The dusty melancholia of Lucky Shiner feels earned and lived-in. It's a far cry from just naming your new bedroom-pop band Double Dare.

It’s an Aphex Twin EP more than just an EP, and as those go it’s very good.

It's to Lambchop's credit that their music avoids comfortable resolutions. Instead, it hangs there, no moral, no judgment.

This egalitarian spirit and anti-hierarchical approach to song-making fuel the sleekest, most robust music of their career.

On Source, she weaves together so many threads so masterfully that she instantly establishes herself as a foundational voice in the larger, ongoing story of the London jazz scene. Her debut is a stunning introduction.

There are few forces more powerful than the feeling of belonging. In creating his stunning Miami rap opus, Denzel Curry taps into that, demonstrating that he belongs among its most distinguished representatives in the process.

On If You’re Reading This, all of this chest beating is delivered over the most darkly hypnotic beats Drake’s graced since So Far Gone.

Capacity is a remarkable record, one that proves that Big Thief are not a one-trick pony, they are the full circus.

For anyone still struggling to tell any woman with a guitar apart, the deft collaboration and complex collective songwriting on the boygenius EP is a great place to learn.

Nothing about Devotion feels like a burden. Instead, it’s so personable and candid that it feels like a privilege to spend a few minutes hearing what Tirzah has to say, imperfections and all.

While Ambivalence Avenue is an excellent album by any measure, Bibio deserves extra credit for venturing outside of his established comfort zone.

A strong experimental record that draws on Cee-Lo's malleable style of rap... one of the year's strongest hip-hop albums to date.

The album oscillates between emotional registers, balancing profound quiet with strummy, emphatic pleas about how we might better comport ourselves in the world; there’s a sense that even at their most gentle, these songs are transmitting something deeply earnest and hard-won. This is as true of Read’s lyrics as of her arrangements, which are newly rich and rewarding.

The album draws its power not simply from the quality of Kozelek's songwriting, but from the close intertwining of words and music, which makes his albums much more essential than any book he could ever publish.

Ashes Grammar draws you in by offering outstanding moments in strange contexts; you'll re-listen to hear specific pieces even though you're unable to remember exactly when and how they occur.

That Complete Recordings has long gone out of print makes Black Tambourine an essential acquisition for current In the Red, Woodsist, and Slumberland loyalists. And even for old-school adherents, the bonus tracks included warrant a repurchase.

Within and Without is an excellent demonstration of what happens when, even after the buzz-band cycle has faded, you continue to investigate a sound on your own hushed, ambitious terms.

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

Every song here, even the slow stuff, feels giant and propulsive—a grand celestial tour of rock and R&B, guided by one of the few singers and multi-instrumentalists with the range and intuition to pull it off.

In developing into such a formidable flock, the Decemberists not only have far outstripped those ridiculous comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel that dogged Her Majesty, but have also allowed Meloy to widen his lyrical scope and hone his ambitious narratives.

There’s a nagging instinct that pop songs are supposed to have more pieces to them, or that drummer Eric McGrady is supposed to be using more than half of a drum set. Stick with it, though, and something even better emerges from those gaps. By leaving their songs exposed, Dehd show how much they believe in them, and rightfully so. Their confidence in their concision is the best part.

Few MCs, on his label or elsewhere, are capable of firing in so many different directions and hitting this many targets at once without sounding out of their depth, but Q corrals the ups and downs of his lavish lifestyle into a deliriously entertaining joyride.

This is electric music in every sense of the word-- amplified, processed, and imbued with a neon glow.

The vocals: a cloying, toying mix of insouciant sass and arty call-and-response jabs, all delivered with an unhinged sense of preening and play. That's pretty much the Method Actors method condensed, and it plays out to deliriously rewarding and consistent effect on a CD that collects songs recorded from 1980 to 1981.

His strongest, most satisfying effort to date.

The album exists in that scarcely inhabited rock-and-roll world where technical prowess coexists peacefully with clear and simple songcraft, the former never forgoing the latter.

The happy-music-with-sad-lyrics shtick has been done often, but rarely so well since the Lucksmiths' namesakes.

The really amazing thing about the album is how anthemic and affirming it feels despite the near total absence of proper sing-along choruses.