Willner may not have been able to affect us as deeply and profoundly as he does on Looping State of Mind, showing us not only that he has successfully moved past the confines of his early work, but also that he's presently at the top of his game.

On The Odds, there is a sense in which The Evens are tensing the muscles of their quiet/loud rock within its short range.

It’s not every day (or month or year) that an album like Rosebudd’s Revenge comes along, one that packs a novel’s worth of imagery, mood, characterization, conflict and theme into practically every line; one that presents scenes so meticulously crafted they inspire us to pick up the narrative threads ourselves, to explore where they came from and try to figure out where they lead, which is always farther than the story tells.

It’s for the Pabst crowd, not the trendy crowd concerned about looking the part. It’s this honesty that permeates everything Escovedo does.

While there’s certainly something thrilling about the wild, back-and-forth rollercoaster ride of listening to a Danny Brown album, in the end the grandest triumphs of Danny’s work are the myriad revelations gained from how the seemingly contradictory elements of these dualities interact with one another.

Hospice is a work of rare beauty and a watershed moment in The Antlers’ career.

It is an excellent album that has taken them seven long years to finally get to, but those are seven years that have been evidently well spent: After years of mediocrity and being, to some degree, marginalized -- just when the world needed them -- The Roots are back like never before.

Gira and company have put a lot of care into this project, crafting a beautifully-recorded, exquisitely-packaged set that stands as the obvious next best thing to actually seeing the band in the flesh.

Konnichiwa confidently struts and showcases the emcee’s vibrant, exciting personality traits perhaps more than pretty much anyone else in Britain, grime or otherwise. Skepta’s music inhabits the good, evil, and the delightful grey areas in between.

Faith In Strangers amplifies human interaction with the elements and the fractured nature of our relationship with them; this might not be the most joyful depiction, but it has been impeccably well documented here.

Tempest's epic scale and grandeur makes his few previous albums look like short stories leading up to a great novel.

Perhaps his greatest record.

Wolf Parade do what they do better than anyone in recent memory.

Until the Quiet Comes isn't bad, exactly. It's just definitely not good either.

The Men have decided to gift us with yet another 10 glorious songs.

Here, Cloud Nothings move past the slacker touches that marked their first releases, their gestures getting bigger and broader as they make attempts at emotional universality.

It wipes away the dust and brings fresh ideas into the room.

Poetry aside, none of these 14 songs are highlights of any of the three artists’ vast catalogs. The stories and the production alike are pure sunshine, which often passes into the saccharine.

Every song lands, resounds, resists, and repeats true to its aim.

Wildflower isn’t going to shift any paradigms, and it’s not going to leave the same impression on the world that Since I Left You did all those years ago, but none of that makes it any less of a delight to listen to.

Listening to Faking the Books makes you feel utterly alone; and maybe that's the whole point.

Their days of wild experimentation seem to be over, but on Hot Sauce Committee (and the fine tracks they left off, some of which have been made available online), they demonstrate that there are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore within that style.

There are few surprises, but each element finds its own breathing room such that the layered space of each track is fully audible.

The Walkmen are that rare band that can stretch into all manner of different shapes and retain their oneness with the rock gods, and they've held onto the zeal that made them stand out like a diamond among the other jeweled NYC bands with impeccable resumes in the early aughts.

Rival Dealer might be an intrepid leap for Burial, but the music is ultimately obscured by his intention to share a positive message through the most glaring of means.

LP (2015) is a short and sweet affirmation for the faithful.

For anyone with ears tired of the sirens, the red herrings, surfing the more visible peaks of the endless ocean in search of something worth combing over, you'll find this spacebound lighthouse a good place to put your feet up; and get up on your feet, if so inclined. Thoroughly recommended.

As good as Hastings’ production is, however, it is Young Fathers’ vocals that make Dead great.

Their flutters of effects, long, frosted periods of sonic dormancy, pefectly balanced twin vocals, and general sense of space set them apart from the herd with a surety you only see in the elite.

Grinderman 2 goes a long way towards solidifying this four-man Bad Seeds mash-up as a distinctive musical act, even as it brings them closer to their parent band's wheelhouse.

Holistically, there's nothing remarkably new here that hasn't been pursued before by this collective. The execution is nice and easily situates this album in the top two of their performances, and the sound quality far surpasses their previous efforts.

Ultimately, what makes Good News so successful is that it retains the melancholy mood of past works, while at the same time adding depth and maturity.

What is most impressive about New Amerykah is that Erykah simply breathes life into these tracks.

This is not going to appeal to a wide swath of people, but DJs who take advantage of the late hours of a petering-out dance party to play dubstep and spacey ambient techno will surely appreciate the vibe here.

This record is a tremendous achievement, but in the end, the grandeur of Hidden can be a little much to take in all at once.

