It’s groovy and funky and sultry, and it takes things seriously while still being joyful. It encourages freedom of form, in the sense of both body and art. It’s the perfect second album for Christine and the Queens.

The Ascension is one of Sufjan Stevens’ grandest, most ambitious works yet.

By closing the door on the philosophies and musical approaches he used to take, Tyler discovers an open window, leading him to new, peaceful strength and mastery of his craft.

An explosive expression of unity in the face of strife and an exuberant expression of hope. ... But beneath the pomp and circumstance, Welch is traditionally known for, Dance Fever is a deeper look at a woman who unapologetically bares it all.

To Be Kind does as much soul exposure lyrically as it does musically, Gira’s simple, howled lines finding the vein incredibly easily.

The artists for whom Clark now carries the torch were never satisfied with their past accomplishments and were always pushing forward. MASSEDUCTION cements her in this camp.

With Jaime, Howard proves what many of us already speculated: The magic behind Alabama Shakes was Brittany Howard.

Currents is all about the wide lens. It’s not the landscape worth falling in love with, but the way Parker gives us a tour. Let it happen, and it will carry you off somewhere much further away than you realized was worth visiting.

It stands tall as a late candidate for the year’s best rock record. Spiritualized has added yet another chapter to its wild, dreamlike musical legacy, proving that rock isn’t dead and that maybe everyone else just isn’t trying enough.

Mirrors, cameras, and lenses are all over Drop, an artistic statement that effectively functions as a screen.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We finds Mitski at her most peaceful, hopeful, and, yes, loving.

Monáe is, as always, a true master of melding genres, influences, and styles. Her central themes of identity and internal conflict are as tangible on Dirty Computer as they ever have been.

It’s hard and sinister like a gangster rap album, but it’s also sprawling and even psychedelic at times. Nothing else sounds like it, and that’s a joy to behold.

On folklore, Swift has come of age, emotionally and sonically, and proven herself — not that she needed to — as not only an exceptionally autonomous auteur but a nimble collaborator with an ever-broadening palate.

The band return with a record worthy of their already legendary canon of genre-defining works. Mayhem treat each song as an evil spectacle, pushing it to its most absurd and dissonant limits. There’s no respite here, and it’s one of Mayhem’s best albums because of it.

It’s OPN’s most emotional work to date and also his most ridiculous. Its tragedy is bound up with its humor; its sublimity comes from the places where it feels the most broken.

Deftones have only ever produced good albums, but they’ve also spent the decade since Diamond Eyes exploring textures and soundscapes, sometimes at the expense of songcraft. Ohms breaks that trend, with more focused songs, and a renewed love of hard-rocking guitar riffs that may rekindle the band’s relationship with fans that jumped ship after White Pony.

While DAYTONA could easily have been Pusha-T’s victory lap, it only builds on the heft of his weighty legacy.

Brighten takes it all a step further, and more than measures up to his other solo efforts. Heck, in a lot of ways, it even matches (or even surpasses) a couple of the post-Layne-era Alice albums.

Turn Out the Lights is a rich, moving work that creates a communion of sorts, an acknowledgement that the little victories are worth embracing even if salvation seems utterly out of reach.

It’s a neat inversion that yields some of the most thrillingly ambitious indie rock compositions of this decade, though one that occasionally exhausts the listener into submission.

There's a level of self-editing and consistency that slots 72 Seasons ahead of St. Anger, Hardwired, and Death Magnetic as, if not the best Metallica album of the 21st century, the best thrash album by Metallica of the 21st century. It's the sound of a band having fun, laying into a ton of riffs and embracing its own legacy as metal masters.

Gore could be the Deftones’ best album, but you can earnestly say that about any album they’ve ever created and make a strong argument. If anything, it’s the most modern, and a statement that style and substance are not mutually exclusive. Gore has both.

