Piteous Gate is a porous, sensual record, revealing and alluring in ways that other albums aren’t.

For all the deft, varied professionalism on display here, Lamar’s omnipresence on Black Panther: The Album might be its most compelling feature.

Snowflake Midnight ranges widely, from synth-heavy orchestration to film-score dramarama. And between those ambient bookends, there's virtually no filler.

Slow was born of isolation and betrayal, but it’s music that was meant for concert halls Cobalt deserve to fill, music that rewards both introspection and reveling in like-minded rapture.

Despite the signs of sonic evolution, All Hands is mostly cut from the same cloth as its predecessors, with the record's heat generated from the braiding of lead singer Tucker's histrionic vocals and Brownstein's deadpan backup and everywhere-at-once guitar.

This is no mere studio project. The Smile are an actual, organic live band.

Blare Falls in the prescribed order, on shuffle, in a plane, on a train: You’ll dance, you’ll cringe, your Mom will freak out, your homies may start rumors about you--which is as it should be.

Their second album will speak to fans of Built to Spill's squall, Superchunk's chug, and Modest Mouse's string-bending strangeness.

It's the album's studied organic liveness that resonates the longest. [Mar 2002, p.137]

Even in a career filled with expansive balladry, there are moments on Push the Sky Away as lovely as anything in his repertoire, from the music-box piano chimes of "We No Who U R" to the "Dress Rehearsal Rag"-strings on "We Real Cool" and the dulcet choruses of "Finishing Jubilee Street" and "Wide Lovely Eyes."

Invasion of Privacy is a cohesive piece of work that demands to be heard in full, from front to back, side to side, on the pole and on the stove.

Krug clearly takes Sunset Rubdown every bit as seriously as his day job.

Things appear quieter for Kozelek this year, and the magic of Universal Themes is in the telling.

Ultimately, it's their sisterly harmonies--not their lyrical content--that provide the salve of this First Aid Kit.

B’lieve bears a much closer resemblance to Vile’s true breakout, 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo. But even though the late-night atmosphere carries over, the haze isn’t quite the same.

A soul-drenched, horn-inflected labor of lust. [Jul 2007, p.100]

The tug-of-war between bristly unavailability and candid confession mirrors a musical duet between post-punk snarls and genial pop charms. There's no resolution, but the struggle is endlessly compelling.

Combining new wave, ska, dub, grime, Baltimore club, and hip-hop in an ear-warping wash of 21st-century psychedelia, Santogold takes listeners on a trip to a hidden black America, where White acts as tour guide through the alleyways of her mind and undoubtedly excellent iPod.

More than ever, Green is the surreal deal.

Voices flaunts the duo's expanded range.

Though there aren't any clunkers, Tomorrow's Hits peaks when it achieves maximum speed and strives for the ecstatic repetition of eye-rolling, body-transcending gospel music.

“Late to the Flight” is also indicative of Marling’s range on this album: She hits contralto notes on “Shake Your Shelter” and enters soprano territory for multi-tracked harmonies on “Hand Hold Hero.” The instrumentation, almost entirely performed by Mike Lindsay, is more varied than any Marling record to date.

Since the release of Fractured Orgasm, this duo’s 2011 cassette debut, they’ve proven themselves adept at subtly but profoundly shifting the mood of whatever studios or venues they happen to be exorcising. What The Switch demonstrates is that Gordon and Nace have gotten better at being overt.

Far from a run-of-the-mill concert LP, Live provides a much-needed reminder of Pylon’s understated genius--not just as a live act, but as unparalleled, influential alt-rock progenitors.

Beneath all that veneer, the band sticks to its guns. [Jan 2002, p.105]

Halloween’s Slime Season 2 serves as a companion piece that’s smoother, more skeletal, and, by most measures, superior.

Playing out like a one-man Verzuz, Pusha moves deftly between Pharrell’s outer-space soundscapes and Ye’s on-the-nose vocal loops. Despite their audibly different production styles, the two artists occasionally mirror each other as they cater to Push’s sinister style.

Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, like a Whitman's Sampler, has something chewy for everyone.

PB&J casually swap instruments and styles while carefully nuturing their ever-delicate tunes. [Mar 2007, p.88]

On their fourth album, the Kings of Leon still rule with a messy hand, applying rough magic and blurry, slurred imagery to their swashbuckling rock.

Walk Through Exits Only might not be a comeback in the way we're used to hearing one, but damn if it doesn't feel like comeuppance.

A motley crew of producers (Diplo, El-P, Rostam from Vampire Weekend, Drake affiliate Francis Farewell Starlite, one of the dudes from Yeasayer) serves up shinier, harder, louder, thornier beats, and our heroes occasionally respond in kind.

The rhythm section no longer plays the shadows either, blurting out Black Flag–circa-'81 bluster as a deceptively simple assist for their leader's colorful wheedle and strident wail.

This is a more mature nod to the bubbly pop that established her fame. And it's a statement from a woman who's come into her own, and who won't be going anywhere that isn't worth her while. We could all do worse than to follow her lead.

A record that's at once stark and lush... Mojave 3 makes sadsack rock of the first order, flying over the lives of the hopeless in such a way as to make their failures cinematic, their pains panoramic.

