The first album in a series of three (all with the same title, differing only in capitalizations) BLACKsummers'night isn't just the soul album of the year, but also a top-tier addition to the canon of a once-fizzling scene.

The record isn’t immediately absurd, but rather keeps its composure and subtly turns convention on its head with a smile.

What she’s crafted here is a breezy, personal portrait of her life through finely orchestrated folk tunes--and it's nothing short of a stunning debut.

While Meiburg's voice, charisma, and songwriting dominate this album, his backing band does a fantastic job of growing and falling, creating the dramatic effects he envisioned.

This split is a nice mix of an old band showing they can still play with the best of them and a band that's still trying to figure out just who they want to be.

One certainly shouldn’t turn to Weather Alive when looking to jam out hard, but for a cohesive batch of wistful mood pieces, look no further.

This record is definitely a step in the right direction and has some of their most refined and exciting tunes to date. It doesn’t dethrone shutdown.exe, but its ambitions and consistency make it an excellent entry, with fans sure to lap it up.

Simon’s thirteenth studio album is as fresh and relevant as anything currently being mass-consumed by the market, and the things it forces you to think about are far more important than most of the topics that are being fed to us by the industry.

There’s not much else to say that you shouldn’t already know: thick, melodic and endearing, Life...The Best Game in Town is essential listening.

Morbid Stuff is a worthy follow up to The Dream Is Over in all the right ways--giving fans everything they asked for with some amusing curveballs. It’s a complete thrill from front to back that manages to retain the band’s whacky nature while making some inspiring progressions forward. You can't get much closer to a modern punk classic than this.

The listening experience is defined by languorous stretches between big moments, and becomes more of an exercise in patience than an engaging and enlivening journey. If it were more cohesive, more palpably moving in a musical sense, had less fat to trim, I could see myself fawning over Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers in fanboyish frenzy. As it stands, I think that in another five years I'll be wading back through this flawed masterpiece.

Once again, Kate's found a new sound world to operate in and made an effortlessly great album that works both as a conceptually cohesive whole and as a set of standlone songs as warm and comforting as a roaring fire.

Ultimately, it feels massive in scope and is consistently engrossing, with enough new tricks to forecast a bright future for the experimental metal legends.

Patience is the key to the evolution of Glass, using tonal shifts and ghostly textures to compliment the improvisational mastery we are bearing witness to, whether or not it becomes something much more ghastly than beautiful.

Brilliant.

As a piece of esoteric yet engrossing art, I Inside The Old Year Dying marks one of Harvey’s finest creations yet.

Letter to Self is undoubtedly a pretty good option to start off this new chapter, and for Sprints it may be even the beginning of something truly special.

Brockhampton's simplest album, a choose-your-own-adventure funhouse where the experience is as hilarious or as touching as the mindset you go in with.

There are plenty of immediately-engrossing moments, like the dramatic vocal narration of “The Stars Will Leave Their Stage” or the rousing solo in “A Thousand Lives”, but mostly what I return for is the sense of development within songs and from one track to another. This is an album which manages to cover a lot of territory in under fifty minutes, even if the brief intro and outro tracks don’t feel fully fleshed out (my largest criticism).

Any which way I look at it, I see in its 45 minutes all the signs of a true classic, an album whose daring attitude and commitment to odd sonic luxuries future emissaries of the great tradition of experimental hip-hop music should only hope to emulate.

Sleep Well Beast sees The National flourish with candid lyrics and diverse song craft, embodying the band’s continuing evolution and life’s constant change.

While not without its songwriting inconsistencies, The Enduring Spirit has the supreme merit of forging ahead and exploring new prog(ish) territory, unafraid to take risks or sow distrust and confusion among the more conservative fanbase.

I See You is a pleasant enough listen, and in embracing Smith’s more hot-blooded production, the xx have avoided becoming stuck in a rut a second time. Yet like Sim and Madley-Croft in song after song, I See You still leaves me wanting something undefined: something more.

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love sets itself apart from previous Deafheaven releases by connecting the listener to the kind of core-of-your-soul burn that can only come from the pain of failed connection with another human being.

So it comes as no surprise that the harmonic progression does not cadence as the listener might expect; the ear wants one more chord, but Pecknold and his backup singers simply end. There's nothing more to say.

As The Stars is an album for the wide black metal audience, because it shows how bands don’t always have to choose a side and then put up blinders to the world around them. Things can be integrated, but only insofar as the breadth of a band’s musical vision and their talent in transcribing that vision into their songwriting. Woods of Desolation are more than adept at both.

Model Citizen is absolutely straightforward and all the better for it, even if its second half can't quite live up to the relentless good vibes of "Brighter Days (Are Before Us)" or heavier banger "Mapped Out".

Despite its searching, Hannah exudes a qualified, though not-at-all-false confidence.