The most satisfying moments come when the orchestra stops playing, allowing the quartet to settle into its own groove, as it does often for those London sets.

Their reedy, one-note falsettos barely have the range for dance tracks that ask almost nothing of them, and For Ever’s mopier material is at odds with the very specific, frivolous itch that listeners come to this band to scratch. Jungle fare best when they stick to the grooves.

Room 25 is quarter-life crisis turned breakthrough, a balm through which Noname offers a taste of the simple sort of heaven that she's still searching for herself.

“Auster” remains, despite the pauses, a minimalist study of harmony and tone color, and the gorgeous “Third Hour” is languid and drifting. But there’s also more motion here than we’ve heard in her work before.

Bolstered by Jones’ increased visibility and a newly varied instrumental palette, We’re Not Talking stands as proof that speak-singing still has some life left in it for a new generation of indie rockers.

You will find no comfort here. But it’s the job of an artist to capture something of the tenor of the age they live in, and Pastoral fits the bill: a mad jig along a cliff edge.

On Twisted Crystal, Guerilla Toss journey to the edge of the universe and grapple with the mysteries of human existence. Such adventures can be panic inducing, but here they conquer anxiety through curiosity, finding excitement and even solace in abstruseness.

There’s nothing here that touches the band’s creative peak--and, honestly, even the best of these nine songs falter next to Wonky’s highs--but there’s just enough pleasure to be gained on Monsters Exist to justify the album as a worthwhile endeavor.

There have been times in James’ career when his knowing smirk threatened to eclipse the music. But here he’s obviously having a genuine blast, and his joy is infectious.

They have never shied from commixing independent sounds. In Moon 2, they have captured this utopian sort of jostling, where two people banging into each other make a great noise, and there’s a productive coincidence around each turn.

Regardless of Heart Head West’s stretch of sweet-and-sour ballads, its lack of textural and rhythmic variety leaves you hungry for something heartier.

ith “Sober Motel” especially, Dilly Dally subtly chip back at the ways music is exploited under capitalism. Its greatest element, as ever, is Monks’ rare voice--jagged, on fire, intoxicating itself.

The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold.

Too often, it’s a simulacrum of passion: feel-good house music as daily affirmation. Unlike the broad scope of their videos, their songs feel squashed, like an inspirational message made for Instagram’s tiny window.

More than any previous Spiritualized album, however, And Nothing Hurt feels like a mere set of songs, an accessible group of tunes that may be painstakingly constructed but are only casually connected.

Egypt Station reveals itself to be another well-crafted collection of confections, reminiscent of nothing so much as McCartney’s oft-maligned 1986 release Press to Play, another burnished recording pitched between modern and retro, where Paul couldn’t resist indulging in shiny new sounds or dirty jokes.

One of the year’s best and most urgent metal records, Head Cage is a fitting counterpart to another essential bit of 2018 heaviness, Thou’s Magus.

What’s transcendent about both the music and the lyrics of Magus is the way it lives in the build-up to a war that is only just beginning.

Unlike a lot of beat-based music, the focus here isn’t primarily on the precision of Coates’ patterns; Shelley’s is more about the way they scatter and change shape, like clouds drifting overhead.

The album works best when the technology evokes abject isolation. ... Despite the complexity and insight it offers in its lyrics, the jumbled rhythms on “$$$ Huntin’” trip up any groove the song might otherwise achieve. Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune often loses its footing at moments like this, when the tempo picks up.

Lyrically, more often than not, these songs are frustratingly uncreative.

This follow-up uses brighter surfaces to obscure sinister intentions, clothing surprisingly dark songs in indie-pop innocence.

You get the sense, maybe, that Tumor is carrying around other people’s secrets, and that Safe in the Hands of Love is so cavernous-sounding, in part, to accommodate them. Holding all of this together is a stew of feelings—dread, sensuousness, ecstasy, terror--that melt into a mood so pungent and pervasive that people who grew up inside all kinds of different music will be beckoned towards it. Ambient electronic, dream-pop, experimental noise, ’90s R&B, even late-’90s alt-rock--Tumor’s music is fluid and generous enough to contain it all.

Presumably, this paring down is not a permanent stylistic shift so much as a creative exercise--a chance for Crutchfield to revisit the simple roots of her songwriting practice. In its completion, she has demonstrated just how few colors she needs to paint vividly.

While Eminem’s verbal dexterity has remained intact, his shortcomings have grown more glaring with the passage of time. When he isn’t unleashing his id, he has, at times, veered toward power-ballad treacle.

At their best, Szun Waves jams come as swells, with a power that is hard to dismiss, regardless if you can see their intentions from a click away.

While IDLES don’t sound dishonest on Joy as an Act of Resistance, both the urgency and the vagueness of this record create the impression that a declaration of “joy” might be a little premature.

However well they reflect KIN’s mood and themes, these pieces don’t quite cohere into a proper stand-alone album. Independent of the film, they feel more like a series of impressionistic sketches that tease at the eruptions of Mogwai’s definitive work, yet stop short of hitting their maximalist potential.