Sounding like nothing else and answering to nobody but its creators, Run the Jewels 2 is in a class by itself.

Each song contains its own small epiphany, but they never quite add up to the one big sweeping epiphany that you'd hope for.

With more developed ideas than Mass Romantic and a more cohesive sound than Electric Version, it's their most consistent, confident, and best album to date.

Cinema takes in Czukay’s solo and collaborative work outside of Can, the iconic avant-rock quintet he co-founded in 1968. Starting in the early 1960s and ending in 2014, the set lights a path through his sprawling, winding oeuvre and confirms Czukay’s status as one of the great weirdo geniuses of the 20th century.

As a box set, Higher really does reinforce how creatively rich a band Sly & the Family Stone were, while making it seem almost unbelievable that their peak only lasted seven years and seven albums.

It results in a gorgeous and meticulous record. The lyrics are striking—dense enough to inspire a curriculum, clever enough to quote like proverbs.

Of course, Grace Jones is the star here. Five of the original album’s nine songs are covers, though rather than fealty to the source material, Jones sounds as if she’s shredding the songbook with her bare teeth.

Drum's Not Dead is a majestic victory lap, and on all levels, a total fucking triumph.

Rival Dealer has some of the most immediate music from the Burial project, but it's worth noting that this is also a noisy, dissonant work.

The first half of CD2 is the apex of Burial’s dancefloor material, truly as good as it gets.

Renaissance is a commanding prescription to be perceived again, without judgment. Listening to the album, you can feel the synapses coming back together one by one, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of feeling good, if only for its hour-long duration.

The Sabbath may be Black indeed, but there’s room for both light and shade, and Vol. 4 is a masterful evocation of both by the band that did it better than anyone.

The message is encoded into every note: If Anohni's music can manifest into something new, then perhaps we can. There is risk involved with moving from a timeless sound towards one that attempts to capture a moment, but without risk art is worthless.

This perceived, grand-scheme "Importance" of Echoes is irrelevant: what matters is that it wants you to get off your ass and work it, and that you will be thrilled to oblige.

This is both the most diverse and most listenable of their three full-lengths, and yet it never seems like a compromise. It feels like the product of careful, thoughtful growth, bringing in new influences--bits of mid-1970s Fleetwood Mac, sparkling indie pop, even a few soul and gospel touches--while maintaining the group's core sound.

The prismatic, black-lit aura of their fascinating, endlessly explorable debut Psychic doesn’t try to stop anyone from making that connection and if you spot Jaar’s stated influences of Can and Richie Hawtin, that’s fine too: rarely has a record held such appeal for the high-minded while welcoming the simply high-minded.

As a career overview Minimum-Maximum far surpasses The Mix. This record's "importance" in the Kraftwerk story is up for debate, but there's no question it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Building in the steps of Black women and their sonic architecture, Natural Brown Prom Queen thrives on improvisation, daring lyricism, and technical ingenuity.

The record is consistently, remarkably strong.

In many respects, Leaves Turn Inside You is the band's most ambitious, sweeping, and difficult outing yet.... I'm convinced that, if you've been following this band's development, the initial bewildered expression on your face will give way to total enchantment, and this new, boldly different Unwound album will have you in its grip for months to come.

The power of Frank’s work often comes via extreme transparency, but he’s not writing diaries. It’s about how he’s able to locate the crux of any situation, or expose undue artifice, or peel things back to their naked core.

A madcap sense of humor animates all his best work, and The Life of Pablo has a freewheeling energy that is infectious and unique to his discography. Somehow, it comes off as both his most labored-over and unfinished album, full of asterisks and corrections and footnotes.

By turns jubilant, confused, afraid, angry, sad, relieved, all pretty poignant, yes.

At its heart, jazz thrives on bold, sensitive interaction in the moment, and Live in Europe 1967 represents the pinnacle of that practice.

Picture of Bunny Rabbit offers the chill of encountering more of a beloved artist’s classic work in the moment they made it. There’s something near-holy about overhearing Russell in this magic half-light again.

Dragon is as heavy in its lyrical concerns as any previous Big Thief record, and more ambitious in its musical ideas than all of them. But it also sounds unburdened, animated by a newfound sense of childlike exploration and play.

This great unknowing serves as the album’s guiding principle. In Cave’s wounded voice, you hear him grapple in real-time with the incidental prophecies of his lyrics and his need to get the job done.

Really, in a world far too concerned with backstories and far too lacking in good old dedication to craft, Grizzly Bear's just about as boring as they come: four guys who very quietly set out to make a fantastic record. And so they did.