Those noisy, waxy workouts (“Tarpit,” “The Post”) that served to make the hookier tunes even brighter on the ’80s Dinosaur albums have mainly been left behind with the band’s youth since their 2007 return. But the swaying, softer respites on Not prove just as effective.

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.

Even at the EP’s most florid moments--say at the 11-minute mark, where they zone out for a minute of cobweb-like arpeggios--it remains music of immense impact and gravity.

The best bits are when the band’s own drummer Dale Crover picks up the bass for a third of the album’s 12 tracks.

They maintain a slow, directionless drift that weights their third record with the dread of what’s beyond the sky.

Late Nights: Europe is a dirty, delectable paean to the mischief that takes place after three in the morning.

[A] sensational debut--she’s evolving into an artist serious pop listeners can commit to.

Everybody Talking might not be the very best record Gucci’s ever released--as much as everyone’s rooting for him right now, it’s hard to say whether this album can displace Chicken Talk or Mr. Zone 6 in his vast canon. But it’s by far the greatest cause for celebration in all of Gucci’s career; the iceman comebacketh.

The band sounds better than ever, too, mounting a muscular four-way attack that captures the immediacy of their frenetic synchronicity better than any non-live album of theirs to date.

By seamlessly incorporating disparate collaborations into the fabric of this City, Crampton summons a greater collective strength than they’ve exhibited on their own--and implies that, going forward, her muse could lead her anywhere, with anyone.

It can be strikingly narrow, to impressive ends--not many producers would be able to wring so much emotion from stoned, spacey, minor-key arrangements year after year. ... But in other ways, the results can be mixed.

From the moment that crystalline keyboard riff and sparse drum machine open the first track, “And That, Too,” it’s clear the band has raised the stakes to match the talent they’ve been hanging out with.

Psychopomp is a 25-minute-long dream-pop album that feels like much more: a sharp-edged exploration of how loneliness and longing form into brittle personal shields.

Not everything works, and the second side maybe gets bathed in one too many foggy organ dirges, but I, Gemini is like the chorus subject in weirdo-pop single of the year “Eat Shiitake Mushrooms”: Never invincible, but never predictable.

[A] crop of relatively cheerful-sounding — not to mention industrious, and never dull--tracks.

It’s not at all certain that this lovely, gentle record will ever get a follow-up--fortunately, it already sounds damn-near timeless.

Sweetly alienated knockouts like “Ice Cream (On My Own)” and “Sometimes Accidentally” lend a gravitas to twee as shruggily out of place in 2016 as Tallulah was in 1987--and every bit as necessary.

It’s not easy to homogenize the opposing forces at play, but everything here feels like a genuine rumble through a mind scarred and inebriated by the reality of gang life and chasing the American dream while the room spins.

Both the album’s most grating and gratifying moments sound like they could’ve emanated from a Hot Topic 15 years ago. There’s danger in that nostalgia, but when it’s good, it’s great. It’s a decidedly uncool record from a band that’s long since stopped caring about these things.

Nice as F**k are not a “girl group”; they’re a Spoon that owes two dozen quarters to a washing machine.

Cheetah is warm, rudimentary (lotsa 808s), and demurely catchy--making it the poppiest record of this career phase by default.

Wildflower is a shaggy document, to be sure. Not everything’s a stunner like “Because I’m Me” or “Harmony”--sometimes there’s moldering AM Gold like “Light Up.” But now it’s not about the journey into paradise, more like a rush to the finish line. They’re out of time, but they still made it.

A mature but still totally floor-ready return.

Ladyhawke’s long-awaited Wild Things is both a Tegan and Sara-worthy fever dream and a Little Boots-ian collection of expertly rendered synthesized-rock.

Most of the energy of New English is poured into his (trademark?) ad-libs. The staccato yeahs and machine-gun sound effects do a good job of convincing you that you’re listening to an exciting project. But after a while, it just starts to make your head hurt.

