A curious, engrossing listen.

Collapse isn’t accessible per se, but it is a release which perfectly reflects the finest elements of Richard James’ oeuvre. It is a record liberated from convention, unafraid of failure and confident in its depth.

A master of mesmeric laments, Roberts can conjure dusky cemetery air in a twitching of his fingers or sombre exhalation, yet A Wonder Working Stone offers high spirits in the gloaming as well as low.

The album not only justifies its existence but also adds something vital to the band’s legacy. It’s messy, lean, sharp, and relentless. Not cleaned up. Just tuned up and turned loose.

Every track here is distinct and complex. The Way and Color is not an album designed to blend into the background noise of your day. It really demands your time. It demands to be listened to.

They continue to forge gripping narratives and confrontive declarations, their verses ensconced, often straitjacketed, in industrial, hardcore, and metal sonics. In fact, there’s not much “mock” here, just well-crafted juggernaut mixes and volatile cum apoplectic vocals, with touches of pop sensibility thrown in for good measure.

[The EP] follows the lead of last year’s return to form The Take Off and Landing of Everything in its sonic subtlety.

A powerful collection. And if Heavy Is The Head is one thing, it’s aware of its own worth.

The album’s sprawl also allows the stunning space-funk title track to spread its wings for full lift-off unhurriedly over 9 minutes until total resistance-shattering hypnosis has been achieved. If this is their Silver, Say She She’s gold must be out of this world.

It’s not that the album is particularly any shorter than any other album – clocking in at around 40 minutes--it’s that it’s so tightly-packed with such consistently good content and is so musically pithy, that you just can’t ever really get enough out of it.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Lost & Found is Smith’s first LP. The sureness and creativity that exudes from each and every song disguises what some would call a lack of experience.

when i paint is an intimate record full of poetic and melodic turns, giving you the impression that sometimes Levy herself is surprised by where it takes her.

Moondust For My Diamond is another essential album from a man who couldn't make a bad one if he tried. Realistically, it's not quite as powerful as its direct predecessor, but the fact is that very few albums are.

Joy’s fluttering vocals reflect the ancient feeling of the folk genre, but the soaring chorus balances that feeling with a modernity, paving way for the more pop-leaning aspects of the record.

Twin Flames sees Postdata at his most carefree, in this sense – a split-tone successor to the tumultuous nature of its two preceding albums.

Essentially, HELLMODE all but confirms the sincerity electrifying the voice of our charming punk hero. With little hope to hold onto, he's still angry, urgent, and prescient as ever.

It is thanks to such a diverse roster of musicians that the album is as rich in instrumental character as it is in lyrical depth and intrigue.

More careful explorations of Cascade’s less instantly obvious depths suggests that Shepherd may well have found a method for seamlessly blending the widescreen, unhurried explorations and subtle variations on a theme that characterised Promises with his foundational roots and ongoing interest in the simple joys of surrendering to hypnotic repetition that drives the pummelling physicality of dancefloor-friendly electronic music, most recently sampled on 2019’s Crush.

It stays true to the duo’s journey of experimental pop rock sounds, while finding energy in existentialism.

What’s makes PUP an engrossing listen, though, is also what takes it beyond a typical hardcore record: there’s sunlight that refuses to be shut out from the overcast skies.

At its best, Process is an album that makes a virtue of its own patterns of gray art-punk surfaces slashed with caterwauling bursts, like a roller coaster you’ve ridden enough times to feel the ups and downs in your muscle memory. In both cases, the thrill remains, adrenal peaks and false-calm valleys.

This quaint duo has created a bold and unapologetic record that stands out as the best of its kind for quite some time.

BTR best functions as a way to experience every mode that Grace has to offer as both songwriter and vocalist. It’s also the closest that Grace has come to letting others in and having a direct dialogue with the outside world.

For the first time--a stunned silence at the intensity and pace of these cascading arpeggios (19.5 notes per hand each second, apparently, and the world record), these rhythms within rhythms that envelop and sustain. Boy, do they sustain.

Despite the wide range of aesthetics on the record, however, there are no two ways about it; this thing is bloody gorgeous. Two of the most adept singer-songwriters in haunting, poignant melancholy, the beauty to Better Oblivion Community Center lies exactly where you’d expect.

What fans will appreciate most about this collection is how Del Rey's poetry seems to give us a much clearer understanding of her than than her songs are able to.

This weepy and emotive record will probably be glued to many turntables; the ideal soundtrack to a morning coffee.

Whereas White Denim’s output has occasionally in the past brought to mind a musical polymath trying on different outfits to see which one will fit, 12 feels like White Denim’s most direct, emotionally honest and cohesive (not to mention unabashedly catchy) album.