It is a record that keeps listeners in mind, attempting to make sense of all of these painful feelings and moments in order to offer all-encompassing advice on life’s fleeting nature and on whether or not it’s still worth investing in love.

The Undivided Five is slow, meandering and intelligent. ... A Winged Victory for the Sullen produce breath-taking works of sumptuous beauty which will no doubt bore the shit out of those who are not equipped with the patience, cultural competence and time to delve into the work properly. That sounds wildly elitist but so be it.

Amidst the swathes of memorable hooks, pulsation of electro-beats and persistent homage to acts like New Order and Iron Curtain, Bigger Than Life proves to be much more than an amalgamation of pretty and fun sounds. There’s real emotional weight, rooted in nostalgia and that in-between feeling of well, being in between.

There is no insight into what brought him here, or how he feels in this place on a spiritual or even human level. Instead, it offers a shallow rush of, essentially, “WHOO GOD!” complete with an admittedly fantastic choir, but little else.

Although she’s got a considerable back catalogue behind her, and she’s not exactly reinventing herself here, this feels like a new beginning for Caroline Polachek – and it’s an unmitigated delight and success.

Like a gong bath that actually works, Sunn O))) are an entirely preternatural entity who exist within a state of liminality, sound created within but also between time, in contrast to the banality of music as narrative. Pyroclasts is best listened to loud, obviously.

Despite the mechanized nature, the depth of texture on show here is astounding, and HIDE definitely know how to play with space as well as sound.

Gira, with the help of many talents, has concocted Swans’ most beautiful yet most bleak sounding record of its 30-plus years existence.

There Existed An Addiction to Blood is shocking, insightful and unlike any other hip hop release this year, and quite possibly Clipping’s most impressive work to date.

Juice B Crypts is certainly a decent-enough math rock album, but when you have people as experienced and talented as Williams and Stanier “decent-enough” doesn’t cut it.

The 45 minutes of his new record are a textural deep-dive into the patterns and pleasures of the psyche, and it is both fascinating and fascinated in its results.

Vagabon is clearly searching, and she's managed to create something of a shelter for all of us within her new work. It's difficult to listen to Vagabon and not feel at home.

This brand of tell-all genreless rock may seem impenetrable at first, but a few listens is all it takes before you’ll be hooked by Richard Dawson’s paranoia, honesty and poetry.

There is restraint here, an alien concept for a band of Lightning Bolt’s usual undiluted abandon, but there is also the gleeful harshness which makes them such a force of the underground music scene.

No Home Record is impossible to listen to without making reference to her former band, yet it stands alone as the finest work of a magnificent, imposing talent.

You can’t say that Two Hands is an overtly hopeful album, but it is far from hopeless. Rather, it is realistic and grounded. Big Thief’s restraint in adding the production wizardry they showcased on U.F.O.F. is a key move to making the songs of Two Hands really hit their mark.

The reality of A Pill For Loneliness is that it gets carried away with flights of fancy that are, more often than not, boring. In the past 14 years City and Colour has released some vital albums, and while this certainly alludes to them, it isn’t quite on a par.

Look Up Sharp is a defiant, singularly challenging work, and it infinitely rewards those bold enough to venture into its maw more than once.

Though it’s DIIV’s most consistent record so far, a step in the right direction and a more radical a gear shift than either of those releases, the tracks on Deceiver offer only wide differences in quality and little variation in style.

It’s difficult to escape the fact that there is little to commend Ode to Joy for beyond its exceptionally competent loveliness. That is, however, no reason to completely disregard it.

uknowhatimsayin¿ may not immediately shine as brightly as the grandly ambitious and fearlessly experimental XXX or Atrocity Exhibition, and some of its tracks and vocal hooks are a little undercooked, but Brown’s latest reveals itself more and more with each listen.

Angel is unprepared to commit to anything in the long term, but is always fully committed to now, and this has allowed her to make her boldest and most purposeful step yet.

The Talkies is rough around the edges, is of a debased, primal nature, yet is incredibly on-point with the unsettling atmosphere it communicates. Girl Band is officially the crown jewel of Irish punk, if a beautifully horrific crown jewel.

Contrasting One True Pairing’s sleek sound, Fleming is consistently willing to dampen the mood with world weary, starkly honest observations as to our current cultural reality. Whether it’s toxic masculinity, paranoia, or an all too real fear of global collapse, the record lays all things bare.

It may be a bit of an inscrutable debut, and certainly one that invites critical thinking far beyond a casual listen, but it’s an infinitely rewarding, promising one. You may just find yourself wanting to retire on its shores more often than you expect.