Potential not only makes a shockingly strong case for the top tier of contemporary sample-indebted achievements (alongside pillars including Burial’s Rival Dealer EP and Jamie xx’s In Colour), but does so while insisting that the universe, much like ourselves, will never be explored in its entirety.

Even with a finale that slightly underwhelms, Assume Form is a remarkable achievement by one of the most original songwriters of his generation. Blake hasn’t lost his love of percussion, and his gift for melody seems without limit. This is Blake at his most focused, stripped of electronic frills, and down to his emotional underwear.

A History of Nomadic Behavior showcases a band that’s able to make its music more challenging while also being mindful of songcraft and being subtle about it in both respects.

Collapse is another entry in a remarkable run of work that Aphex Twin has been releasing since his return from a long and clearly necessary hiatus. It may feel like he is on cruise control a bit, but James’ coasting is any other artist’s magnum opus.

They’ve turned themselves into a ravenous rock deity, a masterful songwriter whose every release demands attention. And while the title of the album refers to one who Chews But Does Not Consume, it’s the kind of project that swallows you whole.

Luckily, Hecker has impeccable taste. Very few composers can achieve this kind of beauty or this kind of experimentation, and yet Hecker does both, time and time again.

Where the freewheeling Benji painted lyrical autobiographies in painstaking detail and Are We There dove headfirst into dark and sometimes overpowering emotions about toxic relationships, HEAL is a mixture of the two, a cleansing document that’s ultimately more hopeful.

The music might seem cold, but when you’re surrounded by it, enveloped in it, it can keep you warm, too, like a glacier cave or an igloo.

The remastering of this album is a blessing to the careful compositions and mannered performances throughout the record.

The original was proof that Nas, a cat known to bathe in ’90s aesthetics, could spin gold with a producer known for the exact opposite. KD2 fulfills that idea, as the pair double down on what worked the first time, toss aside what didn’t, and find the perfect center between 2021 and 1991.

Atonement is an emotionally compelling record that explores concepts of finding strength in one’s being. Between the raw intensity of the instrumentation and vocals, as well as the inspirational elements throughout each song, Killswitch Engage offer a very solid addition to their discography.

Waiting five years to hear previously released tracks is worth it precisely because Radiohead finally feels connected enough to perform them with meaning.

There aren’t any real misses on Deeper Well, and the record feels more like a dreamy mood piece or conversation with a friend than an attempt to round up a collection of chart-ready singles or social media-friendly soundbytes. Musgraves was far more interested in asking the bigger questions — and it doesn’t even seem to matter too much which answers she found. The deep dive was the point.

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love has moving, emotional pieces and sharp performances bolstered by a band clearly stretching out of its comfort zone successfully. The album is a refreshing new shade of their sound without abandoning the band’s core mechanics.

SAWAYAMA appears poised to be one of the best pop albums of the year and sets Sawayama up as a pop force to be reckoned with.

Despite its heightened complexity, Too Bright still fosters an intelligible world where Hadreas can bridge the distance between his vulnerability and self-assuredness.

The management of tone throughout is also masterful and consistent. For all the shifting that occurs within individual songs, it’s always anchored to place by restrained instrumentation and artful, deliberate counterpoints between highs and lows.

David Berman is one of our greatest living songwriters and he’s returned in beautiful, melancholic form as Purple Mountains to speak to the lifelong nihilistic depressive in all of us.

Although her bio insists that the narratives within the record aren’t intended to comment on gender roles, My Woman strikes down the notion that neither Olsen’s artistry nor her womanhood can be limited.

The music’s vision and beauty hold together regardless, a sturdy and unparalleled step of confidence.

His current labelmates include hitmakers like Big Sean and Justin Bieber, but also respected wordsmiths Jadakiss and Jeezy. It’s that latter strata where he belongs, and P2 proves he can hang.

Black Origami is an album that, like its predecessors, will be savored and analyzed for the rest of the year. It’s a lock for best albums of 2017.

