Reznor’s letter paints Ghosts V: Together as hopeful and Ghosts VI: Locusts as fearful, but the moods evoked by both are too richly layered to just dichotomize the two records along such bold lines. Together contains more than its fair share of excruciating suspense (the incessant siren-like wail of “Apart,” for example).

Reznor’s letter paints Ghosts V: Together as hopeful and Ghosts VI: Locusts as fearful, but the moods evoked by both are too richly layered to just dichotomize the two records along such bold lines. ... Locusts harbors pockets of peaceful reflection (such as the one-two respite of “Trust Fades” and “A Really Bad Night”).

The Orb are deep in their own pocket here and welcome all to join them in their warm depths. Whether anyone will heed their call after all this time remains to be seen.

What hovers over this lovely, late-night listen is the unavoidable passing of time: a nostalgic filter through which each groggy gem should be viewed.

925’s most hedonistic narratives might be cause for condemnation, but let’s not cancel Sorry yet—the album’s more grounded poems suggest that the band are perceptive enough to render their loftiest tales with scorn.

This is music that is nearly impossible to dislike and is a fair recommendation for almost anyone seeking tranquility or quiet music for contemplation. Still, we should expect more from the Eno brothers, who are both iconic musicians in their own right and have left their impression on both the mainstream and experimental worlds forever.

Building on a well-received debut, and taking a bold step in a new direction. It’s an impressive feat that Glaspy manages to do both at once.

Understandably, The Caretaker’s stories are often not pretty sights, even if the music always is.

Walking Proof’s balanced blend of quirk, confidence and craftsmanship make it a 2020 standout, both within the sphere of Nashville’s rich music scene and without. The genre flexibility doesn’t hurt.

Snapshot of a Beginner wants to have fun, whether through the swaying, airy scheme of its most danceable tracks or the up-tempo noodling of its energetic ones. Finding greater artistic value in the weirdness is a bonus.

What made their previous work so special was their ability to encompass the listener’s consciousness, looming over uncomfortable moments and allowing them to feel gratitude for the ensuing moments of relief. Ceremony lacks that control, and instead assumes the listener wants to be dragged around this disorienting hall of funhouse mirrors without looking into a mirror themselves.

Their music is overwhelming, but Irreversible Entanglements’ excellent second album, Who Sent You?, proves that it’s essential, too.

The first four songs alone are a revelation of sustained focus and fury. ... It would be impressive if Gigaton retained the thrill and invention of its first half, but that’s a tall order. There are invariably duds mixed amongst its 57-minute runtime.

Truly great pop is escapist, a chance to transform the otherwise mundane into something divine for a three-minute time span. Tesfaye doesn’t always get it right, but on After Hours, he offers up at least a few moments of communion during a time of isolation.

Uneasy Laughter is fine. It’d be much better if it was either divorced from ruminations on honesty, or if the band actually managed to define themselves without leaning on ’80s nostalgia.

Sorry You Couldn’t Make It represents yet another late-career experiment in a lengthy one filled with them, a back-to-basics approach by an artist who’s seen it all. There’s no telling where Swamp Dogg goes from here, but if his most recent handful of releases are anything to go off of, it’ll likely sound nothing like Sorry You Couldn’t Make It. But it also means that no matter what genre he tries on next, the results will be astounding.

With such lovely environmental textures, Sixteen Oceans makes it easy to imagine how warm a fully ambient album from Four Tet might be. For now, it’s nice to be able to stare out the window with Sixteen Oceans.

Fans of folk and Malkmus alike will find something to love here, even if Traditional Techniques doesn’t quite make the grade.

Every Bad is the nuanced album that indie rock has needed for years.

THICK lay it all out in a way that isn’t subtle, but that’s okay. Their vocals convey emotion as raw as their instruments, and that alone is something worthy of praise when studios frequently make bands sound cookie-cutter.