What made M83 so great was its inclination to look forward as well as backward. Unfortunately, DSVII —like Junk— looks backward without bringing anything new to the table.

You might not revisit this record often, but when you want to step back and step out Altid Sammen in its quiet contemplation will be the record to open up new avenues and expose what it was you were searching for.

Lookout Low provides 10 outstanding tracks, each one making clearly apparent the effort put into creating this album was not in vain. This album is certainly going to be tough to beat.

House of Sugar is not only special because it is the most consistent, detailed, adventurous Alex G record so far, but because it also clarifies what Giannascoli has been working towards all along and positions itself as an opus of one of this decade’s most defining indie artists.

Jenny Hval has never come closer to a universal truth. If she’s often felt to have been speaking from on high, Hval has never been more purely human than on The Practice of Love.

Lower Dens have the right ideas for their music, but they’re not always the right ideas at the right time. This album, flawed as it may be, is still worthwhile for when the latter happens, like with the heated guitar work and wailing vocals of ‘Two-Faced Love’.

Though it’s not surprising that Iggy included a couple of left hooks, it hurts a little bit that the album doesn’t have more of the sing-speak poetry and post-rock dreaminess. He does it so well, but only about 22 minutes are dedicated to this sound. ‘James Bond’, in contrast, is a distraction from a compelling new direction.

Among the 21 tracks of Close It Quietly there is plenty that is amiable and whimsical, pleasant and inoffensive. There is also, however, almost nothing affecting or memorable.

Lost Girls is fundamentally disappointing. It is an album devoid of originality from an artist who should be reaching for the stars instead of looking back into the murky past for inspiration. No doubt it will sell by the bucketload, but then people like Coldplay and voted in the Nazis so what do they know.

Black Belt Eagle Scout has crafted an album to play any naysayer: At the Party with My Brown Friends will make a fan out of anyone.

It’s clear that with Venus in Leo, HTRK have taken a step higher, using desolation to their advantage. With an eye for detail and fondness for obsessive downward spirals, they have made their first album in five years comfortably fitting of their sensual and aching mystiques.

What has changed is that this time around is that she swapped out the usual 8-track recorder she usually used to lay down her vocal parts and instead recorded them with producer Arthur Rizk in an actual studio. Far from distilling any of the fury from her pipes (which sometimes sound on the verge of shredding themselves) the added clarity does a lot to boost the emotional wallop of her words especially on the more vulnerable moments.

Devour is the first Pharmakon album which was recorded live in the studio, and there is a sense of organic creation to it which is pivotal to the ideas layered within. The warmth of the production separates this album from her previous three, perhaps even suggesting a sense of hope for humanity in the face of overwhelming odds which are stacked against us.

Right now, it can feel like every artistic statement is part of a grand commentary on our collective entropy. Joan Shelley plays on all of our nostalgia for calmer days. Her latest album is great shelter from the gathering storm.

The majority of Fear Inoculum’s songs are more or less interchangeable, achieving the same overall effect in slightly different ways. ... Toolheads will find much to enjoy here, I am sure of it.

With each album Snoh Aalegra shows progression. From Don’t Explain, to FEELS to this latest release, Snoh has taken parts from previous releases to create this record whilst keeping her authenticity.

Jay Som is truly at home on Anak Ko, and it shows. It may not pack a wallop, but it's always welcoming, and, sometimes, that's just what we need.

With more than enough flagrant energy to satiate the average punk, The Murder Capital—still—is most affecting through its delicate and understatedly sad musings on life and death. In fact, the rest of the record sees the band tap into poetic introversion that is both broad enough to latch onto, yet intimate enough to impress your own experiences and fears.

By no means is Infest the Rats’ Nest the best ‘heavy’ album of the year, that honor is shared by Lingua Ignota and Baroness. But it’s not crazy to suggest that Infest the Rats’ Nest is one of the most valiant efforts of 2019, one that has only furthered the wondrous mystery of Melbourne’s beloved band.

Their newer, glossier pop sheen pedestals them as the makers of proficiently written and intently catchy tunes that are inoffensive and innocuous - and never adventurous enough not to be.

Put simply, Animated Violence Mild is an excellent album which is imbued with righteous vitriol. This isn’t just the best Blanck Mass album to date, it’s also the best record that Power has been involved in, which really is saying something.

Concerns over the band’s changing sound are summarily squashed under the furore of their zipping forward with the energy and heft of a dozen motorcycles.