Most songs take the form of this kind of zen guidance, but Eyes on the Lines avoids stagnancy in part due to its relative brevity--only 9 tracks--and in part due to Gunn’s combination of flowy melodies and shifting chord progressions, which can trigger a kind of relaxed euphoria.

As a propulsive work, fueled by immediacy and intensity, Devour rejects the attempt to escape the body through the gear-consumed noise fetishist.

This is soul music, sometimes in form, but always in content; mournful and inspirational in equal measure, Wounded Rhymes more than earns that categorization.

Issuing such a thorough CD document of a vinyl trilogy winds up not so much a simple change in format or an exercise in excess, but rather a telescopic glimpse into the rapidly expanding Demdike Stare universe.

Regardless of the modernist leanings of Kanye's techniques, the album retains an organic feel that rivals Com's hemp beanie and Erykah Badu's incense.

The shorter form of most of the songs (none longer than five and a half minutes) means that you rocket through The Hunter at what feels like breakneck speed, strapped to an intergalactic, pyrotechnic rollercoaster of awesome.

Composed by two musicians at the height of their craft, the album reveals itself, thus far, as the apex of a limited genre still forming and as one of our finest contemporary acts of remembrance and ascension.

Blackjazz is an undoubtedly bold statement from an incredibly gifted compositional genius. Munkebey has been working toward this album for a while, and it is a real achievement in synthesis of the band's overriding influences.

With Swim, Caribou has transcended the confines of indie pop and electronica.

Arrowhead is unfortunately not among the stronger things he’s released.

It’s surprisingly comforting to hear a band like this come along and put everything in perspective, making you fall in love with music relating to your life, instead of becoming so grandiose and impersonal as most music has in recent years.

Love vs. Money exists, much like its creator, [is] stuck somewhere between timely and timeless, kind of like a dream, the infectious, can’t-get-out-of-your-head variety.

Choral, never succumbing to mere regurgitation, represents talented musicians confident in their methods, who channel their influences to produce a sound that proves accessible while remaining distinctive and utterly expressive.

The performances in these songs are as dramatic as they are musical: disarmingly direct, phenomenally compelling.

It’s minimal techno made by someone in love with nature; dance music that should be narrated by David Attenborough — it's also what gives the album its beautiful spark of originality.

Atonement is the name of the game on this record, and when paired with Tillman’s gorgeous baritone and humble melodies, the self-reflective end result is often heartening. Not every track here captures this doleful magic (“The Songwriter” and closer “We’re Only People” occasionally get lost in their own sorrow), but it’s commendable all the same.

This is a record that only Darnielle could pull off: in the hands of a less skilled writer and vocalist, it would fall flat or grate the nerves as so much hyperemotional posturing.

The dance songs on here awaken muscles of yours that might have fallen asleep over the last few years.

Despite Shame’s lyrical foibles, they evince a prodigious adeptness for musicianship, and though Songs of Praise isn’t the most arresting debut by a garage band, there are far worse places to start.

Although occasional representational sounds intrude on some tracks, it is Sunn O)))’s glacial, thundering voice that carries Walker’s conceptual project forward.

Because the album can’t be one complete thing, Age Of is its own archenemy; its own princess stranded in a high castle; its own climb up the Holy Mountain. A radical incompleteness haunts it.

The true insight here is that Zu’s prowess is growing and can’t go unnoticed for much longer, especially with this caliber of material and their continual desire to try new things.

Fear of Men speak with clarity (for all their lo-fi charm) through the idiom of twee and jangle pop.

What a Time to Be Alive, the yawp and the yeah and the yowl, is the perfect thesis and pinched nail. It’s the resolution to remain unhampered by despair while excising and atomizing all the moments we have to despair in.

Traceable by touch, cogent in dreams, the fibers of its text bear the weight of a psychedelic meisterwerk.

From start to finish, it’s a solid bit of pop, one that clearly took a lot of hard work to make.

Luck in the Valley expands on his previous palette and culminates the sounds that have been gracefully flowing from his fingers for the past decade as a solo artist.

Unless you’re already a Music Tapes fan, chances are you haven’t experienced anything quite as exquisitely raw, effortlessly transportive, and charmingly distinct in a long time.

The music on Safe is embedded in the contours of an anxiety attack itself. Rather than an attempt at inducing states of rest, the music is contrarily restless and embroiled in agony.

Jay-Z has rebounded to make one of the year's most interesting and engaging rap records with a sense of immediacy and wordplay that no Denzel Washington film could match.

Tommy is exhausting, refreshing, new.

A stunning solo debut.

So when the repetitive rhythms of 23 don’t bowl you over like the first synth lines of Melody, allow yourself the opportunity to sit through its entirety. What you’ll find is an album that reveals its true personality slowly, surely, and yes, lovingly.

