The best and most consistent Pink Mountaintops album to date, Get Back mines a deep vein of nostalgia via song references, memory-scape imagery, and musical touchstones in kraut rock, post-punk and new wave.

While he has first and foremost created a dance record, it is one that rewards the two left-footed listener with its intricate sleights, redirections and deconstructions. It is also a reminder of the joy of unfettered movement and the art behind craft of producers who provide music that encourages it.

Dorji’s playing exudes a confidence that doesn’t rely solely upon volume or muscularity. Years of pitching himself headlong into musical situations have cultivated his ability to develop a piece of music on the fly, using rhythmic variations to make the listener feel like they had better hang on tight, and spinning intricate elaborations upon an idea until nothing seems to exist besides the shudder and vibration of steel strings and wood.

Your response to Be Up A Hello will depend on your tolerance for Squarepusher’s virtuosic onslaughts. It can be as exhausting as it’s exhilarating. If there’s a sameness to the BPM readings of the up-tempo tracks a deeper listen reveals the layers that are buried beneath the frenzy and show Squarepusher has lost none of his edge.

That Trees Outside the Academy is more accessible than Moore's usual output is a fair assertion to make, though there are facets innate to his music that seem sure to prevent the gangly guitarist from ever crafting an album of pure pop.

Frawley has made lemonade, squeezing out the sour juices of life into a lovely, acid-tipped, unassuming but quite refreshing solo record, Undone at 31.

Eating Us is still an unqualified success, the pop album that many followers in the footsteps of Kraftwerk have tried and failed to make.

His melodies hang in the air, homespun like Saturday afternoon arts and crafts, creating a lush foreground that contrasts something lovely with his minimalist production. This latest holds to that formula, and improves upon it.

Heartbreaking Bravery is not an especially weird album, certainly not in comparison with Krug's other work, but it's alluring and intriguing all the same.

While Pythagorean Dream serves the practical end of giving Chatham something that he can tour from town to town without having to school a new set of musicians for each performance, it’s not a compromise or even a reduction. It’s just one more chance to let him show what’s inside a sound.

The mix of autobiographical honesty and imaginative construction elevates Purple Mountains to something more than just Berman’s breakup album or musical therapy session. It relieves the emotions it develops, making the album a stunning achievement even more than a welcome return for Berman.

Like a great short story, Body is well worth revisiting, even after you know the plot twist, to savor details and subtleties you missed the first (or second or third) time around.

It seems like a humble accomplishment, but it is richly rewarding.

The most cohesive LP in at least five years and its darkest, most urgent, most intense work to date.

Penelope Three spends its 35-minute runtime exploring this fertile intersection between haunting folk and anxious electronica, creating a deep, resonant space that’s beautiful, eerie and unsettling.

One of the most beguiling and rewarding Six Organ of Admittance albums — 39-minutes of synth ballads, cracked space-glam and 1980s-glossed guitar overload.

From free jazz to contemporary modern ensemble music, Halvorson has made thoughtful arrangements for Amaryllis. It’s great to hear her rock out too, playing with an abandon that has been simmering all along.

If the consistently lovely Piano is radical at all, it’s in a subtle and contextual way, serving partly as a space for Taylor to investigate several of his own previously released compositions and a few covers with a quiet kind of focus, and partly as a sustained exercise in mood.

Instead of burning before an audience, here you have them working with other musicians and outboard effects to accomplish a vertical array of sounds that reward deep listening as much as full-body engagement.

Engravings does find Barnes reaching new peaks, even if he’s not radically adding to his sound.

Arab Strap chronicle all the joys we seek and the catastrophes we make on what could well be their finest and most complete record. As Days Get Dark is a sordid, mordant, tender triumph.

It’s tempting to spend the whole review quoting Goulden’s best lines, but the songs are solid musically, too.

Every sound is thrown like a punch, rocking you back with sheer bludgeoning impact. The sound is instantly familiar, though surprisingly hard to pin down with punk antecedents.

This is a memory album that is touched with love but almost entirely free of cheap nostalgia. It comes from a long way away, using everything Dacus has learned since to capture her experiences clearly, with art but without too much ornamentation.

