The only misfires include Brother, an old-tyme shanty à la the Decemberists whose Back On The Chain Gang-style background chants are an uncharacteristically tacky production choice. Still, The Wild is full of serviceable songs and outstanding playing, with Banwatt once again proving he’s one of the best drummers in the biz.

The wistful elegance of the music makes Luciferian Towers a peculiarly gorgeous portrayal of our threatening political reality. Xenophobia is on the rise and we seem to be on the brink of nuclear war, but at least we’ve got this album to provide the soundtrack.

It’s relatable while remaining singular, and unsurprisingly it’s also (mostly) bangin’.

The expansive, heavenly textured, rambling blues jams that make up a good part of the record preserve some of the improvised spirit they were created in.

Though melancholy, the album never wallows or gets stuck or even treads water, largely due to all the movement constantly happening in the vocal and piano lines. It feels like an exploration rather than a sealed-up document of the past.

But it’s when she cuts loose from the serene guitar-voice template also favoured by her like-minded collaborator Bahamas (whose Afie Jurvanen is credited as “senior advisor” here) that the album really shines. Lush strings (arranged by Lindeman) bring a new richness to the songwriting, while upbeat tracks like Kept It All To Myself and Complicit showcase more playful vocal turns (the latter closing with a choir of layered vocals) and dense, twangy melodies.

Grainger and Keeler are now more than six years into their reunion, but it’s still hard to listen to these songs without making knee-jerk comparisons to their early work (which, let’s face it, offered more thrills). That being said, Outrage! Is Now shows that they’ve shifted into a new phase of their career – one in which they’ve honed their craft and matured into seasoned pros.

Antisocialites doubles down on Alvvays’s strengths while also helping the band carve out a stronger identity within their well-established sound. By highlighting the band itself, Alvvays one-up their exciting debut.

Throughout, on both killers and filler, the singer sounds like she’s having so much fun.

Some songs feel just short of full-blown biting, like No Question, which is awfully reminiscent of the classic Breeders single Saints. Still, it feels hard to write them off as some kind of revivalist project. If anything, the band’s unshakeable determination to stay in their own lane seems like an ideological gesture. You can’t be cool if you’re worried about being cool.

For an album that otherwise condemns the materialism and narcissism of the modern world, Everything Now works best when it practises what it preaches: block out the superfluous noise for direct appeals to the heart.

If there is a difference between albums one and two, its the slightly twangier vibes and a structural emphasis on keyboard and guitar breakdowns that could be extendable live. It’s not hard to imagine Something To Tell You translating well to Haim’s amped-up stage show.

4:44 is intimate, refined and mature--fascinating partly despite its flaws and partly because of them.

How The West Was Won stands on its own as a clever, mature and scathingly witty record with memorable melodies and choruses. It also marks the return of a true rock ’n’ roll anti-hero.

Ti Amo feels like the kind of escapism Phoenix and their compatriots could use right about now. And the fact that it’s the most summery music they’ve ever made is like a big, red cherry on top.

As on their previous two records, the rewards here are in the refinement, the well-wrought voices and the sublimely subtle performances.

Assists aside, Land of Talk continue to showcase Powell’s singular musical vision, sounding a hopeful, tuneful note in her long-awaited return.

On 2014’s Too Bright, Hadreas expressed liberationist sentiments, played with gender and made his queerness confrontational. This time, those themes are felt more heavily in the way he channels familiar riffs, structures and themes into something so singular, unsettling and beautiful.

It’s far from a perfect record, but it’s their best in years.

Unfortunately, few songs truly stand out. Peven Everett’s effusive turn on Strobelite is the biggest pop moment, while De La Soul fronting the pounding Momentz gives the album some early momentum.

Countless rappers claim to have transcended the game. Kendrick Lamar actually does. There’s the sense his ambitions on DAMN. are even larger, reaching toward something more universal, fateful even spiritual in its reach to find the link tying all contradictions together.

Unless you’re only listening for Bejar, Whiteout Conditions should not only satisfy but also open your mind to just how versatile the New Pornographers can be.

