White Women is the closest Chromeo have come yet to fully realizing their sound, but it's also far from perfect.

The latest Horseback album, Piedmont Apocrypha, compacts this meandering trajectory into a five-song narrative that's inclusive, intriguing, and unquestionably creepy.

The line between exhilarating and exasperating is still being straddled to the point where it's starting to chafe.

The Evans narrative provides an emotional throughline that connects and grounds this stylistically free-ranging collection.

As long as McMahon is singing, Amen Dunes will never sound quite like anyone else--and on Love, he sings better and more ambitiously than ever.

Process carries with it the possibility of Yvette evolving into something even more ambitious and imposing.

Throughout Turn Blue, it's difficult to tell how invested these guys actually are in the music they're making, an indifferent attitude that encourages the listener to act in tandem.

Bermuda Waterfall was written for his friends, whom he memorializes on "Hangin On" for being so thoughtful as to wonder when he might be coming to a party. That's the type of inconsequential, commonplace interaction that sometimes means the world to an individual, and Savage’s ability to locate an oasis of connection in a desert of heartbreak is what makes Bermuda Waterfall endearing rather than irritating.

He’s responded in the best way possible: by producing a record that, in structure and scale, is every bit The Seer’s equal, yet possessed by a peculiar energy and spirit that proves all the more alluring in its dark majesty.

It’s great the band was able to find a throughline between the comfortable and the experimental this time around, but on Nabuma Rubberband they let go of a little too much of themselves in the process.

If Youth Culture Forever runs the risk of alienating listeners who aren’t particularly interested in what young people have to say about anything, though, it’s a mark of the album’s endearing success that PAWS don’t seem to care.

There isn’t much romantic love, just the romanticization of young lust and teen angst. Those are part of the same continuum, though and when II taps into its eternal power, the cries from Milner’s bedroom nothing short of universal.

For the first time in Atmosphere's long career, the stakes feel low, and Southsiders feels both pleasant and noncommittal, like it isn't even convinced of its own right to exist.

The works are raw and technically poor, but the bitterness and hatred they express is overwhelming, illustrating how base feeling, when expressed with such belief, can overcome any window dressing put up around it.

In the Hollows never feels lived-in, or more generously, part of the reality Baldwin has found and written into these songs. The exception comes with the title cut, the record’s biggest production and the most anomalous and audacious pop anthem of Baldwin’s career.

Sheezus has a few good points and some admirable intentions, but too often it misses the point.

The record is an easy, pleasant listen, but it's not particularly compelling as a whole, occasionally falling into a pattern of contented stuffiness.

The immaculate emptiness is, in a sense, Asiatisch’s masterstroke, helping bolster the pervading sense of dislocation of being exposed to a society that’s been fed through the photocopier one too many times.

Their refusal to let the record resolve itself into something that can be easily sorted or explained makes it easy to play it on repeat, trying to find a new angle to approach it from.

Her mesmerizing, eventful, and strange album brings these remote voices close enough to feel their breath in our ears.

The album finally makes good on the post-punk and metal influences that have forever lingered at the edges of Wovenhand’s output.

Nothing here bears the strain of overzealous ambition, there are no flubbed notes, unseemly textures, unfortunate lyrical ideas; everything positive or negative about Breathing Statues is simply too ephemeral to make a fuss about.

As with Skying, it’s a high compliment to say Luminous is a giant bowl of assorted, premium ear candy, and it’s about as nourishing, which maybe is the point.

Gone is the chipper ukulele of w h o k i l l and BiRd-BrAiNs; Nikki Nack signifies maturity while still allowing room for Garbus to do zany things.

Artificial Sweeteners certainly isn't a terrible album, and it does the trick if you're just looking for a quick pick-me-up, but it leaves a bland aftertaste.

We’re used to breakup albums that assume you just want to crawl into a hole and die, but I Never Learn is for the times when heartbreak is so life-affirming that you want to share the feeling with the world.

Someday World is well arranged, meticulously produced, even catchy at times. But there’s an overriding sense of aimlessness, of people just dropping by the studio and breezing into the songs before wafting off to a more important appointment.

For an album recorded primitively inside a Nashville box, there are some stunning performances on A Letter Home.... Occasionally, though, the recording quality distracts from the album's content.