Sawayama’s vocal performances are mechanically flawless, a testament to her talent, though they fail to evoke the sublime responses that Sawayama can evoke. Overall, the sequence suffers from a lack of risk and is self-consciously conservative in terms of its execution—a bewildering anticlimax.

This reinterpretation is as fresh and breathtaking as the group’s past work. Indeed, it may be the most wonderful thing since its debut. Maybe better.

Tha Carter III is a monumental album full of powerful, self-defeating statements that obliterate rap’s internal logic without offering too much more than indifferent bong logic in return. Judged, however, as a collection of singles and quotable verses--the criteria on which we’ve been grading hip-hop records since the end of disco--Tha Carter III is an agonizing piece of work.

Better Souls Good Angels was written and recorded well before the pandemic. But the album, with its darkness tinged with glimmers of hope, its rage touched with tenderness, is very much one for our terrible time.

Crazymad, for Me is a portrait of how we rationalize our behavior as a way of coping rather than a therapeutic dream. It’s a good thing the real Thompson presumably is not the actual CMAT. It’s an engaging fantasy.

With Emma Jean, Lee Fields and the Expressions have crafted a modern day soul masterpiece that could easily sit next to, if not surpass, the greatest releases of the late 1960s and 1970s.

One Day equally recalls the strengths of Fucked Up’s critically acclaimed second record, The Chemistry of Common Life (2008), which received the 2009 Polaris Music Prize. ... One Day is in keeping with this spirit of invention and reinvention, by expanding the group’s sound while still maintaining an ethos of ongoing collaboration and collective commitment.

Although Forget might not usher in a new musical era, it's a near-flawless album and certainly one of the most impressive debuts we've ever seen. It might not change your life, but it will bury itself deep into your brain and make you feel good and warm for a couple of days.

Song For Avery once again shows Avery deconstructing his various influences and welding them together to achieve something remarkable. The result is a sweeping, majestic album that sends the listener soaring above mountainous peaks or gently brushing the canyon floor, often during the space of a single track.

Without sacrificing aural excitement, they have polished their approach with a refined understanding of dynamics and a broadening of style.

The Collective is hard to pin down, but that is part of what makes it so compelling.

Wake Up the Nation, once again illustrates not only his perennial songwriting prowess, but also his incredible staying power amidst artists for whom influence is sporadic and brief at best.

A bonkers and great record.

With Cobblestone Runway, he proves once again he's one of the best songwriters out there, and easily the best Canadian songwriter working today.

For any group to progress and change the way that, say, Radiohead has, is pretty damn inspiring. It shows commitment, and it shows vision.

Rich in heart-rending beauty, tough-but-lovable gutter poetry, and plenty of genuine emotion.

Though the songs are altogether pleasant, they more often than not fail to make a unique impression, instead fading into the background like lovely, though unchanging, scenery.

This debut release from Vieux Farka Touré displays a precocious mastery of form.

Phillips realizes that music, like life, is found in the flaws. She creates sonic sandcastles with strings and percussion and croons above it, but her inner eye is open and sees the waves crashing to the shore.

One can hear every word, every breath, and every sigh. De Vries has Thompson harmonize with the instruments so that they become expressively one voice without losing their distinctive tones.

The fact that this has been UGK’s music for nearly two decades doesn’t blunt the impact of the album, and so UGK 4 Life is comfort food for Southern rap heads: not as invigorating as the first time, but still the best all the same.

With Us Five, Lovano has found a flexible and exciting working band, a group that can play down the center or off on the side, that can swing joyously or reach for the heights of abstraction.

Delicate Steve's debut album, Wondervisions, treads beautifully this line between meaningless emotion and unfeeling precision.

The Mancy of Sound is a challenge, but entirely worth it.

Like most bootleg-style releases, it's not an ideal introduction to the artist. It is, however, a pretty compelling look at him, sometimes as a study, but often simply as a strange sort of concert.

Strawberry distils down the best parts of all the parties involved to make their first truly classic record, one that will be talked about at length this year and for many more to come.

Even a short listen on a mediocre system reveals that Henke possesses the rare ability to bring out the soul in his machines. As with most of his records, Ghosts is full of paradoxes: It's electronic but acoustic, monochromatic but multifaceted, mechanical but lifelike.

