Sure, The End of the Middle might not be as breathtakingly immersive as Ruby Cord or as transportive as Peasant, but it further cements Dawson's place as modern folk's most fascinating auteur, turning historical echoes into something eerily prophetic.

Where Magdalene found itself virtually overburdened by its own emotional weight, this album is almost ponderously short of it, yet malleable and playful in a way that vindicates its escapist bent.

The effects, walls of noise, sharp changes in tonality and song structure are engaging and well-executed. Despite stretches of atmospheric passages and droning instrumentals, Never Exhale doesn’t ever feel boring. It is deliberate without being robotic, and creates an introspectively bleak mood throughout the record.

Violet’s biggest victory is not only sounding like the sum of its lofty parts, but also having a personality that’s distinctly its own.

Although there are a handful of highlights, the group has settled into a comfort zone from which good tracks emerge effortlessly, but nothing outstanding.

I could go on for hours about the beauty within the story of You Are The Morning, but the record truly speaks for itself. From the luscious instrumentation to the heart-on-sleeve lyrics, jasmine.4.t’s first full-length shares a message that needs to be heard: a message of hope found within community. You Are The Morning is nothing short of raw and emotional, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Those who take the time to unpack and absorb the content will almost certainly find aspects that crawl beneath the skin, but the collection is only as hard-hitting as the listener is receptive to the experience. It’s musically calming like a dusky sky pinpricked with stars, but unforgivingly immediate in its focus, like the underlying promise of thunder.

If I’d stuck to just a listen or two of Bad Apple or No Homo, I’d be tempted to think this was a good album. But underneath the fight-montage attack, the songwriting feels about as lazy as it can possibly get. I’m not looking for math-rock bridges or string sections in my garage band or anything, but there’s a difference between walking down a well-trod path and wallowing.

Ringo remains Ringo, for better and worse. And in keeping with the hangdog Ringo persona this isn’t even the best country-adjacent album by a Beatle. It’s an album for Ringo Starr, and if we can’t give it any sort of adulation, we can at least respect its intentions, and those of the artists who made it.

This thing is quiet. It’s cozy. It’s simple. It’s, to be blunt, a vibe. Horrible Occurrences is a warm blanket during this time of year where the days can stretch on forever and the nights can swallow me whole.

Perverts’ 90-minute runtime and average song length of ten minutes could be intended to alienate, and undoubtedly harmed the record’s replay value for me as I continued to dig deeper into it. Perhaps this is the point, or perhaps I’ve missed it entirely. Either way, my respect for these compositions never dwindled because of their bravery and clarity of artistic vision.

Fennesz' ear for striking textures takes the spotlight precisely once here: through the latter minutes of the opener "Heliconia", he plucks and rakes his guitar as though putting it on life support, the stark tone of the instrument a fragile contrast to the densely processed sound that otherwise dominates the album. It produces a genuinely compelling tension and sets the bar modestly high, this but proves to be an early peak: the remaining five tracks lay down one languorous chord pattern after another, their digital modulations and cavernous reverb settings spread too thin to patch the threadbare cast-offs.

It just finds this fantastic middle ground, not only in the way that its frantic smattering of ideas somehow presents not as overwhelming, but comforting - the exuberance infectious, the fuzz electric - but, also, in how Night Palace ties in with the broader Elverum catalogue.

The Last Will and Testament is slickly produced, conceptually sound and stronger in its first half. Unfortunately, it lacks an overall aesthetic that would see this record reach the accolades of Blackwater Park, Watershed or even Heritage while dabbling in those clear elements.

GNX is the sound of an artist stepping into their power and the newfound freedom that comes without have to prove a damn thing. It’s a several-victory lap long coronation that serves as the perfect capstone to what was already a legendary year that shifted the entire rap hierarchy with just a handful of songs.

Seed of a Seed doesn’t quite reach the heights of I Need to Start a Garden (and let’s be honest, that’s a HIGH bar to clear as it is), but it’s still quite an impressive offering. Instead of lazily rehashing what made her debut so special, Heynderickx decided to expand on it and give her songs a more panoramic space to roam in. Most importantly, the core characteristics of her style weren’t lost in the process.

The faults of Bouquet lie not in the genre lane-switch, but in the artist’s seeming disdain for her own talent, which by-and-large goes unutilised here in favour of an exceptionally flavourless, dirt-road bland, pop country excursion.

