The hour of music on The Clientele’s I Am Not There Anymore flies by with a widely entertaining gusto while satisfying the band’s restless creativity.

Working with producer Butch Walker (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran) in his Nashville studios, Cosentino reaches for the pop heights with timely tunes and lyrics which are current, but also middle of the road at times.

Each listen reveals more layers in each song, the first listen might sound like The Beach Boys and the second listen maybe sounds like Donovan, and by the third it just sounds like Max Clarke. Yet it’s entirely original the whole time and perhaps one of the best albums to be released so far this year.

It’d behoove him to engage with an objective third party to help produce the album (a task he assumed here along with his spouse). Based on the slightly erratic nature of Mountains, such an alliance would ensure the versatile skills Nils Lofgren still commands would receive all the attention they deserve and in the proper proportion too.

The Ballad Of Darren has the band sounding as tight and crafted as the first time we heard from the Brit-pop trailblazers except this time around a sense of maturity rings through these 10 songs.

Enter into Rajan with zero expectations and allow Night Beats to whisk you off on a mind-expanding journey that blends genres while keeping the unfiltered creativity of Danny Lee Blackwell at the center of it all.

Though controversial at the time, this music, experimental in nature, still resonates with intensity, spirituality, and unbridled power, a clear steppingstone to Trane’s Classic Quartet, and a ‘must have’ for Trane collectors.

Ochoa’s music will inevitably have you smiling and perhaps reaching back to the Buena Vista Social Club recording and its various offshoots.

“Alice in Bluegrass” highlights the skills of her fine band while the haunting “Stranger Things” is both a vocal tour de force and a stunning dobro turn from Douglas. Tuttle is at her playful best, promoting marijuana legalization in the brief, upbeat “Down Home Dispensary.”

The combination of Wall’s vivid imagery and his sense of tone gives these songs a cinematic feeling, Little Songs is just as much a novel-turned-movie as it is an LP. Colter Wall has another terrific record to add to his discography, one that cements him as Country’s next legend.

“The View” is another near-solo track that legitimizes Lukas Nelson’s songwriting skills, as well as the understated savvy of Promise of the Real. Would that such numbers be the rule rather than the exception on the album? Or that the band quintet stretched out longer and more often than they do over the course of the twelve selections.

While Gabriels wear their influences on their sleeves, they are able to melt them down to form their own forward-thinking take that is as free and courageous as the genre has sounded in a long time.

The album finds a comfortable middle ground between the warmth of your own bed after a long vacation and the anxiety of entering a new era in your life. She deploys just enough ambiance to keep us listening without distracting from her overall message, allowing the hushed melodies and simplistic arrangements to thrive under the all-encompassing creativity of its creator.

We have one of the best in their series, one that sounds like one infectiously grooving continuous track.

There’s no better modern bluesman on the scene today than Birchwood. He consistently delivers the goods and Exorcist is his latest adventurous chapter..

Stinson and Robert have turned down the raucousness and deliver more contemplative efforts, while still experimenting with sound and instrumentation. The stakes feel lower by design as if two musicians are just having a good time with each other as Cowboys in the Campfire allow Wronger to chill along.

The long closer of “The Real Thing” is drawn out as the group goes for a big and cathartic finale, yet never fully breaks on through. That said, there is a lot to like on Emotional Contracts, as Deer Tick returns to the indie rocking fold, proving that they will travel wherever the song takes them.

This is indeed as animated as we’ve heard Lucinda in some time. Her articulation and her songs are strong, while buoyed by excellent backing musicians, vocalists, and superb production values.

These songs touch on solitude, fading love, trying to grow up and some bleak topics, but their sweet sound together makes listening to them a joy.

The Beggar is a challenging listen over its two-hour run time, but the sonic soundscapes SWANS create throughout deliver what the band set out to do; juxtapose the beautiful and grotesque while stretching out their droning sound to the breaking point.

In the end, Lloyd Cole makes the title of On Pain sound ironic. It’s as if the eight tracks and thirty-seven minutes are intended as an antidote to the psychic turbulence pervading the world at large in 2023.

It is revelatory that on such cuts–like the rest, ranging from five to eight minutes in duration–Metheny employs his instincts as much as his technique. The delicate balance of those two elements is nothing less than remarkable on Dream Box.

Cable Ties use their intriguing mix of punk, rock, and post-punk dance vibes with an assured delivery throughout the powerful All Her Plans, breaking out to a larger audience with committed songwriting, driven playing, and compelling vocal styles.

Gov’t Mule’s willingness to step outside its collective comfort zone here is clearly not without its shortfalls. Still, that very courage augurs well for the celebration of their thirtieth anniversary next year.

The album opens with the tone-shifting, unsettling, pessimistic “Obscenery” which sees modern love as unsentimental and everything doomed around grunge-laden guitars, random classical violin breaks and crashing drums; interesting ideas which never fully lock-in. Better is the driving, straight-ahead rock of “Paper Machete” complete with an excellent distorted solo, the angular “Emotion Sickness” that deploys a catchy FM radio-friendly hook, and “Negative Space” which juxtaposes sexy grooving bass during the verses and big clanging noise breaks for the choruses.

The album is eminently funky. That sound works well for a while but begins to wear thin, rescued in the latter half by tracks such as “Concrete Mind,” “Not Gonna Waste My Love” and the superb closer “It’s Alright,” which do the best job of depicting LaVette’s endearing, pour-it-all-out and leave-nothing-on-the-floor-vocals. Of course, there’s a side benefit too – Randall Bramblett is likely to expand his number of followers as a result.

While the album boasts numerous contemporary jazz and innovative artists, it’s a mashup of many Black music styles. This writer gives the edge to R&B and African-tinged tunes but there’s so much to digest here that we may hear it a bit differently each time it plays.

Heaven Is A Junkyard marks the most powerful and personal album from Powers yet.