Dwyer’s band are still the masters of genre-leading and genre-defining garage-psych-founded mayhem but Face Stabber veils that slightly behind bloated long cuts and a lack of standout individual tracks.

i,i is an album meant to please their least demanding customers; a session of pure, light nostalgia, and given the band’s rabid following, it’s still certain to succeed, even to receive knee jerk, overeager accolades. That’s all well and good, but it’s hard not to recall just how much more these guys are capable of.

Passionate vocals and gritty guitar-driven melodies brings the album to life, reminding us of the reason the band have been successfully taking the industry by storm.

With his charisma and creativity at the core of these songs, and an incredible group of collaborators around him, Ty Segall has created an album that will appeal to both long-term listeners and first timers – just like pretty much every one of the other studio albums in his increasingly legendary discography

File under: Works better if you think of it as a remix album.

Cuco might not convert naysayers this year, but he clearly isn't overly concerned. He's delivered an easygoing, often charming set of songs, and that's a mission statement fulfilled.

Midsommar may offer limited mileage when it comes to daily listening. Still, it accomplishes its goals with deadly conviction, and for those with a penchant for unnerving listening sessions, you may just discover a dependable companion here. It's a nightmare to linger within.

Too eerie to be a comedown album, too scary to be a soundtrack, Kiri Variations is rich in weaving a tapestry of Wiccan ideals, of woodlands and innocence and dreams of suffocating entrapment, which combine to produce an album of unsettling pleasure.

By turns distant and unknowable, fleeting and eerie, and even serenely gorgeous, Apollo found Eno continuing to toy with, and reach for the edges of, a sound he himself perfected. ... The album stands out of time, never ageing, forever seeming to beam in from a future just out of reach. Much like the event it memorializes, forever there may it stay.

Whether he feels every emotion he’s describing or is putting on a mask, the songs remain enjoyable and lighthearted.

King’s Mouth has moments of pure joy and feels timeless in many ways, and for that Coyne and co. should be applauded.

A supremely assured, instantly addicting debut, it walks the precarious balance beam between earworm and confessional.

Adding in the duo’s pressing commentary about narcissism and digital romance, both of which bear heavy relevance today, Modern Mirror is goth aestheticism for the now and just maybe—the decade to come.

All in all, HiiDE presents a diverse enough collection so as to be difficult to describe in the brief, simple terms of this review. Nonetheless, it represents a cohesive, intriguing debut album that foreshadows a tantalizing, unpredictable future for BABii. We'd all be wise to stay tuned.

This is a decent body of work which would actually work well as an introduction to the band for those yet to encounter METZ’s noise to date.

It ultimately comes up short on tapping into the kind of emotional depth needed to resonate beyond feeling like those brief moments when we find ourselves experiencing a sudden case of deja vu before snapping back to reality.

There was a lot riding on this album to be a worthy successor to Piñata, and Gibbs and Madlib ended up with something that unfortunately doesn’t come close to those heights, but something that’s still worth thoughtful evaluation and plenty of discussion.

An Obelisk is not quite as statuesque as it wants to be, though it does demonstrate the band’s ethos in a tightly-wound package, and is a solid addition to a repertoire that continues to make a Titus Andronicus release unmissable.

Musically, Mannequin Pussy show off a new-found nuance and detailed understanding that backs up this intricate situation perfectly, spinning the threads of guitar so beautifully that you can mistake the song for romantic, before you’re knocked back to earth by the painful reality of the situation.

This is still dense music, yes, but crucially it never alienates over its epic 68 minutes: you can drop in on this record at any point and still find a good time. As such, I Was Real feels like the band’s most thorough examination of itself yet--and is all the more satisfying as a result.

Overall, this is an album packed with huge riffs and honest intent from a band who seemingly have a new lease of life.

To listen to this 69th Kicks is to enter Peggy Gou's home, kick your shoes off, and hear her very past and present, her very process. Sure, you'll end up dancing, but the couch is always there.

With Gold & Grey, Baizley and his cohorts have produced a monumental work of art that’s as dark and forbidding as it is bright and triumphant. It perfectly balances light and dark, revels in the creative possibilities of music-making, whilst plumbing emotional depths that might have you worrying a little for Baizley’s state of mind.

ANIMA isn't an overly kind record. It is, however, eternally honest.

The Age of Immunology honors a potentially fading ideal. Should it all come crashing down, it's hard to think of a more fitting, colorful, and ambitious tribute than the one Vanishing Twin have given us here.

Schlagenheim may possess some semblance of the aforementioned genres, alongside others like kraut and yes, even jazz, but pining for some rigid label is futile, because Schlagenheim is one of the most unique rock records released this year and maybe of the past five years.