No doubt some of the album feels overly sanctimonious. ... And yet Tillman’s prophetic songwriting makes Pure Comedy one of the first--and best--post-Trump albums in what’s sure to be a long line over the next four years.

Sincerely, Future Pollution still sounds distinctly like Timber Timbre, and stands up easily against their other albums.

This is unabashedly a pop album, full of big melodies and simple metaphors, that adds just a bit of analog fuzz to her usually pristine sound.

You can hear allusions Dylan has made to some of these lyrics in his own work over the last few decades, which makes the collection all the more revelatory. And he sings as gorgeously and clearly as he possibly can, as if it’s more important to him than ever that we feel his love.

A Crow Looked At Me is an unsettling, awkward listen and it might (probably will) make you cry. It’s also a tribute to an amazing 13-year love story (the penultimate song Soria Moria encompasses Elverum’s childhood longing, how he met Castrée and their instant connection) and may turn out to be one of the strongest albums of the year.

The album’s clean production (courtesy of producer Youth) and comfortable mood (nicely summed up by the song Mood Rider) is somewhat surprising and a tad disappointing. However, they don’t sound aloof, either. The mirror JAMC are holding up to the mainstream nowadays is less distorted, but still fully engaged in sharp and timeless songcraft.

His more abstract, mellow songs don’t work as well, too often sounding like buildups to a big drop that never comes rather than completed tracks. But Greene has filled out Feel Infinite with just enough bangers to keep the momentum from lagging too much.

He allows the various sounds, guest features and flavours of the production, which he and his crew adopted from all over the world, to steal the show.

NAV’s songcraft is sharp, but the lack of dynamics ultimately makes this debut feel one-note.

If you can deal with the frequent ridiculousness of the songs, Wild Cat is a fun listen. The production is raw enough to approximate their live sound, and more than a few choruses will get stuck in your head. If you’re looking for much more than that, you’re listening to the wrong band.

Over lush, sprawling production, Longstreth meticulously crafts a starkly honest account of a fall from grace and a rise back into it that embraces growth and forgiveness.

Though there’s some absolutely gorgeous production that recalls the lush sound and synthscapes of 80s rock, the songwriting is weighed down by clichés.

As its cover and length (the usual eight songs) suggest, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life is unquestionably a Japandroids album. Some may yearn for more of Celebration Rock’s high voltage, but by changing gears they’ve added more depth and variation to those shout-along choruses we love so much.

His latest, Love in Beats, is his most seamless collision yet. That harmony is thanks to the unified vision that comes with having two producers on the project: Omar and his brother Scratch Professor.

Satellite feels very much like a transitional record in which Kid Koala is exploring new terrain. Not all of his tangents are successful, but his enthusiasm for stretching beyond his turntablist roots is refreshing.

The xx have always been concise pop songwriters, but now they seem interested in approaching the gates of pop nirvana.

This album is full of bangers and achieves what so many hip-hop heads, old and new, are longing for: music with a message, loud and clear.

Her flow is kaleidoscopic and hearing her turn phrases with Jamaican reggae artist Chronixx on LMPD or trade verses with fellow Londoners Chip and Ghetts on King Of Hearts is an imaginative escape in itself.

On Immortal, he tackles paranoia and police brutality in ways that are both heartbreaking and bluntly nihilistic, while Foldin Clothes is a blissful and unapologetic diversion into domesticity ("I never thought I'd see the day I'm drinking almond milk"). Elsewhere, his earnestness comes off as unwieldy in moments that precariously sit on the cusp of sleepy sentimentality.

The burst of primal aggression is welcome (especially in today's political climate), but this EP is too meandering and amorphous to hit as hard as the band’s best stuff.

It isn’t until album closer Spring Fever that you get a sense of how much further the band could’ve pushed the experimentalism.

Now and then you get a glimpse of ideas that could’ve made the album more powerful if they’d been further explored. ... But the songs are so spiritless and phoned-in that those moments are too little, too late.

A bunch of tunes seem built for radio (So What, Error), ballad Sorrow is overly dreary, and Skin Me borrows way too much from Nirvana. But the strength, emotion and new directions make this album a winner.