Lloyd, the Marvels, and Williams cover an array of emotions while remaining well focused in sound (with the exception of “Monk’s Mood,” pretty enough for inclusion anyhow). It’s an impressive take by a roster of stars given over to the bigger idea.

Last year, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio sounded like they were headed for space. This year, I'd say the mothership has come back home.

It should be stressed as bluntly as possible, then, that Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton haven’t “just” made a good album for a couple of teenagers; I’m All Ears is pretty damn good for Rambo.

It is fractious and difficult and thorny, as always, the rhythms knocked sideways, the parts jutting out at each other in angular, assertive ways. But the singing soothes the rough edges and complicates the punk narrative, weaving a buzzing radiance over minimalist grooves.

The temptation to move to these songs is unequalled in his catalog and, consequently, the willingness to engage the material (and artist) in a positive way also makes Sentielle Objectif Actualité a unique challenge of a very different kind.

It's a nice album. One of the things that's really interesting about it, though, is its relationship with nostalgia.

It’s in those moments [of appealing moment of vulnerability] as well as in the swarming chorus of 'God’s Children' that the duo hit their true heights, and those same qualities are the ones most likely to mark this album as an enduring piece of work from two icons of a class that has long since graduated.

In this possibly one-off collaboration, Shuford and his pals have dug up an archaic artifact and filled it with powerful intoxicants.

Cross imbues largely electronic textures with vulnerability and emotion in a very effective way, reminding me of Mia Doi Todd’s work with Dntel. In eerie settings that seem not quite real, she conveys something grounded and human, viewed indistinctly through thick banks of fog.

Given that it’s a collection of EPs and singles, These Were the Earlies is predictably all over the map, a problem exacerbated by the Earlies’ wide-ranging stylistic ambitions and long-distance collaborative methods.

The harmonies and surging melodies feel natural and completely spontaneous, pop as a relaxed outpouring of sound.

In short, Efterklang could've made this entire record, and certainly that trio of great musique concrète songs, in their bathroom. Easily.

Let the Poison Out only ups the ante. Distortion is easy and lo-fi bands are a dime a dozen, but hardly any of them clean up this well.

Matt Pike has changed over the years, though, and it hasn't hurt at all.

While Jenny from Thebes is a self-proclaimed rock opera, it defies the expectations of that genre inasmuch as it’s not a sprawling, self-indulgent double album. Moreover, it stands on its own.

It’s a confident outing from an outfit with all the right reasons to be confident, a unified and often arresting record with few qualms about what it’s supposed to be.

This is the best live album I’ve heard in some time, intense enough to hold your attention through its massive two-hour length, inventive enough to add something to what you think you know about these songs.

You get a very empowered, very confident album. Super fun, too.

It’s the wholeness of his style that is so arresting.

This one is as strong as the last one, a shade better for shifting the densities of the drone more. It should be a detriment that they could be shuffled together without notice, yet it isn’t.

You’ll Be Safe Forever is a wormhole backward in time. It’s also a timeless reminder of how valuable both Mark Van Hoen and WFMU are to the contemporary music landscape.

He is comfortable enough with the sounds and effects we associate with Sonic Youth to replicate them without the intervening distance of reference, but he is also ready to push these sounds into other more conventionally tuneful byways.

Tizita, like Lala Belu as a whole, feels like both a victory lap and the beginning of something new. It will be exciting to see what, at 71 years young, Mergia does next.

A dozen listens later, I'm still not sure if there's a beautiful core here that's half-obscured by the wrapping or whether it's the wrapping itself that's beautiful. Either way, it's a remarkable finish to a very promising album.

There’s nothing bombastic about it, but it’s large in a way that folk-picking seldom is, and it fills every inch of a sonic landscape.

Eleventh Dream Day are living in the moment, and they have never sounded madder than they do on Works for Tomorrow. They also sound, on their own terms, quite superb, and not at all like they’re trying to keep the past alive.

So is Patton a charlatan or a genius? While Suspended Animation doesn’t exactly settle the question, it’s shitloads of fun trying to find out.

