If False Readings On proves anything, it’s that Matthew Cooper has again shown just how good he is at making music that’s too engrossing to be just ambient, too pretty to be just noise, too eventful to be just drone (as worthy as those all are as forms) and too individual to be the work of anyone else.

Engineer Bosco Mann's work here exemplifies the principal that it's better to capture the sound right than to try to fix it in the mix. Then you can spend the mix getting the balance right, making some sounds stand out and others blend just right. Such is the case here; this record simply sounds right.

From the vocal harmonies to the steel guitars, tympani, and winds, Fleet Foxes continue to give rich and varied textures to their consistently tight harmonic structures and memorable melodies.

This is a more varied album than The Moon and Antarctica (which did seem to have only one speed), and with the return of original member Dan Gallucci, Brock appears to have revived the heavy lead guitar playing of their early work.

It arguably represents some of the sharpest, strongest songwriting of Hersh’s post-Throwing Muses solo career and perhaps some of her best work, period.

Such clear chemistry and inspired interplay will hopefully lead to future releases in the same vein. Anyone with a penchant for classic-sounding ambient electronica with a kosmische bent will find plenty to nod along to here.

It’s difficult to imagine the record being more fully-realized and immersive than it is, and it stands as a towering achievement in Toral’s formidable body of work.

The back and forth between playful, pogo-friendly post-punk (“March Day,” “Great Dog”) and more sober and sonically adventurous indie/noise-rock (“Human, for a Minute,” “6/1”) carries Drunk Tank Pink forward with a sense of abandon, while also taking a reflective look back at the carnage such abandon has wrought.

Ignorance is a serious album about serious things, wrapped up in lush music that doesn’t mask the urgency Lindeman feels. Earlier Weather Station records had a tendency to slip into the background. This one forces you to pay attention.

The latest, the crustily erotic Distortion, is nearly its ["69 Love Songs"] equal. But way shorter.

Though they are spare and though there are a lot of these songs (17), the album doesn’t sag. A restless energy courses through them. Spike-y, unsentimental observations keep them engaging.

Halo distinguishes itself in its startling moments of suspension and sparseness.

Much like BC,NR’s magnificent Ants From Up There, the album feels like several potential closers have been strung together during the album’s final stretch, which could have been trimmed a little to maximize the impact of what’s left. Nevertheless, this is an extremely colorful, fun and addictive record that showcases the enviable talents of a young band with a bright future.

Like Bellowing Sun,Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars uses contemporary human tools and voices that refuse to be confined to words to enact sonic ceremonies that celebrate the natural world.

The remarkable thing about Kelley Stoltz up to now has been how seamlessly he absorbs his influences, finds their essences and out of that irreducable core makes songs that are entirely fresh and new.

The Runners Four manages to capture the unbridled intensity and utter joy these four carry across in a live setting.

Once The Blue of Distance recedes into silence, there’s a distinct sense of time having been gently bent to Saxl’s will. The album feels simultaneously long and short, fast and slow — it’s all of these things at once, forming elegant waves that wash over you.

By making a boldly experimental leap in a career already full of them, Dyer and Sanchez have created a surprisingly accessible record that shows off some of their best work to date. Whatever they call themselves, their powerful alchemy shouldn’t be ignored.

One thing that’s allowed Napalm Death to keep punching through mirrors is that as its sound has sharpened, the band’s ability to capture high-resolution chaos has sharpened, too.

The album is beautifully sequenced overall. Sometimes the transitions purposefully jar and provoke—elsewhere they’re seamless, prolonging, elongating a motif.

If the proceedings get a bit "same-y" at times, it's with good reason. Johnson understands the concept of expansion through repetition and uses it to great effect. As the album tumbles to a close with the eight-minute "Goners," the band's operational scheme seems stunning in its clarity.

The world is crawling with Fahey-loving acoustic guitar players these days--in large part thanks Tompkins Square--but ones as good as William Tyler are rare.

