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The Australian group’s ambitious third album overflows with ideas, samples, guests, and sheer stimuli. In their sparkling music, every sound feels like a treasured memory.

life, death, and the cosmos set the boundaries of the Avalanches’ ambitious third album, We Will Always Love You. The record begins with a farewell voicemail—a final communication, we are led to believe, from a young woman who has passed away—and it ends with the Morse code-like bleeping of the Arecibo Message, an interstellar transmission carrying information on the human species into the infinite beyond. In between those poles, the Australian group continues doing what it has always done: spinning the sounds of disco, soul, easy listening, and other nostalgic staples into luminous, ludic shapes, turning musical collage into a sparkling, four-dimensional fantasyland. - Pitchfork

You And I is worthing noting mostly for being the studio demos Buckley recorded for Sony to showcase his vision for his legendary debut, Grace. It’s Buckley alone at the microphone, taking a moment every now and then to acknowledge producer Steve Addabbo. It’s easy to come in with cynicism toward yet another mining of Buckley’s catalog, but hearing him coo on Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” is quick reminder of Buckley’s power to silence a room. The stark, naked quality of the recording makes it feel like Buckley is within reach. This feeling continues as he chops chords on Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People”. It’s easy to get lost in his soothing vibrato on first listen, forgetting why you may have been skeptical in the first place. And maybe that’s a great place to leave this record — a glimpse into a moment of Buckley’s musical career, to be looked back at and remembered fondly and not over-examined. We have Grace to endless dissect anyway. – Consequence of Sound

It takes an extraordinarily rare talent to compel and captivate with no tools, no tricks, no impressive displays. Chesnutt doesn't perform or entertain. It sounds like he made the record by mysterious compulsion and he doesn’t even know you’re listening. Skitter on Take-off is in the mode of Robert Johnson's recordings: quiet, worried-man blues glowing hesitantly in the dark, shaky, uncertain, spare -- just enough song to keep the devil at bay. Barely at bay, and only for the moment, but for the moment that’s enough. – Pop Matters

For Allah Las' fourth album, LAHS, the Los Angeles quartet turn their collective gaze toward unknown horizons. A record that prefers travel to time, LAHS transmits from a place not found on any map. While the West Coast mood and melodies from their previous work remain, LAHS looks through a wider lens, exploring the exotic, exciting essence of global folk, soul and downbeat. - Bandcamp

Yaeji’s first full-length mixtape is a subtle, more insular turn for the producer. It plays like a self-issued challenge to strip away the fluorescence, to find what’s underneath pop catharsis.

For What We Drew, Yaeji’s first release on the venerable UK label XL, the 26-year-old producer could have easily shipped out a full crate of stylish, bacchanal floor-fillers without breaking a sweat. Instead, What We Drew plays like a self-issued challenge to strip away the fluorescence, to find what’s underneath pop catharsis. As a result, it’s subtler yet more resonant, because its peaks have deeper valleys to climb back from; in the tradition of Frankie Knuckles, Sylvester, and other artists who used bright electronic music as conduits of pain, here Yaeji offers smaller, darker meditations on the paralysis of anxiety and the loneliness inside the revelry. - Pitchfork

For The Time Being is Hanging Up The Moon’s fifth release and first EP. The four tracks within were written shortly after their return from a trip which saw them performing in Japan and Taiwan.

Inspired by that experience as well as the warm friendships struck up along the way, the songs are uncharacteristically upbeat in their instrumentation. The lyrics however retain the wistfulness so signature of Hanging Up The Moon, touching on loss and resignation — a musical counterpart of the fleeting smile elicited by forgotten old photographs of treasured times.

For The Time Being is released by Big Romantic Records and features Skip Skip Ben Ben’s Lin Yiloh 林以樂, a friend made on the trip and a fellow musician under the label. - Bandcamp

LP - 140 Gram, 13 Track Vinyl Edition, with the additional track Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together, complete with identical liner notes only this time written in French, another of Morrissey’s little curio’s.

