As a word of warning, though, this brilliant, but lengthy double album may not be the best beginner's guide to Nick Cave. However, for anyone who is a fan of the duration of his career, this album rewards the listener with a bit of the best of everything he has to offer.

Whereas Antony and The Johnsons was a stark, chilling affair that was arresting and perhaps a little disconcerting, this album is a shining beacon of hope and healing amidst ceaseless pangs of heartache and loss.

Fishscale is a confusing journey: far from a disappointment, it breathes new life into the legacy of Ghostface without blowing too hard, and for that we should be thankful. But to champion his latest as equal or, god forbid, superior to past albums in any way, shape, or form is laughable, as years-removed and repeated listens will bear out.

The cuts on Kindred aren't simply longer than before; they introduce a completely different sense of space and continuity... this is why Kindred is so strong.

The only problem with this album is the difficulty you're going to have explaining what the hell it sounds like to your friends after they hear you raving about it.

A resonant narrative of apocalypse and transformation.

He’s been wood-shedding like a jazz player for years, riffing on ideas and loops and textures the way a pianist learns their scales, and he can now confidently test those skills out on just about any combination of sounds out there, if only to see what happens. In some ways, this succeeds, and in others, it fails entirely.

The most subtle incorporation of drum machines, horns, and vocal effects transforms Bon Iver’s music from the quiet afterthought that characterizes much of today’s indie-folk into a sonic landscape of moods and nuances.

It’s the subversion of the tyranny of the pop song and the aural manifestation of desire’s drift, or trudge, wherever it goes. In the background, throughout, her voice annotates, in stunning polyphony, like Horn’s watery associations, the unknowable trajectory that each song always already takes.

Although there is much to like about the album, it can be difficult to differentiate one from another.

After navigating complex matrices of identity under an indulgent, accessible veneer, Dirty Computer is ultimately--even “simply”--a cathartic assertion of self in a hostile system.

Pile are at their strongest when involved in slippages, designed moments of elasticity and indecision, effects incidental.

For an album constructed from so many constituent parts, Person Pitch is amazingly warm and inviting at times, wrapping around the ears, nestling the head, and squeezing like a nice familial bear hug after years of no contact.

College Dropout contains some of the most intelligent and clever lyrics hip-hop has produced in a while, be it mainstream or underground.

While it may not carry the same intrigue of a college student self-recording a lo-fi opus between classes, this new Twin Fantasy elucidates the masterfulness of an incisive indie savant whose creative reach had, until recently, exceeded his grasp.

What Shackleton has done with this mammoth album is create a full-bodied, visceral experience that meditates on the nature of the essence of a sound in a time and the space of time in which it appears, and the narration only presents the voice as the confrontation with time.

While Blackstar features a fair amount of indulgence, especially on the aforementioned 10-minute-long title track, it never feels labored, and the music never even once imitates the nightmarish soundscapes of Scott Walker.

It’s obviously well-crafted and well-executed.

There may not be clear answers to the riddles of identity and agency posed on My Woman, but even in all of its knotty uncertainty, to be caught in Olsen’s web is such a sweet place to be.

The words on record are breathtaking for their deep focus, which is microscopic to the point of vaguery. Frank Ocean’s lyrics describe such specific scenes that their vocabulary is unmistakably about someone else, his own worlds within our own.

On Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, rock, country, blues, and post-punk rhythms meld with Cave’s lyrics on sex, death, God, and America to create what could be one of his most perfect albums yet.

The Thin Black Duke is a concentrated work of beauty and malevolence that will go toe-to-toe with any other rock record released this year, and likely beyond. Oxbow can take twice as many years to make their next record, as long as it results in something this magnificent.

The River & The Thread transcends its geographical markers. It is an open-hearted piece of Americana, filled with music that is literate, narrative, and just a little bit strange.

Too Bright boasts harder-hitting lyrics, more sophisticated arrangements, and his best-fitting production yet. Its musical successes are obvious in their immediacy and variety.

The Seer delivers on its promise. It's an exhausting and maddening document, but one can't help but emerge from it filled with a renewed radiance.

Mitski may not be any taller or feel like any less of a child, yet Puberty 2 is a monument built high, visible to more and more.

Arca suggests a sort of shift that is so well-defined, confident, significant, and grounded in the artist’s own past aesthetics that it capably reconstitutes its onlookers’ iconic definition of the artist.

The album may sprawl too widely, but its second disc makes a strong argument for the continuity and self-awareness of the whole package.