The album is overflowing with upbeat, Americana gems.

Black Lightning is rife with minimally detailed yet fully rendered character sketches, and Naggar’s deftness at seamlessly weaving dissonant guitar lines into her riveting stories elevates her music well above much of the crowded folk-adjacent field.

Veracity makes Django and Jimmie a marvel, mixing novelty, pathos and classics. What emerges is a core sample of what made these men endure for half a century.

The lyrics here are heavy with religious, dream-like symbolism as he details the journey of his character while allowing everyone to have their own interpretation of what the man finds and encounters in the wilderness. If there’s one word to describe Brothers and Sisters, it’s “energetic.

Ghosts skirts its predecessor's instrumental self-indulgence, allowing its tracks to swim in grandeur--but not drown.

In short, arguably for the first time, Oberst gives us an album rife with liveliness--and it sounds like he had a damn good time making it.

The Competition heralds Hunter’s arrival as an artist who is able to communicate implicitly every bit as much as much as explicitly.

The 13 songs on the record are diverse, with a musical and emotional arc worthy of a sci-fi anime saga, but the record also feels personal and welcoming.

Staunch admirers of the traditional Pretenders sound might not like this record, but I say, “Yee-haw!”

Comfortably merging politics and humanity, odd genre hybrids and supple playing, Binary finds DiFranco’s 19th solo studio album provocative and thought-provoking.

More than one or two standout tracks, Hive Mind goes down easy as a whole; an even-keeled, laid-back drift in and out of The Internet’s signature and sophisticated soundscape. Sprinkled with codas and half-songs, the effect is natural, not jarring, like turning down an alley, or rounding a city street and stumbling into another story.

Isbell’s increasing skill as a storyteller, and the natural affinity he has for melody, combine to make Something More Than Free a masterful piece of work.

Given the fact that every other entry on the album was worked up in the studio, the various early takes offer added intrigue. The order of the set list remains the same (a snippet of the discarded song “Harry” being the only additive added to the running order) but given these early unheard versions and the additional takes that take up much of disc two, the genesis of these performances clearly is clearly illuminated.

Like it did in 1999, American Football proves its ability to stand out in a sea of contemporaries and imitators, post-aughts emo revival or no.

Each track is visceral and transportive, which is no small feat.

If Kelly Lee Owens gently opened the door between dream pop and techno, Inner Song rushes through it and builds a world where ecstatic, curative, untethered electronic sounds abound. Owens’ strides are most evident in Inner Song’s club cuts.

Bridwell has never sounded more assured as a songwriter, exploring bold new ideas and penning some of his most poignant lyrics.

Crushing is the brave story of a woman--and an artist--coming into her own. Securing that agency, however, was no walk in the park. Jacklin clearly had to sort through mountains of wreckage to arrive here, but the album’s autobiographical nature is what makes it so affecting.

Though it mostly lacks the direct punchiness and instant gratification of an album like Schlagenheim, it provides a unique musical escapade that dashes deftly between genres and the depths of the human experience like a charging bull. Black midi isn’t here to charm you or to prove anything—they just want to take you to hell and back.

Each song feels like its own powerful, strange dream—the worlds described are vague yet familiar, tugging at something in your gut that instinctively pulls towards the characters and loves described.

Frahm’s first major solo work since Spaces, and it finds its maker exploring new sounds and new spaces with often stunning results.

It's no mean feat for him to drop a solo album that's both a trove of pop jams and a profound piece of artistic experimentation, and he's done just that--a remarkable achievement by any measurement.

Her songwriting chops prove better with each new release, making Ivy Tripp her most accomplished outing yet.

On Hallelujah Anyhow, he sounds more comfortable than ever before, and that’s saying something. Taylor’s songs are warm and well-worn. His band moves as a single organism. ... Musically, Hallelujah Anyhow is a beautiful patchwork of styles.

I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plane is a wildly successful catalog of the trials of early adulthood, providing a comfortable space to explore painful points of unrealized promise and acceptance. Krieger seems at home within the structures of her languid, smoldering ballads–though the fire burns hot when she picks up speed just a little bit.

Even in their nascent form though, the songs provide ample evidence of Phillipps’ growing strength as a songwriter.

Though The Clearing works fine as background music, it offers up many more intricacies and delights if you give it your full concentration.

The basic ingredients here--a sexy, intelligent singer and songwriter, a guy who wants to be a guitar god and a drummer who socks the hell out of his kit--come fairly close to defining my notion of perfect music. Together they make a triple-layer torch-song/New Wave/power-pop confection.