A collection of studio classics, live tracks and the alternative Mael mix of the ever-popular Suedehead, all chosen by Morrissey himself. Playful, full of life, great questions and worthy choruses. This is Morrissey. 

Colors, Beck’s last album, won two Grammies. Its sequel finds Beck retaining the marketplace nous of producer Greg Kurstin on one track and adding that of Pharrell Williams, purveyor of cheek-popping flair on more than half the album. Beck’s records can often veer away from the sound of their predecessors, but Hyperspace is no minimal DIY folk jam: it’s dewy, plush and on-trend. - Guardian

The great irony about bringing a new life into this world is you start worrying a lot more about death. Not just that of the family members you must provide for and protect, but your own, as well. Plain and simple, the first rule of parenting is: don’t die. When entrusted with the immense obligation of caring for a child, even the youngest of new parents become exceedingly conscious of their own mortality and survival instincts. Behaviors once taken for granted—like, say, air travel or cycling alongside cars on city streets—start to feel more like roulette games wagered with your life; once-considered activities like bungee jumping and skydiving get transferred from your bucket list to a "fuck that" list.

You could hear that sort of uneasiness gradually seep into the seemingly serene work of Noah Lennox—a.k.a. Panda Bear—over the past decade, both without and within Animal Collective. As the first A.C. member to become a parent, Lennox has become increasingly fond of rooting his boundless sonic exploration in meditations on home life, whether cheekily celebrating the drudgery of domesticity ("Chores"), eulogizing the family dog ("Derek"), making heartfelt affirmations of paternal duty ("My Girls"), or openly fretting over his shortcomings as a breadwinner (“Alsatian Darn”). And though he’s avoided explicitly ecclesiastical language in his solo work since writing 2004’s psych-folk hymnal Young Prayer for his late father, each Panda Bear record released since has retained the form and feel of a communal church service: They welcome us in with reassuring proverbs ("try to remember always, always to have a good time") couched in heaven-sent harmonies, provide a sense comfort in the face of encroaching chaos, and strive to connect our physical world to a more celestial plane. – Pitchfork

Conor Oberst’s music has never sounded lonely. Yes, he’s done catatonically despondent, inconsolable, dejected, maniacal—it's a lot to handle, and yet he’s always been surrounded by friends both local and legendary who believe in his vision, underscoring his status as one of the 21st century’s most mercurial and charismatic songwriters. Arriving almost a month after a comprehensive Bright Eyes boxed set that feels like a headstone for the band, Ruminations is a record like none other in Oberst’s catalog—stunning for how utterly alone he sounds. This is obvious in a technical sense, as there are no goddamn timpani rolls, no boys to keep strummin’ those guitars, just Oberst on harmonica, acoustic and piano with ten songs written during an Omaha winter and recorded in 48 hours. Plenty of folk artists make records like that. But there’s also a loneliness in Ruminations that’s far rare and disturbing—the loneliness one feels after taking stock and wondering if they have a friend left in the world. - Pitchfork

Music as a refuge, music as stress relief, music as a drug or an adjunct to drugs: Ernest Greene, the songwriter who records as Washed Out, has always embraced those functions with a hint of ambivalence. His third Washed Out album, with the self-mocking title “Mister Mellow,” both proclaims its anodyne intentions and reveals misgivings behind them.

It’s not just music for easy listening; it’s presented as something to pacify a bored, bummed-out work force. “Life goes by each and every day,” Mr. Greene sings in “Burn Out Blues.” “I need some time so I can find the way/to slow down, relax and clear my head.”

Washed Out’s songs have been plush and blurred, a little melted around the edges, ever since Mr. Greene inaugurated the minimovement that became known as chillwave with Washed Out’s first EPs in 2009. Mr. Greene’s early songs gave sampled 1970s pop and disco an echoey, wavery resurrection, as if yearning for the hedonistic 1970s that he was born too late — in 1982 — to experience.