Mares of Thrace's second album eclipses their first, which is a significant feat given that their debut was phenomenal. There is much to discover on Pilgrimage, although in truth it works equally well as a straightforward hunk of seething noise.

The extra tracks are fun, but far from essential.

Bear Creek is a beautiful record that will steer you down memory lane.

Target Earth feels like a truly collective effort, one that sees riffs and rhythms repeat, liquefy, mutate and reform as new entities, with Snake’s characteristic delivery and lyrical imagery equally focused and defiant.

I’m a Stranger Here is a strong album from top to bottom.

It’s not the first time Forsyth has wowed us with his ambition, but that the players around him match it makes this a new twist on his sound, one you’ll come back to time and time again, if only to hear what you missed last time.

Even with all the history built into these songs and this record, Fussell still emerges as a fresh and vital new voice, as a singer, a musician and a torch bearer for every true sound he’s come across to now.

The whole album is filled with the aching melancholy of wanting something and never getting it, or never wanting someone because you will never get it. How everyone is both broke and broke down, the corruption and failure of the market rotting from the bottom and squeezing from the top, is profoundly realized here.

This trio remains one of the ongoing jazz ensembles that seems to discover new things at every turn, that seems simultaneously on the cutting edge and embedded deep in the music’s history.

One great pleasure that comes from listening to this album are the choices that Scaggs made in songs to cover, songs from R&B, soul, and country, any of which might pick up rhythms from jazz or Cajun music.

An album commanded by machines, few releases could tap into our terrifying mortality like this.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman is every bit a Bad Plus record. Both the songs and the song titles are clever and idiosyncratic in the manner of previous Bad Plus work.

If nothing else, Shirley Inspired provides an ideal 21st century entry point into a vast riches of traditional British folk music. Should the names attached draw the initial interest to this collection, the quality of the material and variety of arrangements and interpretations will hold the listener’s attention across the more than three hours of rich material here.

If your promised land is full of warm harmonies, rich guitar, and well-crafted songs of cosmic country rock then you’ve died and gone to heaven.

It’s a spring for your enjoyment. And like the most effortlessly beautiful cascades around, 10 Years Solo Live can easily spellbind you.

Juarez is an experience, one that can break your heart with the sweetness of “What of Alicia” or “Dogwood” or put the sting of whiskey in the back of your throat with the hard, crass thumping of “Border Palace” or “There Outta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California”.

With few pyrotechnic moments and only bit of reshuffling of the forms of these excellent songs, the Brad Mehldau Trio reminds us of how jazz continues to address serious emotions and great pop tunes at the same time.

Uyai doesn’t sound like aimless dabbling. What it sounds like is a band that has found its groove and knows how to run with it in any direction it pleases. Ibibio Sound Machine is now in full control of its sound, and it’s that knowledge that allows the group to truly let loose.

Rebecca Foon has managed to take what could have been a narrow exercise in chamber music and crafted something with real emotional depth and scope.

Big Bad Luv can hold its own next to any of the great Americana-tinged rock ‘n’ roll records of the past, from Scarecrow to Full Moon Fever to Copperhead Road.

At all points Modern Kosmology feels like a single inspired continuum of pop songs. The confidence Weaver exhibits in holding them together in balance is well-earned and it is a satisfying spectacle that a rather underappreciated artist should find her moment nearly 25 years into her career.

All ten entries on The Witch are exceptional. As a unit, they compose an engrossing aural experience. It’s an album a band would normally release as their third or fourth LP, once they’ve found their groove.

Throw in Cray’s soulful voice and unaffected guitar tone, and you have a nice helping of musical comfort food. Play it for someone who doesn’t know any better, and it might pass for an Al Green record. The only downside is that some of the tunes go on for a little too long.

Ladilikan lives up to that hype. This is intercontinental hybridization at its most enchanting, an enjoyable cross-genre exploration filled with heart, harmony, and a vital energy that takes old traditions and makes them into something wonderful and new.

Folksinger, Vol. 2 is an album full of traditional people’s music, and it may just be that no one’s a better interpreter of authentic folk music today than Watson. He takes us back to another time while keeping us wholly in the present.

