They’re caustic and incendiary as hell, but they’re also unbelievably fun, an exciting and rare quality in music this visceral.

Cherry Bomb is both impressive in its ambition and absolutely stunning in its aimlessness, weaving countless genres into multi-part suites but still coming off undercooked in its entirety.

Second Hand Heart is a whisker less awesome, but in the last month only Earl Sweatshirt’s album could match its acerbic brevity.

The LP is the group’s most enjoyable, but also their most potent, all the more menacing for its unlikely grinning.

As music alone, the band is looser and more flexible than ever, deploying Superchunk’s Jon Wurster for accents and subtleties outside of his main band’s dynamic range, and punching out the gate with highlights as varied as the Louisiana ragtime of “Southwestern Territory” and the punked-up “Choked Out.”

Ivy Tripp cements that Crutchfield is better able to hone in on her fears and articulate emotional realities.

Gibbard’s downcast verses keep Kintsugi all too safely anchored and docked.

It’s far more interesting and hard-hitting, with bizarre hooks where you least expect.... Taken as a whole, The Powers That B (what a title, right?) suffers from the typical overlong-yet-undercooked double-album dilemma that makes it hard to imagine playing either side in a year that isn’t 2015.

Carrie & Lowell is such a deeply, deeply personal statement from Stevens that its smallness sometimes shows. Though it’s easily his best and most powerful album since 2005’s Illinois, it never quite reaches the same sweeping highs of that epic concept album.

The album won't hold you rapt for the entirety of its 45 minutes, but it'll never totally release you from its grasp either, seeping its way into your pores like an insidious fog.

Exchanging their volatile tendencies for restraint and focus, Godspeed You! Black Emperor have created another incredible work and one that finds them again evading the confines of formula--even if it happens to be their own.

The Ark Work is best at its most explorative rather than its most punishing.

The new developments in sound and style of Marling's fifth album--and the way her leading-lady status continues to evolve--leave it as her most captivating yet. Just watch the movie and don't worry too much about the run time.

[A] taut, very good sophomore studio album.

It's the rare rap album that actually rewards its mixtape following.

Time to Go Home breaks new personal and political ground for contemporary goth-influenced music as Chastity Belt trades cliche nihilism for proactively feminist post-punk.

It doesn't excite with sonic innovation and lyrical reinvention, it excites by just sounding really, really, really good, and coming from a voice that, in more ways than one, we've never quite heard before. And that in itself should make it one of the most thrilling albums you hear this year.

The majority of cuts on Goon still feel like demos: languidly spaced chords, carefully measured arpeggiation, and hardly anything so gauche as a groove. The twinkle, such as it is, comes from the vocal.

Lstenability is the difference between the majesty of this 79-minute behemoth on paper, and the songs it needs to succeed. So let's give it up to the astounding thicket of music here, the best-produced rap since the dawn of Drake.

This band has never made an out-and-out bad album, but now it has made an uninspired one.

Fantasy Empire equally splits its time between the physical and metaphysical. It belongs as much in a musty basement as it does in an art gallery.

Rather than diluting Lewis' appeal, the mainstream-accessible, arena-sized sound of Eclipse feels like it's unlocking the potential for Lewis to reach new heights with his indie-dressed soul-pop.

Eat Pray Thug is 11 songs in 40 minutes with the most emotional moment, "Flag Shopping," up soon at track five, paving the way for the intense trilogy that closes: "Al Q8a," "Suicide by Cop," and "Patriot Act."

Ultimately, even in the record's clunkier moments, it's gratifying to hear Madonna leaning defiantly (and gleefully) into what many would consider to be the less savory elements of her personality.

This is the birth of Will Butler, solo artist, whose career seems just as woozily unpredictable and captivating as that of his "day job."

There's no instantaneous party classics on Jack Ü – no worthy successors to "Turn Down for What" despite its obvious influence, but maybe a "Bubble Butt" or a "Big Bad Wolf." As a guileless continuation of the escapist, dub-tinged blowout that Diplo effortlessly pursued with Major Lazer, it's one of the beatiest prizes of the year so far.