The Julie Ruin’s second full-band album, Hit Reset, slides with similar grace [as “Rebel Girl”] between the personal and political--between funny (or sad) polemic, and sad (or funny) pop romance.

The main problem with California isn’t that the songs are bad--it’s just that there are too many (16 for some reason), and not enough ideas to fill them.

She’s flipped the script on us, and in doing so has created her most cohesive work--and maybe even her happiest ending yet.

So assured of its luxuriance that it clocks in at a trim 46 minutes, blackSUMMERS’night nonetheless leaves one sated. This distillation is purest Maxwell.

This isn’t just glassy-eyed ambition--Hynes seems to have deliberately made this his blurriest effort to date, a blending of his chosen genres and ideas in a disorienting collage.

The Mountain Will Fall is only somewhat transcendent in its quiet moments, and the highs are too few and ephemeral. It’s quaint--a step away from the zeitgeist, but not quite future enough.

Mercifully, there’s no banjo--the Sons of Johannesburg are the less folksy, more decidedly middle-of-the-road band that recorded last year’s tedious Wilder Mind. That doesn’t save them from falling into 100 percent of all their other tropes, like substituting frenzied, overlong crescendos with truly grandiose stadium rock.

Even though The Glowing Man offers a satisfying, substantial conclusion to the Swans discography, listeners shouldn’t expect a now-or-never, paradigm-shifting opus.

The Getaway is about as good as you can hope for from a band who will, without reservation, hang out in a car with late-night-TV cornball James Corden with lavalier mics forcibly affixed to their naked torsos (a bit of movie magic I’d be okay never having properly explained, frankly).

This is Jonas’ complication: talking his way into, and then through, sexual minefields. The theme suits his peculiar pipes--the jutted-jaw pout, the texture he scratches into his more insistent notes--which, in turn, take the burden from the compositions.

It successfully excavates old and gorgeous Garbage: digs it up, dusts it off, reassembles it, and lovingly crafts replacements, piece by vivid piece, for the strange little sounds that have rotted away.

On the leaner, extraordinarily concise Magma, you hear Gojira becoming even more fully realized.

YG has gone and done himself one better, creating a record that stands tall alongside the full-lengths he once mined.

Turn to Gold will undoubtedly translate better blasting out of stage speakers, the medium most ideal for unfettered solos and melting six-strings--their riotous late-night debut could barely be contained behind a screen. On record thus far, though, Diarrhea Planet’s instrumental split-personality excess could use a dose of Imodium.

It is an acceptable listen--on par with the Kills’ previous record, 2011’s Blood Pressures--but your best hope for enjoying it is to manage your expectations.

Puberty 2 isn’t shaped like an opus; it’s jagged and slight and the auteur has already expressed second thoughts about the liberties taken with its addiction-themed coda. But it’s a high-watermark of post-irony indie, a cracked safe of perspectives previously unheard in lump-throated punk.

A masterful intersection of emotion and musicianship, Robert Ellis is one of 2016’s finest.

Twenty years later, he returns with Upland Stories, and the prolific singer-songwriter has never sounded better.

That [the "Heaven Sent" track's] parent album is as fun to listen to--with its soaring harmonies, left-of-center biblical influences, and total abandonment of traditional genre restriction--as it is insightful is a credit to its author.

Price lives up to the hype by marrying hardscrabble traditionalism with modern narratives on her debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.

No one can say Black isn’t ambitious, and it’s nuanced too; easily Bentley’s most personal, affecting release yet.

Aggressive and big-grinned, sophomore album Big Day in a Small Town sounds fantastic; it’s often a superb piece of recorded music, designed to move people and make them feel things.

It’s more of a mixed bag.

Fifth Harmony’s talents do get their shine in spots of this front-loaded hodgepodge.

Whether he’s teasing out the darkest parts of America’s history with an acoustic guitar, or allowing a genteel tremolo to ring as a meditation on modernization, it’s easy to get caught up in the disorienting, psychedelic drift of past becoming present. It’s even easier to just relax and float downstream.