Whatever It Takes will please existing fans more than create fresh adherents. There is nothing new here. Hunter and company dig a deep groove. The heavy musical rhythms both tie Hunter up and set him free.

The tracks hold up individually as genuine utterances whose emotional authenticity offers their own reason for existence.

Much of What Heaven Is Like is a noisy, dissonant, and beautiful break from pop song structure.

It captures a couple of gigs two months further on than Stage in the Isolar II tour, so Bowie's voice is, at times, a little more worn. But it's also far more visceral and fleshy and real-sounding.

That combination of astonishing music and nerd-centric revelations makes Live at the Fillmore East 1968 a continuing treat. Had this record been released in its time, it might have felt like the statement that Leeds and every other show was catching up to. Coming decades later from the vaults, it's valuable as a historical artifact, but even more worthy as a devastating concert in itself, inevitable closing guitar-smashing and all.

Their music features a predominant, dystopian characteristic, which is, in turn, met with a sardonic response. It is the element that was most missed in Success, and its return in Loved is what makes the record so exciting.

It's impossible to not like this album, but it is possible to parse the reeds and dig deeper to find something even better than before.

Amon Tobin is a master of creating a chilling, deeply felt musical experience, and anyone who tends to turn a blind eye to electronic music should approach this wonderful album with an open mind. It's time well-spent.

Tthe history of countless folk and ballad songs feature a fluidity to words depending on travel, local customs, or any other number of factors. These songs fit their times and their performers, and Across the Field is notable for examining just how relevant these songs still may be.

Nothing else on The Third Mind is quite as incendiary as "East/West", but each of the five remaining tracks offers adventurous musical delights.

Okkyung Lee and her quartet strike a splendid balance between free-floating and uncomfortably tense, and the suspense is worth savoring. Audience members looking for solid resolution should keep looking.

The album feels more like a singer-songwriter album with country accents than many of Anderson's flat-out country records, which often contained songs not written by Anderson. Years is also missing the flat-out funny songs and rock 'n' roll tunes that usually pop up once or twice on Anderson albums. However, these differences do nothing to detract from the depth and poignancy of Years.

He's the voice-over narrator that one frequently hears in old Western movies or the theme song that spells out the action before we even witness it. Crockett understands that the differences between the white-hatted hero and the black Stetson-wearing outlaw all depends on one's perspective.

One of Prisyn's finest qualities is that it sticks to a precise ten tracks, no filler, no needless privileging of quantity over requirement.

Cook's album not only serves as evidence of this social change, but it is also a damn fine record whose merits should stand the test of time.

Daptone Records' most roguish staples have an enviable career and a sense of style that keeps on giving, and Long in the Tooth, for its ingenuity, is a vibrant continuation of that.

In Blue has tangential connections to other gauzy, drugged-out space techno such as JK Flesh or Wandl. There may even be a distant relationship to Wolfgang Voigt's work as Gas. But for all its murkiness, this is genuinely sensual listening. For all its static-swamped helplessness, it's never cold.

This is music for meditating, for thinking, for relaxing, for dreaming. Each note sounds painstakingly placed and rehearsed but also deeply felt. Toumani Diabaté’s star, in particular, shines in new ways, and the continuities of past and present for him and his compatriots are constantly evident, speaking volumes about each player’s skill and love of performance in Kôrôlén.

The album merges Hiatt's rootsy side and the Jerry Douglas Band's bluegrassy side into something that's not exactly either (though there are no drums) but a little of each in an Americana sound enhanced by Douglas' production work. As Hiatt reflects on memory, loss, and desire, the band's marvelous playing leads to one of the best albums of the year.

What makes the album compelling beyond its author’s self-examined talent is Peters’ confidence in sharing moments of young adulthood where she maybe felt anything but.

The songs on his latest album showcase his ability to address solemn topics, like climate change, heartbreak, and dementia, as well as lighter ones like what’s for supper and mixed-matched lovers, with the same combination of earnestness, grace, and humor.

A soul-baring journey of the blues, mainly through the lens of soul and hard rock, in all its complexity, beauty, darkness, and glory. ... Gov’t Mule is at their best when they plug in, reach back to their roots, and dig deep into their soul.

Earthwork is a fitting representation of the music he’s created in various configurations over the years: unbounded, deeply meditative, and full of noisy swaths of inspiration.