Blade isn't quite that esoteric or ambitious, just an adept, hour-long reminder of how 14 years ago these guys turned your average boom bap into elaborate fantasies of iron galaxies and screamed phoenixes.

The weight of Tucker and Roddick's reverb-drenched, synth-stuffed production is such that it's hard for their songs to consistently achieve the kind of liftoff that the pair desires.

I Want to Grow Up involves aspirations rather than answers, and thus little is resolved of the album's many inner conflicts. Only the sweet-and-sour music they're set to offers any kind of relief, deep-fried in fuzz and totally stoked for that Juliana Hatfield Three reunion.

Snip a few of the duds and maybe Future Brown would be one of the most consistently interesting and understandably weird debuts of the year.

More of the same, really, and what same is that anyway? His beats, hooks and musicality tread slightly above water.

This latest effort shift boils down to two key foci: bolder, less guarded lyrical choices (much of the record deals with Paternoster's ongoing battle with chronic mono) and more strategic space for the frontwoman's legendary guitar solos.

Torche's sound is touched by many of these bands, but not beholden to any of them: In fact, the band sounds more singular than ever on Restarter, becoming less sonically limited as their aesthetic grows more defined.

Unlike on his first two albums, González twists the volume knob up just enough here to sonically divert Vestiges & Claws from its predecessors (or bedroom pop pioneers Nick Drake and Elliott Smith).

A Place to Bury Strangers is one of those bands like Clinic; they've never made a bad album even if normal listeners have decided they only need one or two of them. Transfixiation might not be one of those two, but the abnormals have more fun.

Too Late definitely scans as a transitional work, a transfixing moment-in-time sort of recording that sees an unprecedentedly fortified Drake firing off paranoid and power-drunk thoughts from his basement, sounding even lonelier than he does than when he specifically talks about feeling lonely.

Fashion Week is very different from any other Death Grips album just for being so linear, and while Stefan Burnett's guttural, performance art-ish MCing is missed, their astoundingly dark and imaginative sonic palette remains intact.

If Tillman's this brilliantly pointed as a paramour, we're scared to hear the breakup album.

It's more ideation than practice, which is why the too-cluttered American Beauty/American Psycho won't be this band's American Idiot.

This EP is spacious above the obvious clutter, and its grooves more resemble that of a funk garage band, thus there's more to be filled in. The cacaphony of those detuned, clanging metallophones is a compelling listen or three.

Dylan's voice does the same things it does for so many of his own songs: pries open unfamiliar seams of feeling inside phrases long abandoned to cliché. It helps that this may be the best-produced album of his career.

What disappoints most about Full Speed though is how despite the slick sheen, its lasting impression is characterized by a lack of ambition or awareness.

Reflection takes a shallow look inward and a deeper look outward than you'd expect from a nonstop party.

All We Are can be a somewhat tough album to get a grip on, because it invites musical styles that seem to be set in opposition to one another to find chemistry, resulting in a genre that can really only be described in apparently oxymoronic hybrid terms like "discogaze" or "slowfunk."

After a decade of diving deep into the abstract, Björk's now more grounded and human than ever, thanks to the two most unfathomable ideas of them all: love and heartache.

The Pale Emperor plods inoffensively from start to finish with moderate gloom and a similar level of hooks.

Belle and Sebastian's latest full-length succeeds in pointing out societal injustices with just enough sweetness to lighten the bitter frustration lurking within. And yet, at times the endless flutes, synths, and strings risk of giving the listener a cavity.

More than a decade on, this band is peeking out from behind the veil of obfuscation in an effort to stay relevant; they haven't totally abandoned the whimsy and fantasy, but they've toned it down--almost to save themselves.

The problem is that Bada$$ seems to have missed their lessons on levity. His style--often-poetic lyrics rapped in a blunted monotone over moody production--is skilled, but never very fun.

