One of the most frustrating releases of recent times. Tracks meander insipidly, crushed by the weight of a solipsistic “message” and the real moments of quality only serve as a reminder of what might have been.

It’s mesmerizing background music that doesn’t pass judgment if you let it take a secondary role in your daily life.

Big Thief proves that it can feed your head, your heart, and your hands in equal measure. Like the musical giants of old there is nothing they can’t do, ably going from strength to strength. Two Hands serves as the band’s call to arms.

Home Video is a more noticeably more mellow affair. Musically, it can be a little thin. Her strength as a lyricist is unwavering, even on her sparest, most nondescript ballads (Thumbs). But, as perkier indie-rock tunes like First Time and Brando prove, her careful arpeggios can also shine when she lets a little looser.

It's a moving, eclectic return that longtime fans will admire—and find themselves surprised to discover them for the first time.

Tomorrow’s Harvest, the duo’s latest, is a perfect reminder of how well these two can bring their unique aesthetic to life through music.

Slight missteps do little to deter what is some of the band's most instantly likable tracks in their career, where they turn up one rave-up rocker after the next with wide-eyed fury. Having proven themselves time and time again, they've far outpaced those unwilling to grow up with them.

St. Vincent's most sonically rich effort to date.

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.