Loud City Song is a true achievement from Julia Holter. Nary is there a hook on the album, but the richness and vividness that she brings to the songs musically and lyrically will hook you more effectively anyway.

Though it’s hardly labyrinthine--these songs proceed in pretty much a linear fashion–Slow Focus immerses the listener in an aural landscape that offers so much to explore.

By using her clear mind to acknowledge all that has made up who she is, she has put together the puzzle of her past through the lens of today to create something that transcends its personal nature to truly resonate with her widening audience.

One of their boldest statements yet — Cool It Down has everything one would need in a rock record in this day and age, and it’s the most complete version of the band we’ve ever received.

It makes its own statement, and it does so with the level of maturity and succinctness that we've come to expect from Hecker, an artist who has well earned his place as a leader amongst his peers.

With a heavier reliance on piano and this newer emphasis on these samples, it's an astounding achievement in a young career already marked by solid works.

Heaven To A Tortured Mind is the kind of album that challenges listeners sonically and lyrically, and makes absolutely no bones about it. It’s full of forward-thinking musical combinations, but in its themes it’s even more progressive.

The album’s overwhelming atmosphere invites you to pore over the tracks, to take in each detail the light reaches, then comb over them again for everything you’ve missed.

The material here is as strong as we've come to expect from this band, but its pleasures aren't nearly as surface-level as even Kid A's. The best way to judge The King of Limbs in the long run may simply be to hope someone spurs Radiohead on in this direction.

Windswept Adan is a landscape, an aquatic world to be lost within, and one from which you’ll scarcely want to emerge.

Biophilia is Björk, the sum total, and this album is her continued claim to the throne as the monarch of avant-pop.

Yeah, Gang Gang Dance's idea of accessible and pop-ready is just as trippy and emotionally affecting as ever. Now, you can play it in the car on a Friday night, too.

Anxiety matches the emotional heights and immediacy of the music Ashin was inspired by, but what arrives from his limitations--as a singer, as a DIY-ist--adds to the record a personal foundation and raw authenticity no amount of budget could erect.

Filled to the brim with pathos and lived-in melancholy, she has crafted yet another jewel for her ever-expanding crown. It might not be quite as cohesive as songs was, but it benefits from being more varied, and from having some of her most affecting vocal performances.

It's definitely a taxing listen. But it's also one of the most cohesive and powerful records to come around in a long time, and it doesn't tire after multiple spins.

Van Etten gives us what is, quite possibly, her strongest album yet. And that sense of breakthrough, of sheer lift, is prevalent right from the start. ... There’s a powerful sincerity and confidence to her vocals throughout the record, as she weaves and bobs around her deceptively simple and emotive melodies, often hitting notes that sounds for a millisecond like they won’t quite work, and then suddenly, they do, as on the final heavenly note of “Darkness Fades”.

Topical Dancer is a record for literally anyone. It’s a tool as much as it is an escape hatch. Play this album for your grandparents, your parents, your children, your children’s children, and children yet to be born. For it’s a spiritual palette cleanser as much as it is a physical one.

He’s willing to stumble, befuddle, and outright offend – it’s all part of its creator’s flawed self, which is all but stripped starkly naked in front of us. It’s far too complex, far too searching to be wrangled in a simple review. I know this much: we’ll be talking about this one for a long, long time.

the whaler will make you furious; it will make you feel and assuredly interrogate your own heart. That’s emo music, and it is most definitely Home Is Where.

Where Music Has the Right seemed grounded in the real world (albeit a twisted recollection of such) and Geogaddi straddled the line between Star Wars and The Sandlot, Tomorrow’s Harvest finds the duo launching their sound into Lovecraftian orbit. And it sounds terrific.

Whether or not Dabice believes things inside her have changed, it’s undoubted that I Got Heaven is taking Mannequin Pussy to new levels, and things on her exterior are only going to get bigger and brighter.

It's said that Lamar's goal here was to prove himself capable of standing alone. Well, in certainly one of the greatest critical understatements written, he's done it.

Some bits here are the starkest and most direct compositions of the producer’s career to date, and that’s more than saying something. Suffice to say, as corny as it may be to declare, the project is perfectly named, Magic, because it provides just that.

Is she singing lyrics? Hard to say. But these songs are unquestionably emotive, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually prayers.

The songs are expensive in their depth of emotion but comforting in their intimacy and alluring appeal.

It's the best album of its kind to come out this year and, perhaps even more significantly, Segall's best work to date.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver settles itself around a more narrative structure, letting the baroque arrangements move from one destination to another.

It’s an album expressing the joys of love – physical, verbal, musical, familial and all the other kinds. While she’s the one in the spotlight throughout the album, this isn’t a record about her – instead she’s honouring all those people who find themselves through the release provided by these communal spaces. And damn, it’s a hell of a good time.