At 18 tracks, Starboy delivers some pop gems, but its last third falters with a string of schmaltzy ballads eventually rescued by the Daft Punk-assisted closer, an enjoyable bit of retro lite-funk that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Random Access Memories.

A triumphantly outspoken, brash blast of incisive songs informed by inequality, displacement, joy, loss, humour, working, time’s passage, wit and sick production.

The dizzying array of styles and themes always entertain, and D.R.A.M.’s confidence as both a singer and rapper allows him to pull these threads together.

Gaga has wrenched herself away from dance-pop to focus on the country and classic rock influences that have always been present in her music, albeit gussied up like a coked-out drag queen stumbling out of a bar at 4 am.

Touch doesn't live up to the wild standards of the local group's ballistic live shows, but its focus on connection elevates it to more than just riff-blasting fun (although that's in good supply, too).

Earlier generations of psych fans had the Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd to worship and pursue on tour. Now, three albums in, TOY could become this generation’s long-haired psychedelic heroes to follow around in VW campers.

You Want It Darker is frightening, aching and, finally, sad. But, on this gorgeous, essential record, the sadness is illuminated. It glows.

Winter Wheat reminds us that Samson, with his plaintive, modest timbre, is a singular voice in Canadian music.

This is an album about feeling good, and the freewheeling abandon .Paak brings to his delivery is matched by Knxwledge, who keeps up with him by absorbing as many sounds, voices, eras and influences as he can.

Some Machinedrum fans will find his newfound cheeriness disconcerting, but Stewart approaches the project with so much enthusiasm that it’s hard not to get swept up in the good vibes.

They’ve become better musicians, better songwriters and better at expressing life’s frustrations without jeopardizing too much of what made them so cherished in the beginning.

Ruminations is difficult, packed with depression and despair. But closer Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out, with its rejuvenating piano, shows us that things haven’t gone completely dark yet.

Requiem is a double album but only 13 songs long, which means you’re in store for plenty of extended instrumental jams. Those chugging epics help establish the hazy mood and create plenty of atmosphere, but the best moments come when Goat attempt more conventional song structures.

Weariness gives way to willingness as Solange unpacks and ultimately celebrates Blackness, from the politics of Black hair in Don’t Touch My Hair (featuring Sampha) to a reclamation of Black masculinity in Scales (featuring Kelela).

Thematically he might travel into dark and desperate places, but the idea that one can find salvation in music is made vividly real by the rush of energy that is Atrocity Exhibition.

Their records are blueprints laying out a basic architecture to be improved upon, expanded or subverted when the band plays live. Big Boat offers glimpses of the group's playfulness.

Although the presentation has changed, the raw emotional power at the heart of Bon Iver is intact.

Despite a couple of interstitial tracks just past the halfway mark, RR7349 is more like a suite of discrete moods than a cycle of songs.

It's nice to hear De La Soul stretching themselves creatively, and even the less successful detours are interesting additions to an already eclectic catalogue.

Too often, Jenkins's use of melody fails to create sticky songs in a pop sense, but it does offset his gruff baritone and stern messaging. ... Jenkins is at his best when taking everyday scenarios and cutting to their emotional core.

American Band's force comes from its unflinching exploration of what it means to be American in 2016 and its assertion that questioning the status quo is necessary for the country to survive and thrive. Just in time for the presidential election.

Beach Slang are doing this as much for us as for themselves, and if you're down with them, it's hard not to feel awesome listening to this album.

Whatever he calls himself, Young Thug is still one of the most distinctive voices in hip-hop, and Jeffery lives up to the best moments from his Barter 6 and Slime Season mixtapes.

Prima Donna bristles with paranoia, anxiety, depression and anger about racism, violence, the music industry and his own psychological state. Loco distills all that. Staples's vicious, suicidal fever dream sees him alluding to Van Gogh's mental illness and dropping references to The Great Gatsby and James Joyce.

Blanco takes on characters and stretches her voice into new shapes, easily switching from feminine to macho over the course of a single track, while her lyrics summon up vivid imagery and raw emotions.

