Centipede Hz feels celebratory.

It brings out the best in Toth both as a musician and a songwriter.

If you like Palace Music, Joji will most likely make your day.

It’s as wicked as Twins at a fraction of the cost, as weird as Melted but twice as pretty, oozing acerbic coffee, acid mud, and gasoline.

It's human connection despite the odds that has been at the heart of Bush's music from the beginning. With 50 Words for Snow, she casts the theme in a bolder and bleaker light than ever before.

Even his lyrics, a mix of front-porch reflections and impressionistic images, are more sound than sense, the stuff of ambitious art-rock, not folk.

The organic lushness should please indie-pop fans reluctant to embrace synth music, while the emphasis on sound instead of structure holds appeal for fans of loop music who’ve grown bored of its now-familiar tropes.

Heavy and heartbreaking, teeming with a warm, analog energy, Snow looks backward at each defining element that made the band so memorable to begin with. But like many of the best moments, maybe you just had to be there.

This is mind-meets-body music.

Despite some questionable, off-putting decisions, there’s a wistful, melancholic temperature to this eponymous debut, one belied by the band’s sophomoric war metaphors and rubbery noodling, and it makes their self-titled debut one of the most essential records of the season for me.

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.

TRST is a f**king great dance record. While it is so much more than this as well, considering the negative connotations "dance" can have within much music discourse, it's initially, at least, the album's most notable appeal.

Because of its ambition and grandeur, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming might get criticized for its long runtime, for trying too hard to achieve aesthetic balance and thematic coherency.

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

As a Bon Iver release, 22, A Million is the band’s most impressive record to date, surging forward with oddities that, while certainly nothing new to adventurous listeners, bridge the gap with satisfaction.

Long’s trax are emotionally at a remove from the soulful sirens who are sometimes associated with deep house--that tension between joyful celebration and a modern-day blues, between major and minor keys.

This is a supergroup, and part of the fun lies in the interplay between musicians, especially Cartwright and Hames. In the classic tradition of the "answer song," the two singers take turns poking holes in each other's vows and proclamations, comically deflating their assigned roles in the pop tradition.

Itâ??s the hyper-distinguishable leap from idiosyncratic-but-lovable to just-plain-lovable that makes Bromst--and Danny Boy himself--of increased import.

With this strangely juvenile rush of an album, Wire have simultaneously honored and eroded the legacy of Pink Flag.

As far as songwriting goes, i follows the typical Magnetic Fields album standard of several great songs balanced with a couple unremarkable ones, with the rest being simply really good.

Part of how Cronin succeeds in making the listener feel good are his failures: the outsized ambition and the pushing of his practical capacities remind the listener than they’re being spoken to by an everyman.

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.

Despite references to hard drugs and depression, Boeckner’s songwriting betrays an unconventional joyfulness, marked more by the relief between emotional peaks and valleys than by its strict verse-chorus-verse structures. In fact, in my opinion, this is the first project of his that measures favorably against the solo work of his more cultishly-beloved bandmate and rival.

For anyone who found themselves begging for more than five songs, you will be happy with this new album; the distance traveled from Young Liars is not so drastic as to alienate anyone.

Darnielle [is] a songwriter still worth paying attention to.

The recording perfectly reflects the aesthetic of the world Jay has imagined, and both Calvin Johnson and Bob Schwenkler deserve praise for accurately materializing Slow Dance’s wintry, yet robust landscape.

Ghosts I-IV is a clear step forward while still managing to stay true to what NIN traditionally ought to sound like and represent.

The real point is that, as a compilation, Dark Was the Night far and away surpasses its predecessors-- even in an age when it should be irrelevant. Go buy it.

Heron King Blues definitely signifies a transitional phase for the band.

Songs Cycled--cheeky, geeky, and critical as ever--is his most approachable take on the whole sprawling mass yet.

Sleigh Bells have latched onto an exciting undercurrent in contemporary pop music and put their own distinctive stamp on it. In the process, they've made a hard-hitting album that will positively kill on the dance floor.

On “Fuck Me Out” and “Billy Not Really,” both these dissections of Ride and the brutal rearrangements of Björk’s vocal and fidgety programming would push the ensemble’s rough, nasty but compelling sound to new levels if they hadn’t already perfected it on The Money Store. Instead, what is achieved on niggas on the moon is something that speaks differently but through the same terms.

As a collection of stunning, yet unassuming, pop songs it fits in nicely with the Pernice oeuvre.