From Zero is a tale of two halves. The first half feels like pandering to what people miss from Linkin Park. .... However, by the time “Overflow” rolls around, a switch flips. Though it’s more of a Shinoda track, it sets the stage for a strong second half, with its dark and captivating atmosphere and simplistic instrumentation that makes it a powerful standout. From this point on, From Zero maintains momentum.

All in all, Fate and Alcohol makes for a solid final act for a band which beat the actuarial tables by a wide margin.

Overall, Come Ahead turned out one of the most encompassing affairs in the group’s discography. The attention to detail paid off and there’s enough cohesiveness too. Nevertheless, Gillespie’s redundant voice and lyrics are often too angular, but that’s the hit and miss element all Primal Scream’s full lengths share.

Even with its minor misstep, Songs of a Lost World is a singularly sombre picture of triumph, a band in their collective 60s still making music so vital and beautiful it can genuinely steal the words from your mouth and the heat from the room.

The outfit’s edge has found a whetstone that is able to sharpen the previously-established chaos, whilst also adding a gut-punch severity to the overall effect, even if it remains just as playful in its lyricism and garage-band simplicity. Audacious in sound, digestible in focus and a big-bollocked, rollicking good time.

Overall, Strawberry Hotel manages to create a very dynamic experience, especially by introducing shorter tracks. Only during its latter half it starts meandering, a thing that could have been avoided had a couple of intense numbers been introduced at the right moments. Nevertheless, the album is another successful entry in Underworld’s catalogue, one that seems to be a grower this time around.

It may be unfriendly and demanding beyond a level I've ever experienced from the Necks, but it is so meticulously, disarmingly constructed as such that it might just stand among their most intriguing works to date; leave any expectations of an easy ride at the door, and you'll shocked at how expertly it drains you.

These Swedes know how to groove like they know how to make modular furniture, they know how to lay down a black resin-caked nastiness that reeks from each and every one of their guitar solos they, in short, know how to make a good psychedelic album.

Spiral in a Straight Line strives to strike a balance. It’s a collection of great songs, varies in pace, and is recognisably Touché.

Tyla's 35-minute runtime does feel a bit like a brief spin on an exercycle that refuses to leave low gear, and net dopamine levels are limited. .... Nevertheless, there is plenty of playlist fodder to be plucked from Tyla's trim confines.

To these ears See You At The Maypole is far more consistent in quality, despite being by far the artist’s longest release, at seventeen tracks and nearly an hour in duration.

Supercharged is a surprisingly decent, albeit flawed record. There are elements of greatness at the heart of it, but the problems soon arise when The Offspring attempt to veer away from their wheelhouse of driving riffs and infectious hooks.

Chat Pile leaves it all on the table. Everything they screamed about in God’s Country has been brought to all of humankind. Cool World is darker, bleaker, grimier, and more violent. The lyrics make the musicianship haunting, and the musicianship makes the lyrics tormented.

The interludes don’t do much, while a handful of tunes need a richer structure in order to develop an immersive atmosphere. As a result, Powder Dry is similar to reading pages from a diary, some entries describe full stories while others share only a few scattered thoughts. Nevertheless, I appreciate Tim for discarding all guest appearances and the idea of a comfort zone to truly realize his own vision.

Regrettably, Moon Music follows in its predecessor’s footsteps by being universally bland, lyrically barren, and committing the mortal sin of posturing as a deep and important record while containing absolutely nothing of relevance.

["The Magician" is] an astounding piece of music that has to be heard to be believed, and cements The New Sound as a triumphant success for Greep’s burgeoning solo career.

The relative polish on 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips doesn’t conceal its edge.

Harlequin is a brash and goofy mess that will surely be kryptonite to those who were never willing to buy into her many, many eccentricities. For everyone else, it’s a three-word proclamation: GAGA IS BACK.

Pulls its weight at the points that count, fumbles mainly at those that don't, feels less successful holistically than it does as the sum of its parts, leaves me with anything but satisfaction by the time it's done, and does very little to address the question of when Shepherd will finally show the chutzpah and scope of vision to make a truly great work on solely his own terms.

Foxing may be a cacophonous, unhinged symphony of chaos, but it's also one that quietly encourages us to look at what's already around us, open our arms, and embrace it while we still can...to reach out and touch what is real. It is one of the most dissonant, powerful, legitimately terrifying, and ultimately uplifting pieces of music I've ever heard.

This is In Waves’s fatal flaw and greatest strength. It’s music that can’t help but hold on just a little too tight to ennui and cynicism, expressing the future a respite from the now in place of extending a flexible present.

The truly interesting thing about this is that, for such a spacey album, it’s among the shallowest things I’ve ever heard.

