It’s more of the same. It seems to be needing something more. An extra spark of interest.

Overall, IMPERA keeps Ghost’s winning streak going and proves once again that Mr. Forge surely knows what he’s doing as the group’s leader.

The succinctness of the record creeps up on you, making it dissolve through your fingers in an unexpected way. But, maybe that’s part of the appeal, the desire for more that it leaves behind, a heightened hunger for baroque-tinged indie pop.

Growing older can be sad, but Blur know that light arrives after darkness. Across 10 songs, you can hear them each trying to find it, hand in hand, harmony after harmony.

They [Ghostface and Wu-Tang Clan] are truly a hip-hop enigma, and Apollo Kids is just another piece of proof.

C4C is something more sinister and involuted: It's El-P fighting El-P, but damn is it fun to watch.

Lovers is, simultaneously, Nels Cline’s most ambitious and most straightforward project.

Over its 11 tracks, Splid consistently churns out raging banger after banger, allowing for the record to roar with metal bliss. The creativity expressed in Splid is matched by its intensity, as Kvelertak embrace the metal spirit throughout the album.

Forgotten Days is arguably the best doom metal album of 2020 and an impressive label debut. Thanks to Dunn’s minimalist production, the album is a sonic pleasure, and it’s instantly more listenable and accessible than Heartless.

Telefone shows a great sense of promise and complex beauty.

Over the course of its 12 tracks, the record manages to redeem the spotty moments of the band’s comeback record, remind listeners of the endurance of the hits that came before, and, in Whang’s increased vocal role, even hint at some potential evolutions to come. Most importantly, it gives us the best picture yet of a live act that’s always been surprisingly difficult to commit to tape.

The controlled chaos of the record is proof that somewhere beneath all of the public outbursts and musical misfires, Kanye West--not the old Kanye--but the actual man and his heart are still somewhere in the mix planning to raise the bar and occasionally executing to near flawless result.

Its six tracks wrap all too quickly, and while it was specified that Jimin doesn’t consider this a full-length project, it does leave the listener craving more music in this vein somewhere down the road — it’s worth repeating that the energy of “Face-off” is one that he should consider chasing most of all.

It’s approachable without compromise and confident enough to be itself, not another Alligator or High Violet, but unmistakably from the outset Trouble Will Find Me.

Unvarnished emotion and simple language rolling off her imperfect voice like poetry cemented Lynn’s legacy; Full Circle tries to preserve it for posterity, but with an addendum. Mortality squiggles blatantly through on two new songs.

Much of what makes Touché Amoré a success remains intact: the band jamming away behind Bolm, supporting and expanding his “slam poetry.” But, oh what wonderful poetry it has become, as Bolm dives into the depths of his cortex as he comes to terms with the death of his mother in 2014.

Unassuming and minimal in its execution with a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts, Sleep Cycle establishes itself as a captivating journey inwards towards a destination that’s as comforting as it is reaffirming--and likely what a lot of us need for a good night’s sleep.

Pinegrove builds and burns a lot on Cardinal, and they’re left with the hard-earned knowledge that everything’s probably going to be alright. It’s not the stuff teenage anthems are made of, maybe, but maturity comes with its own small pleasures.

Nick and Amy’s marriage may be unraveling to the tune of a dark ambient nightmare, but fear not: The cinesonic union of Fincher, Reznor, and Ross is stronger than ever.

Asperities conveys a similar sense of place [as previous albums] without ever explicitly detailing where it’s set or why, allowing the listener to envision their own wrinkles stretched over Kent’s richly drawn skeleton.

One of the greatest accomplishments of No Shape is how it provides a lush, seemingly endless musical playground in which Hadreas’ stunning, one-of-a-kind voice can push past any limits and shine in new and unusual ways.

This is undoubtedly the band’s fiercest record.

Listening to Excavation is a profoundly visceral experience.