Across The Field’s lyrics are dead serious, yes, but their tones are ethereal and arrangements spacious, sounding as if they’ve blown in on the keening breeze, to the point where “Carolina Lady” almost melts into air. ... Due to pairing of Louise and Morgan’s voices, Across the Field is never less than lovely.

There are moments here that feel like being carried aloft by a parade, and moments that feel like the jail doors shutting. There are pools of calm and surges of impossible triumph.

[The final track is] less antic and virtuoso than the earlier tracks, but a good deal more touching. Elsewhere Neufeld jets off for the stratosphere, technical dexterity gleaming in a rarified, surgically clean space. Here she sinks into a rich, loamy here and now, luxuriating in slow exploration of certainties.

As ever, he refuses to offer any easy answers, leaving the listener beguiled.

These songs are meant for dancing. The pieces are sharp, but they fit together in irresistibly body-moving ways. The music stretches out in easy hedonism then judders to a freeze tag stop, holds a pose just long enough that you can admire it, and jitters on from there.

It is another well-made and executed Califone album, and it stays completely true to their concept. Consistency is underrated.

She returns with a more personal album, the tragically influenced yet unbowed Untame the Tiger.

From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening.

The organic feel and sense of Shabaka’s humility and vulnerability makes Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace a moving and impressive album.

Echoes of Faust's enduring impact leap to the forefront constantly, but by the end of Something Dirty, it is clear that the anxiety of influence remains on the present generation, not vice versa.

While providing an exciting document of this stage of the band, We Rose From Your Bed… offers a tantalizing hint at what's to come.

With Stranger Fruit he’s gone even further than that; he’s made something powerful, something that amid all the ritual and esoteric language and bloody events foregrounds the humanity of these imaginary, unnamed people and their real world brothers and sisters in a way that’s far more effective and unforgettable than most metal bands will manage to be on any subject.

Classic Objects demonstrates Hval’s capacity for musical growth and lyrical introspection. It is her best work thus far.

Black and Miller aren’t as bluntly exposed as on their earliest records, but they still keep Diamond’s production bracingly in check for a sound that preserves a pervading visceral punch.

The attraction that already existed between Xasthur’s music and Mount Eerie’s exerted a strong enough force on Elverum that it became incorporated into him.

The whole album is vastly enjoyable, but it finishes in an especially strong way in a sequence that starts with exuberant, pop-buzzing “Happy Unhappy,” continues into the gorgeous, lushly harmonized, anthemic “River Run Lvl 1” and ends in that “Whatever” version gushed over two paragraphs above.

Silence easily matches, and likely exceeds, Mike Ladd’s recent Negrophilia in regard to hip hop’s lack of limits.

If the Sadies had set out to make a final statement—and let’s be clear, they did not—they could hardly have done better than Colder Streams, a swirling, trippy summation of their journey so far. ... The whole album is great.

Despite the subtle stylistic shifts and gradual momentum building and releasing, no song feels out of place or misjudged.

The unifying factor is Mi Ami’s live vibrancy. Except for the overdubbed vocals, almost the entirety of Watersports was performed live in the studio, allowing the three musicians to explore texture and space, collapsing their influences into a gripping dialogue on the darker side of human experience that we so often ignore.

Their joint compositions are undeniably atmospheric, evoking south of the border drama on “Pray For Rain” and surging apprehension on “Something Will Come.” But they’re also as rigorously structured as any popular entry in a hymnal or hit parade. If you like for your tunes to tell you what they’re going to say, say it, and then tell you what they said, the soothing “Life And Casualty” and the white-knuckled “Hurricane Light” are equally at your service, and they’re not alone.

She succeeds in a rare feat here, making a mood-sustaining record comprised of songs that only improve when listened to in sequence.

The layers of rhythm, voice and electronics here possess the ability to tell stories, just like the novel after which they're named, and out of their conjurings emerge atmospheres and melodies that will remain in your head.

Tourist in This Town is sharply written, revealing a mordant, humorous understanding of Crutchfield herself and the people around her. There’s a vulnerability in these tunes that lives alongside the cleverness, so that we feel her angst, even as we appreciate her cleverness.