[The songs are] skeletal, bittersweet and exquisitely quiet--open enough to make the most of what her cohorts could offer, firm enough to have a semi-personal punch.

Its greatest strengths are more memorable: the songwriting is strong, even if the album is a little top heavy, and it’s a lot of fun to watch Aaron Funk go way out on a limb without a safety net in sight.

While I’ll miss how amusingly unpredictable TA could be, I can’t complain about their first long-player that works, front to back.

At its best, A U R O R A is an exhilarating work, propulsive and contemplative, able to allow for moments of searing volume and elegant beauty.

Lost Time is a spiritual statement, executed through but not limited by drum kits, and it works towards revelation.

If Oh Me Oh My is Banhart’s most fantastic record and Rejoicing In The Hands his most focused, Nino Rojo is the singer at his most inclusive.

With Ones and Sixes they’ve pulled together many of their disparate sides in a masterful survey of what makes them one of the great rock bands of their era.

The magic of I’ve Got Me comes in the way that brutal sentiment comes dancing in on skittery melody and how coruscating lines conform so neatly to classic song structure. Joanna Sternberg makes tales of betrayal and non-conformity sound like tunes from 1930s black and white musicals, and that’s an accomplishment.

It’s an impressive display of the sort of catchy and fun (natch) music that Newman can make, even without the substantial talents of his usual collaborators.

Lamar has once more asserted a great and formidable talent, and good kid is triumphantly and unmistakably his, but the artists that stick around longest are the ones who let us make their art our own.

Functional Arrhythmias moves briskly through these terse, but usually quite rich pieces.

1,000 Years, Tucker's solo debut, shows a remarkable amount of growth both as a songwriter and a performer from the loud guitar maelstrom that punctuated Sleater-Kinney some years back.

Rachel’s can effortlessly create beauty, but what saves the record from saccharine blandness are the arrangements that almost distrust the group’s strengths, refusing to leave beautiful passages uncomplicated by dissonance or some kind of sonic distraction.

2020 is an album that is always making and unmaking itself, dissolving its constituent parts into radiant pools of slush, then rallying them into tangible structures, then letting them collapse again. Being, becoming, nothingness, it’s all in there.

The whole thing is so fascinatingly diverse and upending that even the most open minded listeners may find themselves rebelling.

Arkhon is a distinctive and consistently winning album. It is a departure, but one that still manages to be an addition to Danilova’s catalogue that complements her other releases. Some of the best singles of 2022 reside here.

If April demonstrates Kozelek’s predilection for reaching backwards, in places it also finds him broadening his range.

Emmaar’s reassuring familiarity in the face of the forces of war and commerce is at once reassuring and a bit concerning. On the one hand, it’s great to see that the group remains incorruptible and in touch with its essence; on the other, a bit of buffing and shining aside, if you know the band’s sound, you already know this record.

They’re still nodding to early Pop synthesizer proponents (The Human League, Fad Gadget, A Broken Frame era Depeche Mode), and now mixing in a beefed-up, contemporary EDM blast with the je ne sais quoi that the group infuses into everything it touches.

They weave their instruments around each other deftly, with nobody stomping on toes. ... The anger and the grief are broken up by moments of beauty. ... These moments of respite from the darkness, where Springtime lets the sunshine part the clouds, are where they are the most powerful.

Presley works quickly--he says he went into the studio with more than 100 possible songs--and without much intermediation between idea and finished piece. This process seems to allow him to absorb many different influences (1960s psych, freak folk, children’s stories, his life), filter them through some subconscious prism, splitting them out as almost but not quite recognizable rainbow colors

It hops around from elliptical soundscapes to bright pop songs to surfy psychedelia to brashly incisive rock, just as its progenitor does, and it’s an engaging if discontinuous ride.

If the DFA medium/message commands one groove rattling under a nation, Less Than Human is evidence enough that bot-genius Maclean is just the half-man needed to bang up the plumbing so that all faucets drip lightning bolts.

