A singular listening experience, Kannon is best consumed at extreme volume and with an open mind.

Arriving toward the end of summer, Another Self Portrait feels perfectly suited for the type of reflection that accompanies autumn.

First Aid Kit's lustrous new album revels in its passion.

Brad Mehldau is back in his comfort zone with Live in Marciac, a solo set of two CDs and one DVD recorded at the jazz festival in France.

With Med sud, the band proves its indie-pop potential while remaining rooted in its unique brand of spaced-out alt-rock.

Why Make Sense? is another branch of the band’s tree, an album of infectious pop riddled with bigger questions and dilemmas that ripple well beyond the dance floor.

nyone who comes to “Ode to Joy” expecting Beethovenian rapture and millions embracing will likely be perplexed by this enigmatic 11-song collection. The album is mostly slow and muted. ... You have to listen hard for the joy, but in the end it’s there — the kind of joy of that’s hard-won and never fully shakes off the difficult and broken world from which it emerges.

“Highway Anxiety” shimmers with melancholy and evocative locomotive persistence; “Gone Clear” travels from Tyler’s intricate fingerpicking to a barrage of chiming bells and back again.

On paper, a sentiment like that drips with bittersweet nostalgia, but not when Haggard is delivering it. There's a resilience in his voice.

You won't glean much more about those people and places than you knew going in, but Clark's strange angles and fanciful settings pack a visceral punch.

Often built around little more than the words, DeMent’s homespun warble, and a piano sometimes fleshed out by stringed instruments--is closely aligned to DeMent’s best work.

Plant has glossed all of this as “trance meets Zep,” but it’s more: a kaleidoscope that shows he still has much to say.

Finger-lickin’ good.

Her patience has rewarded us with a work of rare, unvarnished grace and power.

Its songs are more impressionistic, brash in their knotty arrangements and assured in their execution.

This 11th album is slighter than the group’s finest records yet there are enough emotionally true narratives here brimming with soul and bruised wisdom.

Zedek’s voice, neither conventional nor wholly tamed, serves her ends potently, its warp and grain enhancing unvarnished solidity.

Magnificent.

Gore brings together light and dark, airy and grinding, in a way that makes these seemingly disparate qualities seem like natural allies.

This is Cliff's first studio album in seven years--and he indeed sounds reborn.

The shimmering War & Leisure, the singer’s fourth LP, finds him operating in a similarly creative groove [as on 2015's Wildheart] but tamping down wolfish eroticism in favor of breezier, tropical vibes.

For longtime fans of Blur’s alluring blend of pop smarts, rock edge, and electronic flourishes, The Magic Whip is close to a slam dunk, as the quartet conjures the vibe of its ’90s glory days without veering into rehash territory, making it a good ambassador for potential new listeners as well.

A welcome throwback to the raw energy of early Kill Rock Star bands, this delirious debut still boasts enough cheeky vigor to sound fresh and new.

From jaunty opener "Feba" to dense finale "Rotin," the eight songs have distinct identities but share groovy, spacey production and a mystical-futuristic feel.

This may be the best record this Carter girl has ever made.

Embryonic is not as strange as "Zaireeka,'' the Lips' play-four-CDs-at-the-same-time experiment, but it's up there. On the other hand, Embryonic is completely absorbing. It grows on you in a way that the earlier records simply cannot do.

Pusha T is at the top of his game with sharply defined autobiographical tales and defiant, self-aware verses. He often dazzles with his smooth, cold-blooded flow and connects on virtually every song.

The entire set speaks directly to the struggles and fears of an America desperately searching for some meaning and uplift. Staples and Tweedy have crafted a record with heart and grace, but also some toughness--all of them necessary if the goal is transcending troubled times.