Cohesive and eclectic, Ancestral Recall is a sonic expedition to remember.

Black America Again isn't an album meant for casual listening, but rather a socio-politically charged album meant to be absorbed so that everyone can truly recognize the "Bigger Picture Called Freedom."

Vampire Weekend have lost the carefree immediacy of some of their best-loved work; there's nothing on Only God as viscerally addictive as "A-Punk" or "This Life," and there's a prog-like complexity to these performances that's geared more toward the head than the heart. But there's also just enough stripped-down beauty — like the balladic "Capricorn," or the swooning brass outro of "The Surfer" — that Only God Was Above Us remains emotional as well as academic.

Harding continues to keep listeners on their toes with Designer which, overall, is a unique, luminous record that's about whatever you need it to be about.

The intent, execution and expression is pure. But the ominous feel of the entire project overwhelms, in parts, with a forlorn sense of distance and dread — which appears to be the point — yet its subsuming sense of femininity, sexuality, free will and determinism paradoxically draws us in.

On Letter to You, Springsteen is at his rawest and most reflective. ... Letter to You may well be Springsteen addressing his most significant bandmates and his audience with love, but it may as well be something he wrote and sent ahead to 2020.

Each track is a confined attempt at gaiety, a succinct story in service of this greater mission of uninhibited emotion — which is ultimately, hopefully joy.

SAULT carry on commenting about those still-relevant issues with vivid lyrics about injustice wrapped in captivating rhythms.

There are few out there above what he has achieved with Lonerism.

Jaime, Howard's first solo album, complements her distinctive croon with R&B, hip-hop and funk sounds, marking an adventurous departure that reveals unseen depths to the vocalist. With some of the most emotive, direct lyrics of her career to date, the dynamic range of her new collaborators — including jazz maestro Robert Glasper — informs the flavour of each track for an eclectic collection stockpiled with loose grooves.

Bandana also stands on its own as one of the very best rap albums of 2019, or any other year in recent memory.

Compiled by Sofrito's Hugo Mendez, Haiti Direct is an amazing collection from Haiti's illustrious but sadly unsung musical history.

An effort that is even more emotionally ambitious an undertaking, and all the more wounding for its beauty.

Converge have managed to once again best their only competition: themselves.

IDLES turn trauma and anger into affirming lessons on Joy As an Act of Resistance, crafting a cathartic masterpiece that wears its heart--broken, but still beating--on its sleeve.

Grimes has given us a complete record that's everything pop should be in 2015: utterly uncompromising, imaginative and, somehow, universally accessible.

It's a brilliant new benchmark in his already stellar discography, showcasing just how much of an artistic powerhouse he has become and a clear shift from the darkness that his music, even at its poppiest, once embodied.

It doesn’t just sound like wild west Americana — it feels that way, drawn from a life’s worth of experience and adoration of the genre. It’s the album that Segarra’s been building toward since they first picked up a guitar.

This is a release worth snapping up on vinyl when it finally comes out.

That Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You's vast ecosystem can support this multitude of sounds and voices is astonishing. Even more so is the way its greens seem to become greener — its skies more full of stars, its waters clearer — the more time you spend with it. It's a universe all its own, clarified a bit more with every listen.

This is DIY revolution groove and as such, is an inspiration to those who wish to express outside the norms.

It's obvious for his fans he's making the music he's set out to create and when he's taken strategic measures to please the mainstream. But luckily for his avid listeners, K.R.I.T. almost entirely does the former here, upholding the funky, southern-psychedelic rap that his fans turn to him for.

Excitingly new yet classically evocative, You're Dead! is contemplative but never boring, an example of genre cross-pollination that transcends novelty and, occasionally, time and space as well.

Science Fiction is a flawed yet beguiling record that keeps you hooked without offering the emotional payoff that we've come to expect.

A flurry of emotion — joyful and pointed — and clattering noise blending into haunting sparseness, this is the record the Sadies have been working on capturing for their entire existence. Thankfully, and with bittersweet timing, they got it done when we most needed them to, making the best record that has ever been made by anyone. Ever.

Through songs now considered longtime favourites, and ones that will now find wider audiences, Homegrown is now free to stand as a more organic, lovelorn harvest of the personal turmoil that influenced Young's revered mid-'70s output.

A gorgeous double album. ... Full of love and appreciation for life, which makes more sense to him now than it maybe ever did, Callahan inimitably presents us with philosophical jokes and thoughtful observations on a record that is an adventurous stocktaking of his own life, set to tastefully arranged folk and an open spirit that welcomes us in.

Have You In My Wilderness finds Holter narrowing her focus a little. In doing so, she gets the best of both worlds, showing off her ability to write warm and breezy pop music while maintaining the complexity, and perplexity, that made her so intriguing to begin with.