Andrews’ band is first rate, particularly organist Daniel Walker, whose weedy, wavering hum imbues these songs with a mournful depth of field. ... What’s new, here, however, is how damned strong she is, how fierce a belter, how indomitable a chronicler of the middle-class struggle.

There’s a calmness, a baroque beauty perhaps, to this mode of singing, but on Paperwork, it’s enmeshed within swiftly moving song structures.

I Know I’m Funny Haha is not so very different from this last album from Webster, but it feels more assured and confident, and the subject matter is more upbeat.

The End is Near employs much of fans found so pleasant about Bedhead, particularly the impressive build-up of two and three bar melodies.

It’s a very good set of songs, sleek and wrenching at the same time.

This time, she and Wells seems intent on demonstrating that members of even the shaggiest rock outfits have a pop side, too. If you’ve been waiting to see someone try to splice together Carol King and Karen Dalton--and more or less pull it off--this is your record.

Unlike your average grime productions, these tracks are rarely propulsive or tailored for the dancefloor, but rather shift and shake convulsively under the weight of stark, metronomic beats, swathes of sub-bass and icy synth swirls. Listen carefully, and there is a certain melodicism nestled in the heart of this album, but its tone is despairing and subdued, glimmers of light in a dark and uncaring world.

Pole’s familiar synth-hissing static has been removed but a chilled atmosphere remains, successfully transforming this release into four club-friendly tracks that will leave you feeling warmer than a glass of red wine.

The very real pleasure of this collection of songs comes in how the love of tradition collides with raucous rule-breaking energy. You’ve got your outlaw country, sure, but did any of those guys write a song called “Motherfucker” and carry it off? Shook does. Not every song stomps. Some are plaintive and yearning, like the lovely “Jane Doe,” others full of anthemic slow-rocking swirl like “Nightingale.” But all insist on direct emotional engagement and brutal honesty and acceptance of a very specific point of view.

Anderson is a skilled, idiosyncratic guitar player, but what sets Cloud Corner apart from the records of her skilled, idiosyncratic peers is that she hasn’t lost sight of the power of music to speak to the individual, not just about them. With their modest run times, understated playing, and emotional honesty, the pieces on Cloud Corner feel like they’re inviting you to share in, not just observe, their joy and grief.

The late Steve Lacy arguably attained the deepest degree of intimacy and prolificacy with the pianist’s songbook, but others like German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach have made substantial strides as well. Smith’s set fits confidently in their company in its balance of original and interpretive material.

Like a raging flood, JSBX has picked up all sorts of things on its way down, but unlike Irene, the band has turned a jumble into something tight and precise and essentially its own.

On Lambchop's more ambitiously simple albums, such as Mr. M, that darkness is all the more affecting.

For illumination on this particular sect of techno’s journey over the past few years, it’s hard to think of an album more deserving of the limelight than Incubation.

What's more remarkable than her fascinating biography is her bold music. Like her life story, there's hardly anything like it.

Stepping gingerly and keeping balanced in precarious places, Wald is a cat. It’s as pleasing as a purr.

Minor quibble aside, Warm Chris is a fantastic record full of color, humor and wonder.

Return to the Sea reins in its eccentricities successfully enough to illustrate that the most understated risks can be the most rewarding.

You may not need to be a Fugazi fan to appreciate Messthetics, though anyone can draw lines from the fiery complexities of Instrument to these explosive compositions. The nervy aggression of post-punk joins with jazz-rock’s virtuosity here, and it’s good stuff all the way through.

The merging of the two artists’ sounds feels entirely natural.

Toledo’s first full band record, his first record with a producer, with a sound that is ragged but clean, emotionally raw but cleverly structured. It’s a record that engages heart and mind and viscera all at once, and if some of the songs go on longer than pop usually does, it’s because they have more to say.

Years of careful post-production honed this impressive exercise in large group improvisation into a multi-hued vista replete with crepuscular silhouettes and flecks of effervescence.

The guitar throughout the album has an unusual approach which certainly helps PGMG stand out from the crowd.

Antibalas is charging ahead, poised for continued recognition and celebration among Afrobeat devotees, as well as first discovery by world music dabblers.