The most-balanced Kevin Gates project to date, discovering an equilibrium between his pummelers and his caressers we didn’t previously know was possible.

The melodramatic tunes masterfully push up against the antihero's downward narrative spiral, making Defamation the rare contemporary album that insists on being heard in full, in sequence, until the story ends.

Longstreth's prickly surface belies a bright pop center: tart, sweet, and gushing all at once.

Gang Gang Dance are back to testing boundaries. For them, it's a return to the future.

Recording new material live in a series of concerts with his longtime road band is the best idea Thompson's had since he ditched soul-muting '90s producer Mitchell Froom.

Vernon's voice--delicately layered and yearning--gives standouts 'Skinny Love' and 'Flume' their stunningly direct emotional impact, but his sturdy folk cords, earthy melodies, and plainspoken, pastoral lyrics prevent the album from descending into self-pity. [Mar 2008, p.97]

Flying Lotus' spaced-out visions are the album's trump card, a computerized mesh of hip-hop beats at dub-like tempos.

The Diary is almost certainly for the diehards but even casual fans will find a lot to like.

A Scottish singer-songwriter with a number of spare and lovely folk albums, Alasdair Roberts goes for the mad prophetic gusto on the strange and visionary Spoils.

Blankly drawn out, they are as unlike expressive human speech as anything in rock.

The feeling is more of what comes when the drugs wear off: there’s a hint of euphoria, but moreover, it’s a sparse and sometimes desperate reflection on working through anxiety, somewhere between the realms of T-Pain and Tame Impala. As a result, this might be the best BMSR record yet.

Strikes the perfect balance between the pop-savvy shuffle of Lyle Lovett and the lush loveliness of '80s Englishmen Prefab Sprout. [Mar 2002, p.134]

The effect is more Tokyo neon than Lower East Side leather. Surprisingly, the sonic leap forward intensifies Casablancas' greatest gift--melody.

With his unnerving falsetto, Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild, frontman for this mesmerizing Denmark quartet, suggests an exotic creature who's fallen to earth, while his bandmates fashion a deliciously minimal version of synth pop that evokes Low-era Bowie.

HEAVN is musically spry and spiritually hefty at 41 minutes, the questioning half of a nationally fraught Q&A that’s long deserved the answers, none of whom are currently running for president.

Pretty.Odd lives up to its title because it dares to be optimistically beautiful at a time when sadness and ugliness might have won them easier credibility. [Apr 2008, p.92]

The group [her band] gives Kline’s ideas depth without ever bogging her down. Smith’s keyboard playing replaces the bizarre synth flourishes on 2015 mini-EP Fit Me In with an understated sound that mirrors the warm, delicate quality of Kline’s voice. Kline’s songwriting is more nuanced, too.

His patron saints appear to be Harry Nilsson and yacht rockers like 10cc, and rarely are either channeled with this little cheese and this much panache. He merges these influences with what's quickly become his signature guitar sound, an effortless style that can be playfully discordant. It's these dissonant bits that elevate DeMarco's easily digestible pop.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy can be a harrowing listen, but it’s also laced with jokes and music that’s fun and invigorating.

Besides restoring the muscle lacking on the emaciated An Object, the opening trio on Snares presents No Age as everything they’ve been (gritty, propulsive, atmospheric, a motorcycle taking on a sandstorm head-on) and the immediately accessible rawk band they’ve never been.

Songs in A&E, finds an eerie strength in quietude and mortality.

Though Swim is less referential, the artist that does come to mind in these sprawling pieces is Arthur Russell, whose outsider disco and house featured warped cello and ghostly vocals.

More avant-opera than pop. [Jul 2006, p.90]

A subtle hallucinatory pastiche. [Jun 2007, p.92]

This is no slavish style bite by Euro pretenders; it's a delectable refiguring.

There’s little to be found here with the immediacy of yore, but this ends up working in the album’s favor: the more you give in to these vibes, the more the vibes give back. That goes double for Turner’s lyrics, which are playfully quotable in a manner that recalls the opaque asides of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar.

Even though we’ve spent 10 songs becoming accustomed to Chloë’s milieu, Tillman upends that comfort on the 11th song. Ultimately, Chloë and the Next 20th Century signifies something larger. Father John Misty will always be interesting.

With compressed mechanical wheedles circling each other like birds on “Ghosting” and the self-explanatory “Morning Vox,” the machines pumping through Howl are the most organic you’ll hear all year.

Pinegrove could have ridden a self-assured record like this to widespread indie acclaim. Instead, it feels like an act of generosity, a record lovingly crafted and intimately written, full of sounds, observations, and emotional realizations that you didn’t know you wanted in 2016, but, in fact, needed desperately.

Living Thing won't double as anyone's dance-party playlist. But it's an uneasy, bracingly honest soundtrack to life after fame.

Lotta Sea Lice is strange, occasionally awkward, and easy to love. Like a good buddy movie, it’s a little sentimental, and possessed of a deeper wisdom than its goofy premise initially lets on.