All that’s left to do is to approach the album the way you would modern art at a museum: with open ears, curious eyes, and a desire to exit with a newfound ability to find beauty in most everything around you.

Despite the lower volume, Bruce Springsteen sounds positively invigorated on Western Stars. With a new sonic palette and renewed focus on the LP as a means of writing short stories, it’s easily his best album of new material since 2007’s Magic.

Yeezus feels very proto- something, the roots of some aesthetic that has yet to be minted. It’s revolutionary at its most urgent, as on “Black Skinhead”.

Even with his sexy talk sometimes failing as foreplay, Wildheart is a magnificent, swirling epic of longing, love, and lust.

The two halves feel out of balance here. Had they been more equally matched, In My Mind could’ve reached another stratosphere.

Empath is another fine addition to the ever-growing / never-ending Devin Townsend discography, and shows that Townsend should one day also be enshrined into this elite “musical chameleon” category, as well.

Pratt astutely portrays the hole that grows during a profound loss, the questions that emerge that can’t be answered. Quiet Signs offers solace in place of definitive resolution as it drifts by, able to capture so much with so little at play.

Already so many people have been championing 2013 as the strongest year for music in recent memory, and they’re not wrong, but here’s an album that has the punch and wit to stick around with the best.

The Worse Things Get isn’t about us or even for us. These 40 minutes belong to Neko Case. It’s her cleansing.

With the stunning Burn Your Fire For No Witness, she deftly captures the terrifying dread of being in limbo, stuck in the sludge of a transitional period. But even with the existential doubt, the loneliness, and the angst, there’s still a resilient beacon of hope.

It’s not perfect, but the album is remarkably cohesive, the right length, and filled to the brim with songs that already feel like inevitable summer smashes.

Roughly half the tracks being available prior to this release isn’t much of an issue when they are of such high quality, and the fresh tracks are some of the best the band have ever written. The group seem rejuvenated with a long road ahead of them.

It’s easily Yorke’s best solo outing and rates among his finest albums from any project this century.

Sparkle Hard is at once his most sonically adventurous and structurally tight set of music in over a decade and easily stands among his most rewarding work with the Jicks.

All Nerve finds The Breeders sounding more ecstatic and less restrained than anytime since Last Splash originally soaked the alt-rock scene.

In interviews, Timony has said that she wanted to make “relaxed and fun” music, and in that regard Rips hits the mark.

Each of the nine songs and poems that comprise Thanks for the Dance is a self-contained, coherent piece of art that perfectly fits in the Cohen canon, making it a worthwhile listening experience and a poignant farewell from one of music’s greatest and most eloquent writers.

Negro Swan is a grand work that gives credit to the pioneers of the culture while building a path forward within that framework, placing Hynes firmly in the canon as one of the most insightful musicians of his generation.

The record is purposefully compact, genre-blending, unifying, reaffirming, devoid of corniness, with just two well-selected features that heighten but do not overshadow her performance. If other artists are clever, they’ll take note: Lizzo has just set the standard for how to make a perfect pop record.

Vince Staples is introspective without being isolating, thoughtful without being boring, and innovative without being pretentious.

While longtime Dylan students will discover much to enjoy and ponder on Travelin’ Thru, casual observers should have no trouble resisting these abandoned experiments. Still, it’s enticing extra-credit listening for those who care.

It’s rich in slow-burning ambiguity, and it may be vibrant and clean, but it doesn’t entice dialogue quite the same way his past albums have.

Currents is all about the wide lens. It’s not the landscape worth falling in love with, but the way Parker gives us a tour. Let it happen, and it will carry you off somewhere much further away than you realized was worth visiting.

It delivers on every promise in a sleek, incredibly catchy package and does it all in under 50 minutes. Yes, it’s music made by young adults obviously aimed at young adults. Yes, it could be more subtle about its influences. And yes, it’s going to make a whole lot of year-end lists.

On Pop 2, her second mixtape of 2017, she digs even deeper into her music’s rough edges, exploiting its paradoxes, peeling back its layers, and having more fun while she’s at it than she’s ever had before.

