While the majority of the songs on the album are lush ballads, a playfulness shines through here like never before.

That Fleet Foxes have crafted such a sublime debut less than two years into their existence as a band speaks to their collective pop genius .

Dirty Computer succeeds overall because of it mostly delivers the same elements that made the Metropolis lineage soar.

Baroness simply lets the songs do their thing, never beating us over the head, never pandering, and in so doing, they’ve created a surprisingly adventurous album, further establishing their position as one of the finest, not to mention likeable bands in America these days.

The most sonically satisfying statement to emerge yet from the Collective.

That level of "realness", the way that the songs ring true whether he's bragging or self-criticizing, joking or praying, is what makes The College Dropout more than worthy of all of the attention that it's getting.

He understands these lessons have been learned by every generation and is part of the traditions from which we have emerged. His artistry lies in how he does it, with talent, humor, and grace.

Aside from being a gifted musician and lyricist, he also has a gorgeous voice, soulful and thrilling. Building on the excellence of his previous albums, What We Call Life is easily one of this year’s best albums.

It’s trippy and majestic head-music spun from moonage daydreams and made for gliding in and out of life.

What Something More Than Free does best is confirm that Isbell is a rare talent, one who doesn’t need a major life event to inspire him to make great music.

It’s a good album, but not a great one, and though the long tail of history will eventually render such a long production time moot, it’s certainly not a record justifying the ludicrous wait.

U.F.O.F., then, is an almost perfect album.

My Woman is a new watermark for Olsen. It somehow elaborates on the disparate missions of both Half Way Home and Burn Your Fire For No Witness while reaching out into the unfamiliar spaces of dreamy synthpop and more hook-driven, pop-oriented songwriting.

Carlile has been making high-quality music for years, and In These Silent Days adds to that legacy. The songwriting is so good throughout, and Cobb and Jennings’ production is spot-on. ... Regardless of genre, though, this record deserves recognition as being one of the year’s best.

Sufjan Stevens’ musical journeying over the past two decades comes to its fullness as he grapples with these concepts. Every piece fits perfectly, but more than that, he knows what sort of puzzle to construct.

Silent Movies is able to take all of the disparate descriptions above and press them into one unifying album. Marc Ribot really ought to have the opportunity to score films more often, because the results can be breathtaking.

This reissue of A New Way to Pay Old Debts tacks on the two-song "High Wasted" 7-inch and four previously unreleased tracks from the original recording sessions, making this scuzz-fuzz journey through the dirt and clay beneath the Mississippi Delta even more essential than it was upon its initial run through the experimental woodlands.

John Howard and the Night Mail is nothing short of a triumph.

This is truly a virtuosic tour de force. Every time you hear a new Jane Weaver album and think to yourself, well, that’s about it, there’s nowhere she can go from here, and then she goes to yet another level, forging still new paths.

It’s tempting to say that Absence is a successful crossover project, but that would make it sound like the music is bringing disparate components together. Instead, Absence feels natural through and through.

Putting her body and feelings out in the open makes them real, especially when portrayed so artfully as in songs such as “Patron Saint of the Dollar Store” and “Heart Swell”.

In London Ko, Diawara uses a broader sonic palette than her earlier music and generally dials up the amplitude. While the music aims to move your body, its Bambara lyrics are also meant to move your spirit.

Elverum has been recording the same song since he was a teenager in the mid-1990s, making tapes late into the night after his shift at the record store. Microphones in 2020 might be his apex.

Few bands today are as good at telling a simple, straightforward, from-the-gut story like the Drive-By Truckers are.

Aside from a couple of hiccups (the clunky R&B of "Get By", the silly call and response of "Knock Knock"), it's every bit as good as Boy in da Corner, and sometimes even better.

While most artists would have drowned under the pressure, hype, anticipation and scale of an album like Blonde, he passes with flying colors, making him not only one of the most unique R&B artists of our time, but also one of the best as well.

On Cusp, Diane embraces the yet-to-come that she has set in motion for herself with a clarity of purpose and a musicality all the more sublime for the time she has spent living.

