Chance is no longer quite coming from that place of adolescence that was essential to 10 Day and Acid Rap, but on Coloring Book, he doesn’t yet sound comfortably settled into whatever it is that’s supposed to come next.

What keeps Last Exit grounded is the laid-back approach to the vocals and beats.

There's no such thing as universal appeal, but The Idler Wheel, despite its brittle sound and frequent fury, is galactic, at the very least.

On Merriweather, their art reminds us that immersion in Western tropes need not be met with scorn, that not all of its idioms have yet been exhausted, that embracing optimism and melody can still be so relevant--and it aches in the most soulful of ways.

To Be Kind launches them further along their trajectory toward this exalted condition, and at its peaks, it witnesses a dawning of an even-more-primary mode of consciousness: love.

American Band won’t transform our American landscape; good country music can’t heal a national soul. But an art of humanity and a faith in being better to each other can help redefine America.

This is a great record, if it is a record.

All hotly (strangely this descriptor seems almost an understatement) anticipated albums should deliver so profoundly.

These songs, nearly half a century old, are as relevant as ever. They should have never been hawked to commercial singers, but delivered as broadsides to the public or as protest music to audiences (as many of them were). Active, agitated citizens should be the recipients of these songs.

Divers steps outside of itself. Its lyrics are obscure, and its melodies are more variable and complicated than those of the “overstuffed gorge” some saw in 2010’s Have One On Me. At particular moments, though, it is plainspoken and personal.

Surprisingly, it’s far more tuneful than her previous release, ALL BITCHES DIE, and yet arguably even less listenable. ... Her voice is an astonishing instrument, moving from operatic fullness to hyperventilating shredded shrieks, but always foregrounding intelligibility.

The aural face of this album is frighteningly flawless: a technical perfection that only lends to the mythic proportions of the songs, behemoths so pregnant with ideas and so rich in sound that they seem to stretch for miles.

This sits up quietly but pointedly as a quiet rebuke to records that won’t try to render the depth of the world in a layered and crafted way, those that prefer to just wink, shrug, or laze.

It's an album from a songwriter at the peak of his powers, having tempered his imaginatively destructive impulses with his affection for all things old, rough, and beautiful.

A Moon Shaped Pool is a “grower,” because all music is a grower. Here, there is perhaps a wider opportunity for the music to grow due to there being an audible release of sign and substance as a ghostly after-image of the band’s event-based trauma.

Dear Science is all the more satisfying for providing a sense that the next leap will be just as rewarding.

Return To Cookie Mountain is one for the ages.

Any song on this album could function as a funny little short story well enough, but Barnett’s band, her guitar playing, her impeccable sense for melody and consistency give her stories life beyond their quirks, beyond her strength as a chronicler of the exhausting contemporary situation, expanding them into emotional worlds unto themselves.

All self-examination aside, there's a lot of substance here. Vocally, he has rarely been more on point, and the instrumental ensemble is sound and uniquely Rubiesian.

The listener need be an equally astute one.

Anyone who can sit down in such a short period of time and write this many unique songs has to have something abnormally genius working inside.

If you're not moved in some way, you don't move.

Amazingly, it lacks any pretense: their aesthetic is organic and fluid, indicating a band that responds honestly and artistically to circumstance, rather than one that imposes a rigid, stagnant aesthetic for more idealistic purposes.

The vicious licks laid down by Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker on "The Fox" are as punchy as anything I've heard them come up with, approaching something like Jack White if Jack White fell in love with The Experience instead of his Johnson. Amazingly, The Woods just picks up from there.

It may not break much new ground, certainly not for instrumentation or other reasons given, but it's one of the most solid albums all year.

It seems to have brought a band who had so long mired itself in total darkness into the cleansing light of day, and in both cases, the results are awe-inspiring.

Bandana continues a conversation not only between eras and between styles, but also between Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, both of whom continue to carve a path wholly their own — with little regard for what lays outside of it.

Foundations of Burden is special, there’s little question of that, but the precocious virtuosity of the performance doesn’t change the fact that the material is far from challenging.