His raps land firmly within the established pockets of beats, but each song is so distinct and JPEG’s writing is so fluid and witty that no two moments within the album’s humid atmosphere sound the same.

Goodnight Summerland displays a fresh focus and intention. Here, Deland shifts toward a stripped-back, folksier sound, highlighting her gossamer voice and newfound observations about the ache of grief and the passage of time.

The songs on Who's the Clown fittingly sound like an extension of Abrams’ world: verbose, conversational, unfiltered. .... But the album falters in its second half, where Hobert uses specificity as a crutch, struggling to transcend the biographical details of her own, quite exceptional, life.

The trio sharpens its focus, marrying clever production with the soul-eating intensity that propelled its rise.

Parallax feels like a more complete work than any other Atlas Sound record, with the differences between the songs less distinct and everything flowing together more naturally.

With Jet Plane and Oxbow, Shearwater achieve not only their grandest statement to date, but their most grounded as well.

It's this sense that nothing is (seemingly) too private for him to share in a song that makes Pale Green Ghosts so potent and, ultimately, accessible

That Lodestar exists at all feels like a minor miracle. That it is so exquisitely done is a small blessing on top.

Musgraves’ album summons up the mid-’60s era nostalgia of A Charlie Brown Christmas, gliding naturally from her established Western-swing throwback aesthetic to kitschy exotica and vintage pop, with an expertly curated song selection that leans on campy novelties, classy standards, and a stocking’s worth of originals.

Japan had to go through the period of growth that resulted in Quiet Life, straining against the limits of their abilities as songwriters and musicians in order to move beyond them. As heard in the context of the group’s history, this album, however imperfect, feels rich with possibility and promise.

Against all odds, they’ve become one of the most interesting indie rock bands working, and the stately beauty of Familiars is the latest satisfying effort from a band that continues to reward those listeners who give them the attention their elegant, secretly weird music deserves.

Illegal Moves is just as powerful a statement about the urgency of the times and the reactions we should all be having, because being entertained doesn’t have to mean being disengaged. That Sunwatchers make their calls to arms sound so fun doesn’t diminish that power--in fact, it just might be the most important part.

A front-row seat for the Amos-Brown mind meld—sprawling, amorphous, hermetic, overwhelming, heartbreaking, funny as hell. It’s a privileged vantage point.

What makes this record so refreshing is its unabashed ambition, the sound of a band rejecting indie-darling complacency for riskier, more mature territory. And the gamble more than pays off.

Fans of big, stadium-swinging hooks might find Sister Cities a sparser, more introspective affair than they prefer, but the band seems okay with leaving South Philly basements behind and seeing more of the world.

Slowdive offers maximum-volume shoegaze too, better than the band ever has before.

She’ll employ of-the-moment producers to add current touches to her tracks, but the way she uses them on Caution results in her fine-tuning her aesthetic, not bending to current playlist-friendly trends.

L.W. resembles K.G. after three additional months of lockdown: It’s more antsy, more angry, and less concerned about letting its gut hang out, allowing the motorik acid-folk of “Static Electricity” to gallop toward the six-minute mark in a blaze of microtonal shredding. But if the songs are looser, the targets are more precise.

It remains a fascinatingly ambivalent note to finish on for one of the most influential indie rock bands of their era, and this reissue, while not necessarily better than the original 1999 release, provides enough context to understand its odd bathos in a new way. It was the album that brought Pavement full circle: dressed for success, but never quite sure if they wanted the job.

Jam curation is an underappreciated art (Teo Macero, Carlos Niño, and Mark Hollis are among its greatest practitioners), and DePlume shows a knack for it here.

Mostly, Field Report sounds a lot like his old band.

Kempner grounds Duterte’s dreamy abstraction in gritty reality, creating a dissonance that works best when it mirrors the album’s treatment of the darker edges of relationships. At times, though, the collaboration limits these artists’ strengths.

I Know I’m Funny haha is full of this delicious texture. It might come off a little shallow, but it reveals its great depth at its own unconcerned pace. It’s probably one of the best records of the year.

Growing up to the world as Fela Kuti’s son will naturally always cast something of a shadow over Seun Kuti’s music, but Black Times comes across as both a respectful reminder of his legacy and a demonstration of Kuti’s own fresh talent.

The album’s sound is sleek and full of grand, sweeping climaxes that occasionally oversell the songwriting. But if Unfollow the Rules is sometimes in want of a unifying idea or theme, Wainwright’s dreamy voice provides a throughline.

The cartoonish brutality of the music is fun as hell, and since Korvette is most often mocking himself during Honeys, it doesn't come off as hectoring.

The Magic Place, her first album for Asthmatic Kitty, stands above her earlier work in virtually every way.

While previous albums gave a studio sheen to the noise, Dilate has a looser, more spontaneous feel to it.