Rather than relying on flashy gimmicks and studio trickery, Lenker lets good old-fashioned song craftsmanship carry the album through its 12 tunes.

It’s a poignant, reflective, and very often frank portrayal of humanity’s dual impulses authored by someone who has lived several chapters, yet knows the story is constantly being rewritten.

These musicians would soon part ways for a variety of endeavors, and Coltrane's assemblage of his classic quartet with McCoy Tyner allows a noteworthy development after his work with Kelly. At this moment, though, nothing sounded more exciting than these five musicians thriving in one strange final tour.

Now he is ready to expose the new form of Objekt, and it results in one of the most impressive records of this year.

This new work is rather stunning in its shedding of skins and plowing of new furrows. The influences have either been thoroughly shrugged off or thoroughly absorbed, and what we get here is a frankly remarkable set of ten songs that lead us from our comfort zone almost imperceptibly to a very very strange place, and then once more out of the woods and back to more recognizable territory.

The band has never sounded stronger on record as they do here.

While aspects of the band's creative vision have been altered and their sound has further evolved, the core elements remain intact. The asphyxiating sound has been augmented with the inclusion of longer, heavier sludge influenced moments. ... They truly deliver.

Forfolks is Jeff Parker on his own, but it’s a selfless statement. Here the music, like life, thrives in collaboration, and context is everything. On Forfolks, the music is a shared consciousness that keeps expanding long after its closing notes.

Sometimes Cash is a little wordy and other times Leventhal’s melodies kind of drift off, but mostly the two mesh together well.

Balanced, not bombastic, long-practiced, and utterly identifiable even when playing across different styles--that's a great band. And Historicity is the album they had to make.

Many of Jenkins’ observations grow more excellent from further rumination and will likely stick with the listener long after the closing chirps of “The Ramble”.

It’s easy to say this is a post-Hüsker Dü album, but the story of Workbook is a more complicated one than that, and 25 years later it still plays like a story worth hearing.

Glittered with transcendent brilliance, gilded shadows do not hide the empowered dramatic turn of Perfume Genius’s Too Bright.

<A HREF="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/5161/los-lobos-the-town-and-the-city/" TARGET="_blank">Review #1:</A> Stands as one of the band’s best efforts. [score=70]; <A HREF="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/5257/los-lobos-the-town-and-the-city1/" TARGET="_blank">Review #2:</A> The Town and the City is just as tight and adventurous as anything else coming out this year. [score=90]

Guppy is a special release. It has powers: the power to transport you back to some of your most formative experiences, but also the power to let you know that you’re nowhere near done having them yet.

We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is an incredible offering in both a prolific and boundary-pushing career for the New York rappers. Building on their gifts as MCs and lyricists, Billy Woods and Elucid have further cemented their place in alternative hip hop as one of the headiest yet most exciting groups right now.

Engulfing is a word that could describe the record as a whole and Big|Brave’s sound in general. That is not unfamiliar terrain for them, but they have refined their sound into a powerful stormfront that strikes aggressively but with a gracefulness that welcomes the listener into the electrified space the band create.

World Without Tears is a complex, multifaceted album that musically highlights Williams's continued blurring of musical genres and poetic lyrics.

Things finds Low's measured atmospherics and gentle melodies further enhanced by layers of instrumentation -- for instance, cello, violin, piano, mellotron and trumpet. Moreover, it finds the band's melancholy and affecting textures coalescing even more into traditional song structures.

It's ultimately a deep, unsettlingly immersive experience, yet it sanctions an almost unbearable intensity to be buoyed by a hard-won acceptance.

Somewhere in its utter hugeness, it breaks down barriers between listener and music, between sound and reaction to that sound.

This remastered version includes seven bonus tracks. One is an alternate version of “Jenny”; the other six are additional songs recorded for this album and unreleased until now. Thematically and musically they fit in well.

Mitski’s career has been one of anonymous toil followed by intense critical promise with Bury Me at Makeout Creek, at last delivered upon with blinding clarity in Puberty 2.