Gone are the days when this band gave us four albums in three years, but their enchanting harmonies and eloquent songwriting are as formidable as ever. And that's what matters most when it comes to a new Teenage Fanclub album.

Preoccupations don't fully hit their stride until album closer Fever, which sounds a bit like Heroes-era Bowie without coming across as derivative.

Skrillex-produced banger Go Off, Blaqstarr-assisted Bird Song and Visa are solid electro-rap party jams that also reference some of her past hits, while low-key dancehall track Foreign Friend and clubby Fly Pirate are among the handful of cuts that get stuck in filler territory.

On much of Skeleton Tree, it sounds as though the Bad Seeds are doing their best to stay out of their frontman's way. It's an album of pure, direct emotion.

Matt's Mind Over Matter stands out by digging in a little harder tonally and rhythmically, adding some grit to all the sweetness. And it has such a classic Matt Murphy chorus and guitar licks that our nostalgic hearts go a-flutter.

In a genre based on repetition, standout moments are critical, and We Move provides too few of them to be impactful. But when they show up, the results are stunning.

The central dichotomous tension is blandly predictable (loud-quiet-loud-quiet), the songwriting occasionally sharp, but its political themes--like its vocalist--are lost in the fury.

Schmilco is also sly and great, but superficially it feels like complex, mid-life personal stocktaking.

The first three songs are so energetic and impassioned as to be rivetingly unhinged.

It's a determined album, almost to a fault, and like the romance hinted at in lead single Shut Up Kiss Me, the album is occasionally messy and frequently epic.

And Agnes, the gloomy, anticlimactic closer, ejects the listener out of the edgy world that much of the album finds strength in by relying too heavily on a mainstream radio sound that feels too safe. Nonetheless, as a whole, HTBAHB is thrilling enough to achieve replay status.

At a time when many musicians seem eager to gain currency from identity politics and sociopolitical events, Mangy Love satisfies by being rooted in a nuanced observer’s perspective.

The lyrics are vivid and occasionally rote in their romanticism, but the formlessness of Endless is deceptive.

Only a handful of songs are beat-driven, but the electronic sounds are often subtle and organic. It’s rare for any one element to overtake his voice in the mix, but there are times when he fades out.

While the best moments prove the country queen is still at the top of her game, missteps like spoken word breaks add unneeded cheese, and Pure & Simple isn't all that thematically diverse.

No matter how sobering Hypercaffium Spazzinate gets, Descendents keep things light by playing these wistful, grown-ass songs like teenagers.

The distance between men and women--emotional and physical--is at the core of many of these songs, yet the album manages to be the most playful PARTYNEXTDOOR record to date.

Sonically, Nothing's Real is in line with the gliding, easy-listening 80s pop that's back en vogue thanks to Blood Orange, Haim and La Roux.

The amount of fatigue and cynicism baked into 14th album Innocence Reaches is not just a bummer; it's verging on ominous.

The acoustic Clumps strips down for a particularly moving two minutes, but for the most part, Loveless commits to the stunning sonic evolution. Embrace it.

There are rhythms and sounds that instantly come off as nostalgic, but in the best moments the beats and textures merge to form something wholly unidentifiable.

Like all Hip records, this is a snapshot of a band constantly moving away from their past and toward a strange musical unknown.

Morning Report finds Arkells lost and deep outside of their comfort zone.

It's a bold move to pick up the scraps from the floor, finish them up and declare them worth hearing, even if they don't fit tidily on any previous (or future) albums. Song by song you could be forgiven for asking "Is this the same band?"

Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not is 45 new minutes of Mascis's solid-gold shredding, but there has never been less to hang it on. The hooks that bracket the bouts of soloing are almost instantly unmemorable and the chord structures uninspired.

It's a solid denouement to Elaenia's touring cycle, and perhaps helps us appreciate that album for its use of exactly the right tools for the job and appropriate scope for its ideas.

Seventies and 80s soul and funk influences shine through on nearly every track.

For All We Know could make a stronger statement, but that doesn’t change the fact that Nao’s voice is one of the most exciting--and fun to listen to--in modern R&B.