A fully conceived album of beautifully crafted songs, and a real treat for fans and newcomers alike.

With an immediate appeal and an evocative and nervous twitch throughout, Mating Surfaces maintains a gratifying pace, balancing energy and peculiarity throughout its 29-minute runtime. ... They manage to be playful without being poppy, succeeding in this case where a lot of modern punk rock fails.

From Old Skin to Harmonia’s Dream, I Don’t Live Here Anymore has plenty of new War on Drugs classics that will sit comfortably next to Red Eyes and Strangest Thing on a setlist.

The National's latest is easily up there with the very best indie-rock records of the year.

Even though we get a catchy moment of goofy, snarling country midway through, the album is a result of the emotional clarity that a year in quarantine provided. Swift has written about curdling relationships splendidly in the past, but there's a new dimension to her writing that wasn’t there before. Onward.

No amount of musical pedigree can save her commonplace lyrical sentiments, though, which are too noticeable to ignore. Which, to a degree, slightly misstep a personal journey where she takes account of a bevy of life experiences with genuine autonomy.

Overall, Amo is a strident record, difficult to categorize and, in a good way, uniquely spliced and sequenced with little fear of crossing boundaries--but part of mastering this dark art is knowing when to put the paintbrush down.

It’s hard to find fault with the record since anything you think might be lacking, melodic interest, harmonic development, rhythmic drive, etc, was certainly left out deliberately.

Elverum has created an album that demands your time and attention, not to mention any memories you may be willing to part with.

She provokes an emotional groundswell in the quietest of moods, one acoustic song at a time. But the knotty, country rock groove of both Head Alone and You Were Right show that she can also shake off those doldrums. Maybe not as much as we’d like, but as she repeatedly denotes in Crushing, healing is an everyday process.

Graceful, inviting, and evocative as ever, Dan Bejar's assembled the necessary parts for an early-year success.

Mental Illness is first and foremost an album about achieving self-sufficiency through trail and blunder. And in doing so, she once again stands tallest, and quietest, in an exceptionally consistent career.

A Hero's Death is not about growth: it's a band assessing where they stand as rising up-and-comers and having the impulse to express themselves differently. Maybe their sulking comes with a bit of affectation, but at least it's a convincing portrait of keeping true to themselves—soaking in everything that surrounds them.

Simply put, Post Self is another stunning addition to Godflesh’s uncompromising thirty-year run.

There's a hard-won maturity here that makes every single line of hers deeply felt, even if it also emphasizes the more cloying elements of her songwriting.

While Fantasy Empire is definitely still more of a tweak than a departure, when you’re still producing albums as monstrously savage and bewildering as this over 15 years into your career, those tweaks can still sound pretty damn significant on their own terms.

A finely crafted collection of indie rock.

Over time, Morby should outgrow his occasional Dylanesque vocal quirks and redundant baroque embellishments. Still, Singing Saw will be remembered as a breakthrough moment from an artist who’s now more comfortable articulating his own visual language.

Bits of Medulla sound similar to Vespertine, but there’s a marked distinction in the means of delivery and enough change to keep things interesting.

Complete Mountain Almanac is a superficially pretty album, but you’ll need to afford it your full attention to unearth its full charms and appreciate its emotional depth. Grab your best headphones and really listen; you’ll soon discover there’s something very special going on here.

For all the missteps along the way, El-P arrives somewhere quite poignant, and although he may not have paved his own way there, his route is quite impressive, and there is no wasted beat and no unseen seriousness and intensity.

Though not quite the standout the band promises early on, it does end things on a mournful yet triumphant note. It caps off one of Pallbearer's most approachable statements to date, where they bring new life to their usual approach as they stick to their core sound.

This Is Happening is looking back on a life well lived and well learned, the final cap on a perfect career.

Their call-and-response breakdowns are still as impassioned as ever on tracks like Drippy and Cruise Control, where they place the hooks and melodies right on the surface. The use of ambiance over their riotous songs isn’t just an asset, it’s also the essence of No Age.

Weaving in dustier threads to Beach House’s ever shimmery fabric proves that the cyborgian approach of mixing the organic with the mechanical is an increasingly winning formula.

All in all, A Celebration of Endings is a curious, often potent blend of sounds and influences. While lyrically dark, its exploration is more often than not a very satisfying ride into the unknown.

Being interesting, unique, fun and damn good is near impossible to pull off. Sleigh Bells has done it on Treats, and goddamn is it good.

This is The National’s 4th or 5th comfortably strong album in a row, another slight variation on a tried-and-true theme.