Ajikawo knows she’s on her way to something new, and she enjoins us to follow her instead of white rabbits. She already knows where they’re going, and it’s not nearly as interesting as where she’s headed.

While Milo’s lyrical wit has remained sharp over the years, the beats he raps over have gotten better and better with every release, culminating in Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! as the best batch of beats he’s rapped over.

Nothing feels out-of-place or out-of-sync, everything clicks together in flourishes of simple brilliance.

They may be a conflicted bunch, but boy, do they ever make a magnificent racket.

Throughout, Showalter comes over like a visionary risk-taker with nothing to lose, not to mention like a consummate frontman.

Soft vocals percolate through the record, lending it a remarkable emotional profundity. Though at times the record feels a little repetitive, Zauner’s lyrical skill keeps it from being boring.

After Dark 2 is a confirmation of his prowess and vision. It is proof and testament that the reignited flame of Italo-disco can endure through the tempests of shifting tastes.

Short of their obvious opposition, there is little here in the way of meaningful tension between the Angels & Devils.

Need to Feel Your Love is an excellent debut, and if this record is any indication, Sheer Mag is set to continue their trend of making great music.

Turn Out the Lights is an exciting sophomore effort from an even more exciting artist. While the album isn’t a tremendous leap forward from Sprained Ankle, Baker emerges with her vision and voice more fully formed. Wherever she goes from here, the world will be waiting to meet her.

Marissa Nadler’s limnetic new album, July, is both eerie and soothing, a lullaby written to induce nightmares.

Prima Donna may not stand up to the unfettered brilliance of Summertime ‘06, but it was never supposed to. Instead, it tells us just a bit about Staples’ scope as an artist.

One thing you should never underestimate, though, is the power of a good story, and Danny Brown has a wealth of them, which makes Old not just the best hip-hop album of the year--but a major factor in every discussion of album of the year.

Not dance music in any traditional sense of the world, Faith In Strangers has injected itself into a crowded conversation on originality alone.

In addition to nostalgia, they also use the easy weapons of doing that juxtaposition thing of pairing cheery music with sad lyrics and vocals and putting the other single (a nice climbing keyboard line in that one) wisely as what would be the opener of the second side if this were the vinyl age; spacing out the good stuff instead of front-loading the record. The other songs aren’t bad, but their pleasures are pleasant at best.

In the show’s context, this soundtrack is a solid A. Evocative, thrilling, and dynamic, it’s everything you could possibly want from a TV score. On its own, it’s one of the most refreshingly forward-thinking electronic releases of the year, even if the tracklist could use some cleaning up.

The band’s strengths are all the same, but they’ve been developed, and their focus seems to have stabilized and sharpened.

Is Wildflower the best album of the year? Probably not. But it was made by one of the most influential artists of our generation. Take note.

Rival Dealer is only three tracks long but it’s as rich as many LPs.

“Suck” is a fun funk-inspired dance reminiscent of early Blondie, but doesn’t match the overall mood of the record, leading it to sound out of place. Nonetheless, Nothing Feels Natural is a great debut from an exciting band; arguably the best debut of the year.

Even if I miss the personal struggles of I Am a Bird Now and The Crying Light, Anohni and her collaborators have created a dazzling musical artifact. Hopelessness ultimately betrays its title, and its banner-waving, because the voice at its center is fundamentally the opposite of defeated.

The album thrums with vitality and elation.

All told, Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest album is good, but it’s also his worst ‘proper’ album since his critical breakthrough. In attempting (but not fully committing to) his most accessible release, Age Of doesn’t feel like it’ll go down well with any particular audience.

Fear of Men have arrived with a storybook in hand, one detailing personal pain with vivid, gentle clarity that should elevate it above any accusations of coyness.

Favorite records tend to draw us back in again and again because they offer a specific, familiar feeling, yet it remains difficult to rate, categorize or even define an album as restlessly mutable as ­Mr Twin Sister.

The record boasts snappy hooks, passive-aggressive bon mots, and plenty of noise, proving that Tweedy has no intention of calming down anytime soon.

Though it’s a tad long, and there are points where I get the sense that the band is still feeling out this new sound, Darnielle and crew have crafted a marvelous record that earns its place in the esteemed Mountain Goats canon while standing tall on its own merits.

While B’lieve won’t always command attention, that’s part of what makes it such a pleasant experience--Vile freely expresses himself without demanding anything in return.

This album is powerful, occasionally transcendent, always honest and never less than entertaining.

Open Mike Eagle is one of the few artists that seems to improve with every release, and just when you thought he couldn’t get better than a full collaboration with Paul White on yesteryear’s Hella Personal Film Festival, he does just that. It helps that the various producers manage to make unique beats that still fit in with the album’s general aesthetic.