With its genre-agnostic, all-the-influences approach, Ricky Music is somehow Porches’ most cohesive album so far.

It’s not clear on Out of My Province what conclusions Reid reached, if any, but maybe this is one of those times when the journey is the most important part. It’s certainly resulted in a rewarding album, one that ought to serve as a breakthrough for an artist on her way up.

Superstar proves itself a tightly knit satire of celebrity, effective thanks to Rose’s sharp storytelling and her calculated use of distortion, which highlights the artificial quality of the protagonist’s new surroundings. ... Among these key storytelling points are some of Rose’s most brilliant moments yet as an indie-pop artist, a dizzying kaleidoscope of her own vocal talent and colorful artistic choices.

The record is arresting and unnerves in a way only possible from personal anecdotes as opposed to Poem’s parables—it doesn’t speak for everyone, like a fable might, but it does speak for a lot of people.

Coupled with some of the loosest, most pop-minded production of Snaith’s career, Suddenly becomes a glimmer of optimism, immaculate music for communal grief and celebration. In that, it’s the most vital album of his career.

The songs that do make up Collector are packed with interesting guitar tones, an intuition for pop magic and a message that should be shouted from the rooftops.

If Silver Landings isn’t a world-beating collection of songs, it’s a promising return for an artist who is rediscovering her voice, and what she can do with it.

Throughout Salvador, Navarrete uses the lexicon of modern club music and intimate, reflexive lyrics to create an astonishingly confessional art-pop album. There’s a self-awareness to the themes that bind Salvador which prevent it from straying into braggadocious territory.

La vita nuova sounds like a collection of essentials for a soon-to-be prolific artist.

Real Estate are never going to be the band to surprise with a major musical left turn, but subtle changes on The Main Thing lead to breathtaking results.

Like most songwriters, she’s at her most effective when she sidesteps the obvious image in favor of something more singular. Pruitt does enough of that to make Expectations a solid enough debut that it will be worth waiting to see what she does next.

When Krauter occasionally abandons the nebulous for the concrete, Full Hand leaps forth with full potency.

Maybe Names of North End Women will center a conversation about how listenable avant-garde and experimental music can be. If nothing else, it’s a compilation of eight strange, impeccably made songs with limitless authority on sound.

Success may not be a salve, but color theory is a resounding triumph.

Reacquainting oneself with the band now that they’ve found a new identity as a quartet is the work’s initial pleasure, the Easter egg hunt of picking out reference points being the second. The third—deciphering the meaning—is the most important, of course, and the one that’ll determine where Printer’s Devil ranks in Ratboys’ discography. In the meantime, just enjoy hearing Steiner, Sagan, Neumann, and Nuccio take the band in new directions.

The further the band gets from their genre’s standard tropes, the more their dynamic lyricism and detail-oriented instrumentation get highlighted, resulting in a few breathtaking songs. But when packaged into Forward Motion Godyssey as a whole, the pacing is slightly off, making for a shaky rollercoaster ride of sounds that don’t always reach its thrilling peak. The ones that do, though, are exhilarating.

Bentham is very good at what she does. She’s a distinctive songwriter with a penchant for avoiding the obvious, and her songs have a way of lingering, with melodies that scroll through your head like a news ticker.

Bateh’s sequencing is masterful, but take some of these songs out of the album’s broader context and many lose their steam. It’s not particularly kind to the casual listener either—this is an album for those fully committed to being a fly on the wall of this jet-black joyride.

Sobriety requires courage, and hopefully, that bravery paves the way for the more sonically diverse Best Coast that we get a glimpse of on Always Tomorrow.

A fun-as-hell pop-punk romp for listeners of any age.

Where these two songs [“Darkseid” and “4ÆM”] burst with fervor, Miss_Anthropocene’s other tracks often stumble and limp.