Keepsake feels a bit more akin to a tentative step forward than a leap into the stratosphere, but for a debut it's stuffed with endless charm and promise.

Exiled is urgent and breathless from a band who need to be heard.

His fifth album is the most grown and mature.

He immediately introduces us to his new titular “Shepherd” persona, and continues to act like the consummate host to the listener throughout the record’s beautifully interwoven 20 tracks and 64 minutes.

Musically, Perfect Version isn’t flashy, but it sure is pretty. Chastity Belt records have a way of popping out at the listener with their shimmering melodies and catchy hooks, while this album is significantly more understated. But Shapiro’s hushed voice, delivered among reverberating guitars and atmospheric drones, invites the listener back for repeat listens.

If Springsteen’s characters aren’t all that multifaceted, they’re at least part of songs that are. ... When Springsteen cuts into his characters’ pain is when Western Stars stands out as one of his best late-period works.

The brevity of Lust For Youth is an issue, particularly as the eight songs fail to fully bond together, so the end result is a little too disjointed and the album overall suffers from a lack of flow, immediacy and purposeful direction. There are some good tunes here, of that there is no doubt, but it feels a little flat as a body of work.

These songs don’t live nicely in any genre, and suffer under the weight of attempting cross-pollination.

Younghusband's new record shows the band can turn out a great sounding bunch of songs and the odd moment of brilliance. If they spent longer letting their songs grow before unleashing them they might have produced something more distinctive.

While Midnight is, overall, a somewhat flawed record, it still shows impressive growth for Chura. Like Messes, it doesn’t settle into the oft-tread indie rock rut of bland, cliché emotionality, while the songwriting is clearly leagues ahead of her debut.

This dedicated honesty that she exorcises in her songs cuts both ways; as undying devotion to friends, yet callous dismissiveness towards herself. This leads to a disconcerting but utterly magnetic outing on third full length Black Friday.

With clear intent, Omoiyari is a strong example of that rare moment when a musician finds their true stride later in their career. Kishi Bashi has offered up a truly essential statement.

Boat is a self-assured, mature body of work with a set of songs that sit beautifully together. The album has space to breathe, alter direction and progress over its duration.

A certain sadness does indeed pervade Margaret’s voice, but it never dominates her work. It reverberates against the beauty of her words.

On his frequently divine debut album, Hayden Thorpe may well be a new man, untethered from his band, adrift in space and time, yet safe in the hermetic seal of an intricately designed vessel, but the desire for human connection will seemingly always bring him out of his shell and back down to solid ground.

Full Upon Her Burning Lips requires patience from the listener as its contemplative pace offers multiple rewards on repeat plays. There is a depth to the album which is more evident with an enhanced investment from the audience as layers are revealed in the aural panoramic panacea that are hidden within the subtext of the songs.

For someone who makes music so precise and demanding, this means that Flying Lotus’ latest album is a harder one to digest, and ultimately isn’t quite as essential as his previous.

Destroyer feels like a band waking up from the slumber rut that marred their more recent output. There is a distinct sense of urgency here, of the adrenaline felt with a new experience that always seemed previously out of reach. McBean has (fuel) injected an exigency to this project once again, and the results are great.

ALASKALASKA are refreshing, listening to just one album sounds like listening to ten. The Dots is a long record and at times their weirdness washes over you, but over time, like the ocean over stones, something subtly changes.

Reward could easily exist in a decade long since past but become a hidden gem, along the lines of Linda Perhac’s Parallelograms or Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day. Thanks to streaming, far more people will be able to hear it.

This album certainly does mark a “departure” for Siobhan Wilson, but it sheds none of her allure.

From bird sounds, flutes and screams to pounding techno beats, disco, house and catchy hooks, DOOMSQUAD’s Let Yourself Be Seen creates harmony in chaos, showing a reflection of our times and the necessity of togetherness in finding a release for self-expression.

With many other moments that dive into depression, death, addiction among other heavier topics, Injury Reserve’s debut record surpasses any and all expectations as a seamless concoction of serious topics flawlessly juxtaposed by extraterrestrial sounds, humor and righteous anger.

Many will ding this record for being too subdued, but the matter of fact is Bondy has grown as an artist since his days as Verbena. He’s evolved, more experimental, more in-touch with what drives him, with the decaying America around him and of course, what pulls at his (and our) heartstrings. Enderness is a profound testament to his maturation.

‘Unspoken History’ and ‘I Want U’ show she has real talent. With more work, and more pain, she might graduate from The Best of Luck Club.