The Highlights

IDLES – Crawler

★★★★

Released on Partisan Records

Not your older brother’s IDLES, this time around the band goes for an introspective turn, a switch-up that was sorely missed on their retread of a sophomore album.

Courtney Barnett – Things Take Time, Take Time

★★★☆

Released on Mom + Pop Records

After carving out her space with her first two albums, her third album feels like she’s taking the time to reflect rather than continue to push forward.

Makthaverskan – För Allting

★★★☆

Released on Run For Cover Records

C86 crossed with blissful shoegaze, the sort of sound I hear when a certain mood moves in.

Beach House – Once Twice Melody (Chapter One)

★★★☆

Released on Sub Pop Records

An all-too-short 20 minute EP that serves as the first of four installments rolling out the Baltimore band’s new album. I already like the direction they’re taking – and I’m left wanting more.

Irreversible Entanglements – Open The Gates

★★★★

Released on International Anthem Records

Moor Mother put out a singularly great hip hop record earlier this year but she sounds even more at home at the helm of her Black liberation-driven free jazz Philly freakout group. Her spoken word sloganeering adds incisive weight to the rush of thick percussion and the wailing of the impassioned, pain-conjuring sax and trumpet lines.

Silk Sonic – An Evening With Silk Sonic

★★★☆

Released on Atlantic Records

Yeah it’s a pastiche of Seventies smooth soul and funk, but Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak sell it supremely well. Plus, the addition of both Thundercat and Bootsy Collins here and there make it well worth the price of admission.

The Rest

Aesop Rock & Blockhead – Garbology ★★★ (Rhymesayers)

Damon Albarn – The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows ★★★ (Transgressive)

Oberhofer – Smothered ★★★ (Telefon)

Delta Sleep – Spring Island ★★★ (Sofa Boy)

Jon Hopkins – Music For Psychedelic Therapy ★★★☆ (Domino)

Pip Blom – Welcome Break ★★★☆ (Heavenly)

The Dodos – Grizzly Peak ★★★ (Polyvinyl)
These guys made a year-end list of mine back in 2008 back when they were Facebook-only, before Facebook started outwardly sucking. They haven’t really moved much since then.

Walk The Moon – HEIGHTS ★★☆ (RCA)
We have been making the same album for 17 years now and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

Kill Birds – Married ★★★☆ (Royal Mountain)
If you like grunge you’re in luck

Casper Skulls – Knows No Kindness ★★★ (Next Door)

Dave Gahan & Soulsavers – Imposter ★★★☆ (Columbia)
Covers album from the Depeche Mode frontman, although that doesn’t really hit home until he launches into a version of Neil Young’s least essential single.

Union of Knives – Endless From The Start ★★★ (Disco Pinata)

Portico Quartet – Monument ★★★ (Gondwana)

Seafoam Walls – XVI ★★★ (Daydream Library Series)

Money Man – Blockchain ★★★ (Empire)

Joel Ortiz – Autograph ★★ (Mello)
The flow ain’t good and every line makes me think well that wasn’t very good so maybe stick to verses.

The Damned

Silent Planet – Iridescent

★★★

Released on UNFD Records

Decent enough sense of dynamics but the heavy parts are ham-fisted and the melodic parts are merely okay.

Ars Magna Umbrae – Throne Between Worlds

★★☆

Released on I, Voidhanger Records

Honestly feels like this album is comprised of the breakdown from better songs.

Belore – Artefacts

★★

Released on Northern Silence Records

Between the cheese-mold synths and the cookie cutter blackened vocals there isn’t much here to hold my interest.

The Ossuary – Oltretomba

★★

Released on Supreme Chaos Records

This turgid romp through dank hard rock clichés does not have the riffs to sustain its desired energy nor the vocal chops to sell the absurdity.

Vertebra Atlantis – Lustral Purge In Cerulean Bliss

★★★☆

Released on I, Voidhanger Records

Thick chaos: brutal dissonant death metal slathered in corpsepaint and howling with pain closing in on insanity. Which is to say it’s pretty good.

Vomit the Soul – Cold

★★★☆

Released on Unique Leader Records

Precision-targeted brutal death that absolutely slams.

All Hail The Yet – Within The Hollow Earth

★★★

Released on Minus Head Records

This album would have absolutely slapped in 1999.

CREATURE – Eloge De l’Ombre

★★★

Released on I, Voidhanger Records

The band displays an array of ideas that pretty much run the gamut of extreme metal without breaking the mould at any point. It’s a fine line to walk.

THÅRN – Collisions

★★★☆

Released on Surviving Sounds

Waves of pure sludge noise, woven together into something atmospheric and listenable. When the album suddenly ends the shock that you’ve been sitting there listening to the whole thing the entire time might kill you.