There is something shimmering, cold, and tender in these songs. There are also moments of rock vigor that are the flip side to folk’s gentleness (never gentility).

Contact is aggregated purge and celebration past the self, flesh seared back and stomp soldered to somnambulism.

On The Suburbs, their third album, Arcade Fire sound more like a band than ever before.

Faith In Strangers amplifies human interaction with the elements and the fractured nature of our relationship with them; this might not be the most joyful depiction, but it has been impeccably well documented here.

These are the giants' shoulders that Grooms have chosen to stand upon, and with Rejoicer they have done so excellently.

In the moment of listening itself, the lo-fi complexities, interactions, and repetitions create a revelation

Taken as a whole, World Eater makes a strange kind of jumbled thematic sense.

Junior is about as sturdy as a disco album can be, which is a remarkable achievement itself. One deliberately-paced decade in and Royksopp are showing no signs of creative fatigue or self-cannibalization.

Somehow they straddle the line between fluff and absolutely essential hipness that few attempt, and even fewer succeed at.

The dance songs on here awaken muscles of yours that might have fallen asleep over the last few years.

A stunning solo debut.

The handful of atmospheric pieces on Careful don’t necessarily contribute but do nod to the filmic quality of Boy Harsher’s work. But where the adjective “cinematic” is usually an upsell these days of “boring,” Boy Harsher have a gift at conjuring visceral emotions with subtlety.

Jayne is a lyricist with the cynical wit of a Stephen Malkmus, but rather than pointing that cynicism outward, he uses it to cut himself down a notch or two.

Wolf Parade do what they do better than anyone in recent memory.

By the time it comes to a close, The Books have taken us on a journey through space and time, and it's hard not to feel full, invigorated by a unique sort of listening experience that's perhaps best described by The Way Out's closing words: "And you're becoming the world and everyone in it."

This is an album of breath and sigh, baby’s gibberish and parent’s confession. It’s also a complex and layered meditation on fatherhood and family, rich in emotion, textured and capacious; it’s a long exhale--stately, calm, joyful.

Poison Season is nothing if not willing to shrug off a few of Destroyer’s newest fans if that means staying true to what the band has done so well for the better part of two decades. More so than on Kaputt, all of the classic Destroyer motifs are on full display.

The music in this album slowly shapes the surrounding substance of the listening space, building a reticulated, synth-orchestrated architecture with countless perspectives.

It’s breathtaking, it’s assured, it’s a perfect finale, it LIVES UP TO THE HYPE.

All the tracks here (note that it would be crude to say they were indistinguishable from one another, but keeping your eyes on the tracklisting might be a good idea) sound like they could have been made with an arsenal of sequencers and rippling arpeggiators, but it’s all the sound of one man surfing the crests of a series of pulses.

What The Flaming Lips have accomplished with Embryonic is impossible to ignore: an ambitious double album in an age where the single is making a comeback, a collection of music that makes a 25-year-old band sound vital and new.

Unknown Rooms is entirely built on pure rests and negative space, the nerve-racking space of silence. Everything on the album sounds and feels distant, as if the sounds are emanating from the other end of a dark eternal hallway.

There's a great, brisk evening stroll quality here, drifting imperceptibly between wistful and paranoid.

Yet despite its cryptic, apocalyptic themes, it’s more appropriate to say that Courage Of Others is a more formal, deliberate album than its predecessor, owing less to “take it easy” leanings and more to the prodigious prog-folk of E.L.P., Giles & McDonald, or the most minor-key offerings of Pentangle.

The result is an absolute monster of a closing track that caps a seductively repeatable album, which speaks miles to the effort on Holy Fuck's strongest album to date.

While Castlemania lacks the punchy, propulsive crowd-pleasers ("I Was Denied," "Block of Ice") that have lately been the band's stock and trade, the record glows with the unhinged, live-in-studio quality that translates so well to an Oh Sees live show.

The recordings all fit within a folk or blues tradition, but given the complex rhythmic layers, they may as well be post-rock songs.

Whether exploring a lost little town or his own lost soul, Will Sheff proves an excellent tour guide.