If you'd cooled on the duo for this reason, now is the time to jump back in. Justice have purified their sound on Hyperdrama, largely for the better.

Despite electric amplifiers and a plethora of pedals, BIG|BRAVE have created an album that sounds like it's existed since the dawn of time. Tears will be shed and embraces are encouraged.

On All Born Screaming, Clark sounds more at home than she has in a while, but all planets inevitably die — perhaps the next one she lands on will finally be her own.

It's yet another solid rock record from a reliable group who are very good at this sort of thing.

Like the colourless photo of a near-anonymous Swift that adorns the album cover, it casts an artful pose but doesn't have the guts to look the listener in the eye.

At its best it's far closer to the sort of comeback album that reminds listeners why they loved the music in the first place, instead of the hollow nostalgia of past glories.

There is unquestionable bravery in the access and vulnerability that sentiment communicates, and the journey into pop music is yet another promising step in rousay's always-morphing development.

Across its 10 songs, Don't Forget Me is as concise as it is exciting. Not a note is wasted, not a second under-utilized. What truly sets it apart is how comfortable Rogers seems embodying her full potential.

The glowering strength of If I don't make it, I love u is in its commitment to both sides of the coin, an album both experimental and laid fully bare — The result is one of the best rock records of the year.

Clocking in at only 35 minutes — though it feels longer, richer — Up on Gravity Hill is a quick glimpse into a more earnest METZ. This doesn't sound like a band experimenting with something new, but rather a group of musicians secure enough in their craft to humbly evolve with increasingly uncertain times.

Whether it's the sing-songy Britpop and jazz on a song like "Out of Options'' or the contemplative soundtrack to a late night walk home on "So Tell Me…," Archives captures intense closeness and isolation, often at the same time in one song.

As disjointed and tense as this sophomore effort may come across, angeltape is a proclamation of artistic and emotional resilience.

With Older, McAlpine enters a new era of her career, armed with bluesy seventh chords and simple rhythms. She's done the work; she's done the soul-searching; she's done the meticulous labour of shaving her thoughts down to their purest, most authentic truths. Consider the ceiling of her last album cycle shattered.

On The Sunset Violent, Mount Kimbie throw things at the wall and see what sticks — those flung with high velocity make the most impact.

A LA SALA is an endlessly rewarding album. There's always something new to be discovered in its haze, a whispered lyric between the layers, a little pebble of meaning waiting to be overturned.

Vampire Weekend have lost the carefree immediacy of some of their best-loved work; there's nothing on Only God as viscerally addictive as "A-Punk" or "This Life," and there's a prog-like complexity to these performances that's geared more toward the head than the heart. But there's also just enough stripped-down beauty — like the balladic "Capricorn," or the swooning brass outro of "The Surfer" — that Only God Was Above Us remains emotional as well as academic.

Love in Constant Spectacle features all of Weaver's strengths and none of her (very few) weaknesses. There's a kind of magical play here that conceals the emotional weight the album continuously heaves skyward, any evidence of the effort smoothed out in the subtitles.

There are admittedly some palatable textures here, an inevitability given the roster of talent, but so much of it is obfuscated in genre confusion and poor arrangements.

COWBOY CARTER deserves your full attention; its sprawl unsuited for TikTok-sized consumption habits. Clocking in at just under 80 minutes, it takes time to properly digest, a rich 27-course meal that dares one to really let it sit on the tongue.

As a riff rock mood board, most of the album passes by nicely enough, with the occasional embarrassing lyric (the aforementioned refrain in "Must've Always Been a Thing," repetitions of "Ring dong / Ring-a-ding dong" on opener "The Dooms Day Bells") being the only moments that are actively unpleasant to listen to.

Occasionally, there are times when you wish Chastity Belt would shed their melancholic coil and get a little louder; interrupt their carefully considered listlessness with an impassioned outburst. But they prefer to simmer in their milieu, aware of the effect that quiet contemplation has in moving their message forward.

Like all of her best work, Akoma is heavy, mysterious and boundless. This is Jlin's world; we're just lucky enough to listen in.

While the songs of Something in the Room She Moves seem to exist in two modes — one buoyant, playful and adventurous, and the other weighty, contemplative and measured — a deeply somatic sense of sound design binds those halves together beautifully.

Lenker’s writing is always in conversations with traditional songwriting modes, but her soft sense of self and fascination with the surreal makes her art compellingly and unmistakably individual.

It's a joy to bask in the glow of one of the world's best producers leaning into his strengths.

