Appropriately, the music across In Lieu of Flowers is the fullest, boldest, and most confident-sounding of the side-project’s entire discography. But honestly, with a story this poignant, potent, and cathartic, the melodies almost become an afterthought. In Lieu of Flowers is the perfect conclusion to a story for the ages; come, gather around, and experience some of the best songwriting of a generation.

At once exquisitely beautiful and deeply tragic, and imbued with a bucolic sense of a rural England full of villages and country lanes and woods and fields, I Am Not There Anymore is a journey that you won’t readily forget. Flaws and all, it’s both a worthy comeback for an excellent band and one of the year’s finest releases.

As with Lover, folklore wears out its welcome by containing too many tracks. A tighter song list would have done a world of good.

For being so politically and socially charged, American Band is not a divisive album.

Everything about Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. II demands worship and solidifies Raekwon as one of history's best with a continuation that exceeds his original debut in every way imaginable.

30 might not have been the cleanest of breakups, but it more than translates in lyrical form.

It's not only his best (yes, even better than Lonesome Dreams), but also his lushest and most emotionally absorbing. Acoustic guitars shimmer like diamonds on the surface of a still lake, while Ben Schneider's melodic verses echo a magical blend of nostalgia and romance.

Conquering does nothing genuinely new, and that’s genuinely okay. The basics are the basics for a reason and, as Employed to Serve demonstrate, executing them with passion and precision is sometimes all that you need.

This album is the sound of an excellent singer, songwriter, arranger, and, I’d argue, thinker translating those strengths into some of the most stirring music you’ll hear this year. Loud City Song may not be loud, but the echo it makes is unforgettable.

This may not be Radiohead’s most experimental album, but it is without a doubt their most sonically pleasing, elegant, and acoustically immaculate offering to date--and it just might be their best, too.

Dream Weapon, bold reimagining that it is, could well be the line in the sand that releases the four-piece from the shackles of their historic hallmarks. The dream of another Dead Mountain Mouth or Board Up the House may have been shattered, but a new, better dream may yet be forged from the pieces. Here’s to finding out.

A Chaos of Flowers marks a productive new chapter in their trajectory, sure, but above all, it represents the very best of what Big|Brave have to offer: emotion in desolation, destruction in grace.

Compared to previous outings, this may be the most bold and unabashed offering of Annie Clark’s career. It certainly isn’t her best collection of songs outright, but there’s a certain amount of style points that she garners for remaining so committed to bucking the expectations set by her audience and industry.

Formula of Love could have been trimmed to 10 strong cuts and I am sure it would have been one of the tightest Kpop albums in recent years. It’s easy to dismiss it due to the genre it represents, but there was considerable effort put into most of these songs, so it’s worth some listens.

Katie is making a point of saying more with less, taking potent emotions and quietly tucking them into a plain white envelope for us to open and interpret. She’s as lucid as we’ve ever heard her, stripping down to her emotional core and daring us to make eye contact.

One of the best albums of 2008, Dear Science, is an album you can ramble on about for nearly 600 words before you realize you forgot to mention 'Golden Age,' arguably the best song on the album.

Truth be told, it's the kind of album rappers should be dying to make: smart and sensitive, beautiful and brutal, uncompromising in doing exactly the things it sets out to do.

RTJ 3 is both a sprinter’s dip and a victory lap – it is neither as sinewy as RTJ 1 nor as effusively vivacious as 2014’s RTJ 2, but still finds itself imbibed with the kind of assured professionalism that is only permitted to those who have previously done enough to be granted a low-pressure outing.

The songs are fun, intimate, personal, and at times simply epic.

This is a significantly more rustic album than All Mirrors, with major country and folk influences joining that album’s lush art pop sound. Even the songs which lean towards the latter style are often gentle and delicate. It’s also a record which feels infinitely more personal.

When Only God Was Above Us isn’t shattering glass ceilings, it’s delivering some of the most beautiful but disquieting indie-rock in recent memory.

Magdalene sees FKA Twigs reach a wholly satisfying pinnacle that is unlikely to be rivaled by any of her peers in 2019.

In some ways the album works better as a slightly blemished and broken piece, because like its protagonist it exits quietly while still leaving so much to say, and it's those pieces of work that weeks later are still being debated over that stand the true test of time.

The music within the album has many sides to it, and the execution gives each aspect enough emphasis to add to the sound without creating clutter or over saturation.

With their newest release, Eric Wunder as loosened the tether and slipped into the savage void. The band is all the better for it.

Two new tracks make this compilation all the worthwhile, with the devilish funk of "Fill My Mouth" being one of the best tracks the band has ever released, and the creeping incantation of "Queen of the Underground" wrapping up this collection of essentials from the Swedish collective.

Bandana is terrific because it makes you yearn for that imagined history, the struggle from page to audio that surely happened to produce such a god-given chemistry. Freddie's deep, choppy flows might initially seem somewhat at odds with Madlib's production but that's why it works, because playing too much to the soul-soaked nostalgia robs the proceedings of their bite.

Converge has become synonymous with consistency, and the band's latest effort proves that after seven albums they still have what it takes to put their listeners through hell in the best kind of way.