Behold both as an artifact and as a word doesn’t invalidate utterance however; rather, it invites unbound reflection.

More often than not, Chung’s tireless attention to his work is well-edited, and even the most chaotic and boisterous tracks are riveting.

It’s a diverse group and they’re doing some excellent work. Really great stuff.

Even at its densest, Whole and Cloven, the third solo record for Bowles, sounds almost desultory, a great credit to his compositional approach.

Andorra is a psychedelic and polyrhythmic trip to a place even less known than the actual country and a momentous addition to Caribou’s enviable discography.

A return to/remaining within form where Carey’s freewheeling guitar and (thankfully) sandblasted and virtuosic voice beam at us from our speakers in triumphant denouement.

Of course, songs like the playful “Lost My Head There” and the searching “Dust Bunnies” could just as easily be about the consequences of excessive drug consumption or no-less excessive levels of modern stress, yet the persistence of the self-alienation motif amid slanted nods to his career in music end up strongly insinuating that his growing status as a rock icon is weakening the already weak hold he has over himself.

All works of art, like all minds, have the potential to overcome mere sentiment. And that potential is glimpsed here in 10 restless hatchlings that make up Carla Bozulich’s new and perhaps most essential record.

Wilco are just doing what they do best, and doing it better than ever.

As they stand with Ice Cream Spiritual, Ponytail have captured an ample document of their instrumental majesty without losing a lick of their live energy.

Beach House have reached the point in their career where achieving grand melodic climaxes seems to come to them effortlessly, and on Teen Dream the climaxes are as thrilling as ever before.

Nine Types of Light has the same basic sonic patina, but TV on the Radio still have cards left to play.

Daniel has successfully harnessed this concept to produce an impressively cohesive art object on all fronts, one that yields perhaps the most provocative statement any musician is likely to make all year. It just might be a little too provocative for some.

This is the new big British band? This is barely inspired enough to make it off campus.

With a less captivating vocalist, this kind of genre-hopping might have felt inconsistent, a potpourri in constant motion, too scattered to register an impact. But Polachek’s range, her penchant for leaving her gasps and deep breaths in her vocal tracks, her carefully thought-over phrasing — these tie Pang together into one very earwormy book of spells.

While Eden’s Eastern flavor is certainly enjoyable, it walks a thin line between cultural exploration and exploitation.

The delivery is too matter-of-fact, too genuine to evoke pity or sadness. It is lethargic, yet not dreary -- it grabs you violently and lays you down so, so gently.

The strength of Creature rests in its ability to reconcile the energy of her debut album, albeit and perhaps unfortunately without the youthful spirit, and the growth of her second album, without sounding in the least bit labored.

The experience is nothing less than fully immersive by the time we’ve made it through “Shelter Is Illusory,” the closest the album gets to true pop (aside from Armstrong’s co-written “Adamah”), replete with a gorgeous quasi-operatic upward-searching chorus from Armstrong and a keening processed-strings backing.

For all of its harshness and grit, Daniel Bachman is an elegant, personal work, a letter written cozily from the hearth of modern country music, its ink smudges and scrawl an affectionate indicator of the hands that wrought them.

Peasant pulls every strand of Dawson’s work together to create something that might actually resemble accessible songwriting were it not so contorted by its own filthy humanity. It is utterly unique music, reminiscent perhaps of the complex, gnarled story-songs purveyed by Mayo Thompson and Joanna Newsom, but taken to much darker, more physical extremes.

Mike Eagle manages to balance the sense that he is speaking for many with the certainty that no one else could do it quite the same way.

Crack the Skye has the feel of a classic metal album, steeped in impressive musicianship and stylized construction; it’s the kind of album you can repeatedly rock out to without ever feeling the desire to skip even one moment of its sprawling majesty.

In Stetson's hands, the sax is no longer an expressive medium or even a madman's toy, but an artisanal tool, a machinic assemblage, designed for catching and releasing cosmic powers.

Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady is simply wonderful.

Words behave like beats on this record, raising the question: what isn’t a beat? Drops pervade the tracks. Is every beat a drop? Every drop’s a bounty, certainly.

As it stands, the album sounds like Panda Bear at the height of his unchecked, uncompromised (and, therefore, at times uninventive) powers.

The diversity of the material provides Galás with an opportunity to showcase the full range of her vocal talents.

What is perhaps this record's greatest strength: Baroness has crafted an epic collection of heavy music with two distinct spheres: the hard-hitting paranoia of Yellow, and the more organic, earthiness of Green.

Freetown Sound is a clapback, a healing song, a historical re-embodiment of the (infinite number of) (also) black experience(s) contained within the vantage of a single individual.