Dream Weapon, bold reimagining that it is, could well be the line in the sand that releases the four-piece from the shackles of their historic hallmarks. The dream of another Dead Mountain Mouth or Board Up the House may have been shattered, but a new, better dream may yet be forged from the pieces. Here’s to finding out.

A Chaos of Flowers marks a productive new chapter in their trajectory, sure, but above all, it represents the very best of what Big|Brave have to offer: emotion in desolation, destruction in grace.

Compared to previous outings, this may be the most bold and unabashed offering of Annie Clark’s career. It certainly isn’t her best collection of songs outright, but there’s a certain amount of style points that she garners for remaining so committed to bucking the expectations set by her audience and industry.

Formula of Love could have been trimmed to 10 strong cuts and I am sure it would have been one of the tightest Kpop albums in recent years. It’s easy to dismiss it due to the genre it represents, but there was considerable effort put into most of these songs, so it’s worth some listens.

Katie is making a point of saying more with less, taking potent emotions and quietly tucking them into a plain white envelope for us to open and interpret. She’s as lucid as we’ve ever heard her, stripping down to her emotional core and daring us to make eye contact.

One of the best albums of 2008, Dear Science, is an album you can ramble on about for nearly 600 words before you realize you forgot to mention 'Golden Age,' arguably the best song on the album.

Truth be told, it's the kind of album rappers should be dying to make: smart and sensitive, beautiful and brutal, uncompromising in doing exactly the things it sets out to do.

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.

woods’s golliwog is the rare symbol that truly awakens from the dead on what seems like his twentieth stellar full-length, given breath by the cursed voodoo that permeates the entirety of the album.

A good-to-great set of songs, that would make a fire mixtape if you cut the energy-draining bores "RUNITUP" and "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE"? A half-finished classic album, powered by reckless abandon and thrilling energy, but too scattershot to make it over the finish line? It's both, and neither, and I don't know, man. ... Call Me If You Get Lost is too busy shooting itself in the foot and calling it coming down to earth to be complete, but following along with its fragmented course down is still an exercise worth engaging in.

RTJ 3 is both a sprinter’s dip and a victory lap – it is neither as sinewy as RTJ 1 nor as effusively vivacious as 2014’s RTJ 2, but still finds itself imbibed with the kind of assured professionalism that is only permitted to those who have previously done enough to be granted a low-pressure outing.

Iconoclasts is pretty much a complete 180 from any of Anna's previous output. That may scare some long time fans, but let this fellow Anna lover ease your mind because this album is pure bliss.

The songs are fun, intimate, personal, and at times simply epic.

Heaven to a Tortured Mind eliminates the diversity and nuance of its predecessor in favour of underdeveloped avant-pop.

This is a significantly more rustic album than All Mirrors, with major country and folk influences joining that album’s lush art pop sound. Even the songs which lean towards the latter style are often gentle and delicate. It’s also a record which feels infinitely more personal.

Magdalene sees FKA Twigs reach a wholly satisfying pinnacle that is unlikely to be rivaled by any of her peers in 2019.

In some ways the album works better as a slightly blemished and broken piece, because like its protagonist it exits quietly while still leaving so much to say, and it's those pieces of work that weeks later are still being debated over that stand the true test of time.

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.

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.

The music within the album has many sides to it, and the execution gives each aspect enough emphasis to add to the sound without creating clutter or over saturation.

When Only God Was Above Us isn’t shattering glass ceilings, it’s delivering some of the most beautiful but disquieting indie-rock in recent memory.

With their newest release, Eric Wunder as loosened the tether and slipped into the savage void. The band is all the better for it.

While Bleeds may not have the monstrous impact of Rat Saw God, it’s a truly glorious follow-up with just as many moments of brilliance.

Two new tracks make this compilation all the worthwhile, with the devilish funk of "Fill My Mouth" being one of the best tracks the band has ever released, and the creeping incantation of "Queen of the Underground" wrapping up this collection of essentials from the Swedish collective.

Bandana is terrific because it makes you yearn for that imagined history, the struggle from page to audio that surely happened to produce such a god-given chemistry. Freddie's deep, choppy flows might initially seem somewhat at odds with Madlib's production but that's why it works, because playing too much to the soul-soaked nostalgia robs the proceedings of their bite.

Converge has become synonymous with consistency, and the band's latest effort proves that after seven albums they still have what it takes to put their listeners through hell in the best kind of way.

By combining these previously worked on sounds in new ways Thursday have created an album that is not only new and unique, but also unmistakably their own.

Like a pang of guilt does he sample his former self, like a torch carried to its final flicker of illumination. And to hear all that, to be able to almost feel that happening, is to bear witness to an artist working at the apex of his talent.