Masterpiece never quite improves on this impressive opening run, though the profoundly un-country guitar pretzels of “Interstate” and “Humans” give Speedy Ortiz a run for their money, and the former even ends with one of Saddle Creek’s signature found recordings, just like one of those eight-minute Conor Oberst intros.

All over their eighth album, the Quins continue to demonstrate what makes them such fine songwriters.

These songs [“Greedy,” “Into You” and “Touch It”], which unite a strong persona--haughty, insatiable, a little manic, really into you--with a vivid pocket version of one style or another, are the core of a swift, heedless pop album, albeit one struggling to emerge from the false notes (“Dangerous Woman”) and rote 2016 obligations (Future) of what’s probably an executive-mandated bagginess.

Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.

The meat of the album is about relationships gone awry, but the edges of that are where PUP really flourish.

Kvelertak reach further back on their epic third album Nattesferd, which sounds more like 2016 metal rode a time machine back to the ‘70s and ‘80s to see what blood-curdling shrieks could do for the likes of bar-band glam and proggy power-metal.

Teens of Denial is an album that works until it doesn’t. That moment will come at a different time for every listener.

This young band’s musical growth supersedes the album’s imperfections, and hopefully Down in Heaven will eventually be regarded as a transition to something more career-defining. Untapped potential is an energy too.

Its long-awaited threequel (after a beloved detour for his Social Experiment crew’s Surf last year) hits less directly and challenges its listeners to engage with something downright lovelier than usual.

The self-infatuation on this album is less attempted-clever and more ambient, a body-posi constant that gives the plethora of tasty palm-muted figures and colorful production settings a semblance of gravity even if it becomes the favorite of the “Yaaas queen”-abusing straight Facebook friend you had to unfollow.

In all respects, Strangers is about coming to terms with one’s situation, and what it lacks in blind hope it makes up for with thoughtful consideration. That care is what assures the record’s grace and splendor.

If there’s a downside to Anything, it’s the exhaustive length: 17 heart-trying wisps-of-songs that near the 80-minute mark, akin to needing a tissue and buying a Costco pallet of Kleenex.

Paradise lands closer to technical brilliance than emotional resonance, but you can feel the band reaching.

Given Holy Ghost’s two-pronged creation (unlike Lukens, Ewald wrote his contributions before Modern Baseball hit the studio), it’s impressive that the finished product sounds as cohesive as it does. That certainly speaks to the guys’ artistic connection and overall friendship. The union might be even cleaner, though, if the songwriting had been more of a collaboration rather than two separate auteurs’ A-side/B-side project.

The LP’s sunset pastels and recurring elastic bass lines at times threaten to rob the tracks of their singularities. But 99.9% is a success because Kaytranada fosters an environment where every guest shines.

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

Somehow, Pool transmutes fatigue and anxiety into a hallucinatory magick that’s far more cathartic than a jacuzzi soak or a glass of wine. It’s Radiohead doing Radiohead on a molecular level, via controlled burns. Their weary indifference to us becomes our transcendence.

It’s a testament to the extraordinary breadth of Oh No, as Lanza metamorphosizes from an intriguing curiosity to a formidable contender in contemporary electronic music.

There’s next to no tempo to speak of, and they assiduously cultivate a studied monotony, but one can’t escape the sense that this slab is, secretly, the ultimate grower.

At its wildest moments, this synthesized Gensho sounds like the universe throwing up in its own mouth.

Will ultimately is a record about going places, even if it takes its sweet time. Uninterested in either Point A or Point B, Will is happy to just drift about in the in-between.

Nocturnal Koreans, the band’s 15th album, forgoes power for stillness, and manages the unprecedented: It’s the best thing they’ve done in 14 years.

Almost every track on The Impossible Kid is indistinguishable from the next, blending together in a way that converts the man’s talent into his fatal flaw, due in part to the forgettable beats.