It’s hard not to make connections, which is a testament to the power of these songs themselves and the way Fussell’s approach to recording them illuminates that power.

Arca likewise refuses to ossify into a legible and easily recognizable shape, defying our expectations of the artist’s output while remaining untethered even to a clearly delineated internal logic. All of this evasion paradoxically pays off, and the resulting album is both emotionally enrapturing and conceptually thrilling.

Summertime ‘06 is the kind of coming-of-age story that’s common to hip-hop, but Staples delivers his account with a furious passion and refreshing insight.

The melding of Plant’s hard rock vocals and Krauss’ sweet sound requires them both to stretch their talents in unexpected ways. The new album’s triumph lies in the fact that they both seem to do this so effortlessly.

Their work, especially that displayed on Refinement, stands as some of the more original and evocative music being produced today, smart and technical without sacrificing atmosphere and feeling.

Let’s Stay Friends is a fitting fourth album for Les Savy Fav. Assured and confident in an established style, the band also finds new ways to express its visions of frustration and celebration.

Vulnicura is emotionally bare and, as a result, remarkably complex, demanding of an active listener, but it’s also one of Björk’s most poetic records in a long career. It also rewards those who join her on her emotional journey.

The most musically rich, catchy, smartly written "new new wave" record since Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights.

Ultimately, Airtight's Revenge joins Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun, Van Hunt's Popular, Meshell Ndegeocello's Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, Rahsaan Patterson's Wines & Spirits, Joi's Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, and Sy Smith's Conflict as a generation-defining masterwork of unflinching vision that captures the artist at the very moment in time that it is released.

Gas Mask is simply a strongly appealing hip-hop record with just the right balance of guests to keep his voice from becoming stale.

Tigermending has everything that a superb record requires: heart, soul, mysticism, unpredictability, and complexity, which is never sacrificed for accessibility.

It’s an album that genuinely feels like SZA’s singular vision, which is eye-opening for those who may be more familiar with the New Jersey singer as a guest vocalist.

There are outstanding performances throughout Sundial. Rapper billy woods in “Gospel?” spews magma, and Chicago legend Common drops a verse on the song “Oblivion” that could have easily fit into his great album Be from 2005. The singer Ayoni adds her voice on two tracks to make Sundial feel like a momentous occasion.

The individual tracks offer empathetic portraits of people and places that he presumes have been undeservedly ignored or overlooked. The album’s underlying theme concerns Weiner’s growth as the world changed around him. Musically, Low Cut Connie embrace Reed’s textured approach to pop music.

Like its overall theme of love, Honeybear can be as intoxicating as it is messy. But given the rewards, it’s totally worth the plunge.

Excavation is entirely capable of conjuring up all sorts of images in your mind while the music plays, but Virgins keeps you focused instead on what’s happening inside of it; for music with so few conventional entry points, Hecker has again managed to make his work structurally and viscerally gripping.

Specifically, Mitski focuses on the loneliness of a "lone ranger" lifestyle and expresses it profoundly through the musical choices accentuating her lo-fi indie rock aesthetic.

Above all though, xx is a thoroughly cohesive, moving and accessible album.

There’s a danger of Illuminati Hotties’ music being defined by these, her most gleeful and attention-seeking songs. Still, after her sunscreen washes off in the pool and the mist of icing sugar settles, it’s her more measured, perhaps overshadowed, tracks in which the album’s heart is found.

Channeling whatever ceremonial endeavors (or imbibing whatever substances) are required, Goat has come up with an exuberant album filled to the brim with potent mysticism; World Music is fittingly possessed by a sprit of pure adventurousness.

Numero Group has performed a great public service here for aficionados of joyful noise. Anyone who spent time left of the dial during the heyday of college radio should pick up this collection.

As foolish as it seems to say that any music is 100 percent new, I've never heard anything like this before.

In terms of epic grandeur, though, Ohms somehow surpasses even the band's most ambitious middle-period work. If past albums in the Deftones discography defined key points in the story of your life, you can expect to be thoroughly engrossed by the latest chapter in a remarkable musical journey that, against all the odds, just got more compelling.

