The point of horrorcore is to both piss off church moms and find a language and vehicle for rage and misery. But there is no aching, tortured self at the center of clipping., just three fanboys’ overworked hearts palpitating into the abyss. While you can’t deny the imagination, you also can’t fathom the point.

Vagabon concludes as a work of not only personal self-discovery, but evolution in real time.

Crush offers proof that Shepherd has quickly learned to harness its noise and power. In a live setting, this material might have the potential to blossom into something unruly, but on the LP it comes across as more mischievous than deranged.

Juice B Crypts is an act of overcompensation from a duo trying to make too much happen with less.

Shattuck’s voice feels raspier and more raw on some of the album’s 18 tracks, a little less energetic, but the musical chemistry between her, McDonald, and bassist Ronnie Barnett remains untouched by time.

The album’s open-door policy helps keep things fresh, and the band sounds more comfortable in their skin than they have since the ’90s. ... Jenkins’ swaggering vocals remain an acquired taste.

What distinguishes this record from any number of other nostalgic indie-pop ruminations on suburban teenhood is the sparkling optimism Hovvdy carry with them.

Pang is such a coherent musical statement that when something doesn’t fit, it stands out. Polachek restructured the album somewhat late, swapping out five songs; what’s left is a sweeping, delicately latticed album with a few odd pop songs. They’re not bad pop songs.

On 2020, the arrangements are proudly inorganic as they lurch and blast, sputter and break. The long-form structure of the record feels more like a short story collection, and taking it in front-to-back can have an overwhelming, exhausting effect. But unlike the sometimes hopeless characters in his songs, Dawson can wield this glut of information in his favor.

Babymetal are still at their best when they hover around their initial idea—harnessing the energy of metal and J-Pop into high-flying hybrids. ... Otherwise, Metal Galaxy teems with embarrassing gimmickry.

Old LP works because its growth doesn’t pander to modern notions of “cool.” But the way the band re-balances the grime-vs.-grandiosity equation with each song demonstrates that when it comes to musical math, the proof matters as much as the outcome.

Their most modest record to date. Think of Closer to Grey as an auteur’s niche art project—satisfying to the superfans, though not necessarily winning over new ones.

Underneath all the fuzz, there’s always been pop sensibility at work; Lightning Bolt riffs have been catchy in their own warped way since Ride the Skies. But at points, they allow those instincts to come into startling focus.

Even longtime fans may find themselves thunderstruck by some of the turns she takes here. But the record also confirms the essence of her creative identity; it’s shot through with sounds and concepts that have defined her work over the years, just presented in a way we’ve never heard them before. ... No Home Record offers something radically new and, in places, almost shockingly contemporary.

On Odds Against Tomorrow he has found a way to settle down without settling into complacency. The album retains the core elements of his best work, and his restless, postmodern exploration of the American lexicon, while refining what makes those qualities potent. Refusing to repeat himself, he takes tradition as a living thing, blazing new trails to familiar vistas.

The more Big Thief zoom in, the more magical they sound.

Their musical progressions are incremental and headed towards predictable outcomes. The slower songs are a little bit more country, the more uptempo ones a bit more rootsy, and all of it is bolstered by typically brawny Will Yip production that cuts through the chatter of any barroom or basement.

Things improve on the second half of the album, when, to follow his metaphor, Jidenna arrives in Africa. The melodies and breezy rhythms of songs like “Zodi” and “Vaporiza” are a welcome shift from his barrel-chested rapping.

You don’t need to be an expert in Cave’s wider cosmology to be swept inside of Ghosteen, to be devastated by its despair and lifted higher by its humanity. You only need the ability to suffer and the desire to survive.

Ode to Joy’s beguiling folk songs are direct and generous, quiet sounds coming from a big room.

It plays like the last record’s darker shadow. As with every DIIV album, it sounds timestamped from the year that punk broke, but the mood is heavier, louder, queasier. The guitars jangle less and brood more.

Look Up Sharp, dal Forno’s second album and her first on her own Kallista Records, doesn’t depart from her past work so much as coalesce the haze into more of a shape.

Kaputt excel at making complicated songs sound fun.

There is no moment where Brown grabs your lapels and demands you to feel what he’s feeling, whatever it may be. He has called uknowhatimsayin¿ his “standup comedy album,” and the mastery on display is that of the comic going out there and killing. But the best-loved and most enduring comedians left their own blood out on the stage, too.

These seven anemic songs find Boris becoming something new yet again—self-satisfied.

Even as the record is steeped in the long history of British folk music, that balance of the tactile and the spiritual anchors these songs in the present moment.

Olsen suggests that nihilism and optimism are closer than you think, that what feels like knowing yourself is almost always revealed as delusion. On All Mirrors, she glories in that tumult, and the sparks that fly illuminate her bravura turn.

His best songs put his ruminations on spirituality, family, loneliness, and humanity at the center, but here he sounds like the only thing he’s surrendered is his spotlight.