Pelican – Forever Becoming
The album is drawn tight as a noose; “Terminal” cranks and creaks like the rusted architecture of some angelic torture device, while “The Tundra” twists and churns and in a balletic freefall of catastrophic riffage. There’s delicacy, too, on “Perpetual Dawn,” the nearly 10-minute closer that’s poised between slow-core hollowness and majestically distorted swells of Sigur Rós-grade beauty. That doesn’t help soften the chugging bass or torque-driven chord progressions of “Vestiges,” nor the icy, unresolved menace of “Immutable Dusk.” Nor should it. It used to be that you could set your watch by the changes in a Pelican song, the ebb and flow of their albums. Not here. Forever Becoming is all about the gradual, gracefully illogical procession of heaviness—a counterintuitive lull that’s all the more hypnotic for its tendency to jar. Read the full review on The AV Club

Avett Brothers – Magpie & The Dandelion
As this explanation implies, Magpie often feels less like a tightly constructed, thematically connected album and more like a collection of tunes the band came up with while on a creative roll. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Album single “Another Is Waiting” is a jaunty, fantastic two minutes of pop bliss that is the epitome of short and sweet. “Good To You” borrows half the melody of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” transforming it into a soft, gorgeous piano-and-strings ballad (with Ben Folds slipping away from cultural relevance, the Avetts have claimed the piano-and-strings ballad throne). And on “Morning Song,” the brothers basically borrow from themselves, taking a variation of a subtle vocal melody from “January Wedding” (“because my heart and hers are the same”) and making it the centerpiece of a soulful, slow-building gem that eventually builds to a call-and-response gospel finale. Read the full review on Reverb

Black Milk – No Poison No Paradise
For his new album, No Poison No Paradise, Milk details his upbringing through semi-fictional character, “Sonny,” who endures the same hardships as any kid growing up in an urban setting. He’s a good-natured child who straddles the line between right and wrong. He faces daunting peer pressures that force him down a different path, away from the rigid Christian values instilled by his parents. At its core, No Poison No Paradise outlines the growing pains of adolescence and the daily struggles of adulthood. Read the full reivew on HipHop DX

Danny Brown – Old
This is a complicated narrative to keep running but Brown is equal to the task. In his berserk originality, writerly flair, emotional impact, and old-fashioned craft, Danny Brown belongs in any conversation about the best rappers working, and he’s at the top of his game here. His rapping is abrasive and visceral, but it’s also musical, a quality he doesn’t get much credit for because of his vocal tone. Listen to the way he rolls the word sounds “fucked up” and “knuckles” on “Dubstep” off of a perfect little woodpecker-stutter of percussion. Or his subdued performance on “Lonely” featuring a fluid, airy beat by Paul White built from two Morice Benin samples. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Dr. Dog – B Room
While the old cliché claims that you can’t ever go home again, B-Room, Dr. Dog‘s first album in their new studio, makes a pretty strong case for just building a new home. Continuing to use the same collaborative process the group began to explore on Be the Void, it feels as though a place to call their own was the missing ingredient for the bandmembers. Despite it only being a year since their last release, it feels as if Dr. Dog are refreshed and reinvigorated, returning to the studio with an enthusiasm and warmth that shines through on the album. Read the full review on AllMusic

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust – Last Night on Earth
Much of last year’s Between The Times and The Tides found Ranaldo refining his sensibility for bent-toned beauties into some (mostly) straightforward, four-minute janglers. Some sinister-toned ambient roars haunted some of that album’s corners, but most of it was sweetened with some 90s pop hooks, tasteful keys purring from John Medeski, and that strangely charming lilt to Ranaldo’s voice, akin somewhat to a crackling bonfire that never rises, burns out, or extinguishes, warbling along in a sweetened middle spot. Read the full review on Tiny Mixtapes

