Even if this is an album that defies obvious lineage and needs a roadmap to uncover the specific sources from Joe Barrite's archive, there's an inescapable sense of emotional impact here.

Their self-titled debut EP for Warp and LuckyMe spans 16 minutes of some of the year's most brazen, positively huge hip-hop sounds.

In keeping with the album's title, Never is uncompromising and direct.

Tipped Bowls feels like a minor record, partially by design. It never grabs you by the throat. It never gives you something totally new to consider. It's also highly listenable, and has a way of slipping in through the side door that I admire.

Shrines is not about range, instead offering subtly different versions of a single, near-perfect idea. You might think of the album as a sculpture, and each track offers a different vantage point... compulsively listenable.

Major's reliance on words rather than riffs doesn't quite feel as effective or unique in conveying its highness on life. It doesn't sound notably more polished or expensive than its predecessor, just more restrained.

The impeccable cool of Sadier's approach freezes out political engagement in lieu of a brand of fashionable leftism to match the sofa.

Anyone can manufacture hope through a slogan, but there's an empathy and humanity that simply can't be faked as Angelakos tries to figure out how to stay atop his life. It's hard to think of a more noble goal for a pop album.

The band acquits itself amazingly well, mixing in a few originals with a well-chosen selection of Golden Age songs, folk tunes, and Azmari troubadour songs.

It's hard not to think that Jackson would have made a better case for this music if he'd put together one blinding disc of stomping giants and polyrhythmic oddities, rather than padding things out with so many wannabes and never-could-bes.

It's best to turn off those imaginary filters when you pump Limbo, and just let it be as entertaining as it clearly wants to be.

The level on which Russian Roulette works best is experienced in a stoner's sound-design-obsessed bubble, where each crackle of a record and particular melodic line of a funk, fusion, soundtrack, or novelty sample seems to contain a cavernous importance simply for displacing air with sound.

This remastered Collection of Rarities is intriguing beyond its archival purposes, as it traces the evolution of an artist over the course of 11 years.

Woody at 100 may be the most successful attempt to capture Guthrie's sprawling essence, but it's hardly the first.

You can't recapture lightning in a bottle, or age backwards, but you can settle gracefully into strengths. Nas isn't back; he's just here.

It's this sense of fearless overreach that unites This Ain't Chicago's best moments, with producers capitalizing on house's additive structure by piling on every trick they can think of to create top-heavy epics of bristling sonics and contradictory moods.

[Icky Blossoms] alternates between caffeinated synth-pop, nocturnal bar crawls, and straight-up electroclash revival. But even if they're working in a genre that demands an icy façade, they fortunately can't hide the enthusiasm that often defines Pressnall's main gig.

A Shut-In's Prayer is arguably the strongest album of Owen Ashworth's career thus far, and it arrives at a time when the influence of his former project looms over specific spheres of indie music.

MTMTMK is more satisfying [than debut, Warm heart of Africa], but it's still a bit overworked in ways that undercut its strengths.

While Channel Orange is stuffed with one-of-a-kind details and characters, its overall scope is grand, as is Ocean's.

The music is for close listening or for nothing.

Hypnotic Nights continues with the Weezer worship introduced on 2011's We Are the Champions, but answers the fuzz-pop frivolity with equal doses of motorik groove and psychedelic drone.

Each disc stands on its own as a powerful document; together, they genuinely earn the word "epic.

Guitars, synths, and beats all sound crisp and glisten with a layer of cold condensation, but they come together in ways that don't necessarily make for memorable pop tunes.

A fine follow-up, Gentle Stream captures its namesake in soft, skilled hands.

There's not a weak second to be found.

Live From the Underground shows that not much has changed with Big K.R.I.T. over the past two years. He's still an exceptional rapper with a befitting production style who can make some very good music. It's just that, at this point, good isn't good enough.

These beats are bespoke. The rapping has never been better either, with the music tailored to wring maximum tension out of each bar.