Tigers Blood is another tour-de-force: a brawny, brainy, rollicking excursion through Crutchfield’s heartland, revving with the power of a pickup truck.

Simply put, Playing Favorites is their best work yet.

Bleachers is agreeable and safe, but there's a fumbling listlessness to the whole thing, a lack of dynamism that makes it fade into white noise. Antonoff’s latest is not the grand, drive-off-into-the-sun record that Strange Desire or even Gone Now strove to be and sometimes became — Bleachers is a commuter’s record through and through.

While it loses some of her past work’s joyous electricity, it reveals something truer. This is Whack’s world after all, we’re just lucky enough to live in it.

Moor Mother’s latest album is a tough listen, and might take a bit of research and a few listens to fully situate in its various contexts. This is all to be expected — grappling with terrible moments in history is never a pleasant or easy experience, but Ayewa makes the pain of remembering feel like fuel for the future.

Gordon has managed to create an album that pushes her legacy as an experimental force even further, another piece in a discography that refuses to be categorized. Rather than drift off quietly into the sunset, she might just be making the most interesting music of her career.

It’s fast, furious, funny, sad and above all real.

Smith is vague about where he lands on his quest for contentment, but Where’s My Utopia? manages the old trick of making the personal universal, while hanging on to the righteous fun that drew so many in in the first place.

Beyond the gooey saunters she’s become known for, she slows the tempo to near-standstills on multiple occasions, while likewise finding the most heart-racing BPMs of her career thus far. By virtue of this being a Faye Webster record, none of it feels jarring; it’s as intuitive as passing the time with someone you love.

Untame the Tiger feels more like something that was worked away at as a healing distraction, put down and picked back up at irregular intervals. The album’s first half generates a positive charge that tapers off toward its conclusion, but Timony’s sly guitar magic is always there to provide a jolt of life.

“My Day Off” is an instant standout. .... Other songs on Still lack these creative frameworks and aren’t quite as successful in leaving an impression.

Lest this all start to sound like homework, Rooting for Love has a glossy surface layer that’s as seductive as any dance floor banger — even brainiacs need rapture from time to time.

If it weren’t for Hughes’s amusing weirdness (more Grimes than Carly Rae, more Misfits than Gem), there would be a risk of her identity getting lost in all the reverence here — and there are places where it still may — but the confidence and songwriting on display prove that Allie X-goes-‘80s is a strong enough concept to carry her for one album.

Ultimately, Daniel is perfectly pleasant.

It’s a fittingly adult album from a pair who’ve long seemed stuck in a loop of playful immaturity — midlife sounds good on them.

Dspite its morbid title, Loss of Life contains some of MGMT’s most sincere and hopeful music.

It doesn’t just sound like wild west Americana — it feels that way, drawn from a life’s worth of experience and adoration of the genre. It’s the album that Segarra’s been building toward since they first picked up a guitar.

The record’s more direct first half may appeal to those who want their old school IDLES fix, but repeated listens to its rangier second half reveal an emotional complexity and sonic cohesion that have long escaped the band. Suddenly, there’s reason to be excited about where IDLES are headed.

GRIP is more than just a showcase for the return of Black queer spaces. It’s a celebration of the relationships — passionate, platonic, lasting, fleeting, loving, lustful — that these spaces foster.

While “Tacos and Toast” is a cozy, country delight about a relaxing Saturday that develops a sharper edge as it moves along, some of Hole in My Head’s more low key tunes fail to match even the too-slick immediacy of its louder rock songs. That said, the record’s showstopper is “Give Up the Ghost.”

Unlike their first and, let's be honest, irritatingly indulgent live recording, Sonic Death, Walls Have Ears presents Sonic Youth as resourceful, patient and secure in their esoteric songcraft.

With Weird Faith, Diaz manages to toe a wonderful narrative line, with all the excitement and trepidation of a new relationship perfectly captured. The deeper you get into the album, the more like you feel you’re living inside her head — it’s a journey worth taking.

This kind of underground indie pop, with its roots in DIY music like Orange Juice and the Feelies, always has a hardscrabble edge — but Ducks Ltd. find the cinematic grandeur in their scrappy ditties.

Warm and meditative, PHASOR’s softness is its greatest strength, extolling the virtues of patience, silence, touch and exploration. It’s a wonderfully complex album belied by its gentle minimalism.

The album, one of Wolfe’s best, is a powerful reminder that you are good enough, strong enough and brave enough to be mighty, authentic and free.

The extravagant and sensual Prelude to Ecstasy is their wine-stained toast to finding beauty in decadence, its cup runneth over with promise.

