More often than not, they make the whole big mess work, even if they can’t make you care whether or not that damn boy even makes it out of the well.

Despite radiating a gentle, unassuming tranquility, Weft rarely bores.

All the Time is sincere so it doesn’t have to be deep—merely an invitation to look beneath the surface.

The album has a telepathic quality to it, like Sandy Denny working with Richard Thompson and John Wood on The North Star Grassman and the Raven, or Elliott Smith mind-melding with Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock for Either/Or. Lay’s lyrics find depth and meaning in everyday moments.

Sea When Absent has the quality of one of those spectacularly bright summer days when they color in everything seems a little over-saturated, and it induces the same dizzy, woozy feeling you get after staring directly at the sun.

Instead of following his darker impulses or fantastically out-there indulgences, Coombes plays it safe.

Strummer’s career was a testament for open borders and open hearts. While such compassion may have fallen out of fashion, Strummer’s messy, impassioned music now sounds even more urgent and necessary.

Herndon and her ensemble displace the human voice from its usual setting just enough that it startles the ear. But that displacement allows you to hear voices as if for the very first time, listening ravenously for proof that out there in the unknown, someone besides yourself exists and is singing.

That gradual unfolding is one of Historian’s many delights. It’s not an easy album to wear out. It lasts, and it should, given that so many of its lyrics pick at time, and the way time condenses around deep emotional attachments to other people.

It is primordial and juvenile, dumb and clever, arch and true, and captures a band at that rare time before any self-conscious tones creep into their music. All the while, black midi discover what has been pioneered by countless bands before, and still present it as something entirely new.

By the Throat demands those kinds of complex distinctions, though. Its radiance is a dark one, and its most sinister moments lead to deliberate calm.

Bliss is eerie because it takes the seduction of those forms and turns it slightly askew; there's something unsettling about the musical equivalent of a permanent smile.

Hanging Gardens is a decadent trifle to lose yourself in, a deceptively simple record that has the potential for great longevity.

As much of a throwback as Mering can seem, at her best she captures her era in her words.

On By the Time I Get to Phoenix, they reintroduce themselves as wide-eyed explorers, a rep that suits their fascination with rap’s mechanics, its margins, and its future.

Highlights cohere into another solid project, but at this stage in Jenkins’ career, adding some new parts to his formula feels pertinent. Getting into a groove is cool, but staying in that groove for too long can become a detriment.

The music is breathtakingly simple but also sneakily and refreshingly adventurous. Listening to the carefully wrought songs on Suddenly, I wished that Snaith had given freer rein to his experimental instincts. On Cherry, he cuts loose.

For the duo to finally meet in the middle for a full-length project after all these years—and for that project to be as warm, gutter, and satisfying as The Elephant Man’s Bones—is remarkable.

They’ve managed to smuggle working-class subject matter into grand, gleaming Britpop without sacrificing their hardcore ethos or the scrappy hope that keeps them in forward motion.

As always, Integrity’s affinity for chaos supplies much of Howling’s latent gravitas, especially on the first few listens. The record’s lurching pace is powered by a bludgeoning type of bait-and-switch mechanic; For every extended, arduous trudge through the trenches, there’s a shot of good, unclean fun.

Doused with sleek and slippery riffs, the album's early succession of propulsive, three-minute art-pop songs is especially strong.

Where Desertshore and The Final Report connect is through a fascination with reaching the point where beauty gets tangled up with ugliness.

indulge his every whim and mood and which emphasizes his songwriting range. As a result, the album repositions Erickson's psych rock as the foundation for a diverse sound.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs still create great, compelling pop-rock, largely because of the way the songs themselves are organized, with conventional verse-chorus structures repeatedly eschewed in favor of detours, miniature grooves, and lengthy asides that produce the sensation of a band and a singer impulsively following their own emotional whims.

His new record is another collection of effortlessly gorgeous ruminations on hip-hop expressed through thermal updrafts, babbling brooks, and cracking twigs.

The album, and the woman steering it, are not only comfortable with their eccentricities but strengthened by them, and the effect is enthralling.

There isn’t a moment where Perico is upstaged, and his immediate charm is in the stylish near yelp of his rapping voice, the way he struts over a beat. He seems to always be at the top of his register, but he tucks a deceptive range of perky melody into each verse and hook. All of this plays out over a sleek G-funk backdrop, with plenty of playful nuance in the production.

If Durand Jones & the Indications was the party, their second album and first since signing to Dead Oceans, American Love Call, is the slow dance.