They've put out six strong albums, consecutively. And without a pause, they've expanded their range without loosing sight of their limits.

The Big Sleep have also gotten better by huge leaps with each outing, delivering on the promise of their earlier songs without maturing too ambitiously.

Rave Tapes is the sound of a band equally unafraid to strike out in a markedly different direction, one confident in its voice and skills in a way that, along with the quality and control of the songs here, speaks well for Mogwai’s future.

Horizontal Structures proves that this music has legs. You don't really need to know who is in this band, or what else they've done, to appreciate what they do. You just have to like your hefty sounds to come wrapped in plush space.

Past Life Martyred Saints sounds as if it's trying to save rock, but without any winks or nods.

Thoroughly satisfying in sum, Hart and crew still succeed in leaving the listener desirous of more.

The sound is physically propulsive, enveloping and mildly psychoactive. The beat pounds hard on the most lizardly parts of the brain, bringing a catharsis, a sheer rush of physicality.

Music for the Age of Miracles is rather beautifully arranged by MacLean and long-time drummer Mark Keen, scored by Chris Taylor with the strings and brass conducted by Anthony Harmer.

UK Grim waxes artfully dyspeptic, its words a palimpsest of layered, complicated reference to current events and contemporary culture. ... Still at it, still hitting hard, all hail the Sleaford Mods.

Maybe Xiu Xiu are sometimes ridiculous, but human beings are ridiculous creatures; that’s why these songs feel so real.

Political protest was baked into her music, often in very explicit ways. Performing “prayer for amerikkka pt 1&2,” from 2019’s FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise in Switzerland, she reminded her audience, “it’s not always time to be neutral.” Speaking truth to power (or audiences, anyway) is one thing, but branch engaged in the arguably more difficult political project of community-building.

Torche’s strongest effort since 2008’s breakthrough Meanderthal.

This third full-length, written around the birth of his first son, takes that bouncy castle exuberance to even greater lengths, channeling the euphoria of sleep-short early parenthood into woozy, optimistic grooves.

Pearls and Brass have your ultimate Friday afternoon "just got paid today" soundtrack right here. Turn it up loud and enjoy.

Breaks in the Armor may, with a few slight tweaks, find Bachmann doing more or less the same thing as he's done on his past few albums, but when he does it this well, there's little reason to object.

Farrar, with his ever-changing band, has been doing this decades, but it seems like by looking back further, he’s found a way to energize himself going forward.

This is arguably his finest work, at least since The Gasoline Age, his '99 ode to petrol-guzzling beaters and strip-mall deadbeats.

That this focuses entirely on the unadorned piano may feel like a step down from those who embrace his more adventurous works. The instrumental chops heard here, though, stand on their own very well, and reveal another side to Hauschka’s music — and, perhaps, create some ambiguity as to where he might head from here.

Their potential is the wrong thing to appreciate: it's their immediacy, their unstudied and unfocused energy, that hits the spot.

Even though this is Blackburn and Hartley’s first record as Higher Authorities, they’ve had this psychedelic, dubby feel nailed down for years now. Making it more prominent is just a nice touch.

Though he’s not in any hurry, he’s also showing no signs of slowing down. There are 11 songs on The Time of the Foxgloves, some jokily lighthearted (“Blondes and Redheads”), others hauntingly spare and beautiful (“Se Fue En Noche,” “Jacob’s Ladder”).

It’s the kind of album you can listen to many times without wearing it out, without even getting much of a grip on why you like it.

It's hard to believe at first listen, but they've got nuance.

While the bossa nova drum machine on “All the Things You Do” and the scratchy funk guitars on “Pyramid Schemes” introduce a bit of welcome variety, both songs wear out their welcome over the course of their combined 10-minute runtime. Thankfully, “Solarised” takes the album out on a high with its swooshing synth pads underpinned by a hard-grooving bassline and soaring vocal melody. It’s a fitting close to a vibrant collection of tunes.

