The songs are foundationally solid enough in their swaying rhythms and sublime melodies that they don’t need twists to keep them interesting, but the care Emmy puts into the album’s crevices makes it one of the fullest-sounding and fullest-feeling singer/songwriter LPs of early 2016.

This third batch has something to prove, and Bloom makes the most of it, stutter-riffing his best Toadies impression on “Hearts in Motion” and sneaking the timeless gorgeousness of Sebadoh’s “Too Pure” into “Down.”

There’s not much artifice to be found in U.K. trio GoGo Penguin’s sophomore album, as even though the LP is a construction of jazz, classical, electronica, and trip-hop building blocks, it flows together naturally.

Sunflower Bean have enough homegrown ability between them to draw up a series of immersing and original compositions.

This smart, jagged, contemplative work makes you wonder if Williams could wring amazing stuff out of Bennington too.

His new self-titled record slips out of the leather jacket in favor of body-oiled synth-pop that balances between swagger-happy and tooth-rottingly sweet.

Her fifth album is indeed one of the most alt-friendly jazz cycles you’ve ever heard, pivoting constantly on tight, proggy arrangements that evoke St. Vincent, tUnE-yArDs, and Incubus in their odd-angled crunch more than anything on Blue Note.

They say good artists borrow and great artists steal, but here Gonzalez does neither--his heart doesn’t seem to be in the heist anymore.

Although Young Thug moves away from exploring emotional pain, SS3 is still very much informed by introspection.

At times it’s hard to tell where exactly he’s going, but that’s okay when it’s all too easy to get lost in the Field’s subtly nimble percolations.

His songs get to where they need to go, but they’re lacking in narrative, specificity... purpose, if you will.

For a lo-fi project, Celebration is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts.

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.

The White Album not only matches the sounds and feelings of Buzz Bin-era Weezer, but also the craft.

The addition of female vocalist Mama “Mahassa” Walet Amoumine and periodic excursions into skanky Caribbean rhythms (wryly dubbed “Tuareggae” by Bombino) stamp Azel as yet another remarkable transition for the guitarist.

That sense of newfound freedom and exaltation surges through Potential, a rich matrix of the Range’s knack for digging up strangers’ stories and assimilating breakbeat, grime, U.K. garage, and late ’90s R&B.

Vroom Vroom is scintillating new ground for Charli, totally unlike anything she’s ever done before, and still quintessentially her in its streamlined, indomitable turbo-pop.

The sonics find themselves not proving enough either. They’re free, to do what they want, any old time. And it costs them.

Open Mike Eagle’s momentum has raised anticipation for his fifth collaborative full-length (and ninth album altogether), Hella Personal Film Festival, this time made with British producer and vocalist Paul White. But he doesn’t quite scale up his political and personal concerns. Instead, he gives us more modest delights.

“Direct Address” fails to make sticking mantras of “Honesty is like a kiss on the lips” or “I don’t believe in first sight” or “I fall in love with everyone I see,” but there’s plenty of promise here that she’ll move past them, and it’s sometimes fulfilled.

It’s a seamless, flawless mix that in Moodymann’s hands becomes a timeless capsule spinning across the galaxy to rally any generation that finds it.

The pop-rock of the album’s first half is relaxed, breezy, intimate, and dull; the twitching beatscapes of its back end are tense, fiery, theatrical, and void.

It’s hard to say if Homme and Pop are better served by the nine-track length or not. Post Pop Depression doesn’t feel particularly tight or focused, but neither dude is conceptual enough to really justify a larger sprawl.

In declining to meet expectations, the Body have gotten free of the potential pigeonholing that plagues both them and the genre at large, providing something so utterly resigned, hopeless and, above all, barren; the most exciting bits on No One end up heightening the frustration and disappointment we crave more and more with each listen.

Hyde and Smith prove they still have the Midas touch.

It wants to achieve what other singles artists (Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber) do with hits-and-filler records that boast enough of the former to justify the existence of the latter. Instead, Miike Snow’s got the filler but only half-failed attempts at hits.

It meshes the two rappers’ sensibilities seamlessly, proving them kindred spirits all along.

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.

Arcology is very much an extension of that pulsing amalgamation of sounds, while filling out an expanded universe of technological touchstones.

An eight-song, 34-minute miniature more substantial than just a handful of outtakes, but also in execution not as complete or united as his album-ass albums (starting with 2011’s Section.80).

A brief, somber meditation on his health problems and on the stresses of supporting dozens of friends and family members.

Full Circle is like an afternoon on the front porch listening to Lynn tell you her life story, a trajectory with an impact that no single disc could ever fully sum up.

The album is full of catchy guitar rock anthems that recall their '90s alt-rock heyday but also showcases some of the maturity and experience they've gotten since then.

The Art of Hustle is about more than misleading filters, though: it’s a thorough testament to how and why Gotti has carried the banner for Memphis since 2005: “Law,” featuring E-40, is superbly ageless.

The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums--a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified.

With their fourth album Värähtelijä they’ve finally made a record that fully follows through on the paradoxical promise of their component parts.