Man Alive!’s biggest strength lies in its sequencing. There’s no narrative throughline to the record, but there’s certainly still an emotional journey to it, elegantly flowing from optimistic synths to self-imploding percussion, from visions of his daughter’s life to the apocalyptic end of Marshall’s own. Like The Passion of Joan of Arc’s spiritual cinematography, each track plays like an extreme close-up in service of a uniquely coherent whole.

Add it all up, and you’ve got a bunch of killer parts that fit perfectly together, and a band that’s even bigger than the sum of those parts.

It’s a record in total lust and fealty to Hailey; you’ll probably want to duck out to use the bathroom halfway through.

Despite the high barrier to entry, West of Eden crowns HMLTD as one of few bands with a serious claim to artistic vision and sonic uniqueness.

No matter what life throws at them, Moore and Riley are a safe harbor for one another, just like their music is for anyone who’s a romantic at heart.

The collection sounds like a deep dive into the ominous shuffling of Color’s outlier titular track, an ideal musical direction given the subject matter.

Disarming, and maybe slightly disingenuous, Boniface shows very clearly that Visser has full control, along with a wide-open heart and a keen ear. They make the most of those attributes, which coalesce into a first-rate debut LP.

Shopping isn’t trying to become more commercial or appealing on a wider scale, but they undertook this sonic shift because, as a band that has long been heralded for its dance-y vibe, the incorporation of electronic elements seems to be a natural progression in order to make the most well-rounded version of what their music conveys.

Despite the album’s lack of big splashes, it still lands like a trip to Florida in February. And at only eight-songs-long, it’s endlessly digestible. Snow, sleet and seasonal affective disorder may rage on, but Supervision is pure warmth.

For all of its unimpeachable Khruangbin-ness, Texas Sun is the Bridges project Coming Home’s fans probably anticipated from his sophomore outing.

Throughout I Was Born Swimming, Williams pokes around in her own mind while wearing a tiny headlamp, digging up romantic evening encounters, lonely late-night drives and midnight beach jaunts. It never quite feels like daylight. But the instrumentation is such that the record never feels cold, either. You’ll just want to sink into it, like a warm bath, or maybe a 4 p.m. ocean that’s been baking in the hot sun all day.

It’s true that pain has informed some of Moreland’s most wringing tracks, but he shows on LP5 that he’s capable of writing potent songs without the anguish that fueled his earlier work. That’s not to say these new songs are all gumdrops and sunshine, but it’s gratifying to hear an artist growing out of the framework that held up him at the start and drawing inspiration from new and different directions.

Far more than a modern-day reprisal of the MTV Unplugged ethos, Perdida is the sound of a band stretching beyond its own self-imposed limits to challenge what a so-called “acoustic album” can be.

Likewise is a record full of little, unrelated moments that manage to create a world of their own when put together. That world isn’t always pleasant—it’s often an anxious and distressing one—but it’s also full of vivid color and meticulous detail.

When We Stay Alive represents that rewrite, but it doesn’t sound revisionist—it sounds quite honest, and often stumbles over its own pain and anxiety as it trips towards healing. These imperfections, though, are what give the record character and a sharp personality.

An album that needs a bit more of its own personality, but it’s sung with the confidence of someone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out.

For all the barbed commentary on Sorry for the Late Reply, Sløtface never come off as strident or preachy. On the contrary, they sound like they’re having the time of their lives barreling through songs together, and their brio is contagious. If Try Not to Freak Out was the work of a band with great promise, Sorry for the Late Reply suggests they’re fully ready to live up to it.

While their symbiosis has helped make the Drive-By Truckers one of the most solid and successful indie-rock acts of the past 25 years or so, the band’s fans are the real beneficiaries. Even when the subject matter is as bleak as it can be on The Unraveling, the Truckers always have something to say that’s worth listening to.

The result is a hermetic record that is practically self-contained within a computer hard drive. Yet Have We Met never lacks for atmosphere, or a sense of unpredictability that feels kinetic.

Trophy far more often concerns adult themes, and it navigates these topics with a clever lyrical hand that few teens could muster.

