This is Nas’ strongest album in 18 years and three months– yes, since his debut album Illmatic.
FlyLo silenced the external forces and produced an album that is dark enough to spin at LA’s Low End Theory, yet smooth enough to garner listens from fans well outside of the club’s beat freaks.
Swing Lo Magellan is an album that will break hearts, bring joy, and deliver emotional notes that few others could.
Front to back, top to bottom, the record is the most charged Mould has sounded since those fruitful Sugar days, and at 52 he sounds as comfortable in his iconic alt-rock skin as ever.
He’s carved out an agreeable adventure with Oceania, and one that any casual or die-hard fan can embrace with true vigor.
The Men may not be hailed as the genre’s saviors, nor should they be, but here they have done an excellent job as its purveyors.
With Lonerism, Tame Impala have doubled down on the kaleidoscopic refractions of their debut. The melodies are clearer, pushed up in the mix, given agency by their immediacy.
Shields growls and purrs in ways Grizzly Bear has never before.
III is less playful than the duo’s previous couple of offerings, but it’s thematic mood is much tighter and more fully realized.
Twenty Five, even while it grasps at noise and disorder, comes together as a fully formed, mature statement of an album.
Old Ideas, however, succeeds in largely keeping the music subservient, buoyant enough to keep things moving but not distracting any attention from the lyrics, the true star of the show.
They’re not just throwing hooks and loops to the wall to see what sticks; the two are primarily writing songs and adding hooks and loops for color.
Transformed in both sound and spirit, Sun is a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter’s soul.
TNGHT balances Mohawke’s crisp production style, the gloss of a high-end studio, and Lunice’s chopped-and-screwed beats, without any time to overload the work with excess triggers.
While Bish Bosch isn’t nearly the departure The Drift was six years ago, there’s a sharper attention to detail and a much broader scope at bay, one that would shake the boots of even the strongest composers worldwide.
On Total Loss, Krell is far more confrontational and less sedated in the face of his woes, upping the sentimental weight in the process
Shrines isn’t trying to capitalize on some moment where rapid hi-hats and deep bass mix with dream-pop vocals; it manipulates two elements to make something malleable, elusive, sexual.
No matter how far into the ether they push, no matter what new form their music takes, there is a core Liars sound
The roads in his mind are curling back onto themselves like a mobius strip and more than ever, most of the verses on Cancer 4 Cure are infinite loops, cannibalizing his own words over and over.
Allelujah! Dont’ Bend! Ascend! offers fewer catharses, fewer emotions, and fewer answers, putting more distance than ever between Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the listener.
It’s a loud, abrasive record that, in the end, feels pretty damn inspiring.
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.
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.
Divine Fits is more than the sum of its rangy, resplendent leading men
The Haunted Man may not reveal a drastic stylistic shift, but the subtle difference is a nonetheless compelling documentation of the process of metamorphosis.
Nothing shrouds Miguel and his directives, and worries, and prayers, and cat calls — it’s all there, full of light and love, refracting through a kaleidoscope of rocks glasses, rainy windshields, and blood-shot eyes.
Visions is a remarkable outing for Boucher in that it manages to showcase her knack for spinning bits and pieces from all points on the musical spectrum into crafty, easily digestible pop.
The trio’s very existence depends on toeing a line between maintaining rap’s brooding thuggish-ness without overpowering it with their dubstep-inspired aesthetic.
Big Inner is a brilliant debut, brimming with homages to pop music’s past, whether it be Motown or Randy Newman.
The producer’s stylings coalesce into a pulsing and versatile dance release that easily justifies itself as one of the best we’ve heard so far this year.
Rather deliberately, Van Etten’s best musical traits can be broken into individual categories. As immensely well done and enjoyable as the aforementioned cuts are, they also feel incomplete.
Mr. M will stand as one of Lambchop’s finest, most cohesive, and easiest straight-through listens yet, despite its intermediate tendencies.
Collectively, the tracks on Blue Chips are part and parcel a New York mixtape — full of retro sounds and imagery that recalls the nefarious streets of the city pre-Giuliani, pre-Disney, pre-Bad Boy Records.
With the release of All We Love We Leave Behind, Converge has once again displayed its uncanny ability to create an album as skull-cleaving as it is beautiful.
Where Post-Nothing melts into a hazy dream, Celebration Rock does exactly what it claims to do—it burns on and on like the best sort of party.
Every movement on Bloom extends that high silence to the length of several minutes, building within the song and into the next track to send wave after wave of eyes-closing, head-tilting, fist-clenching pinpricks.
Erudite without being overwrought and passionate without being dogmatic, what we’ve got here may be the best rap album of the year – at least, so far.
It’s wily, cunning, and aims to pull out the ecstasy hiding down in the guts of everyone, no matter if it’s uplifting or wretched.
With Attack on Memory, Baldi’s never felt more alive or more authentic.
Lamar has bypassed the norm by producing an album that’s damn near unimpeachable.
The Idler Wheel succeeds in creating a singular world more daring than any of Apple’s previous records and one of the most daring pop records in recent history.