Sundowning is an empowering listen, and Lukic's roars force you to reckon with what's raw inside yourself.

It’s Laura Stevenson’s third album, and the third that leaves you feeling warmly disposed but unconvinced, gamely professing your interest to see what she does next time around.

The Surrey duo have not only made 2013's best dance record so far--they've also concocted one of the most assured, confident debuts from any genre in recent memory.

Instead of reclaiming the past, they've pooled their resources to create a new present.

The ample generosity of Manipulator highlights the cruel paradox of showbiz: When you give the people everything they want, you can’t leave them wanting more.

Leaves Turn Inside You, out of print on vinyl for over a decade, is Empire’s main event, the career high this entire box set series has been leading up to. But despite its low standing in the band’s discography, Challenge for a Civilized Society is worth revisiting, too.

As strange and surprising as anything Whitehead has ever made, these 10 songs bristle with an exploratory energy that has long been his best (if rather inconsistent) asset.

As frustrated as those songs are, there's also a ruminative quality to their lyrics that carries throughout the album. It feels like the product of a man finally settling down after years of travel and activity, and not liking what he sees.

Pete Rock and Smoke DZA have forged something we still need, too: a great, modest New York rap album of concrete beats and blood-in-your-mouth bars.

Jardín represents a soft rebuke to the star--as well as a rich, buffed debut from an adept young artist.

The songs on Green Twins feel like attempts to save remnants of the cherished encounters that fill up a lifetime. So few of these moments last long. But Nick Hakim has set out to preserve his any way possible.

Recording and performing for nearly 20 years with Oneida and spin-offs like People of the North, Colpitts’ drums have sometimes provided an almost melodic key to understanding the full-bore noise-blasts surrounding them. On Play What They Want, those melodies can be heard more directly than ever.

Rembo is an album that prizes function as much as idiosyncrasy; much like Differ-Ent’s It’s Good To Be Differ-Ent, the yearning for experimentation is always kept in check by an intuitive appreciation for what dancers desire. It’s a talent to be cherished.

Visions of a Life is an expansive trip. Devoutly 4/4 and unsyncopated, it nonetheless carves out raucous passages in which to burst open.

With Open Here, Field Music rises to the challenge with a set of newly crystallized talking points, offered up along with a glorious mess of noise.

The album’s a tad awkward, like many projects steeped in the mild tea of sincerity, but By the Way, I Forgive You is the necessary next step in a shrewdly managed career. Brandi Carlile requires no forgiveness from us.

Part Three sounds much better. The songs are more linear and of a piece: dank bop compositions that often gnarl up in the middle and leave no room for extended solos. The pace and form of their songs no longer springs from jams, and there’s new tension and spacing to show for it.

There is nothing quite else that ties together such imaginative incongruence with ease, a quilt of scraps that cannot be replicated. What should be a hot mess is a marvel, a constellation of sounds shining bright and mysterious.

Mother of My Children is particularly elegant in the way it demonstrates how grief and love share space when something precious is taken from you, how the distinction between those emotions can blur.

Born Again in the Voltage as an essential document of contemporary modular-synth music from one of the instrument’s great new explorers.

For the first time in years, he sounds less like a copyright lawyer and more like a contributor to a culture he loves. ... T.I has dabbled in a range of sounds since his debut, but that range resonates as renewal here. The record falters when T.I. gets maudlin.

The Drought’s glacial intensity and dead-eyed focus force you to approach it on its own terms, but one senses that Hoffmeier is just getting started.

Ouch is utterly, unapologetically about Krgovich’s own [breakup], an album of unvarnished particulars and graphic details. That doesn’t make “Ouch” less relatable. It has the opposite effect. Its specificity is what makes it ring true.

You Will Not Die is a strikingly intimate album that succeeds despite some occasionally lead-footed pacing and stilted theatrics.

After the atmospheric first track, the second shifts toward modern classical, centering on an uncertain harp theme that develops as McCaughan gusts in low, faintly jazzy harmonies. The third movement descends into a tense, quiet dark-ambient realm: as synth tones curl up like scraped metal and animalistic noises whisper from the darkness, harp notes drop and ring like silver pins. And in the last movement, a psych-rock interlude inflates to epic proportions.

On Live at Troxy, we get the chance to hear Fever Ray—a band, now—exalt all of that good human love as a collective, a chosen family thrilled to share their music and their play.

It’s good, sure. Curry is rapping his ass off. But Kenny Beats’ production isn’t anything new. There are no imperfections, no colors outside of the lines, and with that, it misses some of the heart that makes regional rap special.

The reason the record provides some measure of consolation is due to its modesty. Rather than a concept album about quarantine, it’s a snapshot of a moment in time, one that captures the confusion, longing, and loneliness of a world set back on its heels.