As a unit, the ten tracks on Private Space put funk in a kimono and send it out on the dancefloor with nothing to hide. Don’t delay: dial up the new one from the Indications, then get up and start moving with it.

hile not every cut is a winner, there are plenty of fine performances to be found. This is sophisticated and smooth Philly Soul from the genre’s most successful period.

Defiantly, Lingua Ignota chooses on this album to reside in the world, but not of it, crafting a bone-chillingly cathartic final product that deals in righteousness and reflection in turns.

Quietly Blowing It isn’t the album where Taylor introducing experimental electronics or dissects urban life. It’s the record where he brings together experienced Appalachian artfulness to provide just the right space to fulfill his vision.

Album two is just as strong as album one but in a different way. Miss her at your peril.

It’s fun as well as sentimental. And that voice, now exposed a bit by age but strangely strong and capable of holding the spotlight: it is telling stories that make you feel things. Therefore, let’s hope for more after all.

There are better versions of most of the songs on Welcome 2 America in his catalog already, but if you’re salivating for new Prince music and are open to whatever his vault has to offer, you could do much worse than this.

At roughly 56 minutes in length, Happier loses traction occasionally and would’ve benefited from further vetting, particularly mid-sequence.

For Heart-Shaped Scars, it’s all beautiful, gossamer strings and hushed vocals with the kind of confessional singer-songwriter lyrics that make for an intimate listen, at once chilly and warm.

Electro Melodier by Son Volt is a lot of what you’ve always loved about the band. They give you melodies that are perfect for dark, cramped clubs. At the same time, Farrar provides thought-provoking lyrics. This album isn’t a scathing indictment of American society. Rather, it poses questions that are well worth considering.

With catchy melodies and always engaging writing, the record brings Dacus’ early era to a sort of summation, a realization of what’s been coming, yet without any sense of her artistic momentum slowing down.

The dozen tracks here showcase the range of her talents as a singer and a songwriter and that of a human being who refuses to accept life’s limitations and stand up for herself.

Taste of Love is a good album, but it’s too “good” and not enough “wow” for its own good. TWICE can do better.

Exit Wounds isn’t radically different from the band’s other albums. It remains true to the formula the band have always embraced. The lyrics paint vivid pictures and are easy to sing. The melodies are instantly familiar, which is part of what makes them so endearing. And if it isn’t broke, why fix it?

Browne stays in his – and our – comfort zone for much of the album while still finding new avenues to explore.

While Spiral, like Psychic, includes moments of virtuosic integration – songcraft complemented by innovative sonics, innovative sonics contextualized by songcraft – there are other (and more) moments where the album seems to lack a unifying aesthetic.

The music itself is always infectious. The melodies share a slithering under-tempo that makes everything from lyrics about eggs with toast on the side to the color of one’s clothes seem fraught with deep meaning. The subliminal message has an erotic aura.

On Blood, Juliana Hatfield has shown that she knows what all the buttons do, but in her voyage of discovery of The Wonderful World of Record Production, she’s forgotten to pack enough decent tunes.

With his latest jewel, Staples mines an artistic, existential, and notably fertile limbo.

Penelope Three is not a pop record, but it is Trappes’ boldest, most straightforward work to date. Even if the end result may not be as consistent as past records, it’s refreshing to hear her set her voice free and break out of her dream-pop reveries.

The Flatlanders end the album with “Sitting on Top of the World” and therefore go out in a blaze of glory. But as electric guitars and screaming voices drop out, the music continues to ring on in one’s head as the album insists upon being replayed.

The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE makes bold statements in unpretentious ways with its production and creative choices. It feels like a natural continuation of TXT’s path, while it also showcases new sides of the members’ potential as singers, songwriters, and producers.

The great news is that Dreamers are Waiting is very much in the excellent category.

A solid but unspectacular listen. It won’t knock you flat, and it probably won’t light up too many dancefloors, but for fans of early-aughts techno, there is plenty to love.

At certain points, Thorburn tries to add more gravity to the proceedings, but he needn’t have. The two more downbeat songs that close out Islomania sound a bit labored.

While not their most unique project, Broken Hearts presents a steady, mellowed pathos that’s hard to deny and undeniably genuine. It’s straightforward.

Hiatus Kaiyote have crafted something brilliant with Mood Valiant – an album that’s effortlessly likable, commandingly confident, and rich with heart and soul.

