77 is long; 18 tracks and 68 minutes, and you’d think that if a band insisted on staying around for so long they’d have more to say, or at least display more stylistic variation.

Russell's recordings are enormously idiosyncratic, and a lot of Master Mix's contributors try to normalize his music: sanding off his bristling electric cello tones, hammering repeated phrases into choruses, singing with dramatic intonation in place of his ethereal reserve. (The major exception is Lonnie Holley, whose four brief "interludes" here abstract Russell pieces further.) That often works just fine.

Alone for the First Time is the furthest he's pushed himself, and the growing pains on the album can be chalked up to the strain of trying new things, a kind of adolescent awkwardness that shows signs of maturing into something sophisticated and unique.

Despite the dual versions, Storytone never finds a comfortable middle ground: the orchestral versions too maudlin, the solo versions over-sharing.

The album’s stationary sound and glacial pace, ironically, make it a more demanding listen than Dirty Beaches’ more outwardly confrontational, punk-inspired previous releases.

It’s bleak and beautiful in the same way Keep You is, and it gives a lot provided you put your share of effort into it. And so you’ll probably feel exhausted after listening to Keep You; as well you should.

Taken as a whole, it is an album about unstable unities, things that cannot easily hold together, wholes breaking to pieces and being put back together again in new and unfamiliar shapes.

Behind his accented murmurs, Woolhouse fills out Songs with bolder strokes than the pale production of Life After Defo.

As soon as they figure out that they don't have to lift wholesale chunks of inspiration from any of their heroes in order to make their point, they may find a way to more creatively harness their '90s worship. Until then, Lifer has just enough life of its own.

Throughout Flatland, Objekt reclaims his genre's all-too-familiar affectations by making us hear them for the first time all over again.

These finely wrought songs introduce a fascinating and confidently subversive artist and offers a glimpse of the road she’s traveling.

Home Everywhere has every element needed to make a great Medicine album, only they’re deployed in gangling spasms and obsessive over-processing. If only they’d edited themselves a little more--or a little less.

Offering passes that test, it’s both an “important” jazz release and one that’s actually enjoyable to listen to.

He’s constantly halving the distance to his target, getting closer but not quite getting there. But those infinitesimal improvements on Hell Below--indeed, the very places where it remains static--show, in some ways, what that Ideal Album might look like.

Sounding like nothing else and answering to nobody but its creators, Run the Jewels 2 is in a class by itself.

This streamlined set, Start Together, captures that dichotomy, archiving the Sleater-Kinney canon with care: from the ideological-punches of thirdwave feminism to their post-riot grrrl classic rock revisionism, all seven albums have been remastered and paired with a plainly gorgeous hardcover photobook, as well as the surprise of a reunion-launching 7" single.

Oozing Wound have matured without losing sight of the frayed ends that make their music interesting.

Ruins has a vivid sense of place.

Marigolden fares best when it loses the florid similes and addresses character and story.

His last record boasted that he was the Trouble Man, but with a clear mind and fewer visible burdens, Clifford Harris has produced his most thoughtful and substantive record in years.

The lack of palplable passion on Nobody Wants to Be Here is, once again, somewhat disappointing and even more surprising.

Burnt Offering has its own kind of subtlety, and most of it is in the interplay between meter, genre, and mood.

Sound of a Woman fails to spark, as its homogenous textures blend together to rob this music of the personality and emotion it has when done right.

Soused is compelling, almost inherently so, but it’s not a classic.

While the band may have struggled in the past to reconcile their post-hardcore roots with their art-rock ambitions, more often than not, IX marks the spot.

The Best Day proves to be not so much a revelatory, introspective antidote to Moore’s best-known band as a serviceable, equally high-voltage substitute for it.

One thing he is remarkably good at across his body of work is letting in disarming moments of vulnerability, where he pulls you in to spectate upon the wreck of his life. On Phantom Radio there are just a few too many times when it's all dressed up in unnecessary complication.

You get the sense that pretty much any style could be Ware’s if she commits to it, but for now it’s nice to hear her explore a level of sophistication as her star continues to rise.