Hearing this collection, countless Americana fans will understandably wonder why we have waited so long for this duo to commit themselves to record.

The tensive sentiments that lurked the prior compositions are now in focus, beginning with an ever-mounting wave of vocal crescendos. Each layer adds weight, and each disharmony adds tension.

The Long Goodbye is an amazing achievement that accomplishes its mission of encapsulating a 45-year career with wit and aplomb.

The music rambles and rumbles like an old jalopy that always gets where it’s going with style. It’s vintage stuff that never sounds old as much as ripe and ready for cruising.

As far as 21st-century Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark goes, it contains some all-time highs and some all-time lows. Overall, that leaves it as the second-best of the bunch, behind the excellent English Electric (2013).

Surpassing the merits of Lost Souls, one of the best albums of 2000, is no mean feat, but to do it in such breath-taking fashion is something else, something special.

Like their fellow New York area bands The Strokes and The Walkmen, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have crafted yet another accomplished first album, but theirs is the best-produced and the most promising of the bunch, and the band shows that they're not only ready to transcend all the hype that's been building up; they've already started.

The true achievement of Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem is the redemptive arc Elverum finds within the black metal context.

Ultimately, Ocean Roar works as a continuation of the feelings that were so deeply and richly explored/mined on Clear Moon.

Life, love, heartbreak: none of it is particularly novel as musical material, but on Crushing, Julia Jacklin lets us learn from her experiences with her heart on her sleeve. There is a valuable perspective here, and truly moving music.

Kaputt is eccentric and enjoyable, but it's no Infidels, which is to say it never quite breaks through its sonic limitations.

Established fans of Spoon aren't going to get too much fresh out of Everything Hits at Once, but if the tracklisting looks appealing, then it's worth a listen. "No Bullets Spent" is worth a spin on its own. As for new listeners, this is a very good overview of the band.

A record so concerned with repeating the strengths of an album past that it forgets to chart its own path.

Dance Fever sounds like Welch’s most conceptual album yet, but in a fashion that allows the most catharsis her work has conjured since “Shake It Out”. Although much more theatrical than the honest but somehow boring High as Hope, this record asks its listener to sit a bit with the noise in our heads that might usually make us so uncomfortable.

Geogaddi is successful as few other albums are. Whereas many artists and groups tend to released records composed of series of unrelated songs, songs based on single concepts, or songs written and recorded during single studio sessions, Boards of Canada's latest has done something exponentially spectacular and commendable.

The album succeeds to a large extent simply because it addresses a wide demographic. He sings several steamy love songs whose urban fire will ignite those in search of R&B style passion.

It’s brimming with spectacular moments and paints grand tales that demand close inspection.

This is one of his best packages, and it was well worth the wait and all the twists and turns in between.

Whether the subject is sex, love, equality or heartbreak, Any Human Friend offers up the perfect combination - lyrics to make you think and music to make you move.

Her lyrics are full of witty puns, comic exaggerations and double-entendres accented by her sense of timing and intonations. The lines drip with bon mots that begin straight and then bend unexpectedly.

Insanely hooky and tortuous.

The Age of Immunology is the rare album that arrives full of what might topple over under the weight of its (potentially pretentious) baggage, but which instead delivers a new world of experience beyond any category, musical or otherwise. Music like this may not change your life, but it would be most surprising if it did not seriously alter your perspective.

Despite it representing the staggering breadth of an artist's multi-faceted career, the music assembled here is best enjoyed as one fluid, cohesive unity: Portrait is playful, idiosyncratic and expressive.

The Flatlanders end the album with “Sitting on Top of the World” and therefore go out in a blaze of glory. But as electric guitars and screaming voices drop out, the music continues to ring on in one’s head as the album insists upon being replayed.

“Birdy From Another Realm”, feel like the well-trodden ground in the artist’s oeuvre. This can be a little jarring when set against the more creatively and emotionally ambitious tunes and, while perfectly pleasant, could stand in the way of the project as a cohesive experience. All of This Is Chance is nonetheless a beautiful and bold album that showcases an artist unafraid to develop her sound further, revealing more of herself in the process.