The albums ten tracks flow into each other as if conjured by the most sublime after-hours DJ. Atmospheric beatless expanses cascade unpredictably into crashing hi-hats just a track later, and it’s the most laid-back direct challenge to the banal 4/4 thump dominating dance floors since Japanese transplant DJ Sprinkles’ 2009 landmark intellectual deep house revival, Midtown 120 Blues.

[Tame Impala's Kevin] Parker's little boy may be emotionally bruised, but his capacity for capturing bliss remains unblemished.

After closing the door on her Electra Heart era, Marina Diamandis knew she needed to reinvent her persona. Froot achieves just that, adeptly flirting with chart sugar on the title track and “Better Than That” but more often than not, digging her heels into raw, nail-biting reality.

Lead vocalist/head louche Greg Dulli's dark obsessions and predatory narrators manage to sound as erotically entrancing as he pushes 50 as they did when he was courting 25, aging gracefully like a snifter of peaty scotch rather than a cup of flat beer.

It's a thoroughly satisfying album, but surprises are in short supply. [May 2002, p.120]

The songs on this album may well become standards for fans at a certain place in life, but they definitely raise the standards for Into It. Over It.--as well as for anyone who actually still thinks emo needs help being revived.

Their hooks sink deep, but you'll be more likely to hum than sing along, simply because their words so often disappear into the ether like messages traced with your fingertips on a fogged mirror.

Miraculously, this is instead the man's best since Multiply, and his first since Jim to recreate a specific sound in his own image.

Bottomless Pit is a rowdy and hypnotic 40-minute suite of alienation and controlled anger.

Warm and inviting, his latest opus occasions swan dives into future soul, funky dubstep ("Dance of the Pseudo Nymph"), Theo Parrish–styled house ("Do the Astral Plane"), and astonishingly, Sun Ra jazz ("Arkestry").

Are the Verve back? Maybe. Definitely.

Freer of their influences, Hop Along have produced a stunning batch of songs--each of them like a small world of its own, continuously unfolding.

A curious collab from some unlikely bedfellows, these nine songs carry the propensity to become a gateway drug to discover legendary works from Lee Hazlewood to Scott Walker to Ennio Morricone to such modern askew prairie- and desert-dwellers as Jim White and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb.

Mostly there are ballads--exquisitely poised, expertly arranged ones so dialed into their feminine inspirations that Milosh and Hannibal virtually merge with the objects of their affection.

The result is a thrilling, hyperpercussive collection of laptop ditties mixed so cleverly that they'll sound great ticking through earbuds or booming out of dad's trusty Cerwin-Vegas.

From the stark black-and-white artwork to the sounds within, Panda Bear's fourth album scales back, proffering succinctness rather than sprawl, exchanging samplers for sequencers, in favor of added warmth and intimacy.

From the way she sings, in big gulps and Teen Wolf growls, to the mystical art-rock ballads she bedazzles with sleigh bells, harps, and choirs, there's enough drama here for a Broadway musical. But her delivery is so raw that every mess feels genuine.

Shorter track lengths and thoughtful sequencing help Body Pill come off not as a series of sketches, but rather a tasting menu of Naples’ musical talents that’s satisfying even after multiple spins.

One long indie/new-wave rave-up, all spring-loaded guitars, stabbing organs, and footloose drums. [Dec 2002, p.138]

May be Photek's best record yet. [Nov. 2000, p.206]

The Luca Brasi Story was more ambitious, but Stranger Than Fiction does moves Gates closer to a larger audience.

[WE] is more thoughtful and concise about the proverbial end of the world. And as with all Arcade Fire albums, it’s an urgent, earnest piece of work — no less vital than their worshiped LPs Funeral (2004) or The Suburbs (2010).

The Roots' hardscrabble classicism and maverick whimsy cohere seemlessly, making Rising the group's most potently evocative work yet. [May 2008, p.98]

His decision to ditch the club and retreat to a more conventionally romantic setting allows him to let his voice take center stage, which is where it should have been all along.

The album feels epic in scope, imbuing the banality of everyday life with stunning tension and emotional weight in a way few producers can hope to touch.

The warmth feels sweeter the longer you’ve spent inside.

From the albums start the band's signature "low rock" sound is evident. But impressively so are a variety of new sounds, from female backing singers to the inclusion of such non traditional Morphine elements as violin, grand piano and acoustic guitar....on many levels "The Night" is a success...

A lot of Chris--and a lot of the coverage around it, to be fair--can seem reductive on first glance. But Letissier is one of the most nuanced songwriters working, and an inventive arranger.

Few can both formulate hooks on the ecstatic level of 'One More Time' and then tweak them into noisy oblivion. [Dec 2007, p.119]

Here, she's captured twice in concert feverishly reading her phantasmagoric memorial to friend and artist Robert Mapplethorpe with the accompaniment of fellow savant Kevin Shields, the reclusive My Bloody Valentine leader who matches the ebb and flow of her morphing prose with thunderstorms of guitar sustain that weep and roar empathetically.

Baldi and Co. take the best bits from Albini's tutelage, apply them to lo-fi pop-punk structures and infuse all of it with tightly wound angst.

Every note sounds instinctual, every moment fluid; this is what happens when good friends come together to watch the world burn.