Though it would still be a potent political statement, Hopelessness would be something of a joyless slog if the music weren’t so gorgeous, matching the intensity of the subject matter without overwhelming it and giving the appropriate space to ANOHNI’s voice, which remains a glorious instrument.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who listen for lyrics, and those who listen for beats. If you belong to the latter group, then Views will be one of the best albums released this year. If you’re in the former, well...

Whichever side you fall on, King is worth myriad repeat listens: Dolph bridges the gap between his hometown and the Atlanta production that dominates rap’s mainstream.

Never mind that they still haven’t quite figured out the right formula; for all of their renewed gumption, improved production, and flair with the pen, Pity Sex remain limited by their narrow emotional range and over-reliance on their influences.

Some songs function well as singularities, particularly “New Level” and “Grandma,” which showcase a few of Ferg’s best qualities in spurts, but as a complete work, Always Strive and Prosper is a misfire that presses to be greater than the sum of its parts.

As a body of songs, Lemonade presents Bey at her most skilled and fully matriculated as a pop studio maven and conductor of the present’s preferred orchestral mode: creative file-sharing. ... Lemonade the album, however, is out to sonorously suck you into its gully gravitational orbit the old fashioned way, placing the burden of conjuration on its steamy witches’ brew of beats, melodies, and heavy-hearted-to-merry-pranksterish vocal seductions.

While this album is inarguably Konono’s slickest offering yet, slick remains a relative term with these lo-fi guys.

It’s the spirit of community that defines Honey, a doting mixtape that cherishes the one thing that matters most to Katy B: club culture. From making it past the door to after-hours rejections, Brien’s narrative thrives musically upon teamwork.

Like his peers and predecessors, he utilized vocals to elevate his shuddering half-time low-end above mere physical and intellectual impact--and into the listener’s emotional realm. One listen into Stott’s roomy fourth LP, Too Many Voices, and it’s clear that’s exactly what he’s going for.

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

One of the pleasures of Charlene is how we can now enjoy Tweet--years removed from the burden of carrying Aaliyah’s legacy--as a startlingly unique voice in her own right.

This new EP with his New Romantic band finds even more ways to surprise.

Her latest musical effort, More Issues Than Vogue is proudly campy (that cover art) and deeply poignant.

Changes continues to find him doing what he does best--performing chicken-scratch rave-ups in a raw and unkempt emotional squall, and finding unexpected meaning in authoritative cover songs.

It’s a consistent, methodical unsteadiness that hangs a song on a single blurred synth tone, a suspension bridge between two guitars acres apart in the mix, and then shoots it with bolts of electricity.

Its excellence and momentum vastly outweigh one’s ability to describe it.

Project is prime second-tier Polly, opening melodic and textural doors unlike much else you’ll hear in 2016, and it amounts to a lean, compulsively listenable 41 minutes that makes a conscientious effort to do something larger with her gifts.

With Simpson self-producing Earth, and with the Dap-Kings always ready to land on the one with a bari-sax skronk, it feels like a Nashville album that’s been dudded up and funked out.

In timbre and voice alike, the new LP is startlingly, richly fulsome, commingling the mysticism of Smithsonian Folkways LPs, IDM’s furrowed futurism, and the free-fall questing of Laurie Spiegel’s 1980 landmark, The Expanding Universe.

While Gore is far from impenetrable, it’s still evident that Deftones are the most interesting and esoteric thing the radio-festival circuit might dare touch.

What makes Human Performance a narrowly great record is that it bucks narrative. It’s not their most sensitive record or politically astute or least dissonant but all of these things--their most convincing performance as humans to date.

Sometimes a record is a feast for the soul, and sometimes it’s a dozen chocolate cupcakes.

Super rates as less essential than 2013’s marvelous Electric because I don’t hear another “Thursday” or “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct,” no grand conceptual coups like their Springsteen cover.

[Out My Feelings (In My Past)] is not the bright and exalted counterpoint you might expect--it’s still grim, but Boosie turns his focus outward.

Slay-Z is a very good mini-mixtape, and more than half of it sustains in any formation.