Between his riffy, arpeggiated acoustic strumming and the strongest vocal performance of his career, he cries out, grief-stricken, to hold on to life yet to be lived. With a record this strong so deep into his career, he’s definitely making the most of his own time.

These recurring themes of loneliness and confused love can grow repetitive, deployed in similar ways from song to song, but Sola is still able to keep the imagery fleshed out and distinctive.

This rejection (of prettiness, of palatability) is part of her mission statement, although moments from her catalogue where she allows herself to abandon it ever so slightly — "Don't Go Putting Wishes in My Head" from 2021's Thirstier — feel like the true window into the boundlessness of her artistry.

The music is as diverse as ever — from psych folk to hard rock to prog-jazz to post-punk to stoner metal ― but Segall’s songwriting feels streamlined and clear-eyed, a welcome respite from the storm that surrounds it.

Wall of Eyes is an album of background music, a cinematic compilation that feels like a collection of songs that just weren’t good enough to be on its predecessor. It’s too jammy, too undercooked, too unedited — an overextended comedown without the requisite high.

There’s a delicacy to the way Kirby’s voice interplays with these vulnerable arrangements, especially on guitar ballads like the earnest “Party of the Century” (which Kirby co-wrote over FaceTime with ANTI- labelmate Christian Lee Hutson).

A great, often excellent effort containing at least a couple outstanding moments that see Future Islands really crystallize as its best self. There are some overly familiar moments and the album essentially offers more of the same, but it’s arguably their best work since Singles, the group’s still-reigning high-water mark.

Hazy slacker rock with catchy melodies and psych-y breakdowns, Melt the Honey is a warm, raw album that invites reflection without judgement.

Although there are still growing pains after almost 40 years, Green Day are back with a spiky, enthusiastic vengeance. And that's always a good thing.

While there is no shortage these days of songwriters railing against soured relationships, Hackman has finally made it out of her twenties with all her good intentions and bad decisions leaving marks on her heart. She's ready to turn those pages and tell her grown-up tales.

As a genre-defying work, When No Birds Sing is the perfect middle ground for two bands who relentlessly battle against the lazy pigeonholing of scenesters and critics.

You can't help but wish he'd leaned into the dive bar clatter and freewheeling wildness that always feels just at the periphery of his music. As it is, And the Wind acts as a solid addition to your deep-summer-backyard-beer-drinking soundtrack — sometimes that's all you need.

It's tremendously long, offering remixes of old material and recapitulating many typical Vile motifs. While slyly daring in extremely subtle ways, a large portion (of an almost hour-long EP, I might remind you!) feels somewhat superfluous to his more grounded catalogue.

Lyrically, Brown is still one of the best we have. .... Charismatic guests like Bruiser Wolf, Overall and MIKE manage to make their respective marks without taking up too much space — This is Brown's story.

Expanding upon its predecessor, The Complete Budokan 1978 is an immersive treasure trove that brings us into the storied space for two nights with Bob Dylan. He was a bit restless, heartbroken and perhaps even a little angry, and that got him searching for new muses and new sounds.

Desolation's Flower is a good record that flirts with greatness. It's unlikely to convert any non-believers, awash in great swells of feeling and excellent songs that, admittedly, are sometimes constricted by a lack of space and breathing room. But the good that is there, roiling and thrashing in the depths, is well worth seeking.

The Ice Spice collab "Boy's a liar Pt. 2" is perhaps inevitably tacked onto the end of Heaven knows. It's a bit of a self-own, as it easily outshines the rest of the album despite being far simpler in every way. PinkPantheress has become an expert pop craftswoman — but the stripped-down magic of "Boy's a liar Pt. 2" reminds listeners that incredible hooks outweigh intricate production every time.

Sure, the usual country tropes appear in the form of drinking whiskey, diminishing horizon lines and the "devil [who] don't give a damn" — but Stapleton has long cracked the code of authenticity. Country isn't for everyone, but Chris Stapleton should be.

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert does exactly what it says on the tin, but in the process adds another story to Dylan's tower of song, and showcases Marshall as devotee, student and messenger.

In shearing off that thorniness, Drop Nineteens have returned as a highly competent, often lovely, and perhaps less interesting version of themselves.

While not as immediately trance-inducing as their debut, The Twits finds the band in a newly roiling, bellicose state of transformation.

Taken as a bit of a lark, Skye's I<3UQTINVU exists as a bag of mostly disposable — but exciting! — what ifs. Without the grounded warmth of Ellery's songwriting, the album has the perhaps unintended effect of sending us back to the originals to appreciate the duo's more controlled creative alchemy.

