There Is Love In You, his first proper album in five years, is smoother still, and to great effect—if this isn’t the best Four Tet record yet, it’s certainly a fresh face for Hebden.
Flying Lotus reaches into the past in order to create something clearly of the future – a hybridized work that challenges others to follow its dazzling blueprint.
Odd Blood is every bit as dense as its predecessor, with every inch of space teeming with exhausting polyrhythmic detail and time-warped synth sounds. Yeasayer is still adept at filtering primal emotions through the complex circuits of the future; it’s just that that future looks a lot brighter than it used to.
Butler and company imbue The Suburbs with such a strong sense of place and mood that it builds in impact throughout.
On Halcyon Digest, Cox’s two halves finally meet in the middle on a collection of grabby pop songs sung by a witty weirdo with newly discovered sex appeal.
Over the course of Body Talk, Robyn has proved that there’s real emotion to be found among the ones and zeros of electronic music, and Pt 3. is the culmination of that outlook: euphoric, personal, and inspirational to the last beat.
The 10 songs here don’t collectively match the near-perfection displayed on the band’s debut, but Contra is varied and vivacious enough to make each spin as revelatory as the first time you realized what the band was getting away with and how well it pulled off the feat.
How I Got Over hearkens back to the neo-soul mellowness of The Roots' mid-'90s output, while songs like the infectious title track retain Tipping Point's pop savvy.
Perhaps the rumor that this is his last LCD album is behind that newfound urgency. If true, it’s a shame, as the band’s Krautrock/Talking Heads-funk fusion has never sounded livelier.
High Violet is carefully considered without being labored, richly detailed without being fussy.
Kanye’s best album since The College Dropout, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy finds its creator in complete control of the chaos swirling inside his vivid imagination.