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.