Baby Shakes bring renewed vigor and focus to their spiked-sugar attack with their fourth album, Cause a Scene. The title track’s burst of aggression belies ease

Jenny Hval trades the signifiers of expansiveness and rawness of her earlier work for an investigation into deceptively smoother surfaces on her seventh

When Steve Earle’s sometimes-mentor and friend for decades, Guy Clark, left this world in 2016, Earle commemorated the passing with one of his

Tredici Bacci’s kaleidoscopic sophomore album, La Fine Del Futuro, explodes and deepens leader Simon Hanes’ preoccupations with Italian soundtracks

Romance presents Brooklyn avant-rock juggernaut Oneida at its punchiest and most concise. The band’s first studio album since 2012’s sprawling A List of

Lea Bertucci’s Metal Aether deals in an inhalable ambience so rich that it should come with a warning: it could get you dangerously high. The album’s four

Top 10 Albums

10. Miranda Lambert, Weight of These Wings (RCA Records)
In a field with lots of competition, this was the mainstream country record that dug its hooks in me the deepest this year. Songs about dreams of escape and the consolation of fantasy (as well as when those things come up short), along with the dangers of routine and habit—all strapped to the …

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s long-running Psychic TV collective indulges and tweaks its classicist tendencies with their latest report from drilling into

Pianist Matthew Shipp has been a cornerstone of modern free jazz for decades. Drummer Bobby Kapp is less well known, but since a flurry of activity

With Real Enemies, composer/conductor Darcy James Argue uses his big band, Secret Society, to peel back the layers of modern