Four years later, with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, he’s dropped the album that Kanye haters wanted Kanye to make.

The music itself sounds a little more factory-made than White may have intended.

It’s carefully and competently constructed, palatable but perilously short on whimsy.

These songs have strong, familiar features, but they build off of one another; every one of them is full of hyperactive, bats**t detail that makes it immediately attributable to this band alone.

She follows up 2007’s covers and remixes album Yes, I’m a Witch with another collection that’s just as strong and intriguing, mainly because of the smorgasbord of indie and electro-pop oddballs and A-lister names attached to it.

Where Marina’s appeal lies in her writing her emotions large through her music, Christine achieves something more challenging and arguably richer in gleefully obfuscating hers--making her as difficult to read in song as on her minimalist and tonally flat LP cover, but essentially inviting you to come and be puzzling with her.

For all the paradoxical production agendas in play, Mr. West’s guiding hand in constructing the album’s boldly going flow is everywhere in evidence. As glacially paced, mood-enhancing music, Pablo is a hypnotic slam-dunk.

The sound isn’t funereal, but exultant, the slashing and stoned pinnacle of everything the trio had built to over the course of their decade of existence.

Void beats enjoys advantages over lesser Stereolab releases like 2001’s Sound-Dust by offering a rockish danceability they never explored. But the Faustian bargain also ensures there’s no easy pop song like 1996’s “Cybele’s Reverie” or 2008’s “Self-Portrait With ‘Electric Brain’” to break up the largely instrumental bleep-sweep.

Principe doesn’t carve any revolutionary niches on or off the dance floor so much as it patiently, oh so patiently, chips away at Thomas’ own reputation as a space-disco purveyor

The more down-the-middle SVIIB shows that these postscripts aren’t always special, but we’re grateful for the closing chapter nonetheless.

Though they might always hit the sweet spots of DJDS’ first album, Stand Up and Speak’s comprehensive offerings--more substantial in structure and content than your average EDM--nod to the gilded early days of dance music across the country.

Ultimate Care II is reliably dream-like, the sort of album you never quite hear in the same way twice; passages jut out or fly under the radar.

Confident, intimate, and weirdly glammy, Life of Pause is worth taking five for.

Animal Collective’s latest sees them painting with confidence, acrylics, dinosaurs, Bob Ross, a twist, and a wipe out.

Even haters will have to acknowledge Opus as being undeniable for what it is, an iconic collection of 21st-century house music that’s so expansive and far-reaching it outgrows its very genre, unable to be contained within any four-walled enclosure.

Wiz has a decent feel for hooks and occasionally does some interesting things with melody. But it’s simply not enough to retain interest.

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.

We Are KING’s quiet moments have more churn than most bands’ fast ones.

EVOL, along with the Purple Reign mixtape, doesn’t provide that instant hit that Future’s world-class 2015 was so full of. Instead it crawls into your brain and makes itself at home; you’ll find yourself going back to it over and over without even realizing.

Big Black Coat works best when the music is as committed to frenzied, all-consuming libidinousness as the lyrics, and on those grounds, it’s a surprisingly successful reinvention for the duo: one that feels more in line than recent efforts with the strengths (if not the tones) of their earliest material.

I’m Up is not a major work in Thug’s catalog. It’s brief and feels disconnected at the beginning and end, and for the most part doesn’t exercise his considerable chorus-crafting muscles. But it’s a fascinating creative time capsule, and feels like a welcome detour during a hugely prolific four-year period.

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

Nearly forty years in, Williams, 63, is at a place where some are likely contemplating the mortality of her career, too. But on The Ghosts of Highway 20, she’s never sounded more alive.

There is almost always an underlying inorganic sound that’s either ominous, nauseous or both, and it’s the only thing that guarantees that none of the slower tracks will unknowingly be embraced in dentists’ waiting rooms next to classic soft rock. The faster songs are highly danceable, especially with these queasy keys.

It’s no wonder the process felt redemptive for Smith; to exorcise years of mounting bleakness is no doubt a relief, but the resulting record is one that’s compelling for the exact opposite reasons. It’s not a light at the end of a tunnel, but luminescence creeping through the crack of a doorway--illuminating just enough to let you realize just how dark everything still is.

Fever Daydream is a surprisingly assured debut that, at the very least, evokes electronic music of the past and present.

ANTI is Rihanna’s first aesthetically personal album, and throughout its disorderly roaming, it remains revelatory in a strict sense; it’s a musical step sideways but an artistic step up.

The most standout feature of Nine Track Mind might be its rhythmic consistency, an exercise in deceleration.... inoffensive dross.

Plenty of musicians this diverse and dreamy can lose themselves beneath production textures or simply the weight of their own brain, but Hilton doesn’t shy away from indulging in pop, which is as experimental and transitional a form as any other.

PARA, is both exactly what its name suggests and a galaxy of far, far-flung musical touchstones.

As important as the production is, though, it’s still the songwriting that makes Pawn Shop stand out.