There is strength in numbers, and Andy Bell’s rise to the double album challenge is as strong as anything that carries the Ride name.

Breaking the Thermometer is a reminder of the album as a statement, a covenant between artist and listener to intentional and attentional communion. Leyla McCalla’s profound creativity asks for such attention in his album and richly rewards it.

This is beautiful music, as obvious an instant classic as you can get in the so-called “desert blues” category.

Strays reveals Price’s strong talents as a musician and a human being.

Acid Arab weave sand-blown Korg synth filigrees in ways that would make Dabke keyboard titan Razen Said proud. On ٣ (Trois), their third album (of course), the pulses quake, inviting us all to the post-pandemic party.

Anyone coming to RP Boo or footwork in general via this release needs to be prepared to have their bones rearranged and their senses overloaded.

Rosenstock’s choruses are catchy, the tempos are fast, and it’s an impressive proper studio performance. But does it go the length to be called anything groundbreaking? Not so much. But that’s not the point. Rosenstock has been doing this for a long time; experience goes a long way. For what it’s worth, he’s really good at what he does.

Coyote is more melodrama than human drama. The material is worth hearing because of its merits rather than for insights about its creator.

It’s unlikely this will be a breakthrough to a larger audience, but to the faithful, this is the latest chapter in one of the most consistently rewarding careers in hip-hop.

For an artist of such longevity to remain so vibrant is rare. Focus on Nature is a testament to how good songwriting and solid musicianship, in the right hands, never grow old.

For all of Weaver’s experimental spirit, there isn’t a vast distance between some of the new songs and the soulful pop of, say, Sade or Dido. Weaver has always been keen on strong melodies and layered harmony vocals, so when “Perfect Storm” delivers its New Wave analogue groove or “Romantic Worlds” evokes chilled-out dancefloors, the music sits in a dynamic middle ground between alternative and mainstream.

This has been a particularly strong year for heavy, guitar-forward music, and Up on Gravity Hill is sure to turn up again on some end-of-the-year lists.

The eccentricities are still present, the quirks still correct, but everything has been shepherded into a more cohesive, frequently more melancholy, totality.

The album is an elegy, not to Showalter’s past but to a way of framing it, and with that frame gone these songs sound boundless, zealous, free.

At once daringly astute and gleamingly sincere, assertive and eloquent, Hoop’s Memories Are Now should have no trouble in picking up those fans who just recently hopped on board during her outing with Beam and running with them.

Her experimental approach to club and ambient music complements the progressive choreographic mind of McGregor. The score's staggered rhythms are easily tangled to abstract legs, and its disjointed melodies are naturally entwined to twisted arms, making Jlin's soundtrack perfectly malleable for McGregor's Autobiography.

Fantasize Your Ghost is warm, welcoming, and unpredictable, and Ohmme is a group to continue to watch as they tread ever new ground.

Playing to Snider’s considerable strengths at playful familiarity, Was keeps the flourishes to a minimum, pulling the vocals to the fore and dropping the rest back in the mix. Though the sidemen are illustrious (Jim Keltner and Greg Leisz for God’s sake) they aren’t here to show off, but rather to advance the man at the centre. It all works beautifully.

Slaughterhouse is still a hell of a rock album, one that shows us the speedy evolution of Segall as a songwriter and gives us a convincing document of his touring band's energy.

Michelle Zauner conjures the macro in the micro. Her richly observed songs convey intimate details and observations that conjure the immensity of concepts like love, sex, and desire.

Despite these minor blips and the fact that being a ‘compilation’ it perhaps lacks the cohesive, emotional narrative arc of Kill for Love, AD2 is still an atomic display of IDIB’s firepower.

With the presence of so many just-off-the-map yet accessible tracks, this set serves as an entry point to a host of artists all sharing a similar aesthetic operating at different levels drawn together by an overarching understanding of how music works on multiple levels. In this, Moodymann’s installment of DJ-Kicks may well become the unimpeachably perfect bar against which all subsequent sets will be measured.

Grab a beverage of your choice, sit back, and let the world’s greatest heavy metal band take you on yet another excursion. It’s not without its share of bumps and plenty of familiar scenery, but after more than 40 years, it’s as exhilarating as ever.