The problem with A Hero's Death isn't that the band's changed, exactly; it's that the way they've changed makes them sound less like themselves and more like the many other young, angry guitar bands they're often lumped together with. The fact that they're unafraid to defy expectations so early in their career is a good thing. Hopefully, they'll realize it doesn't have to come at the expense of what makes them unique.

It Won/t Be Like This All the Time is like all of us. It's bruised, lonely, confused yet hopeful. It feels more important than a collection of songs on a spinning disc. It's a balm, a hand to hold and a kick up the arse. It's the album the Twilight Sad have always been destined to make, and it's the album fans have always known they would make.

If Clinging to a Scheme was the sound of a band emerging from a long, beautiful slumber, then Passive Aggressive is further reward for long-time fans who had been patiently waiting the whole time. And considering that the indie-pop world is still crushed out on vintage-leaning bands, the double album is sure to earn the band more new fans.

Layering his idiosyncratic songs with elements of classical, jazz, Broadway and Disney movie scores, Barnes elevates Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies into the pantheon of seminal new pop masterpieces that test our very concepts of what modern pop should sound like.

Everything works on Tomorrow Is My Turn, an album that heralds the arrival of a major American artist.

There is nothing wrong with bands making predictable music specifically designed to be played live; hell, bands like Motörhead and AC/DC have become rock institutions by doing just that. With this in mind, do not expect an artistic revelation from Fantasy Empire.

Crowell proves in The Chicago Sessions that both his pen and voice are still as vital as ever.

VOICES employs music as a forum for activism, spreading sentiments of unity, tolerance, and compassion throughout a pensive, sweeping, and goosebump-inducing song cycle of drones, arpeggios, and keyboard figures. In the wake of a surge in anti-liberalism, oppression, bigotry, and bloody violence and unleashed in the middle of a global pandemic, it's a becalming rebuke and a heartening conduit for hope, reflection, and radiance.

The results are every bit as sublime as anything he and his partners in collective aural immersion have ever released.

All the frustration that Pierce felt over the course of putting together this album hasn't clouded the music. On the contrary, the songs, structures, and transitions all come and go natural and easy.

A comeback that not only beats expectations but has an excellent claim to be the band's crowning achievement (so far).

When he sings, he doesn't seem to be singing from some ivory tower. And when stripped of the confines of a band dynamic, that relatability is even more naked and genuine. Warm is Tweedy unfiltered, a gift that begs to be shared.

Indestructible Machine is as good as anything I've heard this year and marks the true, and truly defiant, arrival of what could be a serious talent.

While both performers have shown themselves to be more than competent solo performers, with Meshes of Voice they show the result of two compelling contemporaries coming together, in the process creating something utterly revelatory and, ultimately, greater than the sum of its respective parts.

There’s enough that’s interesting and/or good about Light Up Gold to give it a solid recommendation, with the caveat that Savage’s voice is likely an acquired taste.

Singing Saw is the sound of affirmation, of both hard-earned talent and childlike imagination. As a result, Morby has discovered a sound which is organic without ever quoting, rocking without ever rolling at the same time, transcending while barely leaving the ground.

Neither the left-field alternative interpretations of Johnny Cash’s final few albums, nor the insular, moody explorations of contemporary Bob Dylan, Helm’s recent work embraces the past alongside the present in a way that is inviting, joyous, and thoroughly satisfying.

What truly makes this album stand out is the group’s sense of control.

Studied and expansive, its reverb, tambourine and 12 strings induce a Technicolor dream that’s simply brill[iant].

Though NOMO exhibits an ecstatic love for Afrobeat, spiritual jazz (check the odd time-signatured mysticism of “Patterns”), and the like, they’ve been increasingly studio-prone with each successive album, allowing for the effects of postproduction and modern electronic instrumentation to take their music in wild new directions.