The thought and vision tucked into these constructions are inexhaustibly fun to listen to and unpack.

No Cities to Love spends much of its running time reminding us not what Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss can do but what other configurations of players can't.

If only she was as shameless lyrically as she is musically, she wouldn't be feminist (who cares) but she'd simply be worth letting in your ear.

As is, Uptown Special plays a little like a Spotify playlist on random--fun, and unexpectedly thrilling at times, but jarring and never totally satisfying.

As concept and program, Sullivan's best album to date boasts every curtain call and lighting effect designed to flatter its star.

Grim Reaper is an unedited adventure of blossoming soundscapes, vision-blurring, dissonant melodies, and cheerful robot dance numbers like "Principe Real." It hardly hits the same note twice.

Rae Sremmurd are at their best when they're doing what they want, rather than eschewing their oddities in favor of radio-friendly hooks ("Safe Sex") or buzzword phrasing.

Black Messiah has dozens of false starts, short stops, jagged breaks, and backmasked bits. Everything is a little warped. But somehow, the music never falls out of the pocket. And in that commitment to upholding the groove, we find warmth and evidence that we're still moving forward despite the assault on our senses.

Tracking and self-editing issues have always plagued her Minajesty's projects, but never more so than on this one, an album that probably would've landed with bigger fanfare had Minaj not so loudly touted it as all but an instant classic all year long.

Sucker is just an exceptionally good pop album.

It's an LP that makes virtually no sense in the Pumpkins' chronology, but is a satisfying enough half-hour of Alternative Nation-era would-be-smashes.

Cole's keen sense of injustice registers throughout 2014 Forest Hills Drive, whether slagging white artists for artistic thievery or seething over national media outlets pigeonholing black genius into sports/pop either/ors.... But the absence of "Be Free" still detracts. Unless you're the type of moviegoer who sits patiently through the end titles, feel free to duck out of "Note to Self" a bit early and head over to SoundCloud.

It's a small, controlled, uncommonly focused album, by an artist well into the kind of middle age that prizes refinement and brevity.

Something is definitely missing on A Better Tomorrow: not necessarily the cryptic slang and mythology, but that RZA and the other members haven't found something to replace what stood them apart from the crowd.

Structural issues aside, the strength of the material on The London Session is enough to place the Queen back on track to relevance, after a number of less-inspired efforts had all but sapped her career momentum.

"Sister Ray" comes across like a medley has so many shifts in speed, volume, and energy that it seems more like a medley than a concentrated take on the White Light/White Heat epic. It's the brightest gem among many in the collection, which consolidates all of the group's many faces into one cohesive opus.

Four [is] the most consisting-sounding Direction album yet.

Fans of TVOTR's early density and difficulty might get dismayed at their gradual transformation into the thinking stoner's Coldplay. But it's impossible to listen to Seeds' luxurious fuzz and think that this is a band who mean to be anything but fat and in love.

He's put together a record that's as full of unforgettably kaleidoscopic melodies as it is surreal shoutouts to Dolly Parton and Kurt Cobain--pom pom is just about as beautiful of a mess as Pink himself.

The album is another leap forward for the producer, refining his sense of songcraft and expanding his instrumental palette without sanding down his rough edges in the slightest. Faith doubles down on the industrial brutality of Problems, while also balancing that with a sense of hope and comfort rarely heard from Stott previously.

Broke With Expensive Taste is a project dripping in confidence, class, bursts of brilliance, and personality.

Even the full-length's sleepier moments offer a break from its breakneck speed and succeed in balancing out an otherwise dizzying record.

[Kiesza] serves up is one of the most elastic albums of the 1990s, both 20 years too late and also totally in time.

2's developments in subtlety and humor.

The emphasis put on the soundscapes for these songs--unprecedented for the singer/songwriter--results in her lyrics occasionally getting buried under the synth swooshes, but for the first time in a long time, the majority of Taylor's lyrics don't really demand your attention anyway.

