11 tracks of stick-to-the-roof-of-your-eardrums music that sounds all at once immediate and laid-back.

Danny Brown is taking the route everyone wants an artist to take: putting out forward thinking, self-expressing art that is setting the bar rather than merely attempting to reach it.

If you're willing to take the time and patience required to give this album the attention it really deserves, you'll find the rewards will exist long after you turn off the album.

Timberlake throws every influence he’s ever touched at the canvas here, and he somehow gets away with it.

MGMT is truly the sound of two artists in the studio with the goal to entertain no one but themselves.

Nothing Was The Same is the best Drake album yet.

Is Survived By is a genuine, life-affirming piece of art that’ll move even the blackest of souls.

Last year’s stellar Battle Born, felt considerably more vibrant than Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action ever does.

Saves The Day is another feather in the cap known as the band's illustrious career, marking the return of the band we all fell in love with many years ago while successfully beginning the next phase of the band’s career.

Mechanical Bull is the sound of real life. It’s the sound of Kings of Leon realizing that sometimes where you were is better than where you ended up.

He has done his best to deliver the kind of care-free, gaudy rap album that will be blaring from the speakers of house parties everywhere for months to come, and B.O.A.T.S. II #METIME readily delivers on that promise.

Its 10 songs meander by with enough sense to not stick around, and other than the grungy rock-out moments of “Nightwater Girlfriend,” we barely notice anything.

This is what those album reviewers mean, when they talk about setting the bar high.

More than anything, Moving Mountains feels complete.

AM is a tight and focused record that sounds huge and retains Turner’s personality and charm in a way previous releases haven’t always done.

Yes, the lack of production and general scuzziness of the record is reminiscent of what we’d like to hear from No Age, but aside from this the music lacks excitement and inspiration.

For everything Smith lacks in wordsmithing, his bandmates make up for in straight up dramatic songwriting.

Repave is integral to retroactively understanding Vernon's canon and also establishes a path forward from the runaway success of his past.

It’s an enchanting odyssey that is steeped in the tantalizing mysticism of the unknown.

Though Ty Segall often seems like he makes records at inhuman paces, Sleeper indulges his very human impulse for a good wallow, and proves that there’s more to the man than the distorted ripping guitars would make you believe.

Simply put, this record already feels timeless.

In a genre that seems to be heading downhill in quality and popularity, Norma Jean pump enough blood into it with Wrongdoers to keep it going.

When listening to Doris, you're going to want to have lyrics nearby or else you're going to miss well over half of what's being said. It makes for an album that's hard to listen to without putting in some effort, but the results speak for themselves as Doris proves to be both a rewarding and engrossing listen, even if there are still a few kinks to be worked out.

With Tracing Back Roots, We Came As Romans have shown just enough progress to make me believe that LP4 could be the game changer they’re looking for.

He still lacks the kind of technical rapping skill that made A$AP Rocky reach star status. Regardless, A$AP Ferg has constructed an album that surpasses the quality of Rocky's Long.Live.A$AP from earlier this year.

While the album doesn’t have the dynamic genre-hopping sensibility that made both Continuum and Born and Raised instant classics, it’s still a solid set of songs that follows one of today’s best songwriters as he establishes a new comfort zone.

Whether or not it's as good as The Luca Brasi Story is irrelevant, though at this point the two are about even. The highs on Luca Brasi are higher and the lows are lower, but Stranger Than Fiction is a much more consistent listen.

With Archambault’s vocal performance stronger than ever before, the band sounding fresh and the lyrics seemingly closing out this chapter in their career, Letters Home is one of the most thrilling albums they could have created.