The Electric Lady is mostly a classic R&B and soul album, sprinkled with some torchy jazz and gospel, and a star-dusting of Ziggy-era Bowie.

It’s frequently arrestingly beautiful (“Selfish Gene”) or driven nearly wild with joy (raucous party-starter “Mr Noah”), but always with a visceral, off-kilter kick where Panda Bear’s last pair of full-lengths opted for heavenly effervescence or communal transcendence.

...Like Clockwork is a droning, incoherent endeavor, and it simply doesn’t reward the attention it’s asking for.

Throughout In Conflict, Pallett opens up his compositions even more than his lyrics, but the songwriting is no less brainy, and themes no less tangled, than on his earlier work.

ingles is sometimes stark, and sometimes surprising – but its key constant is that it’s rarely short of spellbinding.

It might be his best work to date. Just about everything here is good.

Love Streams is far from Hecker’s best release. But it’s a promising development in his career, in that it proves not only that Hecker hasn’t run out of ideas but that he’s still bursting with them.

Songs on Oh No never outright fail, but they don’t all inspire the same level of intrigue and enthusiasm. There are moments when Lanza sings entirely in falsetto over an ambient afterglow where you will get FKA Twigs deja vu.

Pleasure for the listener is probably moot for a project like this, but Elverum has an instinctive gift for immersive, imagistic arrangements, and it’s wonderful to hear him indulge it again on Now Only.

The production is superb, crisp drums that pop, keys that sparkle and tones that you recognize from Rostam’s other production. ... When Hamilton and Rostam record together they use the same voice.

It’s a record that boasts glaring maturity without diminishing the iconic immaturity.

Jeffery isn’t the best rap album of the year, but it comes on strong enough to convince you--even for a few fleeting minutes of “Wyclef Jean”--that it just might be.

[“The Bus Song” is] Unpretentious and thoroughly enjoyable indie pop/rock; expertly crafted. Nothing on the album comes close to it, even though there are moments.

Shadows is no lark: it’s a gentle and undulating return to Dylan’s salad days.

As it stands, it’s a moderate success following her appearance on Disclosure’s Caracal and Samsung commercials.

4:44 is just about the safest way Jay-Z could have re-asserted his dominance: smarter raps over soulful beats over a very concise runtime.

Doris displays some of those growing pains, but it also delivers a uniquely impressive collection of vicious beats and lyrics that make Magna Carta...Holy Grail sound like Marky Mark.

With Cilvia Demo, Rashad proves his place in the Californian crew’s lauded lineup, and TDE show their own versatility on the cusp of hip hop takeover.

The way it ping-pongs between pastiche and higher art is interesting. But so much of this music has been done better by other artists that it’s understandable if you see no reason to listen to 2012-2017 in favor of superior disco edits by Tiger & Woods or DJ Harvey, or more beguiling avant-acid house by Africans with Mainframes--or, y’know, a Nicolas Jaar album.

It all comes satisfyingly full circle, but Familiars mostly washes over you when it should be lunging for your heart.

This is a darker, more direct take from a band that sees in pop music a place to distill their ideas.

If a person asks how to get into Slowdive, the correct answer is still to start with Souvlaki but Slowdive wouldn’t be a bad second choice.

Compton is an exceptional, big-budget rap album up-and-down.... Although fat definitely needed to be trimmed from this animal, it’s humbling to know Dre hasn’t let his ego get the best of him musically.

Every song has key x-factors that transform already solid works into longer-lasting excitement.

The result is a record that’s concerned about faith, death, and the metaphysical. It’s heady stuff but grounded with vignettes of everyday activities--a beautiful, comforting second work from the singer.

By challenging their audience in such starkly interpersonal terms, Savages have pulled off an even more impressive trick. On Silence Yourself, they were shouting a rallying cry from the rooftops; on Adore Life, they’re shouting a foot away from your face.

Only when you dive in does the beauty reveal itself. Grizzly Bear have never been afraid to expect something of the listener. That’s never been truer than on Painted Ruins.

It’s as good an album by a Rostam-less Vampire Weekend in 2019 as we could have possibly gotten, and the sound is a return to Vampire Weekend and Contra except arguably better with the ‘upgraded’ production and thoughtful textures. The change from indie to mainstream in the tiniest of microcosms: a Vampire Weekend album.

The about-faces make for an engaging, challenging listen, but by the end it all seems a bit vague.

Overgrown is not the enigma that was his debut, but rather it is a first-rate album from a musician that isn’t all that interested in being enigmatic.

Savages’ smart reorganization and shuffling of punk, post-punk, krautrock, and noise music into something brutal, jarringly confrontational, and completely singular is a breath of fresh air and an unignorable statement of power and resistance.

