J. Cole’s raps, but KOD sounds like someone who is either unfamiliar with drug abuse, or is completely unsympathetic to the dynamics of drug abuse in America.

Eat the Elephant is engaging, atmospheric rock done right with intelligent lyrics and ambitious themes.

To be blunt, Tesseract are entirely too reliant on ambiance as their "secret sauce." Where a proper use of ambiance can add a pensive tone or an opportunity for emotional reflection to a song, Tesseract rely on it both as cohesive glue on nearly every track on Sonder and as a melody replacement. It's simply not enough.

With Resistance is Futile, they’ve finally caught up with their own reality and decided to produce the one album they never made; a serviceable rock album.

It’s a waste of time to recount highlights though, because this whole album is essential, and to skip from one point to the next without experiencing the journey along the way is sort of the opposite of how Golden Hour deserves to be listened to.

Moosebumps is [not] a bad record, it’s simply a more polished rehash of a fantastic record from another time.

Bark Your Head Off, Dog continues the Hop Along tradition insofar as it is sharp, well-produced indie rock accompanying Quinlan's bold lyrical earnestness. This is the band's hallmark sound, so loyalists can rejoice. What is different this time around, however, are broader and more grandiose instrumentation.

Themes and lyrics aside, the record is simply full of great songs.

It doesn’t aim to instantly satisfy unsuspecting listeners, dazzle newcomers, or alienate longtime fans; but what Unieqav does is craft a digital world sewn together by technology, biological information, science, and action. Engaged by the imprint of minimal techno beats and gliding melodies, the possibilities Unieqav promise are far from endless, but are indeed beautiful.

Their very best songs would see the light and the dark clashing within the same structure, every member's different interpretation of what the band could be fighting for dominance in an exhilarating rush. The major difference on Erase Me is that the two sides are in harmony, cleaned up and smoothed out and repackaged for a digestible listen.

Enjoyment for this sort of album can be derived from two factors: being, your toleration for pandering, and your toleration for complainers. Given the circumstances, I’d advise you simply look past either point and enjoy the music superficially, but if you’re finally sick of The Weeknd’s melancholy, now might be the time to look elsewhere.

New Material is an album that achieves a lot, but accepts failure as an option and takes it with a begrudging grace. So much can be made out of the stories told in the album's songs, but with the general lack of ideas, the role of the doomsayer is running its course for Preoccupations.

If you choose to look for the metaphors, there's beauty and even redemption to be found in Now Only; if you don't, there's a kind of quiet acceptance in the numbness.

Every single song is still about smoking with girls, and every song is the same stale, tired, derivative indie/emo I’ve heard a million times.

American Utopia, despite the chance at becoming a politically-charged vent towards particular injustices, instead aspires to give hope rather than add onto the dumpster fire of negativity; or so to say, Byrne sits us down and gives us reasons to be cheeful.

AmeriKKKant falls on its face pretty fast.

Felt, in turn, is not Suuns going through the motions; it's Suuns putting down their guitars and dusting off the synthesizers and scrounging up less than stellar material.

A Productive Cough should have refined and furthered those musical ambitions, but basically, it didn't--they're right back where they came from in a dying scene, idolising the genre's past and ignoring its future when they could have easily been the writers of it instead.

This is one of Moby’s most cohesive efforts, so if you don’t dig this side of his musical output or look for a wild diversity, you’d be a bit disappointed. Other than this, the record flows surprisingly nice, unveiling a lot of strong material.

If Async was an album centered on the genesis of its creator's suffering and recovery, Remodels is the triumph over the odds put up against Sakamoto and his way of continuing to share his life's work with the world through the lens of his disciples and his contemporaries.

To describe this group's efforts as excellent or even superb doesn't do their record proper. American Dollar Bill is the record to the end of the world, maybe even to the world as it is right now. If it makes you afraid, then that's very okay. They probably want it that way.

Lo Moon isn’t afraid to step outside of its comfort zone, and it’s a big reason why the album feels like such a distinct triumph over the genre’s familiar tendencies and tropes.

Some patience is required, but if you embrace the slow burn, Cusp will slowly reveal itself to you; the bright harmonies covering Diane’s darkest lyrics will come crumbling down. And when that happens, all you can do is listen--in awe of the beauty born from personal pain.

Hours upon hours of material is present for listeners, the hardcore and the uninitiated alike, to indulge in; the five-pound box provides listeners with a potentially new outlook on this underappreciated era of King Crimson, and is guaranteed to be worth the price of entry just for the fleeting mellotron strains of “Lizard” alone.

Patience is the key to the evolution of Glass, using tonal shifts and ghostly textures to compliment the improvisational mastery we are bearing witness to, whether or not it becomes something much more ghastly than beautiful.

This is an album of songs for a big idea before it was shrunken down and packed into the blockbuster money machine, and its well-intentioned attempt at bringing legitimacy to Marvel leaves Lamar and co. alone on a podium, broadcasting their passions through a megaphone to kids who just came to see superheroes do some backflips.

Loma doesn’t offer us the moment where the lines converge (i was never good at geometry) but it reaches for something more substantive: catharsis. Funnily enough, it sneaks up behind them as they’re looking elsewhere.

Rich Brian didn’t need to go so hard with the image change, but as far as debut albums go, Amen is catchy, it’s not gimmicky, it’s not annoying, and there’s just enough Chigga still in there to keep things entertaining.