Electricity thrills from start to finish, yet another well-crafted work from a band that continually shows itself to be unbound by categories of space, time, and genre. This is past, present, and future funk all rolled into one and ready for a fantastic time.

The record is easily accessible on a surface level, and as a series of irresistible moments, it’s almost unparalleled.

It has no chance in hell to answer to all the hype and buzz around it, it’s not going to impact the dance music scene that reveres the robots so and you might as well be playing it on shuffle, but it’s a rich and warm musical experience that suits both the dancefloor and concentrated headphone listening in equal amounts that forms an important part of the duo’s musical journey.

The album is a visionary statement of arrival, a potent and singular masterpiece that exposes the deepest chambers of a fiercely beating heart with a singular purity of focus. It's a mesmerizing journey of self-actualization in an era when constant connection makes that all the more difficult. After soil, Wise's reach seems infinite.

Despite a somewhat stifled mix, and the fact that Butler’s romanticism has been replaced by moments of bitterness, and in some instances petulance, what makes the new CD a worthy successor is what made us fall for this band in the first place: the music’s unflagging passion.

Unheard Songs is a revelation; a more fitting tribute to a troubled artist could not be imagined.

A carefully layered, multifaceted album in terms of its sound, music, lyrics, and thematic cohesion -- in short, a great musical achievement.

At once ancient and modern.

Norman Fucking Rockwell is Lana Del Rey unfiltered, full of beauty, emotion, heartbreak, and devastation.

Phenology is stunning, ranking right up there with the best hip-hop music of today.

Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase? comes a bit out of nowhere and is surely the most impactful release he's ever made, Matmos included.

They’re solid songs with winning grace notes—”My Kind” opens on a 20-second orchestra-tuning cacophony before finally kicking into power chords, and “Hopeless” bursts into a furious if regrettably brief guitar solo before the final chorus. But they primarily work to show just how much better—both tighter and weirder—the rest of the album is.

In a Poem Unlimited offers certainty over contradiction. Remy may loathe violence but understands the pleasures of getting mad. The songs offer a release from moral uncertainty.

What they might lose in flair, they gain in severity, perspective, focus and the strength of their connection to the well of deep sadness at the center of the country-music tradition.

In every other respect, this album finds Touché Amoré at its strongest, emphasizing those qualities that have made it such a draw in the past and improving those ones that had been holding it back previously.

A brillant, beautiful album whose very nature allows it to work equally well as music for the background, where it serves as utterly unobtrusive wallpaper, or the foreground, where the little details can be noticed and treasured.

Innocence is Kinky might be a more clear distillation of Hval’s vision, but that’s only because the gaze is fixed so intently from performer to perpetrator.

With American Ride, Willie Nile joins their ranks and proves he can do it just as well as the best of them, sometimes better--Springsteen included.

His most recent album shares the same spirit that infused his first one back in 1980. Nile is a national treasure who brings rock to the masses, and while he may sing about “The Day the Earth Stood Still” because of the recent pandemic, he’s still moving and grooving.

Provocative when it needs to be, it steers well clear of addressing current world issues explicitly. It doesn't try to answer the difficult questions; rather it invites the listener to delve into their minds to find out the answers for themselves. As a result, this is an album that will resonate in five, ten, 15 years times--and they did it on their terms.

The Suburbs offers several observations comparable to the ones above but fails to combine them with a greater mixture of moods and topics.

The new editions of Gish and Siamese Dream (especially Siamese Dream, which handily outclasses its companion release in all areas) are steps in the right direction, being sumptuous reminders of the heights the group once attained back when it had everything to prove and nothing to lose.

On the whole, In Color is a vibrant, warm distillation of Jamie xx’s genre-spanning influences, one which could easily result in a meteoric rise in his profile.

The Sadies' best album yet.

The result: an album where he sounds more like himself than ever before. For a guy with nothing left to prove, Fulks sure seems determined to show off.