Standards is by far the most bombastic album of Into It. Over It.’s career.

Dude Incredible, however, is also one of their most direct albums, the nine songs holding that same menacing gut-punch, despite that highfalutin thematic unity.

The newly turned-up volume and heavier instrumentals of synths, bass, and drum programming still never drown out Baker’s tender vocals, which are consistently unexpected and innovative.

Dixon and Stein’s music is a chance to revisit it, to envelop ourselves in its arms (or claws), and to bask in the glory of something supremely strange and wonderful.

Like a lot of the bands that inspired it, Omnium Gatherum is expansive, assorted, and at least a little self-indulgent, but that’s precisely what makes it brilliant.

Atlanta Millionaires Club is a masterpiece of claustrophobic intimacy that brings compelling immediacy to a time-tested story.

What Cave and Ellis have crafted with Carnage is a refreshing respite from chaos, a record that sits at the burning edge of dawn and anticipates destruction’s undoing.

Thanks to all involved in this loving project, we get a better chance to explore and understand what made Wildflowers bloom as fragrant and beautiful as it did more than a quarter century ago and what made Petty the perfect talent to pluck those blooms from the studio weeds.

It’s all at once contemporary enough to thrive in a market that demands constant innovation, yet nostalgic enough to shepherd the spirit of a bygone era on which the genre is founded.

Channeling the traditions of Southern music without getting caught up in it, Lateness of Dancers proves the genre’s vitality.

Freetown Sound stands concurrently as a deeply personal work and a striking representation of the struggles present in today’s society.

Her biggest fans may prefer less direct writing, but it makes St. Vincent her most widely appealing album to date, an infectious work that doesn’t ever feel like a compromise.

[Britt Daniel's] big statement is his Body of Work, of which every fine part adds up to a greater sum. Here comes another one.

Brand New manage to reinvent themselves while also recapturing the essence of what’s made them so special and enduring.

A raging confidence surges throughout Cool It Down, and the music showcases a band who older, wiser, more mature. It’s held together by the strength of Karen O’s lyrics, her signature voice, and the eclectic instrumentation that have made the band so loved. It’s also their most experimental effort yet, full of dramatic soundscapes that see the band push the boundaries of what it really means to be an alternative rock band in 2022.

With Attack on Memory, Baldi's never felt more alive or more authentic.

Learning how to untangle one of the richest experimental albums of recent memory becomes a challenge well worth the undertaking.

Kaputt is the sort of record that arrives only once in a while: an expansive world that captivates you from beginning to end, impresses you with its self-awareness and cohesiveness, then releases you from its grasp when it's all over.

Already so many people have been championing 2013 as the strongest year for music in recent memory, and they’re not wrong, but here’s an album that has the punch and wit to stick around with the best.

Resounding with enchanting vocals, a distinctly dusk-singed ambience and a keen precision thanks to its percussion, Blue Lines transcends the spills onto the dance floor and tinny thumps from laptop speakers, possessing a cosmic ability to remain a masterpiece 21 years after its release.

At this point, Win Butler is rock ‘n’ roll’s Christopher Nolan, a hyper-literate artist who crafts reliable, intelligent, and challenging blockbuster events that sweep our minds away. With the 85-minute Reflektor, he’s taken his most creative risks to date and at the cost of simply trusting what he sees, who he knows, and where he wants to go.

Simply put, they’ve evolved from a hype band to something much more coveted: a great band.

Hummingbird proves that these guys are maturing into a sound that's both singular and wrenching with severity.

It’s an album that provides tangibility to an incredibly complex feeling.

Stripped of vocal harmonies and electric guitars, the unadorned, raw songs feel unguarded and painstakingly earnest. The sound quality is impeccable on every single track, and Young’s voice has never been more emotionally charged.

Going back to the well is generally frowned upon, but given the depth of Waits' well and the crispness and vitality drawn from it on Bad As Me, it hardly seems to warrant criticism that he has chosen to rummage through his past and revisit what he never had the heart, or mind, to throw away.