It’s clear that nearly 40 years since her debut single, the creative prowess of one of popular music’s most valuable treasures is undiminished.

With an album as well thought out and arranged as Flower Boy playing on repeat, “right now” is absolutely enjoyable.

A World Lit Only By Fire is revisionist industrial and the soundscapes of this brittle disc leaves you wondering what on earth just hit you.

As varied as this all may sound on paper, just keep in mind that Planet Mu’s most listenable artists are already pretty far into left-field from the start. So when µ20 hops from one stone to another, it feels like you’re following a path of some sort.

The 11-song, one hour set is packed with all the hits from those classic first three records. However, as you would also assume for a band taking the stage well after midnight, the energy isn't always there for the entire set.

Once again, Tobias Forge has come through with a slick, wickedly catchy collection of songs that are certain to please Ghost’s rapidly growing audience.

Love’s Crushing Diamond arrives fully formed, a complete sonic work that tenderly guides you along and clothes you in its layered beauty.

Taken as a whole, Old Ramon is a brilliant mopey stroll through San Francisco's slate gray streets.

Will frustrate as many fans as it enchants.

Esperanza Spalding’s new recording, Emily’s D+Evolution is an astonishing beauty, a set of a dozen songs that artfully and persuasively bridge genres.

The real pleasure of the record is hearing how Lindemann and her accompaniment shape each song around those musings.

Apollo Kids definitely feels like a bit of an apology to his fans, and might be more accurately considered a stopgap, street album before Ghost's next labor of love.

Sister Faith radiates right from the first listen, and this record has picked up where House with a Curse left off back in 2010.

It’s that sense of timelessness--and, yes, mood--that makes Lovers such an essential collection both for Nels Cline fans and anyone who believes in the beauty and power of jazz.

Brexit (let us look forward to the day when we no longer have to speak of this blight) may be this album's context and its backdrop but what we might be getting here is ultimately a form of contemporary elegiac lyricism rather than full-fledged social polemic. Perhaps that is a more useful and rewarding reference and access point for this remarkable piece of work.

From sharp, wispy aches to flat, guttural releases, vocal notes move innately and curiously. She sings to discover as if every bellow imagines a peace that her spoken voice cannot. ... [An] unpredictable, nuanced album.

There's so much to like here, as a current document that faces forward while reflecting the past. My main nitpick would be the echo and trailing effects on the vocals, making the words linger with an extended dissolve. It's especially noticeable on headphones and makes for an odd choice on an album that otherwise sounds gorgeous. Still, even this perceived flaw alludes to an ethereal quality.

Rare, Forever synthesizes all of Vynehall's musical instincts together into one unique vision. Both beguiling abstract and instantly gratifying it’s as dizzyingly immersive as Nothing Is Still whilst occupying a totally different sonic space.

Troye Sivan’s Something to Give Each Other offers pop music enthusiasts a much-needed reprieve from the more emo offerings of Olivia Rodrigo or Billie Eilish. But the record falls short of its own standards, set high by the success of its predecessor and lost in its own ecstasy and provocative imagination.

Not only has the band wrapped up the themes of the record with impeachable, spotless playing and production, but the man at the center of it all hasn’t lost his penchant for writing quality tunes either, as nearly anything you blind-spot off This Is Happening will prove.

Donuts is hip-hop, then, like “Howl” is poetry or Guernica is painting: the best aspects of a particular style, developed to their fullest and executed masterfully.

The duo is always tinkering around the edges of their sonic universe, getting darker, weirder, subtler, and more expansive. They do all of that on Once Twice Melody, and the payoff is enormous.

It’s not exactly a work of brilliance – the tracks are too slight, and the whole tone is too wilfully perverse for that. Nevertheless, Blunt has crafted something undeniably engrossing for those willing to play along with his strange game.

