Sumac are at their most compelling on tracks that occupy an LP’s entire side, where disparate elements can clash at length.

As a transitory release, Persona is the best of both worlds: just as ferocious and unrelenting, but with bolder production and deeper hooks.

This isn’t escapism, but a meditative retreat—give it an hour of your time and return to the material world more grounded than ever.

The album remains too small a platform for her tremendous vocal talent.

The full enjoyment of Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities requires some imagination of your own, a sort of listening past the vaporous surface of the music. Like teenage Holden at the radio, you may sense a magical world there, just beyond what you can hear.

As a solo record, it's no declaration of independence, but by sticking to what he does best, Staples makes it ring with sadness and sophistication.

For all of the stylistic hopscotch being played, the individual songs on Nebula Dance cohere into an impressively solid whole.

The chemistry between Earl and Alchemist comes from how naturally their styles blend together, as if VOIR DIRE is some kind of prophecy being fulfilled by the universe. It’s a record that was meant to be: simple, elegant, and always true.

They haven’t lost their ability to channel classic rock’s penchant for epic mysticism, but they have learned how to make it work on a more earthly level, revealing the human emotions that lurk behind their happy-go-lucky noodling. It stands as a testament that the best jam sessions can take you on a journey, even from your living room.

Ones and Sixes is all at once beautiful, ugly, tense, warm, inviting and repellent.

Even at six tracks, it’s stunning how much life (and death) Wareham spreads over these tracks, and makes these tiny whispers of songs feel like the biggest secret anyone’s ever told you.

Gone are the gimmicky fragments and Mcluskyesque scene-jabs. The Beatific Visions is dominated by direly catchy and fully fleshed-out songs that pop like punk, lilt like country, mutter politics, and reek of the garage.

Ferndorf as a record isn't something to get you hearing music in a new way or an open up a new world, but it does succeed very nicely for what it is.

it's more like an endpoint for devoted fans looking to connect the dots. As such, it provides a fascinating coming-of-age story of an artist who came into his own playing styles he knew he loved and others he only thought he hated.

Martha Wainwright proves Martha Wainwright has a strong, distinct, fully formed musical identity, which would be just as impressive by any other name.

These songs capture a big part of PUP’s talent: making music that captures the sentiment of depression yet never succumbs to its lethargy or listlessness.

It's impressive then, that even with this newfound attention to detail, the Rapture still maintain a flailing energy and enthusiasm that most of the other dancepunk bands could only fake.... However, what ultimately makes Pieces a step or three down from Echoes is a drop off in consistency, reflecting a higher percentage of songs that fail to ignite.

Putting aside musical intricacies, Inside the Rose just sounds amazing, conjuring a lustrous, lucid world shaken by distant explosions. The drones of strings, pianos, and electronics are offset by bright accents of tuned percussion, sustaining an atmosphere of anticipation and wonder.

Fireworks hit home with anyone who feels like they’re operating without a net, so for those who have already gotten their pop-punk vaccination, Oh, Common Life is a necessary booster shot.

There’s no separating Wet Leg from the brazen humor that gave them their breakthrough. But this record is as dazzlingly earnest as it is wry, displaying the staying power of a band that will outlast a sense of novelty.

It's weirdly kind of a grower. There's nothing that immediately jumps out and announces itself as the 'Where Do You Run' of Everything Goes Wrong.

As with any piece of music that ebbs and flows this forcefully, you should listen to it loudly, and try to get swept away by it.

Those first three albums have always been easy to put on and enjoy, and now we have a fourth to go with them.

It's short and intense, and accordingly it hits hard and leaves enough of a lasting bruise on you that you can't help but touch it, just to feel the pain again.

Flamagra may not comprise nearly as elaborate a world as those that Lynch conjures, and it doesn’t push Ellison’s art forward in the same way that You’re Dead! did. But the afterlife is a hard act to follow, and in the light of that flame on the hill, Flamagra makes for an engaging way station.

The contemporary energies thrumming along the music’s surface highlight the deep connections the record effortlessly draws—a series of starbursts connecting William Onyeabor to Gloria Estefan to Loose Joints to Grace Jones to a beat that picked up before recorded history begins, somewhere in West Africa, and never stopped.

Her imagistic writing remains spare as ever, making a game of revealing concealed emotion by rendering it in multiple languages.

Mental Wounds Not Healing is a brutal, beautiful experiment--and a seamless collaboration that sounds more like the birth of a great new band.