Kantos isn’t all bad, but it is his worst album yet. It’s somehow both too cluttered and more conventional at the same time, and the lyrics, while pretty most of the time, don’t hit as hard as they did on this record’s predecessor.

My Method Actor is very likely an aimless sandbox, one which leads to some very cool songs, and others there's no chance we'll remember once we're eight albums deep into Nilüfer Yanya's career.

The essence is there, and it’s a force, to be sure. If it doesn’t feel as raw, as dangerous, or as alive as it did in the past, well, once a wildfire’s burned through a place, it’s going to be hard for it to relight itself. But those embers are still glowing with that evil heat, and Rack still carries more than enough weight to rest among all but the best of the Lizard’s material.

In short, Wish on the Bone is an excellent album, whether your preference is more on the indie rock or the alt-country side.

Sinephro builds on the cosmic shrapnel of her debut Space 1.8, reprising that record's chamber jazz arrangements and buzzing analogue synthlines, its New Age mystique (at the time packaged as ECM overtones) and its knack for gorgeous ambient expanse, all while furnishing the continuity that album's episodic tracklist so patently lacked — but Endlessness does not demand that context, or any, to stand as a great record. This album's draw is as simple and effortless as hearing each and every one of your intuitions for the possibilities of its palette spool out in real time.

Lenderman plays the tropes, sure, but when those warm blasts of fuzz come swelling up underneath that lazy slide guitar, what else can you do but smile and roll right along with them? If I don’t feel this hitting the status of its great forebears, that sure won’t keep them from being in the same conversation; hell, with Manning Fireworks Lenderman may find himself shuffling his way into that pantheon.

I Lay Down My Life For You isn’t brilliant for the ways in which it’s bonkers, but brilliant for the ways in which it’s not. This is no hyperactive pile-up of disjointed ideas, no scrapbook of jank, but (rather) a weighty and well-realized WOOF of a statement, one that retains the eclecticism, sense of humor and sample/prod-wizardry that put Peggy on the map, but honing that shit to a point.

There's no real dips on Triple Seven as even the slightly less engaging moments (“Busted”) enhance the excellence of surrounding highlights and sound perfectly fine in their own right.

Whereas Beatopia felt stuck between two different eras and styles, This Is How Tomorrow Moves takes the new ideas beabadoobee introduced on that record and fully fleshes them out with no reservations. As a result, it’s the most self-assured and downright enjoyable album she’s released in several years.

The radical optimist in me wants to commend Magdalena Bay for channelling their myriad inspirations without referential pussyfooting, but they play their theoretically dazzling palette so straight, with such frictionless segues that the bulk of its tracklist pans out as one proverbial thing after another.

Fontaines D.C. finally sound like they're in that better land, shedding their skins with an infectious grin and an even more infectious pack of choruses. Dare you to try and not smile along.

‘Espresso’/‘Please Please Please’ are each strong enough in their own respective ways to carry Sabrina to stardom and keep her there for years to come. It’s just a shame that the rest of this record couldn’t live up to those efforts, because anything worthwhile to be gleaned from this particular era of Sabrina Carpenter’s career has already been out and heard a hundred times over.

An opus that reaffirms Tinashe's place within the pantheon of modern R&B, yet one that also proves that she needs to slightly refine her formula to craft that defining record she's been hinting at here whole career.

There is hardly a wasted second on this thing, not a single gap in the energy rush it sustains, and I suspect it will fare extremely well in a live setting as such. Quibble if you will over this being the mode Melt-Banana have opted to commit to; we're still getting them at their best.

The listener might not quite know what they’re getting, song by song, but the whole tracklist remains high-quality guitar-driven pop. There are notable highlights - among them the utterly infectious opener “Never Be Lonely”, the immaculate title track, and the drugged-out and strangely hypnotic “Screensaver” - but every tune has its own merits.

Sure, this is the worst Charly Bliss album, but it’s also the most fun I’ve had with music in a while: it’s an innocent, radiant celebration of life’s lovely parts.

With the influx of diverse instrumentation and delightfully wacky songwriting/production choices, Paradise State of Mind may actually be their most accomplished album to-date – either way, it’s definitely their most entertaining.

It towers over the vast majority of contemporary rock music with its controlled tunefulness while ever maintaining the effortless modern appeal of Jack White himself.

This album's initial impact and discog-relative quality may be nothing short of a wonder, but it only takes a few songs for all-too-familiar snags to make themselves felt. Though the mix places him appropriately low, Corgan is still one of the worst singers in all rock music.