Ultimately, these are celebration songs, compelling the listener to look forward, put matters into their own hands and create something good while they can.

Simultaneously modern and nostalgic, a hard rocking band that you can lose yourself in, Hotline TNT have made a record that defies time and space.

It's still a bit distant and aloof — and ultimately too tame for its own good — but Chronicles of a Diamond finds the band heading in more interesting directions. It is, in every sense of the word, a vibe.

Thankfully The Silver Cord's hits overpower its misses, and disco battle epic "Set" strikes with a punch, adding another track to the short yet mighty list of King Gizzard songs to play in the club.

Perhaps it's just the associative properties, but it feels like Jenny from Thebes manages to truly distill the manic energy of the Mountain Goats' formative phase into a maturing yet vital shape, giving it a place in the upper reaches of their pantheon.

While the band has always been a rock-first concern, the core of God Games is in its mature, layered and emotive downtempo pop balladry.

Whether or not this search is of genuine desire or some gesture toward a gaudy ecclesiastic aesthetic, Hayter's most recent attempt at salvation manifests in arguably the most afflicted and disconcerting peak into her head and heart yet.

Hackney Diamonds may not go down as an iconic Stones LP, but this late in the game it's basically a triumph by nearly every measure.

On ONE MORE TIME…, blink-182 don't always hit that sweet spot, but when they do, it feels earned.

Javelin finds Stevens at his most vulnerable, yes, but like Carrie & Lowell, he paradoxically hides behind a wall of references and metaphor (many of which I'm sure are biblical in nature, discreetly whizzing past my woefully secular ears). Now posited in plainer language than ever before, he makes its cipher even more challenging to crack. That's what makes these records so healing to their audiences, though: the universality.

More than anything, the pair [James Chapman and Emma Anderson] effectively manage to touch on all the details that fans of Anderson and Lush might hope to hear without pandering or retreading old ground too heavily.

Some of It Was True finds the Menzingers growing up, not too fast and not too slow.

Ghostly, graceful and deceptively deep, Goodnight Summerland establishes Deland's concise power as a songwriter. As her artistry continues to evolve, it's clear that there's more than one way for her to tell her trademark stories of the infinite worlds within our own.

There's rarely a moment on Jonny that feels regressive — for the first time since the Drums' debut 13 years ago, Pierce has mastered a way to bare both his chops and his emotions.

Music about climate disaster usually feels somewhat dogmatic and thematically grandiose. But on Tomorrow's Fire, Ella Williams of Squirrel Flower takes the wide scale of the apocalypse and taps into its most intimate and personal corners.

Paint My Bedroom Black is a shiny and haunted — but unwaveringly hopeful— collection that sees her carve out her own kohl-liner rimmed space in the modern pop pantheon.

At first glance, the record may read as a scattered amalgamation of journalled revelations, but measured by the careful consolidation of its many tiny details, it may be Woods's most intentional, fleshed-out project to date.

In its enhanced and alternate history, complete with more stunning liners by Mehr, this Let it Bleed edition tells the tale as beautifully, clearly, and boldly as fans of the Replacements could ever hope for.

While not as immediate as its predecessor, Void solidifies KEN Mode as one of Canada's most important heavy acts, a band that doesn't just rely on brute force to affect its audience.

Artistic, intelligent (but not overly intellectualized), and executed with a skill and care many of us can only hope to comprehend, The Enduring Spirit is this year's best metal album, and one of the best albums of 2023, period, full stop.

falling or flying may fall a bit short of the expectations set by her debut, but it does fly in the face of what you'd expect of someone on their second outing as a solo artist. It's a solid effort despite some missteps — among the clutter is some of the best material of Smith's young career.

Sit Down for Dinner proves the band is as compelling as ever, circling in and out of each other's vocals and rhythms with ease.

It's always amazing how the two rappers behind Armand Hammer can complement each other so seamlessly while also seeming to tread on two separate planes of existence — We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is alive with this unique balancing act.

As a group that have faced their growing pains together, Slow Pulp strike the perfect balance between soft, thoughtful and loud on Yard. Tangled up in nervousness about being either too selfish or too self-pitying, the band finds a way to wring out the drab fabric of discomfort until a bit of beauty trickles out.

Albums like Feel, Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion are typically considered Animal Collective's best works, yet they all lack the sustained presence of Isn't It Now? Lord only knows if it's the impact of Elevado or simply 20-odd years of musical chemistry coalescing into something new, but however it happened, Animal Collective found the now sound.