Bill Callahan – Dream River
Callahan’s learned to use negative space so well that there’s even poetry in the pauses. Take “Summer Painter”, an instant addition to his canon of great songs; for what else can be said of a song that begins, “I painted names on boats…/ For a summer” and then unfurls, glacially, like an elliptical yarn spun by a leathery old shanty-dweller who has, without question, seen some shit. Callahan’s learned how to use his voice like a camera (“When the hurricane hit some found it suspicious/ That I’d just since left the frame”), and here he’s shooting a wryly funny mock-epic. “Rich man’s folly and poor man’s dream,” he sings, and then pauses for effect, “I painted these.” It’s a masterful little zoom-out, and it only heightens the sense that Callahan’s playing director here, a feeling furthered by guitarist Matt Kinsey’s torrential freak-out when a storm rolls in. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Forest Swords – Engravings
Having said that, the focus on Engravings isn’t narrow, and, as on Dagger Paths – a record adorned with an eerie image of a Japanese geisha – Barnes dots his tracks with flourishes that evoke a wider, perhaps dreamlike, world. On opener ‘Ljoss’, for example, a flurry of Spanish guitar segues into slaloming notes that appear to be performed on an electrified koto. Similar unexpected flourishes creep into pretty much every track, in the form of distended woodwinds on the gorgeous ‘Thor’s Stone’ (a reference to a stone slab local to Barnes that was supposedly used for Viking sacrifices) or bursts of sampled choir and orchestra on ‘Irby Tremor’, which are distorted in a manner redolent of The Caretaker, only with a focus outward rather than into the recesses of the mind. Read the full review on The Quietus

Elvis Costello & The Roots – Wise Up Ghost
Bitterness and Elvis Costello, how sweet the sound. On “Wise Up Ghost,” the musician’s powerful new collaboration with the hip-hop group (and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” backing band), the artist offers a dozen songs that tackle war, peace, dishonor, disappointment and strife. A record that pops with urgency, it’s a journey into the world of big-picture alienation, one that highlights the little lives trying to survive amid the chaos. Read the full review on The LA Times

Neko Case – Worse Things get,the Hard I Fight…
Neko the sonnet-puking miracle. There is no end to her grace, even among messy, jagged ephemera that constitutes Case’s lyrics. It’s very much like she’s purged her pretty packages of words to make room for the breathlessly world-weary poetry that clings to every melody for dear life. No time for sonnets when there’s wasp nests in your idyll. And while a line like “I remember the 80s/ I remember its puffy sleeves” honestly comes off a bit trite, that honest detail in the end is there as a dare. She’s not talking about easy things, and she’s blazing toward the sensory, sacrificing simple rock tropes and perhaps “cool” itself. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Janelle Monae – Electric Lady
With The Electric Lady, [Monae] finds a way to give us more of herself. Together with her tight-knit Wondaland collaborators– Kellindo Parker, a magnificent guitarist who singlehandedly gooses several songs into transcendence; her college friends Nate “Rocket” Wonder and Chuck Lightning, and Roman GianArthur– Monáe supervises and synthesizes a parade of golden touchstones (Sly, Stevie, Marvin) into a show-stopping display of force and talent. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks
The first sound you hear are these little pulses. They’re little beats, that tease. Beats that creep quietly. Beats, made by a man (a sampled first beat of a babies heart? Or the snap-crack of a bone?) and processed by his evil machines. And then, before the prelude reaches any kind of climax, ‘Copy of A’ bursts onto the scene and you find yourself riding these green pixelated horses into battle… Read the full review on Drowned in Sound

Kanye West – Yeezus
“9.5” – Read the full review on Pitchfork

Sigur Ros – Kveikur
Short of a Scott Walker-esque turn for the bleakly absurd, Kveikur (“Candlewick”) will probably be as dark as Sigur Rós will ever get. Melancholy and anger aren’t foreign concepts to the ethereally beautiful world of this Icelandic trio, whose lineup was shortened by one with the departure of keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson in 2012. On their career peak ()—known commonly as “The Bracket Album”—the group channeled their orchestral style into an exploration of the somber side of beautiful. The grey introspection of the 2011 live CD/DVD Inni further added to the undercurrent of gloom in the band’s music. Though Sigur Rós will be perpetually known as the guys who wowed the world with the otherworldly gorgeousness of Ágætis byrjun, the broad brush strokes the group is often painted with by critics ignore the threads of the morose that run throughout their discography. Read the full review on Pop Matters

Bill Frisell – Big Sur
There’s not a whole lot of soloing or Frisell’s notorious excursions to the edge, but for those who dig that side of him, he does bare a little teeth against a bluegrass backdrop on “Hawks.” Frisell lets his hair down again, but in a distinctly California way on the backbeat driven, beach rock of “The Big One” and the presence of three orchestral stringed instruments does nothing to water down that feel. The same goes for “Highway 1,” where Royston’s swampy rock pace is exploited by everyone else, conjuring up something of a chamber version of the Beatles’ “Come Together.” Read the full review on Something Else

Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest
Tomorrow’s Harvest opens with dissonant arpeggios and a heap of fuzz—what John Carpenter might record if he took a job soundtracking a Michael Mann film. This theme sticks for the album’s duration, like a steady drizzle that doesn’t let up for weeks. The clouds only part sporadically, but when they do, we get some of the most unabashedly gorgeous music in Boards Of Canada’s discography. “Cold Earth” has the kind of wandering melody and head-nodding beat we’ve heard innumerable times from this group, but the space they leave in the mix brings clarity to its strange chords and rhythmic nuance. Driven by a ghostly piano and strings filtered down to little more than a high-frequency scratch, “Nothing Is Real” provides some rays of sunlight. Mostly, though, we’re left sifting through chilly ambience and tangled drum patterns, driven by the lingering sense of some greater meaning. Read the full review on Resident Advisor

Deafheaven – Sunbather
Though there are plenty of heavy riffs and betwitched screams a la early ‘90s Norway, there’s plenty on Sunbather that’s bound to piss off those wishing to tag this group as black metal. The LP’s sleeve art is a striking, gorgeous pink, far from the imperceptible black-on-white band name decals that black metal is so famous for. Soft instrumental passages like “Irresistible” recall Explosions in the Sky, whose placid guitar technique (see the blueprint established by The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place) is not privy to harsh tremolo picking. Meanwhile, on the other end, there are those who are drawn to this album for its take on shoegaze and post-rock, i.e. the avid readers of indie e-zines. For all the things they might find appealing, they probably won’t bee keen on George Clarke’s vocals, which never fall below a piercing screech. Read the full review on Pop Matters

Black Sabbath – 13
Ozzy Osbourne has stated multiple times that ’13′ could possibly be the most important album of his career. With such a fabled discography preceding ’13,’ both with Black Sabbath and his solo career, Ozzy’s claim is not one to be taken lightly, and although ’13′ may not be the greatest album to ever be attributed to Ozzy’s name, the disc is a definite success for Black Sabbath. Read the review on Loudwire

King Tuff – Was Dead
It’s a tight, consistent, and unbelievably catchy rock album that quickly and effectively defined who and what “King Tuff” was, stuffed with killer guitar solos, infectiously sunny hooks, and lyrics that come off like personality-defining mantras. If you were at all familiar with Thomas’ other work, the immediacy of Was Dead probably came as a surprise. But this was the album he’d been hoping to make all along: “There’s been a few diversions into other types of music, but I’ve pretty much always had a rock’n’roll heart.” Read the full review on Pitchfork

The National – Trouble Will Find Me
With every new album the band continues to mystify with their amazing presence and spirit and it’s no different with Trouble Will Find Me. A repetitive verse that reads more like poetry than lyrics, the narrator is disappointed by a lover that got away and how petty arguments always were the distraction. The music is pensive with a chorus that features choir-like backgrounds and a bass line that permeates throughout. And the whole time, you’re left with this vision of the narrator, alone, with nothing but the lost memories of what could have been. And like beautiful The National fashion, each ensuing song is a vivid recounting about some kind of love that might have been and the lesson learned. Read the full review on Delusions of Adequacy

Queens of the Stone Age – Like Clockwork
Though there has been plenty of buzz about ‘…Like Clockwork’s’ all-star contributors, the core four-piece has ample room to shine. The album opens with the darkly intoxicating opener ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled,’ an experimental track with Homme offering falsetto as Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears contributes backing vocals. But things venture into more accessible territory with the standout track ‘I Sat By the Ocean.’ This traditional rocker features an infectious ‘Good Times Roll’ guitar lick and a swagger that just swings. Read the full review on Loudwire

Phoenix – Bankrupt!
If it sometimes seems that Bankrupt! is bursting at the seams, it’s because it is. A song like album highlight “SOS in Bel Air” has no less than three different hooks running rampant through its breathless structure, while “Trying To Be Cool” pokes fun at itself and the band with a breezy, gleaming bit of ‘80s trifle that is decidedly uncool for 2013 – and that’s before the R&B breakdown that ends things without a hint of embarrassment. Read the full review on Sputnik Music