An unapologetically lovely affair that is sure to soothe the frazzled nerves of its discerning listening public.

Heterocetera is packed with writhing climaxes and blistering comedowns that leave you gasping without ever being able to forget who is behind them. Of course, confronting these contrasts remains a provocation on the artist’s part, but only ever in the best possible sense.

Lambchop’s albums often come off as minor masterpieces--not quietly stunning but aesthetically proclamatory, carrying material enough for a listener to stay with and dwell on. FLOTUS is no exception.

Pussy Cats Starring the Walkmen more than makes up for the lackluster A Hundred Miles Off.

The "black" of the title is not racial blackness, but the blackness of the void, the "abyss" of occultism. And that void, evoked by the dark, inchoate pop of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, is indeed beautiful.

Due in large part to Herring's undeniably affecting vocals and lyrical laments, In Evening Air is a record that sticks. It is one for autumn, for spring, or for any moment of your life that is vividly tainted with love and all its trappings.

What makes Since We Last Spoke such an indisputably groundbreaking record is Rjd2's ability to create such an intricate pastiche of diverse musical styles that it seems like a wholly new genre in and of itself.

With a couple of exceptions, the Nicene Creedence Edition is the least essential of Matador’s Pavement compilations. But even with this caveat, the package performs the service of reminding us how good Brighten the Corners still is.

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.

Like the guileless ballers on the screen, Delicate Steve's got surprisingly smooth moves, and the album lets you see the wonder of each one. It goes for the layup every time, sinks it, and you'll have no problem cheering along.

Like a daydream, St. Catherine is to be savored while it lasts, then let go until another day.

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

The Morning Star is both an Exaltation of the Guitar and a magician’s vanishing act: Bachman himself, noise-man under the role of hypnotist, embracing chance and slippages and sloppiness and draperies.

Post-apocalyptic muck and digital drivel, outer space splattering of dark matter, Mattel and Fisher Price toy instrument sets: it’s all here, and it’s all in accordance with Anticon’s aesthetic.

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.

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.

This is not an album bent on changing the way one listens to music, but the way one listens to their self.

The band's strongest offering to date.

Expo 86 puts up a good showing. The best songs are catchy as hell but complex enough to stay sharp even after repeated listening.

New Material works as an excellent signpost of where the group has been and where it’s headed.

Drone Trailer is another fine addition to MV & EE’s ridiculously prolific, yet highly impressive output. Even with its scant six tunes, it’s unlikely anyone will be left hanging long if more music from these two is what they are after.

These fine-detail improvements are what make This Is Happening LCD’s best work to date, though mumblings about how Murphy might be repeating himself a bit remain valid.

For CFCF and Jean-Michel Blais, it’s essentially a self-improvement exercise, one with every reason to exist but no particular cause for release. For the listener, it’s something too rare these days: an exceedingly pleasant listen, unburdened by the weight of being anything more.

Allways, then, is simply a welcome return from one of Chicago’s most consistent artists, reaffirming their primacy among contemporary exploratory rock bands.

It manages to captures our curiosity without giving away too much, gently nudging us to explore.

While the center of Blackshaw’s compositions will likely always be guitar, he has shown with this album that he can write music for several different instruments and do so incredibly well.

An intriguing and mesmerizing compilation of songs that underscores any love you already had for Broken Social Scene.

Harvey Milk never quite match the achievement of their canonical works, but, nevertheless, they've succeeded in stretching the running joke without dissolving into self-parody. Or perhaps more aptly, they've delivered on the promise of self-parody with a record of genuine insecurity, unsettling pessimism and inherent, indisguisable humanity.

The songs are better than solid. They're catchier than catchy. These songs are just good.

This CD is in itself a bold challenge to producers everywhere to step out from behind the laptop and explore the creative, spontaneous elements of live interaction.

Not only is it exciting to hear Youngs challenge himself with genre conventions, but it’s also comforting to know that no matter which mode Youngs adopts, it always sounds like him.

The Long Shadow of the Paper Tiger cements their place at the forefront of contemporary dance music. The songs are funky and immediate, but display a global consciousness that puts them in a class of their own.

Essentially, it’s the effects of Aesop’s modesty that keeps him afloat above some of his equally skilled contemporaries. (This, in addition to the dope factor, more than makes up for the moment when the album overwhelms and shapes into a part-primal/part-industrial drone.)

The strings and tympani gradually fade out until we are left in silence. The moment serves as an appropriate conclusion to a singular work from an extremely talented new voice.

