To listen to any free improvised music is to hear another world, speaking its own spontaneous language. The Quickening comes from a place very nearby our own, now lost, but recoverable by listening.

As with other Magnetic Fields projects, some deeper cuts succeed more than others. Still, any lows aren’t particularly low.

More than just an autobiographical document or a manifestation of Charli’s impressive work ethic, How I’m Feeling Now is her answer to questions about the viability of music in a crisis. It works better than anyone could have anticipated.

Sorceress is a mature and freeing record, one that celebrates meager triumphs of womanhood even as it mourns a loss of innocence.

WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD has plenty of gorgeous moments. Those moments will inspire the most generous listeners to wonder what this record could have been, if Hakim had given it more time to gestate, and maybe edited himself more.

Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is both vast and packed with detail. The songs expand and contract, one minute blasting open with the melodrama of a Roy Orbison ballad, the next zooming in with surgical detail as Hadreas describes ribs that fold like fabric, a tear-streaked face, an instance of post-coital petty theft.

Where Aromanticism was intimate and sleek, græ is rangy, sprawling, a riot of moods from lustful to angry to broken-hearted. ... The most powerful moments on græ examine the distance between this wariness and the loneliness it produces.

On her follow-up, Paradise Gardens, these clouds clear to reveal her most immediate, adventurous music to date and the always razor-sharp songwriting that lurked behind them.

His candor can sometimes obscure this essential fact, but his forthrightness underscores the emotional clarity of Reunions.

Regresa maintains their brand of tropical synth pop, but while their first records could be cheeky, poking fun at Latino machismo, this LP probes deeper questions of life and identity.

As an album, PITH begins to drag towards the end, closing with a track rightfully called “Flatness.” But as a series of singles, its meld of ’90s grunge and early-’00s noise is delightfully strange.

ALPHABETLAND is a return to the X of the early 1980s.

Despite What’s New, Tomboy?’s enlivened arrangements, the most interesting element is his lyrics, packed with fragments of daily life and ruminations on death.

Though the strength of Petals for Armor is derived from the complexities inherent in self-actualization, it is, at times, weakened by its musical and lyrical scope.

She’s becoming an increasingly agile performer, rapping, singing, and everything in between. It Was Good Until It Wasn’t channels all those skills into sterling R&B that feels like a homecoming of sorts.

A hushed collection that floats through the subconscious like a tender dream.

It is a brief but thoughtful collection marked by old-school production, deep allusions to his songbook, and performances that could be placed among those early pillars. Yet it doesn’t feel like pandering. Despite the familiar sound and old-world setting (4th and 5th century, to be exact), these songs never look back for too long. They feel like another step forward.

The most dynamic of Austra’s albums, HiRUDiN cultivates the raw pleasure of pop hooks without shying from the strangeness and discordance that has lit up the project since its 2011 debut.

Caleb Landry Jones’ music inspires a reaction somewhere in the middle: It’s interesting, even fun while it lasts, but you probably won’t return.

Demo Tapes contains moments of precise delivery, sticky flows, and hooks primed to be enjoyed in the context of an arena show, but there’s a fair amount of well-tread material, too.

The resulting Shall We Go On Sinning carries itself with the strength of a soft prayer, masterfully fusing jazz, deep house, and minimalism into an enormous, featherlight shield.

Harkin is most alive when it sprints with that sense of speed and purpose, surging with adrenaline and sparking with twilit excitement. The one or two songs that stumble into a medium-paced chug.

Kirby’s competent home production, and his economic arrangements, amount to a rich product that still manages to sound one-dimensional on repeat listenings, with little sonic depth. And his predilection for the occasional bright melody line works at cross purposes with his atmospheric tendencies. The album can never fully let itself recede into pure ambience.

Making a Door Less Open would inevitably benefit from a willingness to risk spectacular failure—this isn’t the hard left-turn “Can’t Cool Me Down” hinted at.

The basic material remains familiar—gated synth tones arranged in taut melodies and spindly arpeggios—but Senni has found a new flamboyance in these astoundingly ornate, often song-like pieces.

On Wahre Liebe Roedelius is able to conjure many different moods without deviating from the round, bell-like tones of the Farfisa, an instrument he returns to after years of primarily working with acoustic piano and digital processing.

Not only do Dayes and Misch offer an alluring marriage of virtuosity and pop, the album feels like the best recent example of Brian Eno’s theory of scenius as opposed to genius: the theory that it takes community and collaboration to spark something incredible, rather than the work of one gifted individual.

While her recent records have used their sprawl to navigate a wide array of styles and moods, she now finds a range that pulls her into focus. It is roots music, bursting from the ground, changing form in the light of day.