Jay weaves his way through every imaginable style and flavor with unyielding expertise.

While What We Drew is more internalized than past releases, it is not conflicted; rather, Yaeji finds clarity in vulnerability, in the pendulum swing of her humanity. Crucially, the mixtape doesn’t turn its back on one of Yaeji’s strongest traits as an artist: Her music has always been deeply social, and now it is more gregarious than ever in its gratitude for those around her.

Throughout Alpinisms, the group finds a perfect middle ground between the indie realms of tribal and choral, layering electronic flourishes without letting them overwhelm the arrangements.

With Nattesferd Kvelertak exploit an opportunity to create a sense of mystery. More importantly, they back it up with a group of songs that's virtually filler-free and loses little steam towards the end.

With their dirty mouths and pretty faces, pop perspicacity and knack for making a bloody racket, there's no question the Vaselines were worth rescuing from obscurity.

What makes Sun Bronzed Greek Gods work is the band's innate understanding of the power of a killer hook, and their ability to turn them out effortlessly on each of the EP's seven tracks. Sincere, sharp, catchy, funny--maybe these songs are all you need to know about Dom after all.

However convoluted things get, you still wanna pump fist and bang head, even if you're not always sure when you should be doing so.

He's no longer hiding in clever loops or layering. This sensual album suggests a producer at the height of his powers.

It’s GoldLink’s ability to seem at home in any space that makes Diaspora so coherent, and so specific to him, despite pulling music from all over. He is the anchor.

Shutting Down Here never sacrifices the knotty complications that make his work far weightier than a mere genre study. This is a personal record, after all, and knotty might just be a big, welcome part of who Jim O’Rourke is.

On a record whose lyrics can be unintelligible, I normally wouldn’t spend so much time dissecting the words, but Agriculture so often directs us toward closer analysis, deeper listening, fuller understanding.

More than ever, DEP have songs. They're also the band's most colorful to date.

It’s neither bootstrapping origin stories nor rock’n’roll fantasies so much as the grim realities facing Moctar and millions of others around the world that give Ilana its considerable power.

With more intensely vigorous drumming, more obviously personal lyrics, and a more blatant interest in glossy electro-pop, Edenloff's band carves out their own niche. It is one that masterfully blends the masculine and the feminine, the refined and the coarse, the dark and the bright.

While some moments are absolutely stellar, I Might Be Wrong is only a shadow of what a Radiohead live album could have been.

Requiem for Jazz is a complex record, requiring sustained attention and careful thought. Though it lacks the fiery rage and visceral immediacy of 2020’s LIVE, its nuanced critique of jazz’s role in Black history is an important and necessary continuation of the conversation that Bland began over six decades ago.

The band already sounds comfortable with their new sound, settling into a weightless groove that make you feel as if they’ve played this way forever. It’s one of Lambchop’s greatest strengths, that even when they’re overtly experimenting, they wear it as naturally as the garish pearls that have adorned their stage attire.

Even though many of the characters are heartbroken or wracked with anxiety, Williamson navigates modern life using timeless tropes that lend Time Ain’t Accidental an immense, gratifying confidence.

Jme has made the strongest record of his career, chock full of nimble, intricate raps that seamlessly integrate the nerdiest of signifiers.

Flowing between formal tonality and structural dissolution, Lee reconciles her traditional musical upbringing with her subsequent expansion into free improvisation and avant-garde composition, and she finds an unusual beauty in juxtaposing the familiar character of popular and traditional music with experimental sound-making’s leap into the cosmic unknown.

This is a readymade soundtrack for humidity-choked summer nights spent getting up to no good and going crazy from the heat.

At 35 minutes, it’s more a sampler than a full set—essentially a bonus feature for one of the year’s finest rock albums. You already know that these three musicians have forged a thrilling chemistry amidst the chaos of the pandemic. That this live album exists indicates that they know it, too.

It lurches along like a junk-heap jalopy, unsteady and unsafe, bits flying off in every direction, stopping, starting, and bouncing in pain.

It might not meet the extremely high bar set by his best work, but it’s almost certainly him at his most emotionally vulnerable.

The Window’s great gambit is to lean into them anyway, and it pays off spectacularly, heightening the thrills without sacrificing the amiability. What a pleasure it is hearing this charming little band show off.

I can attest that the music really does move forward similarly to my own metabolism, gradually building, holding a modest climax in the middle, and ending on a long, fluffy comedown. [Review of UK release]

Dents and Shells is Buckner in top form, using a broad brush to manifest his enigmatic poetics, hallucinatory atmospheres, and melodies that appear and evaporate like breath exhaled onto cold glass.

As a snapshot of an influential band in their prime, Live is undeniable, and the set serves as an especially effective tribute to Bewley’s crucial contributions.