The Golden Casket is almost a complete package. Its 12 songs are remarkably tight and focused for a Modest Mouse album, which again feels reflective of the composed, focused headspace Brook seems to be in. It’s another wonderful, soulful release by one of the world’s most singular rock bands and wholly obliterates the retrograde notion that musicians require tortured head scapes to create rich, compelling art.

It’s clear that the quartet really enjoys playing together, and even in the extended songs, Darnielle keeps the band reined in enough, so they aren’t approaching jam band length. Despite this being the Mountain Goats’ third album in just over a year, Darnielle’s songwriting is as strong as ever, and the band shows no signs of fatigue.

She continues to be nothing short of magnificent as a performer, and her generosity in bringing newer artists with her into the spotlight is wholly gratifying. And, while the sentiments here may not be wholly novel, they are well-timed, and they soar when Kidjo sings them.

The result is a mixed bag that features all sides of a fearless guy in construction yet practical in tone. The most interesting moments come when he decides to feature frequent collaborator Henry Solomon on saxophone.

It’s not exactly a work of brilliance – the tracks are too slight, and the whole tone is too wilfully perverse for that. Nevertheless, Blunt has crafted something undeniably engrossing for those willing to play along with his strange game.

What they have delivered sounds like Dinosaur Jr. are at ease with themselves, but they still enjoy making a hellacious din at the appropriate time.

A Few Stars Apart by Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real is further evidence that Nelson is a musical chameleon.

It’s a broad and satisfying collection, and given the diversity of the artists – from Helmet to La Roux – it doesn’t sound like a malfunctioning jukebox. That’s quite an achievement.

Many of these tracks don't even have much in the way of guitar riffs or interesting drum rhythms, even though studio aces like drummer Josh Freese and guitarist Robin Finck (both veterans of Nine Inch Nails) are doing excellent work with their playing throughout the album. Combined with Elfman's lack of vocal color, this makes the album sound like a buzzing, pounding collection of white noise punctuated by occasional bursts of interesting string themes or the odd downtempo track.

Marina re-embraces her inner strength and quite possibly creates her magnum opus with Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land.

Second Line is an important record in that it brings deep humanity and emotion to dance and club music. It’s a deeply personal album, one that brings to mind the soulful singer-songwriter albums of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, or Syreeta Wright but marries the confessional, candid sentiment with a self-consciously synthetic soundscape of house.

Her music is too bighearted and alive to fall in line with most kitschy, modern-day dream pop. On The Tunnel and the Clearing, she takes us even deeper into her fuzzy, dubbed-out analogue sound-world.

Some of the songs would fit well in the soundtrack of a film adaptation of an Irvine Welsh novel. Other songs would fit better in the soundtrack of a coming-of-age film. Still, for all its complexity, there’s no song you find yourself singing after you’ve listened to the album a couple of times.

It’s a fine outing from an outfit that continues to make compelling music.

Even when he tips over the line into cheesiness, his brevity (most songs are under the four-minute mark) keeps songs from wearing out their welcome. Nurture is a bright, cheery album that may help to lift some moods as North America moves past the worst of the COVID pandemic.

The vast majority of the pieces are quite slight and intentionally under-produced. Don’t mistake slightness, though, for sparseness or bareness – Jurado continues to write devastatingly effective narratives whose key details, seemingly off-handed ones, even, can bring you to your knees.

Yes, with Clara, the sound sculptor Scott Morgan continues to astound. What’s most entrancing might be the fact that, without taking detours, the Canadian artist manages to keep his work feeling fresh and unanticipated.

The Width of a Circle offers a rare peek at how his work was developing—an often ungainly evolution that listeners can now track chronologically. Whether they’d care to is the question.

It's a complete package - a work of seductive, heartfelt brilliance by an artist at the absolute peak of her powers.

It's not the revelation of Exile in Guyville, but then again, few records are. Instead, it's a moving collection of great songs that Phair invests with confidence and intellect.

I found each half of This Is Really Going to Hurt to be quite solid, but I couldn't quite get over how it sounds like the band are trying two separate things. It almost feels like two EPs, each with a different musical focus, shoved together.

Trees Speak are a band that wear their influences on their sleeves. But their list of influences is so long that it never feels derivative or repetitious.

Black Ants makes for a vastly different listening experience: exciting, angular, and brilliantly inventive. This album sees the Kasai Allstars tap into a new dimension of vitality and points to refreshing new possibilities for the Congotronics series.