Flaming Lips – The Terror
After resisting for so long the miniaturization of rock—the entry in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series on Zaireeka aptly describes that album’s synced-up, four-disc experience as “the anti-MP3”—The Terror is The Flaming Lips record that fits in your pocket. Not that this detracts from its potency: This is a lonely record, epic in length and intimate in scope. Read the full review on The AV Club

Iron & Wine – Ghost on Ghost
Ghost On Ghost is the fifth Iron & Wine full-length, viewed by Beam as “a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few.” This is a curious statement, as the record doesn’t initially feel or sound too far-removed from 2011’s Kiss Each Other Clean, nor The Shepherd’s Dog. The instrumentation is lush and expansive, song titles like ‘Grace for Saints And Ramblers’ are quintessentially Iron & Wine, and the sinners, naked boys, morning birds and country fairs that appear on the opening ‘Caught in the Briars’ are lyrical staples for Beam at this point – ones he has contemplated plenty across his discography. Read the full review on The Quietus

The Knife – Shaking The Habitual
Overt politicizing isn’t the only thing that’s new here. Gone, for the most part, is the frosty electronic base of their past. Shaking is far thornier and more organic, full of industrial blurts, stormy drum and noise passages (ala Olof’s work as Oni Ayhun) and extended drone sequences. Fans seeking another “Marble House” are offered only two throwbacks: the gorgeous vocal hook that emerges from the frothy murk of “Raging Lung” and the rippling electronic pulse of “Ready To Lose.” Instead, across its expansive breadth, one hears echoes of Amon Duul’s epic krautrock jams, the fried-brain electronics of Einstürzende Neubauten, and the urban tribalism of Gang Gang Dance. Read the full review on Resident Advisor

Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze
Written on the road and recorded across America in upstate New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, the follow-up to 2011′s Smoke Ring for My Halo turns the Philadelphia songwriter into a seasoned explorer, conjuring up the rugged frontier magic that Young, Browne, Fleetwood, and Petty sharpened in the ’70s. This album’s alive and far removed from the claustrophobic confines of his last outing, whose dreary black and white cover offered a succinct portrait of that album’s introverted personality. Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

James Blake – Overgrown
Blake’s real argument for the continued relevance of his dewy, electronic gospel-folk comes via his second LP, Overgrown. At a few points on the record, he seems to be demonstrating to the wub fetishists that he’s also capable of sonic mayhem. Whether they’re meant as representations of conflicted emotions or simply designed to get crowds moving, the codas to “Digital Lion” and “Voyeur” are as bass-first and funky as anything Blake’s done to date. The last minute of “Lion”, which credits Brian Eno as collaborator, prominently showcases Blake’s gospel fixation, his wordless vocals present to acknowledge the powerful groove. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Bonobo – The North Borders
If “slow and steady wins the race” is indeed a truism, then Bonobo’s fifth LP in nearly fifteen years The North Borders is an model illustration of it. After the hearty reception to his last LP – 2010′s Black Sands – The North Borders sees the confidence and scope of his sound blossom; tracks unfolding in ornate, colourful flourishes to reveal an attuned sensibility for orchestral grooves and delicate textures, as strands of garage, house and trip-hop are woven into ripe, expertly crafted progressions of down-tempo electronica. Read the full review on Fact

Tyler the Creator – Wolf
Wolf as a whole also sounds gorgeous, and that even goes for the bruisers. The polyrhythmic hi-hats of the madcap posse cut “Trashwang” eventually give pause to a piano bridge, and the blustery lead single “Domo 23” gets a bump from a boisterous horn section. Foreboding numbers like “Rusty” (a lush reimagining of 1990s RZA production) and the nightmarish, tribal “Cowboy” are declawed by rich textures and melodicism. “Answer” sets Tyler’s longing for his late grandmother and absentee father to a bright guitar figure and shimmering organs. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Charles Bradley – Victim of Love
Compared to the airing of grievances that was No Time for Dreaming — standout “Why Is It So Hard” seemingly let out decades of frustration over the course of its four minutes — Victim of Love is nothing but smooth sailing. But that doesn’t mean Bradley’s totally content these days. The major theme here is, of course, love, and Bradley’s walloping sob of a voice is more than capable of extricating all the feelings that come with his subject. There’s adoration in that voice when he sings lines like “My life was cold / You put the flame on it”; he sounds both desperate and lost when he asks, “Where do we go from here?” Read the full review on Consequence of Sound