It’s a better album than 2012’s conflicted, twilit Four, but Okereke’s new grace awaits an engine as powerful as the one enjoyed by his old gracelessness.

Despite being so joyously engulfed by Sia’s voice, the songs come over as dispossessed orphans, all a variation on that same theme of being lost and held down by overbearing powers and temptations.

The most impressive thing about Moth is the way it manages to wrap a more compact frame around Chairlift’s spiraling colors without dulling the final product.

In trying to transcend dance music, he’s actually made its purest form: an album that’s a listening experience.

While Purple Reign is not a masterpiece, it is a thoughtful, if slight adjustment on the lens of where Future stands, at a crucial moment in his career.

Jonny Greenwood’s electric fuzz, supplementary rhythms, and beloved vintage Ondes Martenot synthesizer add real bulk to this Middle East meets East plus West experiment in cultural diplomacy.

At a relatively spry 62, Maal’s voice retains both upper register strength and youthful clarity.

Too often on tape, though, the album sags under its own weight.

Night Thoughts honors Suede’s longstanding place in Brit-rock history as theatrical brooders with a penchant for pop and post-punk, while also celebrating the five-piece’s growth by supplying listeners with another round of swirling dance ballads (the gloomy, arena-filling “Outsiders” and the twinkling “No Tomorrow”) and operatic, Dog Man Star-ry ruminations (“Tightrope”).

Sonically, Emotional Mugger lands somewhere between all of these records [Manipulator, II, and Ty-Rex], maintaining the cohesion and (relatively) streamlined arrangements of Manipulator but nodding to the scuzzy ’70s hard rock of the latter two and Segall’s trademark haywire, lo-fi garage.

The tonal palette is warm and lush, with a transporting quality that’s twofold, sending the listener both to the artist’s western locale and back in time.

Her best album-length-EP since Quarantine remains instrumental, but now skitters jazzily.

One of his strongest outings ever.

Leave Me Alone is a friendly, enthusiastic album of coppery six-strings glinting in the sunlight with the more-than-occasional flat note, scuffing up the album’s already sand-blasted texture with an endearing scrappy quality.

Despite expert camping, the title track, lodged like a splinter at the beginning of the sequence, strikes as too reliant on wintry rue. But when three-note fuzz guitar blasts answer each lyric in “Lazarus,” or Bowie harmonizes with himself on the nonsense lyric of “Girl Loves Me,” it’s hard to resist 40 years’ worth of craft resulting in so intriguing a record.

While it’s no We Global or even a We the Best Forever, it’s not without its own outrageous merits.

There are a few strong sonic ties to God Complex, specifically the works of producer Louie Lastic, but this album has greater balance. The full spectrum of sound explored is even richer this time around.

Jeremih’s no saint, certainly, but this album feels universal in its depictions of desire--his sexiness is satiable, his desires multifaceted, and the way he chooses to explore them deliberately diverse.

Every note fits. Every key has a keyhole. And King Push proper would be hard-pressed to beat this small wonder of great cameos (the always-undervalued Jill Scott, sampled Biggie), productions (in a first, Timbaland manning the boards on the eerie “Untouchable”), and block quotes (“I’m the L. Ron Hubbard of the cupboard”) here.

Whether the devastation of the aforementioned accident has imbued Baizley with new life, or his dual successes in the arts are just making him a fuller person, somehow Purple is still heavier than Yellow & Green despite being a leaner machine.

The occasionally somewhat disturbing words he pens for that medium knock around on the page with the same ease that they roll out of his mouth.

Big GRRRL Small World sounds like the work of someone too tireless to limit herself to genre lines or defined boxes, and it’s hard work resisting rap’s numerous pigeonholes.

The Buffet is better than just another R. Kelly album, but not enough to be worth saying so outside of a review, much less on a year-end list; call it a good one-night stand.

The tunes on Saint Cecilia--the patron saint of music, as any Art Garfunkel fan will tell you--were largely assembled from past albums’ cutting floors. The title track crawls towards wholeness on the lovely vocal meld of Grohl and Kweller.... Meanwhile, “Iron Rooster” is a bone-tired dragger that’s probably of recent vintage but could date back to Down on the Upside.

Though we may never fully understand BUB’s highly advanced Space Speak comprised of rumbling mix of squeaks, chirps, and squrggles, listening to the ebullient Science & Magic would indicate BUB’s newfound ability to sneak out from under the proverbial bed and bask in a ray of sun.

Even as they add unimaginable depths to a deceptively simple form, Kannon reasserts their commitment to merely existing, unapologetically out of genre and out of time.

The deceptive lack of star power would be less of an issue if there was more here to break up the album’s mid-tempo monotony.

What’s most charming about But You Caint Use My Phone is how unpretentiously Badu comports herself, ever-mindful that one of her most special qualities as a vocalist remains her ability to entwine the resilient with the goofy.

There’s plenty of sublime to go with the ridiculous, as well.

To say that PRODUCT leaves you wanting more is an understatement, beginning and ending with EDM you can’t dance to, building and toppling all kinds of aural Legos in between.