Manic is a rich and often confounding listen, an expansive album filled to the brim with the imagined worlds Halsey’s built for herself in the real one. It’s also sincerely, indefatigably Halsey: She puts her loves and ambitions on wholly earnest display, even if it doesn’t always make for the most consistent listen.

Add it all up and you’ve got not only one of the best albums of early 2020, but one worth remembering when it’s time to make your list at year’s end.

More TORRES is a good thing, especially after a worrisome interlude when it seemed the artist might be done. And Silver Tongue is compelling evidence that she is not.

In combining her equally sincere and sarcastic tales with her proclivity for ginormous hooks, her stunning, Sade-like croon and her disdain for genre boundaries, she’s crafted an infinitely quotable, profound and moving bedroom pop masterpiece.

The Neon Skyline is another pleasant journey lovingly crafted by Shauf. He has once again proven himself to be up there with maple syrup, Ryan Gosling and Schitt’s Creek as one of Canada’s greatest exports.

It’s no surprise that their return doesn’t feel as triumphant as it should have. Instead, this record feels like more of a means to an end, an excuse to get back out on the road and play their biggest hits once again.

The contrasting approaches clash, but even Thin Mind’s strongest offerings feel recycled. Think of the record as comfort food for Wolf Parade fans, or as an introduction to the band for the uninitiated, and the unadorned craftsmanship grows palatable. It’s a fine record. It’s even modern. It just isn’t progress.

There’s nothing to suggest in Hotspot that Pet Shop Boys are running low on inspiration. The album’s highs are high enough to further prove that the duo has had the most consistent career of any of their synth-pop peers.

With tunes for dancing, thrashing and falling apart, of Montreal’s latest effort is a fitting start to 2020. The pre-drinks may have been a trip, but UR FUN is one party that you don’t want to miss.

Listening to it feels like sitting down and soaking in the stories of someone who has seen it all, written in a direct, uncomplicated and emotionally resonant way.

Marigold is an excellent portrayal of someone trying to get better, own up to his mistakes and move on in a healthy way for all parties involved. It’s more restrained and defenseless than ever before musically and lyrically as Hall asks both himself and the listener for forgiveness. If you’re so inclined to hear him out, there’s a lot to like here. And if you aren’t, then that’s OK too.

When There Is No Year abandons the synthwave influences and embraces Fisher’s clear admiration for Foucault and other critical theorists, it’s easy to remember Algiers’ unique appeal.

Boman more than makes good on her potential with Dream On. At once intimate and intense, her first LP is the work of an artist stepping fully into her own.

Someday, other band names will disappear from Kiwi Jr.’s reviews as the quartet further develops its sound. Football Money is evidence they’ve clearly got the ability and the point of view to do exactly that. Until then, they’re working from a world-class playbook.

Rare is most effective when it glistens.

The Big Moon demonstrate both musical and lyrical versatility on Walking Like We Do. It might seem like a predictable move for a guitar band to unleash a keyboard-heavy album number two, but unlike other bands who have deployed this method, they don’t go so far down the wormhole that they lose their original appeal.

Keeping the raw emotion of a war that killed an estimated 40 million people out of the equation likely helped Field Music get their job done, but a touch more sentiment would have gone a long way toward taking this album beyond its research project roots.

Even when Georgia sings about relationships, love, romance and all that standard pop music fodder, her lyrics tend to double as tributes to the joy of dance.

The meticulous nature of After You’s dreamy and frequently cathartic soundscapes suggests Peñate spent years perfecting these 10 songs, maybe ever since Everything Is New was released. That’s a long time to work on a record, but after finally—finally—hearing the finished product, it’s obvious the wait was worth it.

Desert Dove thrives on clarity of purpose and craftsmanship: Anne’s voice rings pristine from one song to the next, clean and clarion, never wavering, never striking false notes.