A supernal set of tracks ends Preparations, movements of pure reverie that complete the album in fitting fashion.

Blade of the Ronin’s greatest success lies not in avoiding the commonplace, but rather in their commitment to pre-SDCC juvenilia, as well as to a more holistic sense of sincerity.

This is undoubtedly a stronger effort than Shadows Collide, and maybe that's due to [Frusciante's] ability to just let the music fly instead of attempting to overwork things.

Albarn doesn't give us a "Clint Eastwood" or a "Dare" this time around, but in spite of a messy and patently artificial conceptual framework, Plastic Beach feels clean, shiny, and new.

A lot of W.C. Hart’s lyrics are preoccupied with the idea of locating yourself within the whole whorl of the earth-psychedelia-human experience, be it from underneath, above, sideways, chronologically, anyhow, anyway, somewhere between the “rock and stars and sand.”

The sound design of the album is conventionally breathtaking.

Together, Stetson and Neufeld have succeeded in not only melding their respective sounds, but also refining them.

In destroying himself, Chasny has unearthed deeper, simpler fundamentals in his craft and, in doing so, breathed new life into his musical voice. With Hexadic II, Six Organs of Admittance is born again.

Arca suggests a sort of shift that is so well-defined, confident, significant, and grounded in the artist’s own past aesthetics that it capably reconstitutes its onlookers’ iconic definition of the artist.

Blackheart is ongoing and nearly seamless, unselfconscious in its refashioning of 80s guitar licks, steel drums, 256-bit EDM, flutes, and trap snares.

Family is a work of purpose, from a band whose previously wandering attention-spans rendered any chance of artistic success accidental.

With twice as much content as usual and Numbers working out their heaviest dose of lo-fi drone rock, this is their best release to date.

Amazingly, it lacks any pretense: their aesthetic is organic and fluid, indicating a band that responds honestly and artistically to circumstance, rather than one that imposes a rigid, stagnant aesthetic for more idealistic purposes.

If you can get past the hype, you'll find that For Screening Purposes Only is a solid, sometimes spectacular debut from an exciting group of young'uns.

On Pangaea Ultima, that world isn’t one with which the audience is typically familiar, but Moore does a spectacular job of making us feel at home there.

Brown cathects his trauma into his songs, redirecting his pain to a productive, pedagogic end.

On A Shadow In Time, Basinski tries not merely to locate Bowie’s ghost in the machine, but to find its cross-dressing, orange-haired, anisocoric-eyed soul locked somewhere inside the hard electronic casing of the world.

It’s not so easily classifiable as “country,” but easily classifiable as really great pop music.

Yet as someone who may struggle to believe what they say, I’m enamored with Ringhofer’s wild exuberance in proclaiming them, in repurposing them, and, by extension, I would even say in explicating them.

Although Mudhoney aren’t shaking things up too much with their established formula, The Lucky Ones shows no signs of the band mellowing out, and their bloozy, fuzzy rock action still sounds pretty damn great after a couple High Lifes.

Here she sounds more focused, and her delivery more triumphant.

Their developments are nothing if not honest, even if the gruff, muffled intimations of hip-hop sound awkward or antagonistic, even if the softness of these pieces evades any conventional sense of emotional directness.

In essence, it’s an improvisational nightmare that leaves you feeling extremely uncomfortable for an entire hour, while concurrently having you wish you could lie down to listen.

Maybe much will be made of their newplayful trifling with those muchmaligned indiedancetronica influences, but I don’think this is the mereaesthetic synthwave chill,man plasticity of the endlessly reproducible shoppingmall sunset.

The album is post-rock at its best, a monumentous achievement even by the group’s standards.

Deerhoof are spazzy, but not sloppy, and their execution is as serious as the atomic bomb on the album cover.

Chelsea Wolfe’s songs don’t often sound like they’re supposed to, and therefore they always sound exactly like Chelsea Wolfe.

Tears of the Valedictorian works on so many levels. It adds another hefty, colorful cornea to the Frog Eyes spazz gallery, for one. It also takes a step toward streamlining their sound, which may, in the wrong hands, be considered a faulty premise, but let me assure you, it isn’t; this recording is crystal-clear but far from diamond-decadence.

Total Folklore is a captivating release of memorable, “hummable” tunes dressed in the trappings of noise and “difficult listening.”

De-Loused in the Comatorium is a very strong debut album for the Mars Volta.