Instead of a triumphant return to form, then, Innocence is more of a satisfying side conversation, a familiar face coming round to the back door and whiling the time away nicely till dark or dawn

Reversing their gradual progression toward gentler, grander grooves, the Pornographers' sixth album is both their liveliest since their first and their most immediate.

Isolating his experimental tendencies to specific tracks leads to some uneven pacing on the album's second half. Otherwise, Green Language fully delivers, serving as a fascinating turn for an artist who earned his reputation by essentially bashing fans into submission with bass.

Though its list of guests may suggest a hedge, Echo largely hews to the road that's less heavily trod upon.

The record is 13 tracks long, sounds nice sometimes, and features Ty$, Juicy J, Project Pat, Curren$y, Chevy Woods, and Nicki Minaj, so it doesn't overstay its welcome and has decent taste in guests.

The world that Worlds conjures is fantastical and defiantly cheery.

Her extreme choices can fall extremely flat when she tries too hard to force them to be what she wants (or, to put it in Sinead's own terms, when she winds up coming off as bossy instead of as a confident, charismatic boss). But when they pay off, it's all worth it.

In its menacing incandescence, LP1 sounds like nothing else in the world right now.

Featuring 10 tracks of gooey, dislocated goodness, its gravity-free atmospherics are just right for soundtracking summer moon treks, intergalactic windsurfing, and asteroid volleyball. Down to earth it is not: These deep but compact space jams can't get much higher.

McGee may not know where he's going on his murky head trip, but he's a compelling enough guide that you want to follow him.

Soul deftly blends caprice with the ensemble’s usual care. Anything featuring Daniel’s scrunched-up, uncommonly expressive yelp and high-strung guitar can’t help but be Spoon-y.

Like floating from level to placid level in Monument, listening to this record prompts your imagination and encourages discourse and reflection. Not the academic kind, but the kind of communal discovery people have been doing for ages.

No myths to sell, just the idea of a working rock band reclaiming what's left of a center-right boomer rock coalition. Hynoptic Eye gets my vote.

In her tuneful insistence that every unhappy couple is unhappy in its own way, Lewis remains one of our foremost chroniclers of heartache and its discontents.

After a few listens, the line becomes representative of a larger realization. In acknowledging certain personal and artistic shortcomings, Presley has uncovered a hidden well of confidence and skill that couldn't be contained in his home recordings.

He sounds comfortable with his new band, a pristinely recorded quartet that frames his lyrics with music just interesting enough to not overwhelm them.

Jackson writes open-endedly, shifting between direct experience and metaphor; mysteries left unsolved by her lyrics and persona are alternately heightened and resolved by the hurt in her voice, the assuredness of her arrangements.

No doubt this will all slay live, but there are parts on For Those Who Stay where Saulnier's obvious talents and ambitions never quite get three dimensional, though it's obviously not for a lack of effort on his behalf, as this is one band no one would ever accuse of not trying hard enough.

Although critics of Morrissey's solo career have justifiably argued that his post-Bona Drag ensembles haven't met the Smiths' lofty bar, World Peace Is None of Your Business is the first Morrissey album that's often stronger musically than it is lyrically.

What gets stultifying over the course of 38 minutes can be invigorating in small, pep-talk size bursts.

No Coast is the work of a proud scene divorcée declaring his allegiance to nothing but verse and chorus. And that's a beautiful thing that too few punks understand.

For those who can keep up, some exultant and righteous highs await.

It's an album designed for playing late at night; even peppier tracks like the popping-piston "Burn The Pages" and the jittery "Hostage" have a darkness to them. That darkness might not make Sia the world's hugest pop star, but it sure makes her one of its more compelling ones.

Apparently Citron is ready to leave the nest. When Beverly performs live she'll work with other players and Rose will be elsewhere, focusing on her solo music. That's too bad, as Careers makes a great argument for teamwork.