Nest is an album of incredible scope and emotional tension, and though there’s hardly a moment to rest, its strident beauty will restore you just the same.

Fine Line is entirely inoffensive, but it’s also open-ended, and maybe those questions are the reward. Maybe Harry Styles just wants to keep us guessing.

The new LP is a touch less bombastic than its predecessor, but its freedom and euphoria arrive via beats not all that different from Kay’s past tunes. Given both the emotional growth that often accompanies coming out—and the three-plus-year wait for something new from Kay—this minor amount of perceptible change feels a bit underwhelming. But the similar shuffle delineating the majority of these tracks is never anything less than catchy.

Not only is LEGACY! LEGACY! one of the best albums of the year with its incandescent power and hooks that never stop giving, it achieves the remarkable feat of crafting a cohesive whole out of a dozen disparate stories.

In KAINA’s sprawling but concise little world, her truths feel universal.

On Songs for You, Tinashe shows off how adept she is at flitting between genres, hopping on moody, woozy R&B, sun-dappled G-funk, ’80s pop, acoustic devotionals, club-worthy drum ’n’ bass and skittering trap, sometimes in the span of a single song without so much as straining her airy, but substantial soprano. There are a few songs left over from a scrapped album with RCA, but here, they feel part and parcel of the vision Tinashe has for herself.

Everyday Life lives between the stripped-down comfort of Ghost Stories and the mercurial nature of Viva La Vida, but most importantly, it provides more hope than ever that they have another masterpiece in them.

Despite the pitfalls of Girl, the group do show an openness to experimentation that is far more promising than if they had just released a watered-down version of Earl Grey. But a more pop-focused sound doesn’t do them any favors either, and they don’t quite stick the landing.

Like Nilsson Schmilsson, Losst and Founnd flits restlessly from style to style, emphasizing the singer’s eclecticism and sense of humor. And while the songs are hardly as great as that 1971 masterpiece, nor the production as timeless, it is nice to hear Nilsson’s voice anew.

Sitting through a slogging collage of beats for 40 minutes before ever hearing a verse is no easy task. It would be one thing if these tracks had a common theme holding them together, but there’s no central voice to bind one to the next. ... The only thing that will keep listeners pressing on is the star-studded back half of the record. The incredible amount of talent Shadow recruited is exciting.

When he strips everything else away and zeroes in on penning a purely gorgeous song, you can hear the spark that has made him one of the most consistent and creative mainstream artists of the past 25 years. It’s still in there, sometimes you just have to travel through Hyperspace to find it.

More than half a century since Cohen proved himself to be someone worth listening to. Thanks for the Dance, Cohen’s fifteenth and potentially final studio album, shows that little has changed in that regard. Whether he’s singing about sex or death, or whatever else, Cohen’s voice remains indispensable.

CHAMPION, taken as a whole, functions more successfully as painfully honest introspection, 10 tracks worth of the singer working through an endless parade of complex and conflicting emotions. There’s a bit of an identity crisis at play here, and that crisis knocks the record down a few pegs. But Briggs’ struggles through her anguish and isolation were clearly worth the effort, and CHAMPION is worth a listen.

Krystal may not be as charming or musically distinctive as its predecessor, but if a breakup has left you with nothing to do but “curl up and die,” then Matt Maltese’s second album is the calming, pillow-crying record you need.

The record is perfectly pleasant, one that tries so hard to soundtrack that feeling of being in nature, maybe stopping to admire the view on a hike in the mountains, but it lacks the lyrical or musical immediacy to truly stand out among the handful of other albums (particularly those in his own back catalogue) that aim to do the exact same.

Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police is an experiment, and maybe as such it’ll be deemed less worthy, less interesting, than Weird. But where Weird is good, Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police is engrossing, an act of pop cultural interrogation for its own sake.

Pop the bubbly. Buy that heart-shaped box of chocolates. Send that overly earnest card. Dacus has done it again, and that’s reason enough to celebrate.