If you can’t conceptually get behind the concept of a metal kid giving up noise for beauty, you’re probably not going to like the record. Otherwise, check it out. It’s lovely.

Brave Faces Everyone doesn’t have a bunch of easy answers either — it’s more a record of solidarity and mutual support than it is anything more prescriptive.

There is nothing uncertain about You Stand Uncertain--this is one of the most assured albums of the year in any genre.

Though they’ve yet to release a subpar record, the sarcastically titled Ultimate Success Today laser-focuses both their song writing and sound into what may be their defining statement to date, especially apposite for these grim times.

Bullish and forceful, The Disco’s of Imhotep is also a work of considerable intricacy and mystery. Jamal Moss aims high and rarely overreaches, making the album not only ambitious, but a welcome blast of modern house that would live up any club night.

Any way you look at it, though, it commands and keeps your attention, and that’s something to appreciate in any age.

The results are as you might expect from the album title: playful, wide-eyed and occasionally chaotic explorations of intense forces that reach above and beyond human dimensions.

Saltbreakers is a wonderful album – a little glossy on the surface maybe, but saved from preciousness by its intelligence, restraint and soaring images.

The low tide image on the cover Black Sea suggests that this process of covering and uncovering is cyclical, and the music bears it out by adding a welcome bit of noise and depth to some stately and slowly evolving melodies.

Lost in the Dream continues Slave Ambient’s trajectory, threading wispy, half-spoken melodies through emerald forests of tone, ducking conventions like riff and hook in favor of edgeless, shapeless sensuality. These are songs that drive off into dune-like landscapes, always in motion, never arriving.

Approaches to guitar rock that are generally better segregated sound great together here, as they jump from '90s indie to shotgun at yr face drunkfuzz. I've got no idea where they can go with this. For now, they've made a record that leaves me spinning after every spin.

A juicy amalgam of West African rhythms and soothing electronic sounds.

It's a party, not a revival meeting, This Gift, but a good one.

It's rare that historically important recordings are also essential listening, but this is such a case.

Having demonstrated their ability to adeptly blend movement and atmospheric melody, Caminiti and Porras should aim higher than simple--albeit skillful--drones. That said, Ancestral Star delivers more than enough to reward the patient listener.

So even though Popp's new sound palette seems like a step back, the way he uses it is as au courant as an oil-soaked pelican. O is not a retro move, but the work of an artist dealing with the now.

From its start, Audience of One diverges starkly from the expected; by its end, the sense of surprise is replaced by that of satisfaction.

What makes Album so good, however, won’t be a consensus opinion on whether or not it’s culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. It’ll be the personal associations brought to it by each person encountering Girls for the first time.

These are not reproductions, but rather meditations that breathe and exist on their own terms.

It’s wonderful stuff, a model of restraint and subtlety that also has visceral pleasures.

The Beths took the path of being exactly who they’ve always been, but more intensely and immediately. Given the interruptions, they waste no time in getting going.

I’m Going Away is striking for its group sound; the Furnaces play with more air around them, more flexibility and interaction.

Logos opens a portal through which its artist tells us something about who he is, and though this is not everything, it is enough.

Their various styles are integrated and naturally came out of the way the Get Down Stay Down coalesced.

Color me pleasantly surprised. The Hungry Saw, it turns out, actually revitalized Tindersticks, spurring the band to an unprecedented level of productivity.

Up on High will sound like nothing much the first time you listen, but stay with it, because the songs are soft and unassuming, but excellent, and they’ll catch you in the end.

Martin and Chen create a world of liminal spaces on In Blue, the invitation to share them is persuasive and rewards are many. The Bug is a mercurial but known entity, his work always impressive, his choice of collaborators telling and Dis Fig shines in this setting. Hers is a voice and a vision you’ll want to hear more from.

Pink Graffiti is a strong album, and one that grows on you the more you listen to it. Your opinion of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys probably won't affect your judgment of it all that much.