The album merges Hiatt's rootsy side and the Jerry Douglas Band's bluegrassy side into something that's not exactly either (though there are no drums) but a little of each in an Americana sound enhanced by Douglas' production work. As Hiatt reflects on memory, loss, and desire, the band's marvelous playing leads to one of the best albums of the year.

Her latest album solidifies her status as an artist to watch closely for decades to come.

Doomin' Sun is indie music at its most engaging. ... A reminder of how exceptional songwriting and musicianship can be even in the face of apocalyptic anxiety as long it's the right mix of artists.

You Hear Georgia shows that the group are improving with age. After 20 years, they still make songs that make you want to boogie your troubles away. While some of the themes are similar to previous Blackberry Smoke songs, this collection of songs is enough to keep new and old fans singing along no matter where they are.

It's the kind of elegant, smart, and literate music that celebrates songwriters and producers who are working just a skosh out of the mainstream. It's pop with deep roots in club culture with subtle influences of underground and alternative soul. The tight-knit collaboration of Jordan and her crew make for an astonishing achievement.

Throughout Cavalcade, Black Midi displays superlative skills, fierce chemistry, and avant-garde vision, offering spellbinding performances while also, perhaps inevitably, falling prey to sonic tautologies and circuitousness.

Unfortunately, 20 years of the same thematic thrust—coupled with the new material’s proximity to generic heavy rock—blunt the new material's impact just as the stage is set for Gojira to shine.

Sour, for the most part, is a pop album that dips its toes into the alt-pop and bedroom pop subgenres, specifically spending most of its time in the latter. ... Rodrigo's lo-fi deep cuts that were made in the shadow of "Drivers License" can sound a bit repetitive. Her craft as a songwriter is especially evident on tracks like "Enough For You", "Happier", or "Hope Ur Ok", but the acoustic complexion these songs were going for could have benefitted from a bit more background noise.

This music does not call attention to itself. This would work better as background music than witnessed on stage as not much exciting happens. That’s on purpose. This is music to chill with and ponder quietly.

Fat Pop is full of highlights.

It’s among his finest solo works, with a consistently tight synthesis of radio-friendly immediacy and riveting instrumental discovery that’s always made Rhys such a singular artist. True, it’s not as edgy or wacky as some of his previous work, but that only helps guarantee that it’ll appeal to just about anyone and everyone who hears it.

They’re Calling Me Home memorializes and breathes new life into a set of songs that feel familiar and entirely unexpected.

Ya Tseen’s vision on Indian Yard is expansive and yet feels fully realized. It’s hard to imagine an album covering more ground and still striking such a precise balance of cohesion and variety.

The album resists the latent bleakness tucked into its thought. The Chills take on loss and distance, fake news and aliens, and discover the possibility that confusion could reign. The group stays intense as it challenges these troubles, standing firm and facing the trials of life honestly but firmly.

If Whiteout is an imperfect album, it is one that also evinces Howard’s refusal to stay in a single musical lane.

Engulfing is a word that could describe the record as a whole and Big|Brave’s sound in general. That is not unfamiliar terrain for them, but they have refined their sound into a powerful stormfront that strikes aggressively but with a gracefulness that welcomes the listener into the electrified space the band create.

This is St. Vincent in the '20s and she is glorious. The production value is spectacular; her songwriting/production partnership with Jack Antonoff is more than paying off.

Natalie Bergman's religious beliefs stimulate her music, but her debut album, Mercy, inspires whether one is a Christian or not.

Like the food from the region, not everyone has a taste for okra, bullfrogs, and crawdads. The ingredients may not sound appealing to the uninitiated and initially may be off-putting for those not from the area. But for those that are, there can be nothing more delicious than Cajun cooking. The same is true for White’s music. What makes it special depends on how open one is to his “haw haw haw” vocals and bubbling guitar sounds.

The result is a set of modern piano jazz that covers a remarkable range and features three brilliant musical imaginations that play well together.

He truly has made his best album to date in the process.

Does it succeed on its own terms? In the case of Van Weezer, the answer isn't clear. It's too patchy to be a Yes but far too tuneful and breezy to be a No.

It's a record that is perfectly tuned to it's time. It's an album that captures the sad, reflective mood of the country - and the world.

The album is neither preachy nor damning; it’s a gorgeous musical interpretation of childhood, as learned experiences are both elegantly conveyed and messily regurgitated.