Bando Stone... really is just an excuse for Glover to flex his acclaimed range, with a mishmash of tracks that presumably gel with moments in the movie given the snippets of dialogue peppered throughout. The price of this lost cohesion is that the man really does have the range to pull all this off.

The social media taint/ industry plant vibes radiate from this project as if it’s been sprayed by a skunk, with very little to recommend it other than as a soundtrack to some upcoming TikTok trend. There’s doubtless an audience for Ice Spice amongst the army of impressionable youths who may find this kind of rap wonderfully diverting, but it’s hard to deny just how artistically barren this release in particular is.

Dr. Dog stands on the shoulders of the band’s other modern efforts. If it’s quality indie-rock you’re seeking, then this is an album that you simply shouldn’t overlook. Dr. Dog is back.

Smile! :D is a weird album. It’s equal parts disappointing and enjoyable: it’s a good time if you don’t pay too much attention and zone out every once in a while. Most of all, it’s a failed experiment.

Fans of the band’s earlier albums should enjoy it, while those pesky unbelievers may even be converted as well.

There’s just so very little here to work with, and even as a listener who’s dying to find things to like about this album, every minute spent revisiting it feels like a minute wasted. I sure hope they have it in them to rebound from this disastrous release.

Even when certain songs weren’t quite working, I still found myself able to nod along and get lost in their rhythms. Even when another guest verse cropped up and it threatened to kill the album’s momentum, I found myself rewarded by another dynamite verse from Denzel thanks to the album’s breakneck pace.

It does feel lesser when compared to Blems After Banging’s debut LP, partly because a lot of the novel intrigue has washed away post-Cry, but also because it feels slightly incremental in its employment of familiar tropes and introduction of diverting yet somewhat unnecessary ones. Nevertheless, the record still possesses an intoxicatingly spacey sense of style, the ambience of the music permeating the atmosphere and remaining like the smell of exhaled smoke. Whether it lingers for seconds, days, months, or even years after is a question entirely dependent on the listener.

While Johnny Blue Skies may not boast the adventurous songwriting of Sturgill Simpson’s most daring epics, there’s something about Passage that is honest and comforting. It feels like we’re getting an actual glimpse into his life for the first time in nearly a decade, and while it’s not all rosy (see the nine minute closer about falling out of love with your soul mate), it’s at least all real.

The Death of Slim Shady (Coupe De Grace) isn’t a blazing return to glory, but it is an intriguing album filled with some legitimately light-hearted and funny moments – something I feel has been sorely lacking in his material for years now – the battle between Eminem and Slim Shady is a great concept that is explored pretty competently here, and the instrumentation, while far from perfect, captures the essence of what he’s trying to accomplish here.

The Great American Bar Scene sees Bryan once again settle into something of a familiar groove. He tries throwing John Mayer and Bruce Springsteen features into the mix, but the results are ultimately the same: more slow-to-mid tempo country crooners with results-may-vary emotional resonance. The album is unsurprisingly at its best when Bryan injects fresh ideas and more energy into his formulaic approach.

Warts and all, My Light, My Destroyer is an accomplished effort, and given the context of its release, I’m very happy we get to listen to it.

Dedicated fans of The Felice Brothers can bask in another strong batch of songs, while newcomers may look to this as a gateway to the group's very best material. Either way, Valley is about as worthwhile as b-side compilations come.

Arrangements shift almost entirely between verses, and a dense, psychedelic mix feat. hyperkinetic panning makes you turn up that Mario Caldato Jr. goodness and just lose yourself in the noise only to find yourself being pummelled by Love Heart Cheat Code's final brace of tracks.

It’s sonically daring, and challenges itself to be both unique from the scene and true to its creator.

The content is raw, warm, personal, acid-tongued, poetic, and, given Young’s age, remarkably accomplished.

Les Chants… mostly finds its own spot in Alcest's discography by being the most complete and accurate representation of what the band are all about. It's unlikely to turn naysayers into fans, but if you need an album to introduce newcomers to Alcest, this might just be the one to show them.

Nothing feels forced, the tunes’ order plays like a summary of a night long DJ set that starts slow and ends at the crack of dawn with downtempo/trip hop. Some are highlights, others fly by making less of an impact, yet they are not throwaways. Despite being released as separate singles, the LP plays very well as a whole.

As such, not much of the sonic territory meandered upon here is particularly new for the band, but they manage to provide highly satisfying renditions of many of the styles they’ve explored over the years. As such, this latest album feels like a rather comfortable, but nonetheless impressive, addition to the canon.

