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.

Singles leaves the listener in much the same state as their other records: loving what exists, warts and all, yet still gazing expectantly toward what remains to be seen.

While How to Socialise isn’t the most musically adventurous album, its moments of humanity are what give the band its subtle edge.

It is music with palpable warmth, not nearly as cold as your average techno track.

While James is here less austere than on Cheetah EP and less eccentric than on landmark release Richard D. James Album, Collapse nevertheless proves to be a serviceable Aphex Twin release at this point in his career. His knack for finding interesting textures and layers hasn’t been compromised nor has his willingness to build off of previous styles in his oeuvre.

Stadium here is an exposition of time, in this stadion, this measureless measure, or rather, time is here exposed.

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.

If you think you’ve heard songs more successful at melodrama and heavy mood than “Bad Magic” or more successful at the naked, perennial mode of “pure beauty” than “Requiem For Forgiveness,” I want you to forget them, because you are kidding yourself.

Canary is less unified, but there are great songs here.

Through tackling the repercussions of vocal processing and by demonstrating some of the most profound uses of it, Love Streams gives credence to the act in a way that vilifies the most obscure uses of it, even when the end results yield little more than the evaporated phantoms that we continue to chase in our everyday lives.

But no matter how much I sit here listening to Broken Social Scene, and no matter how special most of these tracks are, they lack the cohesiveness that made You Forgot it in People, and even Feel Good Lost, something to get ecstatic about.

This is intensely human music.

Quarter Turns embodies a shadowed and daunting environment with such an abundance of beauty that it bears contrast rather than resemblance to that damning abode, for the former remains an uncontrollably agreeable environment, despite its grim and unnerving allure.

Bazan has built his career on the merit of his honesty, and Curse Your Branches finds him exerting that idea more forcefully than ever before, creating a record that beautifully, paradoxically, and soulfully explores the beauty and strife of admitting "I don't know."

While not as immediately consumed fully as a whole as Rejoicing In The Hands was, when given time and taken apart to be put back together anew, Niño Rojo clearly states the depth of Banhart's presence, if admittedly, not quite making a clear purpose just yet.

Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 invites its listeners into that silent continuum that makes music whole.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is an immensely enjoyable, plain-sailing cluster of energetic, singable melodies.

Over the three preceding records, the band has built up a loyal following by creating dark, gritty, but tuneful music. This album slots in nicely to the band's catalog as yet another release with undoubted new wave pop sensibilities fluttering amongst more damaged, foreboding vibes.

Through his exuberant, alien compositions, Deacon seeks to manifest for us the wild places of his country, the barren plains and arid deserts, and in the process, reminds us that they are things worth preserving.

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.

It’s great to have a thematically consistent and well-executed Thee Oh Sees album.