Sling may not have the pop-centered style of Immunity, but it’s one that features Clairo’s impeccable ability to craft intimate, emotive songs. It’s a record that’s musically indebted to the past, but it’s done so in an adventurous, fascinating way.

Putting aside all of the work Kelela has done to hit her stride in the mix, she is ironically most brilliant when the producers lay out.

Eternal Atake has moments of heartfelt candor, including “Chrome Heart Tags” and “Spread the Bag”. LUV Vs. the World 2 doesn’t really. There’s no equivalent to the “Never Bend” remix from 2018, which hinted at a world of hurt behind the “project walls.”

Throughout the record a pleasing balance of melody and repetition is maintained.

Time, life, death, religion, New York City, and New York money are big topics to tackle in a 45 minute pop album, and Modern Vampires doesn’t even attempt answers to the questions it raises. Instead, it’s content to expound upon the Vampire Weekend aesthetic in inventive, imaginative, and undeniably successful ways.

eternal sunshine is a place for her to process and reflect; she might not be fully in her healing era, but she’s picking herself up and preparing for whatever’s next.

This is a mature and polished debut, and if you thought Adele was a decent vocalist, you should listen to this girl.

Asunder is polemical in its trudge, drawing out notes the way a politician pauses between words to emphasize their meaning. As with 2012’s Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, Godspeed pulls it off.

El Camino distills its predecessor's high-octane fumes and high-profile influences into very nearly the Platonic ideal of rock and roll.

Thanks to the rich clarity of his delivery and the prominent place that the vocals take in the mix, Callahan’s lyrics cast a long shadow over the rest of the album, allowing the literary connotations to carry over into analysis.

Dude Incredible, however, is also one of their most direct albums, the nine songs holding that same menacing gut-punch, despite that highfalutin thematic unity.

While instrumental, the recurrent use of a glistening fanfare motif, present across the album's six tracks, gives these pieces a much stronger sense of cultural and biographical identity than most vocal music.

What Sawayama has successfully captured with Hold the Girl is the healing power of pop music, and the catharsis that can come just as easily with an arena-ready banger as it can with a feral scream.

Goofy stretches like those [on “Today More Than Any Other Day”: “Today, more than any other day, I am prepared to make the decision between two percent and whole milk”] make it easier to digest, and even relate to, the anxiety that informs More Than Any Other Day more and more as the album marches forward.

Ty Segall has never made a truly bad record, and that remains true with Freedom’s Goblin, which explores and innovates enough to qualify as incremental (but confident) progress for one of rock’s most consistent voices.

The contents of Early Fragments display exactly what the cover promises: a beautiful set of songs that don’t quite fit together, more variations on a theme than a unified album.

Considering that Project Regeneration Vol. 1 was pieced together from demos, it really is a commendable effort. What could seem like a cash grab is far from it. The album is a fully fleshed collection that properly cements Wayne’s legacy.

Where the freewheeling Benji painted lyrical autobiographies in painstaking detail and Are We There dove headfirst into dark and sometimes overpowering emotions about toxic relationships, HEAL is a mixture of the two, a cleansing document that’s ultimately more hopeful.

The band have created an effort that digs its way into the listener's ears through an honest approach.

Williams sounds here like she’s singing about something else, something more her own. The assorted focuses of these songs sound like they’re being relayed less as rallying cries and more as personal thoughts and confessions to a close friend or a lover. The result is a fitting solo debut, a solid album full of friction and honesty.

There isn't a whole lot of blood in Slaughterhouse, but it is a thrill ride, and an exhausting one at that.

Soft Sounds… isn’t quite as playfully subversive as Zauner’s big-rig guitar solo on “Everybody Wants to Love You”, but her work as Japanese Breakfast continues to draw its energy from transgressing both the expectations of herself and her audience.

