustic fare.

The core tension between Tamborello's complex, almost impossibly dense production and Gibbard's cutting voice makes Give Up a pretty damned strong record, and one with enough transcendent moments to forgive it its few substandard tracks and some ungodly lyrical blunders.

Pyroclasts feels about as close to that completeness as a metal album by a druid-robed group named after their amplifiers can get.

Pimienta has ably realized her potential and silenced those who doubted her deservingness.

The highest highs of Icky can't quite reach the altitude of the band's breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group's more robust sound.

The whole 12-part suite unfurls like a gorgeous symphony, as if the entire Space Program only served as preparation for translating a work of cosmic complexity into a language we humans could understand.

The songs sound great, but the easy on-stage banter and joyful communion with the audience sounds even better. Shut-ins of the world, unite and take over.

Murder of the Universe may be built from the band’s now-familiar krautpunk battle plan, but their ability to execute outsized architectural complexity at manic, warp-speed velocity is no less astonishing.

Getting forcibly pinned down in her personal cycle of attack and retreat is a dark, visceral, utterly compelling thrill.

Pound for pound, The Louder I Call is Wye Oak’s brightest, most straightforward effort

Invisible Cities serves as something of a breath-catching moment for a band that's taken a giant leap on each of its albums, bringing some of the thunder back while further elaborating on the progress made on Ghost Rock.

Although the outgoing sonics of Endless Now represent a considerable leap in sound, it's those same qualities that could very well repel those drawn in by the burnt-ends glory of Nothing Hurts-- not because that previous record is necessarily better, though.

The ensemble’s playing and the leader's compositions make Junun an easy stretch--though, crucially, not a condescending one--for listeners otherwise unfamiliar with the great variety of methods often obscured by "world music" market-speak.

Ghost's new album may not uncover many of the verteran MC's still-hidden darts but, even 11 years after his solo debut, there's no denying that one of hip-hop's most vibrant voices in its comfort zone.

Casey, having already plumbed the depths of sorrow, still has room to go deeper as Protomartyr’s sound continues to become much richer and more rewarding.

Distortion isn't a return to form so much as a return to content.

Dan’s Boogie is not a facsimile of its predecessors. It is funnier, wiser, though the stakes are perhaps a little lower. .... It all feels effortless, like he’s been doing this for his whole life, which he basically has.

Dunn’s approach has remained so consistent across his career that the difference between this album and its predecessors is one of degree, not type, but it’s safe to say that From Here to Eternity plumbs newfound depths: There is a coppery burnish that was not there before, a tendency to float just beyond the bounds of our usual limits of musical perception.

WORRY. is stuffed with so with many sugarcoated melodies it’s almost headache-inducing. Yet there isn’t a single insubstantial lyric here.

Songs for Judy now feels like a concept album whose concept is just as far out as prog rock, if less flashy and more soothing. It’s a high fantasy of meadows and moons and canyons, of shows that start after midnight, of possessing or creating enough space to let Neil Young play some quiet songs for you.

The album as a whole feels warmer, more spacious. The songs on Painted Shut were doled out like 10 fist-shaped car door dents, but Bark Your Head Off, Dog moves at an agitated hum.