This is pure unadulterated fun, masterfully executed.

mewithoutYou managed to synthesize its various explorations into a richer sound, using the sort of palette necessary to adequately pummel the album's deep meditations while properly expressing the emotional potency they contain.

While the tracklist drags on a bit on Book of Ryan, the discussions of dysfunctional family life ("Power") and mental illness ("Strong Friend") are heavy and worthwhile topics. Royce doesn't sacrifice energy for message either. "Summer on Lock", "Caterpillar", "Legendary", and others are fiery bursts of boom bap and trap which show that at nearly 41, Royce is not slowing down.

In its compositional diversity and its thoughtful commentary on the troubles we face, Giants sounds like a perfect accompaniment to this troubled period in human history.

With the subdued evolution on their new record and a treasured female feature, Omni continue to carve out a distinct identity (with an exacto knife) and shine among the glut of post-punk revivalist bands. That’s a Souvenir worth savoring, for sure.

Even though there are a few tracks where Sleigh Bells try to get away with bluster and decibels alone, it's amazing how much of Treats backs up the talk and the walk.

It sounds hard to imagine these influences joining harmoniously, but they do.

A nineteen track salvo of glorious musical mayhem.

If things seem schizophrenic it's because they are.

This new album sounds fuller and crisper than Iron and Wine's earlier recordings, but the minimalist artistry hasn't changed.

Kids See Ghosts will be remembered as the climax and most enduring record of Ye Season, one that keeps giving with each and every replay.

An album that’s worthy of your admiration for its execution and vision, even if it doesn’t quite inspire the same visceral appeal that made the group’s unflinchingly intimate, first-person vignettes approachable and absorbing.

There’s no grandstanding on this modest yet confident record. Rather there’s the humility, humour, wisdom and hard-won truths of country music at its best.

It is Meshell Ndegeocello’s most complete and fully integrated record and a defining work that in evading category seems to generate its own rules of engagement and enjoyment.

There are few suprises on an Eric Church album, but it includes excellent vocals, sophisticated musical choices, and strong storytelling chops. It’s a good thing these things haven’t changed.

This is head music in more ways than one, and listening to The Practice of Love is just as enjoyable as making sense of it once it's over. I'm still far from the bottom of this thing, but the journey there is something I look forward to.

On Phasor, we are still orbiting and navigating Lange’s particular dreamy sound space with the familiar debris, but this time, there is a stronger emphasis on the power of relational love.

Stage Four still features the band doing what it does best, and also improving on its sound in many key areas.

The rest of us will continue to drink in the boldest, most thrilling album of this supremely talented band’s career.

Hiatus Kaiyote have crafted something brilliant with Mood Valiant – an album that’s effortlessly likable, commandingly confident, and rich with heart and soul.

Laurel Halo’s penchant for abstraction has long served her music well, but Dust veers too far in the direction of academic detachment, suffering from its own inertness.

Containing belligerent and inspiring tunes for frustrating days, Entrench has arrived at the perfect time.

While the music itself is often devastatingly beautiful, it is not without its share of darkened corners.

Imperfect yet fascinating and occasionally gorgeous, No Shape once again expands and defies any preconceived boundaries of the Perfume Genius project.

They've created another stunning collection. From its all-encompassing reverie to the LP's themes of the arcane, Inter Arma are most certainly in their wheelhouse, continuing to redefine what it means to be a modern-day metal band.

The Book of Traps and Lessons is sharp as Tempest's lyrics position her as a soothsayer. Through her album, she inspires a call for consciousness that will certainly incite radical social and personal change.

This uncertainty paired with brilliance is emblematic of the recording, this moment in his career. Sugar Mountain makes sense in conjunction with last year’s "Live at Massey Hall 1971" release. Or, more specifically, it’s a direct precursor to the singer/songwriter confidence he exuded three years later.

While brevity alone isn't automatically a virtue, the songs here contain enough ample surprises, and hidden rewards, that there's nothing lacking even as the Hives smartly employ the logic of "always leave them wanting more."