Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Culled from a batch of roughly 40 demos, these tunes explore vulnerability and vexation, sweetness and cynicism with more manageable musical complications than ever before. For instance, the gorgeous “Impregnable Question” finds the seam between Heart of Gold-era Neil Young and late-1960s Serge Gainsbourg; it’s a love song between Coffman and Longstreth, her coos helping him to soften his voice above a warm acoustic shuffle. Over handclaps and a ragged, wrapping riff on “Dance for You”, Longstreth offers one of his most intuitive and immediate hooks. There’s gusto and playfulness here, too, from the way Longstreth clears his very-warped throat before launching into the first verse of opener “Offspring Are Blank” to the brilliant decision to record Coffman and Dekle mocking some of Longstreth’s most impenetrable lyrics toward the end of the irrepressible “Unto Caesar”. When he sings “Down the line/ Dead, the martyrs’ morbid poetry,” Coffman teasingly answers, “Uhh, that doesn’t make any sense, what you just said.” You want to be in the room with this band. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Aesop Rock – Skelethon
Once Rock opens his mouth on Skelethon there’s nary a respite until the wrinkled-nose voice of anti-folkie Kimya Dawson breaks the album in half, over the tersely beautiful intro to “Crows 1.” It’s as if Rock had been hemorrhaging rhymes, having stored words for so long. The gracious beats also deserve credit for balancing the forbidding noise familiar from his Def Jux years. On “Racing Stripes,” an acid-jazz intro gives way to hallway-echoing drumrolls, while the gamelan-tinted vibraphone that cradles “Fryerstarter” is almost sexy. There’s never been blown-speaker boom-bap like “Tetra” on an Aesop Rock album before; and the occasional finished thought, like “This is why we can’t have nice things” or “When I see your picture I draw dicks on it,” helps keep him earthbound. Read the full review on AV Club

Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage
“L’Enfant Sauvage” begins quite plainly as a celebration of the traits that the band have worked hard to single out as their own over the last decade – exaggerated harmonics, dynamic pick scrapes, nuanced drumming behind sledgehammer riffs. The guitars are crisp but swing low when required, often distinguished more by their pick attack or palm muting than melody or rhythm. It can make for repetitive listening, but once in the right frame of mind the small changes from song to song, from one kind of groovy riff to another, are easier to appreciate. The bouncing title track and aptly-titled “Explosia” may be similar in some regards but will take on different character when they inevitably take their place on Gojira’s live setlist. Read the full review on Ultimate Guitar