Rare, Forever synthesizes all of Vynehall's musical instincts together into one unique vision. Both beguiling abstract and instantly gratifying it’s as dizzyingly immersive as Nothing Is Still whilst occupying a totally different sonic space.

For all the enjoyably sunny fatalism, though, the absence of vocalist and bassist Gerard Love, who left the band in 2018, is noticeable. Love’s unmistakable falsetto and saccharine hooks added a dynamic to the Fannies that brought a welcome contrast to Blake and McGinley’s songs. Love left the band amicably, citing his desire to tour less, but his absence nonetheless feels at home amid Blake and McGinley’s songs about growing into middle-age.

This is music for meditating, for thinking, for relaxing, for dreaming. Each note sounds painstakingly placed and rehearsed but also deeply felt. Toumani Diabaté’s star, in particular, shines in new ways, and the continuities of past and present for him and his compatriots are constantly evident, speaking volumes about each player’s skill and love of performance in Kôrôlén.

DEACON delivers on the fantastic promise that Wise's earlier work - most notably his debut LP soil - has shown. He brings a creative, eccentric, and intelligent sound to alternative soul.

The title track showcases May’s ability to create a noir-type atmosphere by singing in a hushed, breathy voice with clipped phrasing. Sadness and sorrow seem to flow from her soul. The other cuts may suffer from being generic, but they reveal May’s ability to sound professional.

Lyrical monotony aside, Violence Unimagined turns the page onto an exciting new chapter of a most colorful and remarkable history.

Stott’s latest may be the most inviting record in his catalogue, perhaps even an entry point into his funereal sound-world. It’s also one of his best.

The world is full of beauty and noise, and Claire Rousay has the uncanny ability to translate these disparate elements into a gorgeous, unique musical journey.

Several songs address contemporary issues concerning race, personal responsibility, and generational guilt in oblique ways that make one think while having a groove on. It is meta-funk without the heavy bass and other genre tropes. The music is more experimental and strange, even while being rhythm-heavy. And the lyrics are avant-garde and innovative.

Over 49 tracks, you get examples of the hits, the misses, and the curiosities. The good, the bad, and the ugly. But every track is a little bit fascinating.

Most artists, though, recognize the necessity to steal creatively, combining unlikely influences to make something close to novel. Greta Van Fleet, though, seem to lack even a passing familiarity with the last four decades of recorded music. Despite all the talk of artistic growth, the band have really only moved on from I to IV.

Long segments don't even feature Beyoncé, which can be trying on the album but in the film are understood as the accompaniment to dance routines and skits.

Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over is Demi Lovato like we have never heard before. She is sassy and carefree while serious about her identity and personhood in a way she has been itching to be for years.

It doesn't get bogged down in a particular style. It's not a pop/funk hybrid. It's not minimalism. It's a combination of many different styles from a country that was enjoying national prosperity and using all the tools at their disposal to make unique artistic statements. As a result, it's one of Light in the Attic's best compilations in awhile.

STATE’S END! is another wonderful chapter in a book we hope will continue to be writ for years.

Cheap Trick certainly aren’t innovating stylistically or challenging themselves here—they basically just stick to what works—but they still do an exceptional job delivering precisely what fans expect.

This is truly a virtuosic tour de force. Every time you hear a new Jane Weaver album and think to yourself, well, that’s about it, there’s nowhere she can go from here, and then she goes to yet another level, forging still new paths.

There's something light and joyful, even as the lyrics turn dark and the music turns abrasive. And somehow, VanGaalen keeps it all fun, whether he's stressed out or not.

With Dream Weapon, Genghis Tron don’t so much transition as achieve transcendence of everything they once were. And the change is so fully realized that it renders notions of genre loyalism utterly moot.

This strategy of laying low works for Smith, while intellectually one may question it, the resulting music sounds skillful and accomplished.

Aside from a few unusual performances, Way Down In The Rust Bucket might tell us anything we didn't know, but it provides plenty of excellent music from the right band at the right time.

Rose sings and plays with buoyant energy. Her melodies are simple and cheerful. The lilt in her voice suggests the silver lining in every cloud. The lyrics may express a mixed message, but god darn it, Rose isn’t going to let it get her down. Or maybe, more importantly, it’s not going to keep her down.

More of a curiosity than a regular go-to record.

If you liked the pound and grind of Tomahawk’s self-titled LP or 2003’s explosive Mit Gas, or, better yet, past work from Denison, there’s stuff to like here.