[Forever] ends up being a stitched-together collection of hackneyed, banal platitudes laid over tongue-bitingly asinine hook after hook, all so mewling and flabby there’s little to grasp beyond feeble stabs at nostalgia.

By the time of the album’s last lines are delivered, I never feel like I’m left unscathed. The Fool is a record filled with a sense of intensity, an almost unnerving feeling that its creator had a lot to say that simply had to get out. Whether it’s any good is for you to decide, but love it or hate it, I think you’ll feel something.

brat feels like the culmination of a hard-fought career; a substantial moment in the greater canon of pop. It makes me want to dance. It makes me want to cry. .... Charli has somehow squared circle of reconciling universal accessibility with once again upping the ante on her vision of pop’s future.

Despite being the shortest record in Natasha’s discography, it is also the most angular. Diversity is secondary to her vision and concept this time. It worked for the most part, yet as a whole, The Dream of Delphi could have easily been a more comprehensive affair.

[Aftab’s voice] is the gold thread that is woven through the aforementioned musical tapestry. Singing in Urdu and English, Aftab delivers a breathtaking performance that floats above the album as a guiding star. Further, Aftab has a keen knowledge of when to take control of the music and when to let the music speak for itself, which only adds to the ethereal atmosphere created throughout the album.

Gravity Stairs is the ideal vision of a band of pop's elder statesmen aging gracefully. There's no shameless chart-chasing or transparent attempts to capture the sound of yesterday here, which we can ascribe to the remarkable fact that something about the Finns' music simply sounds timeless, no matter which sound they're exploring or name they're releasing it under.

That Golden Time is an accessible listen, in the sense that it doesn’t demand much engagement to be pleasant, but repeated exposure will uncover nuances both musical and lyrical, while the ten song tracklist is impressively consistent in quality. Give it a try.

While no song is earth-shatteringly amazing, there’s something (quite a lot, it seems) to be said for a record of nothing but great tracks. This really is a good shoegaze album with a nice atmosphere - but it’s also a little more than that. And it doesn’t seem to care about any of it.

Umbilical unleashes a different side of the band’s signature blend of bone-crunching riffs and ear-splitting screeching, but it’s characteristically well-crafted and certain to satisfy music fans previously seduced by Thou’s grim and imposing style.

The songcraft here - the ebb and flow, the bells and whistles, lapping against the shore - is fantastic. The resultant castle on the seafront, built from the sog and the shrapnel, is a joy to spend time with. Best of all, it doesn’t feel like an end.

Well-meaning and inoffensive.

Post Human: Nex Gen is genuinely impressive. How does one band manage to rip off Deaf Havana, Deftones, Boston Manor, Enter Shikari, Porter Robinsonbithfimtaylorswift, Green Day, Radiohead, MGK, Iggy Pop and DreamWeaver, feature Underoath, Aurora, Lil Uzi Vert, Daryl Palumbo and Glassjaw… and be this goddamn boring?

Along with Coagulated Bliss, this is one of the finest examples of audacious sonic development in the genre in recent years. It’s not what I expected, but it’s what I wanted and so much more.

While the music doesn’t go above and beyond what we’ve heard from them already, the quality remains steadfast, making To All Trains one of the sharpest entries in their discography.

Hit Me Hard and Soft is a bold, well-crafted pop record rich with the personality of its creator, and like most such albums, it holds up just well if you take it as a face-value set of engaging, gratifying songs as if you mine it for complexity (aesthetic or lyrical).

It’s easy to argue that this album represents Pratt’s peak to date. Without a doubt, the record contains some of her finest songs.

This album destroys as much as possible while it’s on, and even if it leaves a little to be desired once it’s over (damn expectations!), it doesn’t seem to give a fuck about what you think. Honestly, fair enough.

The album is a frustrating, calculated mishmash of pop powerhouses, balladry and dance music, but are either underdeveloped, overdeveloped, or just plain bad.

It’s far from perfect, but Fearless Movement is another worthy statement from one of the most important musicians of our time, and a convincing announcement that there is still a terrifying amount of creativity to be discovered within the bandleader’s extravagant afro.

There are a lot of great ideas, but those ideas don’t necessarily translate into greatness, largely because the album feels a bit drowned in its own creative progression. .... I can say, however, that tThere are a lot of individual moments on Radical Optimism that are lovely to listen to, and—despite my qualms—it’s definitely worth a spin.

In the end, this is a very good, borderline excellent, album, weaving together a delicate atmosphere with well-crafted arrangements and (unsurprisingly) beautiful lyricism, but strokes of genius are few and far between.