The album is a shoo-in for being a timeless great, no matter what we say. Vernon's got the magic touch. But it's lacking that original sense of urgency that flowed so freely in and out of For Emma, making it so genuine and so incredibly listenable.

In fact, it's very hard to determine what the actual standout from this album will be, because literally every track is full to the absolute brim with the genius of seasoned veterans

No matter how far into the ether they push, no matter what new form their music takes, there is a core Liars sound, and they've never sounded more aware of that or as ready to take on the challenge of reaching into that center.

Sweet Heart, Sweet Light covers a broad aural spectrum from surrealistic haze to outward pop and as such, is some of Jason Pierce's and Spiritualized's best material since Ladies and Gentlemen.

A revitalized take on noise-rock that honors the originating genre while eschewing its occasionally stifling boundaries.

Slinky enough for the club, down-tempo enough for a rooftop soiree, Settle traverses boundaries and expectations.

This collection captures a beautiful set from a legendary group that remains vibrant and continues to look forward into the future.

Sunbather is a developed, mature, and, above all, an original statement that truly lives up to the unbelievable amount of hype it has earned.

Like Icky Mettle before it, reminds modern listeners of just how unhinged their sound was, especially when compared to those that came after them.

With Kill For Love, it almost feels like the man's true thesis, as if he's strung together all his ideas, feelings, and sounds into one colossal being that acts less like an album and more like a highly organized archive.

Dedicated to the late Vic Chesnutt, Mr. M will stand as one of Lambchop's finest, most cohesive, and easiest straight-through listens yet, despite its intermediate tendencies.

This is a high-personality disc, one that avoids cliches and cheese while also being steeped in tradition and an immense dose of adorableness.

Vol 3: To See More Light is his strongest and most cohesive collection in his career, aided in large part by the head-turning vocals of Justin Vernon, who appears on four of the 11 tracks on the album.

Transformed in both sound and spirit, Sun is a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter's soul.

Bloom culminates six years and three albums of anticipatory ache with subtlety and meticulous song placement that unfolds if you let it.

Nothing Was the Same wrestles Drake’s successes with his ever-lingering insecurities, and like some of the best music, we can see ourselves in these songs. It’s an exhilarating change of pace for the genre.

Even without the bonus disc full of rare goodies, this remastered version of Lifes Rich Pageant is required listening.

Honeys is 36 minutes of an excellent band doing what it does best, approachability be damned.

Nearly every song embodies this symbiotic relationship of adolescent daydreams and the ominous real world, as if each tune was its own coming-of-age novella.

It's an album that makes you sad that it's not longer; sad that it can't just go on forever. This sentiment alone should indicate the caliber of album Fleet Foxes have created in Helplessness Blues.

Between doing more of the same old goodness and boiling everything down to its most essential lethality, Beyoncé also makes room on the album for more grandiose tracks that would sound right at home in Broadway musicals.

Big Inner is a brilliant debut, brimming with homages to pop music's past, whether it be Motown or Randy Newman.

Spaltro pleads and howls her way to the crux of the matter, finds her own way out, and leaves a poetic map behind for the rest of us.

Gambino can really rap. Scratch that; he can really, really rap, plus sing and emote and put on a show better than 90% of his hip-hop counterparts.

At this point in their career, Loewenstein and Barlow had found the perfect balance between their creative powers, and it shows quite brightly on Bakesale. To that end, any amount of extra proof that Sebadoh can dig up to prove that point should be welcomed happily.

It’s approachable without compromise and confident enough to be itself, not another Alligator or High Violet, but unmistakably from the outset Trouble Will Find Me.

To date, the Foo Fighters have never tried to reinvent the wheel, per se; they just want to keep it rolling. And that's just what Wasting Light does. For that purpose, Foo Fighters give us a solid record from open to close. The drought is over. Rock is back.