She wears her obvious theoretical grounding lightly and never lets it obstruct her ecstatic quest for new ideas and deranged stimuli. And Varmints is a knockout, the kind that makes you see cartoon stars.

A deliriously ambitious record packed with neo-psych lullabies and swooning choruses.

Earthless are incredibly indulgent, sometimes to a fault, but they’re much too excitable to be called selfish or masturbatory. The dudes are once again just riffing here. It’s a trip worth taking, at least a few times.

It’s both solipsistic and psychedelic, urging listeners to travel into their own depths and welcome the joy and despair they might find there.

If these Goats Heads Soup rarities betray the album’s indecisive, scatterbrained origins, the reissue’s third disc—an oft-bootlegged but greatly enhanced recording of a Brussels show from October ’73—finds the Stones still very much at the top of their game as a live act. ... Ultimately, Goats Head Soup remains fascinating for how it makes the Stones seem a little less mythical and a lot more real.

Wiki has always wielded his considerable talent to paint cityscapes with words, but with Elsesser’s production, they become transportive.

"Street Horrrsing" was a great record, but Tarot Sport is a cut above. Perhaps surprisingly, it's also a welcoming album--and one of the best of this already fruitful year.

As ever, MacKaye shrewdly distills macro calamities to personal, almost prosaic vignettes.

Vince Staples has movement but lacks velocity, which casts his words in the most intimate light imaginable. ... Even if you’re looking for the booming pastel energy of Kenny’s recent collaboration with TiaCorine or the breathless vibes of his work on Vince’s FM!, Vince Staples still has plenty to recommend. The sonic palette is grayscale without being boring, stoic without missing bounce.

Comparing the Scruggs cuts and the funky, swampy Cash covers with the austere John Wesley Harding outtakes that begin Travelin’ Thru is illuminating.

Disbanded in their prime before they grew stale or flat, they still feel pregnant with promise, tantalizingly unfinished; like an actor cut down in youth, they've remained an irresistible lure to the imagination of pop romantics ever since.

Our Love is a very assured record, from its unconventional, austere arrangements to its unrelenting focus and thematic consistency.

Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala.

Dream All Over recalls the most crucial lesson of all underground rock music: become your own sound, and create a universe for it to exist in.

And yet, as loaded as the subject matter is, it does amazingly little to diminish Hatfield’s bright spirit. Even on this, her angriest record by a landslide, the singer retains the intrinsic tunefulness that’s marked every record she’s made since she was a teenager.

A shoegaze album with a rare scope and an even rarer sense of fun and imagination.

It could often pass for Nick Cave as produced by John Carpenter, which is the sort of gloss these Mute lifers usually repel, yet it’s striated with layers of their past and their characteristic strangeness. It’s the best thing Andrew has done in at least a decade.

There are no great musical innovations here, but that’s not to say the songs aren’t affecting: Anaïs Mitchell is a compelling, earnest rumination on the desires and possibilities that arise when you start looking for significance in small moments.

Rebound isn’t seismic—longtime fans will have no trouble cozying up to many of these songs. There are elements, however, that separate the album from its predecessors and suggest some tentative movement toward a new way of working.

Heavy Ghost is, in Stith's words, "more like life:" sometimes challenging, sometimes confusing, but, in the end, rewarding.

Unusually for such an introspective album, the guest spots are welcome respite.

With who told you to think??!!?!?!?!, milo both asserts his place within the lineage of underground hip-hop and argues for its continued relevance.

An innate sense of contrast amplifies the music’s force. Showing utmost respect for empty space, they know precisely when to pull back—to emphasize the cracked edge of Busch’s voice, or leave room for a silvery tendril of guitar—and when to flood the zone with pure, cleansing fire.

Pre Pleasure takes its time unwinding and occasionally leaves too much unsaid. Some songs drift away, setting a mood rather than communicating an idea. But when Jacklin allows the two to work in tandem, she excels.

Ultimately, it’s not the hazy discontent that makes Everyone’s Crushed indelible but its livewire sound.

Even though many of the characters are heartbroken or wracked with anxiety, Williamson navigates modern life using timeless tropes that lend Time Ain’t Accidental an immense, gratifying confidence.

While this sense of riveting discovery isn’t fully achieved on “For David,” the album nonetheless offers a stunning journey into a vast, ink-black void.

Do Make Say Think have presented us with their best work yet, a varied and unpredictable album capable of imparting the chill of the winter and the warmth of celebratory joy to you without ever presenting you with a human voice.