Rather than slashing and burning through new territory, Chosen Lords merits attention as a charismatic history chronicling the evolution of James' musical identities.

No question, This Is How You Smile is a love album, a happy album in spite of everything and anything else. It’s there in the title. Instructions for sanity and joy can be simple to follow. Roberto Carlos Lange seems to have it figured out.

This is the least fashionable album I have heard in ages, and all the better for it.

James is still at the reigns, and Syro is proof that he is still very much the king of his own tangled domain.

Transforming such intensity into a product so bewitching is an incredible effort, and the resulting works leave very little doubt that Colonial Patterns is more than some admirable interpretation--it’s a ruthless conquest.

It involves not a disconnection from, but an exploration of the material potential in his instrument(s): an excursion to the outer limits of instrumentality, a commitment to resonance as the product of granular viscera: of throats and diaphragms and guts and lungs.

Teens of Denial vaults through references to stand alone, rapturous and sincere--a fuzzy framework from the floor of all we know.

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.

Even though (III) is Crystal Castles' most unified album, the text of Glass' voice is still faceless and without words--empty.

There is beauty and anguish to poring through Tyler’s songbook, a reckoning with spirits that refuse to die even as the world spins on furiously and without regard for the passages of humankind not willed or fortunate enough to keep up with the storm.

There's no such thing as universal appeal, but The Idler Wheel, despite its brittle sound and frequent fury, is galactic, at the very least.

The words on record are breathtaking for their deep focus, which is microscopic to the point of vaguery. Frank Ocean’s lyrics describe such specific scenes that their vocabulary is unmistakably about someone else, his own worlds within our own.

What makes Eternal Turn of the Wheel so captivating is not so much the band's furious blend of rural sampling combined with their consistent prowess as black metal musicians, but the enchanting manor in which they craft the tracks.

Although warmer, almost folk-rock, Pickpocket’s Locket is as visceral an experience as any Mercer project, albeit in a new way.

Thankfully, More Life is Drizzy’s homecoming, a vocalization of the heart in his heartless world, and a veritable return to form for it. Welcome back to the Firm.

The faithful will be rewarded with this immaculately recorded set of live versions, while the release could provide a solid introduction to those who've yet to discover the virtues of having heavy, emotional music that still manages to let you fill in the blanks.

Bulldozer is essentially just an impersonation of a Snares record circa 2005, masterfully percussed but otherwise unsubstantial.

They really did a great job. I think their best song was 'Those Who Don’t Blink' but it is not a good song for a headache.

Depending on how one looks at it, The People's Key might even be understood as the culmination of a long and troublesome trajectory Bright Eyes began as a teenager's bedroom project in the mid-90s.

This is one of those genre puzzles that are rewarding to anyone with an adventurous appetite, even if your bright eyes’ve never gazed anywhere but ahead.

Mother of My Children is, generously and radically, an attempt to reconcile an identity with a universe.

The Colour In Anything emphasizes the element of trust that collaboration implies and its role in articulating Blake’s feelings.

Overall, a handful of great songs, no clunkers, and one absolute classic is more than should be expected of any album.

This music is uncharted, revelatory, blossoming, and all the more so, because somehow it feels like it might be to Foster as well.

This album fits into the venerable history of The Ex and will make you want to dig out the old albums, too. History, as the band told us back in 1982, is what's happening now.

For the few of you who have not already been won over, I Learned The Hard Way will make you a convert. For everyone else, the album excitingly perpetuates Jones' reputation as one of soul's all-time greats.

It's the fact that the album emerges from these lacunae, between mainstream electro-pop and DIY indie, between declaration and uncertainty, between contemporary knowingness and a complete lack of irony, that imparts its own imperfect je ne sais quoi--and, paradoxically, the hooks don't hurt.

The entire first half of Eagle shows Callahan as a much more evolved and mature musician. He appears more comfortable expanding his musical space, and he exercises tasteful restraint with Beattie’s strings.