For the most part, Fortuna projects a confidence and self-belief that wasn’t all that perceptible on the rough-hewn Antipodes.

Hundred Waters are always set to simmer. That mostly works in their favor on The Moon Rang Like a Bell, as the album’s strength comes from its gradually accruing moments.

It's honest music from the noise-­pop couple, both of whom come into this project having broadened their sound within their own respective bands.

Sylvan Esso is feel-good music on all fronts, and when it comes time to throw on something at a summer gathering that’ll make people feel slightly hipper than they were when they arrived, Sylvan Esso will be a go-to. But it’ll still feel like I’m living in a beer commercial, someone else's idea of an inclusive, hip summer day.

If Do It Again is the physical artifact of Robyn and Röyksopp's union, it's extravagant and left of center, but it's above all generous.

Good to Be Home's recollections are only meant to be alluded to, a summer-jam album riddled with familiar nods to shared experiences but still walled off from observers who think they really know Blu.

Together, this trio excels not just at the expected but also delights in the quest to find a common vernacular amid multiple musical languages. That’s the challenge and the charm of Shade Themes from Kairos, a record that minds borders only long enough to maneuver around them.

They’ve been slowing down for a while now, but here they feel nearly worn out.

In Conflict might not be an autobiography the way you or I would write it, but make no mistake: the deeper you look into it, the deeper Pallett himself stares back at you.

Are We There may be her most present-tense album to date, her most immediate and urgent--the peak of a steady upward trajectory.

Kibby's willingness to push boundaries makes In Cold Blood worth listening to—and, who knows, maybe one day its songs will make for some great karaoke.

As an experimental electronic album, Reachy Prints comes off as milquetoast. As a pop album, though, it sparkles.

Black Thought remains a spectacular rapper, decades into a career with plenty of invitations to burn out. He hasn't slackened an inch. His flow patterns on "Understand" hit like flurries of jabs to the sternum. The problem for listeners, of course, remains that he never quite knows how to stop dancing on his toes; he always sounds like he's high-stepping through a tire-field.

The music is undeniably alive, even though--or perhaps because--the band that made it is all over.

Of course, Grace Jones is the star here. Five of the original album’s nine songs are covers, though rather than fealty to the source material, Jones sounds as if she’s shredding the songbook with her bare teeth.

Definitely Maybe is the sound of people who feel like they need to scream to be heard—and even then, the chances of anyone actually listening seems depressingly unlikely. And yet, not wholly impossible.

For all its emotional charge, Changing Light barely feels more intimate than Share This Place.

While Ultima II Massage starts off with material that's heavier and meaner than anything he’s done previously, the lighter sound of the album's back half can't help but come across as a drop in ambition, turning down the volume on what could've been the most dynamic Tobacco record to date.

Nothing else on Metamodern is quite so bold or quite so dense as “Turtles All the Way Down”, but Simpson comes across as a man deeply dissatisfied with the easy answers country music typically passes along as wisdom.

A handful of tracks on Volume X are decent placeholders that do nothing to expand or appreciably reinforce the band’s aesthetic, but “Ice Fortress” stands out to represent everything Trans Am does right.

Ghost Stories certainly sounds like the product of someone working out their private pain in public; unfortunately, the results are less Blood on the Tracks and more "Can I Borrow a Feeling?".

On the plus side of the ledger, you can understand what the hell Oberst is talking about most of the time on Upside Down Mountain, which makes it an immediate improvement over Cassadaga and The People’s Key, two albums that somehow managed to be cryptic and pedantic at the same time.... But elsewhere on Upside Down Mountain, he wields populist observation like a politician, trying to utilize his homespun wisdom from an elevated plane.

So as good as Abandon is, one can't help but think the more he goes through, the richer and more resonant his music will become.

The Serpent & the Sphere reveals a familiar Agalloch that you’ve never quite heard--evermore patient, risky and, mostly, free of fault.

Su might not have the highest aspirations, but minor dreams can still compel a listener; Sincerely Yours just needed to find better modes of expression.

While Lithium Burn is an easy album to empathize with, you wish it'd do more to make you root for the band.

At last, Young Widows sound less like a string of hyphenates and histories and more like their own demented, delightful selves.

Hour of the Dawn sounds like a summer record, meant to be played when emotions are high and the sun is out. Most importantly, it shows what she’s capable of when the shine has worn off.