The more valid question is whether Senjutsu is worthy of Iron Maiden’s illustrious catalog, and the answer is an emphatic yes. The LP stands out among the second Dickinson-era albums for its symphonic touches, memorable songs/riffs, and airtight mid-tempos.

Kvelertak are able to traverse across sub-genres and pull from dozens of influences within four minutes and still maintain purpose and direction confidently.

Tribulation has found a fine balance, setting the primordial muck of their blackened roots up into a much soupier pool of influences and musical ideas.

By pushing far outside of his comfort zone, he has imbued his sound with a fresh life that adds another compelling chapter to the chronicle of his rich career.

Often very pretty, just as often very strange, Holter has crafted an album that reflects her unique vision, though it fails to captivate the whole way through.

Where Post-Nothing melts into a hazy dream, Celebration Rock does exactly what it claims to do-it burns on and on like the best sort of party.

It’s clear that these five musicians have learned the rules and are actively breaking them, and their unpredictability from moment to moment is powerful, fun, and enigmatic. ... If Projector is any indication, Geese will be breaking conventions for years to come.

Sheer Mag is a band that’s unafraid to feel, whether it’s desperation, rage, or overwhelming love. Over the course of an urgent debut, they let their guard down and embrace their emotions, showing the rest of us that we could all afford to as well.

Brimming with joyful bombast, Harmonicraft warrants re-listens.

While some edits could have crafted a more concise record, this grand, indulgent piece finds Holter at the height of her ability. Even the quiet periods are always entrancing.

Stripped of vocal harmonies and electric guitars, the unadorned, raw songs feel unguarded and painstakingly earnest. The sound quality is impeccable on every single track, and Young’s voice has never been more emotionally charged.

The duo's debut, self-titled EP may only span five tracks, but after repetitive listens, replacing your amps, and multiple refreshment breaks, be prepared for it to take up an afternoon.

In this latest chapter of his career, Mould has turned his music into a personal reflecting pool, a watery blank canvas into which he expertly casts the stones of his regrets and longings. Just don’t plan on booking your birthday party there.

Turn Out the Lights is a rich, moving work that creates a communion of sorts, an acknowledgement that the little victories are worth embracing even if salvation seems utterly out of reach.

Woods’ brilliance, a voice (both literal and figurative) whose strength is compounded by her many facets. On her debut full-length, HEAVN, Woods lets each of those facets shine, without letting any of them get lost in the glow.

July might be Nadler’s most cohesive and focused record yet.

While other artists struggle to translate personal development into their music, Brown does it with ease, navigating growth in a way that’s not only deeply personal but also extremely honest.

The most fun PUP have ever sounded. ... For a band who claim to be “too old for teen angst, too young to be washed,” PUP have successfully found that balance.

On the whole, Looping State of Mind is carefully thought out, beautiful in its lofty ambitions, and a refreshing return without any unnecessary sheen and gloss--minimalism that moves.

Indie rock albums with this uniquely developed a voice don't come around often, especially not when it's this much fun.

Harry’s House was constructed board by board, and, ultimately, it’s a lovely place to spend time in. Styles is making the music he wants to make.

Look Now is another solid entry into an already healthy and vital body of work. It’s not his absolute best, but it still earns a spot in the meatier part of his iconic recording arc.

He’s still a countercultural figure himself, veritably, but he’s achieved self-actualization. Old won’t let you forget it.

I Hate Music is no Majesty Shredding, but it’s no slacker either.

3.15.20 truly showcases Glover’s talents as a musician, producer, and songwriter. It’s a balanced body of work, not through its similarities, but rather its extreme contrasts.

Reclaiming his own identity, Skepta is now properly equipped to amplify the sound just above its dank, underground incubator.

Faith in Strangers is more than an album that comes to life. It details life from the inside out, focusing on each movement’s innards rather than its outer coat.

While it might be easy to dismiss an EP as a lesser body of work, this five-song set makes the case that Van Etten is in a period of songwriting where all her music is essential, regardless of the package it’s delivered in.