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).