This is rhythmically agile music, thankfully. The songwriting is sturdy, too, even if it can sometimes feel like Bradford & friends are running on an autopilot setting set to David Bowie’s Low.

With Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Vile has added another seemingly effortless 70 minutes’ worth of straightforward, easygoing golden tones to his consistent discography.

Hot Thoughts is another top tier indie rock record from the most consistent band in the game.

For anyone who can appreciate emotional breadth that music is capable of conveying, make Wild Light a part of your life. It may be the best instrumental album you hear this year.

As it turns out, the Philly collective clean up quite nicely, and Sea When Absent is an involving, wonderfully creative mess.

Blank Project never aims for luxuriance. Neneh Cherry instead undertakes-- and nails--a riskier feat: a reflection on midlife that sounds both wise and inventive.

Deerhunter have returned to tasteful pop-shoegaze mode and made their mellowest, most lyric-driven, most calculated... and, err, most cheesiest album. Best Beach House record of 2015!

The vast majority of The Next Day is vibrant, even delirious, roaring with Bowie’s heaviest rockers and teeming with guitar hooks that just beg to be lovingly re-appropriated by James Murphy.

The inventive production and songwriting transform result in monolithic, almost sculptural works that rarely make more than half-hearted gestures to anything specific outside themselves.

They’ve evolved certain factors of their sound and ventured into new territory, but AM is not so much a change of direction as it is an affirmation of all the musical elements that made the band exhilarating to begin with--inspired lyrics, screeching riffs and great melodies.

Fanned by an intelligent approach to production, Disclosure’s fire has started to burn, and is destined to whip itself into an inferno this year.

There’s an unforeseen clarity in his compositions and vocals.

To fully enjoy Bonito Graduation, view it through its own inquisitive outlook, and to not be daunted by the fact some of it won’t be understandable to you.

Morning Phase never sounds anything less than opulent.

RR7349 proves that Stranger Things was no fluke. Survive are clearly still in the process of perfecting their “analog equipment meets digital-age songwriting” sound, but for the first time in their career, I think they’ve come close to achieving that perfect harmony.

They Want My Soul is the sort of mid-career album promising young bands should aspire to, and long-established acts will come to resent.

AZD is a slim, sparse electronica record. For all its high and low frequencies, it leaves much of the human audible range empty, space to imagine.

Ultimately Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is a fascinating record, a series of varied and elaborate soundscapes that find the right balance of mood and melody.

Ritual Spirit, apart from the rapping portions (which don’t detract from the experience), pores over a genre Massive Attack helped shape.

Jesso doesn’t have a perfect voice, but his flaws are less derailments and more idiosyncrasies. These pockmarks, along with strong and engaging composition, are what give personality to a record that could been another bland adult contemporary release destined for the sale bin.

It simultaneously respects and warps electronic machines, making for an ideal entry point into the disparate segments of digital life: the horrifying as well as the beautiful.

Shabazz Palaces are often as mystifying as they are mind-bending, but they’re in a class all their own.

The most critical takeaway is how nuanced every single track is on behalf of Kaytranada’s unparalleled attention to and manipulation of detail.

The Range’s new album Potential overflows with humanity, and that fact is what elevates it from just a quality electronic record to a universally important piece of work.

A record this nondescript’s just detracting from what we could be listening to instead.

Each song works on its own terms, but many of the songs don’t seem to share terms.

It is not a return to form, because how could we expect or want it to be? It is a return to the contextually avant-garde, and for Deerhunter in 2013 that means rock n’ roll.

Short Movie is an introspective journey crafted into a communal experience. It’s the product of a genuine artist losing faith in herself, hitting the reset button, and returning with an intensely personal work that manages to say something about us all.

He’s stripped his simultaneously fascinating and off-putting style down considerably without diluting its effect, jettisoning the loopy abstractions and lurid detail of Doris in favor of a commanding iciness.

Torres is an album that is pulsating with life.

The album doesn’t take nearly enough risks.

Try Me is an album that does things completely on its own rather difficult terms and succeeds on those terms.

Overall, there is an unfortunate, unintended fatigue that permeates the rest of this album, likely due to the reliance of syncopated guitars to carry most of these songs.

These tracks don’t feel futuristic, but they shine with a blinding light, capping one of the most impressive arcs of any album so far this year.

The production here is all skeletal beats but heavy-hitting drums, letting Thought do most of the heavy-lifting on his own. ... Ultimately, Thought’s first solo release does what’s expected of him; I just wish it did a little more.

She may be uncertain of her talents, but she’s not uncertain of who she is, and in the case of Fin, that’s just enough.

This is a record where the sum is greater than the parts, whereas The Epic was its parts (and having a lot of them). Harmony of Difference is another win in Kamasi Washington’s book.