At once cosmically huge and acutely personal, Zauner captures grief for the perversely intimate yet overwhelming pain it is. Long may she keep at this music thing.

The five tracks here differ from their predecessors only by degrees, so if you liked the previous records there's little here to find too upsetting, but as an EP it feels like a stopgap ahead of the next Com Truise album.

Super elaborates and intensifies Electric’s approach: Louder, brighter, more. It doesn’t have the sustained arc of that album, but Price specializes in renovating house and disco, modernizing with care, and his small details still beguile.

It is, if anything, even denser, more dimly lit, more seamlessly contoured [than 2013's Cupid's Head].

He's a skilled enough songwriter that he could probably pull off an entire sobering album about this stuff. Instead he made a really fun, self-effacing one.

There may be no artist more committed to the line as a creative medium than Nisennenmondai; projected through Sherwood's spacetime-distorting lens, their vision of infinity becomes all the more engrossing.

Many of the songs ("Embody," "On the Lips," "Too Dark" and "Sleep Song") on the album have appeared in acoustic permutations in past work, and they make the leap seamlessly. Each are marvelously well-wrought trains of thought, cramming existential questions into the banality of everyday moments and finding something beatific even in the plainest of things.

All told, Fleeting isn't as distinct or as instant as its predecessors, particularly Jones' 2011 masterpiece, The Wanting.

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.

Where they once aspired to be your blood-pumping druganaut, Black Mountain now excel at the art of making you uncomfortably numb.

Changes’ lyrics are immediately and sometimes overly familiar, but Bradley’s unmistakable voice is the obvious draw throughout.

The pace is unhurried, and Gibson offers a cathartic tale of loss and redemption, set against a gorgeous sonic backdrop. She sounds newly confident, invigorated, and free.

A Mineral Love bursts with cheerful, candy-colored falsetto funk, not unlike Ambivalence, while leaving out the crunch and glitch, letting the instruments breathe.

The tape plays like a final installment, going out with a bang and saving some of the series' best for last.

We listen to Weezer in 2016 largely for nostalgic dog whistles. We listen because Blue retreads like "Endless Summer" and "Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori" offer Proustian pleasures in spite of their obviously-recycled frameworks, and because the simpering, sweet "L.A. Girlz" is the group's best single since "Island in the Sun."

Though it's Moderat's strongest record, III isn't quite all killer. The very Field-like "Finder" bounces its vocal loop into the pocket, but it doesn't show off the songcraft found on songs like "Reminder," which might have sprung from a solo album by Thom Yorke.

Slow Forever thrives in that existential anxiety, as though Wunder and Fell realized they had a lot to lose but even more to gain. As surprising as it may seem for an album where death, despair, and destruction linger in every word, Cobalt gambled on resurrection and, against the odds, advanced.

Lacking compelling hooks, a unifying mood, or a clear narrative, his debut is oddly inflexible and over-calculated.

Even as they explore alien aesthetics, the Body and Full of Hell are constantly finding ways to uphold the spirit of each other's work.

Wuthering Drum is a work seemingly unconcerned about giving you what you want, but what it does provide is almost enough.

These songs feel personal. They tug at important moments. It's a quietly masterful, emotionally rich work. Of all their records, it's ultimately the one that sounds the most like the image their band name evokes.

Much like the producer’s former offerings, Dame Fortune tries to be everything all at once, making for a good listen with occasional lapses.

Each song is well-structured and wise beyond its years while the messages are confused, delicate and very, very teenage. This is the sound of growing up smart.

At 11 tracks, it's longer than 2 and lacks the experimentation of Drink More Water 5, and it drags.

Daughter is best when it's specifically first-person, when Price bends country to fit her own story rather than bend herself to fit the form.

After two albums that struggled with the growing divide between the serious band they seemingly longed to be and the bubblegum punk band listeners want them to be, The Thermals strike the right balance on We Disappear, an album that manages to satisfy both camps.

A frequently gorgeous, sometimes roiling set that stands out in each artist’s catalog.

Glitterbust is not unlike Gordon's other recent duo, Body/Head, though less bold. Still, it feels like a gift to spend time in the oceanic space Gordon and Knost summon, letting its nuances wash over you.