The album sounds beamed in from an earlier decade, but it runs deeper than nostalgia.
“Hold My Hand” attempts to capture the sweeping pathos of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”
Belle and Sebastian’s 10th album strikes a balance between the band’s familiar sound and proving they still have something to say.
For all his density and heady conceptualism, Klaus Schulze remained a playful, earnest maker of music all his life.
Wet Tennis stages a 35-minute dance party that’s tempered, as well as bolstered, by notes of reflective melancholy.
Toro y Moi’s Mahal feels a lot like the aural equivalent of lazing around on a Sunday afternoon.
Laurie Anderson’s Big Science is an immense structure, generously democratic, as approachable as it is enigmatic.
Banks’s Serpentina asserts its uniqueness in paradoxically conventional and unsurprising ways.
Much of Jack White’s Fear of the Dawn finds the musician acting as a sort of mad scientist.
The album was a spiritual rebirth and transitional work in the band’s catalog.
Kurt Vile’s Watch My Moves is a competently written set, but it’s disappointing to see the artist play it so safe.
Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century chases love as its guiding subject but too rarely feels amorous or sensual.
On Gifted, Koffee alternates between earnestly expressing her gratitude to be alive and confidently resting on her laurels.
The singer wrestles with questions of fame and heartbreak.
If there’s a formula to figuring Destroyer’s Labyrithinitis out, it lies within Dan Bejar’s enigmatic mind.
Aldous Harding’s Warm Chris invites close attention and rewards it with understated surprises.
Charli XCX’s Crash finds the pop singer workshopping the reckless abandon of her persona.
On Classic Objects, Jenny Hval steps outside of herself to consider her position as an object of capitalism and patriarchy.
With Life on Earth, Hurray for the Riff Raff has achieved something truly enviable: a fresh start.
Broods’s Space Island is most effective when it disrupts its pervasive chill to inspect the details of crumbling love.
Beach House’s Once Twice Melody is an emphatic affirmation of life’s joys and sorrows.