Successive Washed Out releases expanded Mr. Greene’s vocabulary across additional decades, incorporating live instruments and invoking psychedelia, trip-hop and ambient electronica: anything that could dissolve into a midtempo haze. - The New York Times

After releasing a collaborative EP with Warp's Bibio, who is also featured as a producer on “Ever since the fall”, this 2nd solo release under Olivier St.Louis marks the starting point of worldwide live efforts for 2017 with continuous touring. He'll tour with German AnnenMayKantereit for a few dates & will join his partner in crime Oddisee for his “The Iceberg” Wolrd Tour afterwards. All of this comes after a successful UK Tour with Laura Mvula this fall. His upcoming release “Ever since the fall EP”, will be out on Jakarta Records in February 2017 and features productions by Bibio, Olivier himself and co-productions by Oddisee. 6 tracks somewhere in between lo-fi soul, drum computer sounds, warm basslines and funk trenched live compositions...

Their third and latest LP, On the Water, is more invested in wide-open spaces. The opening (and title) track gives all the elements of the band's sound more leg room: Herring's unhurried vocals, epic, smoldering synths, and the steady churn of a not-too-choppy tide on a sample that begins the song. Recorded in a friend's house in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, overlooking the Pasquotank River, On the Water draws from the imagery and movement of the sea. It's less intent on bringing the drama or the fury than In Evening Air was, but its reflections on aging and memory accumulate into something surprisingly moving. - Pitchfork

Over ten years ago, Audika Records began releasing the exceptionally varied, long sought-after music of Arthur Russell, and in the process has succeeded at helping the beloved, late artist find the broader audience he always believed he would reach. A new generation of listeners and critics has come to appreciate Russell as a visionary and an influence upon a broad range of today’s most compelling musical artists. On October 28, Audika will bring to light an as-yet-unavailable side of Russell’s body of work- the most rare and, at the same time, arguably the most accessible part- in Love Is Overtaking Me, which comprises 21 demos and home recordings of unreleased pop, folk and country songs from his vast catalog.While much critical and popular affection for Russell’s music has come about well after his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, many fellow artists believed in his genius and were drawn to collaborate with him during his lifetime. The legendary producer John Hammond (Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen) recorded Russell on several occasions; a number of these recordings will finally be heard on Love Is Overtaking Me. - Bandcamp

Painting With is the tenth studio album by American experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on February 19, 2016. The album is a follow-up to Centipede Hz (2012), and features contributions from John Cale and Colin Stetson. It peaked at No. 46 on the Billboard 200. Three singles were issued: "FloriDada" (2015), "Lying in the Grass", and "Golden Gal" (both 2016). A companion EP, The Painters, was released the following year. For Painting With, the band's line-up consists of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and Geologist (Brian Weitz), the same trio which participated for Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009). - Wiki

Keaton Henson follows up the release of first two albums 'Dear...' and 'Birthdays' with 2016's highly anticipated 'Kindly Now.' A blend of meditations on love and unabashed confessionals, Keaton's music is at once startling, affecting and spellbinding. - Bandcamp

In spite of the noisy aura it's drawn around itself, there's not much mystery to A Place To Bury Strangers. The New York band has been dishing out slight variations on the same sonic blitzkrieg since its self-titled 2007 debut; the only thing that's changed is the fine tuning. On the group's fourth album, Transfixiation, all of APTBS' trademarks are in evidence. Deadpan vocals float through apocalyptic static. The volume bleeds out. Cacophony reigns. - NPR

Originating in a New York apartment and completed in a garage in suburban Sydney, Jonti's new album Tokorats will see release November 3rd on Stones Throw Records. Following up from 2012 releases Twirligig and Sine & Moon, Tokorats is a psychedelic, harmony-rich dream-hop journey. Originally recorded as a sister record for Jonti's debut album Twirligig in 2011, Jonti scrapped the entire album and started again in 2013. After four years and hundreds of versions for each song, Jonti is finally ready to invite you into his Tokorats universe.

Jonti explains, "A Tokorat is that supernatural creature in the mirror. A multicolored weirdo mutant composed of all the elements of your story and all the complexities of your character. In every song, I was having a conversation with all the good and unflattering reflections of myself -- AKA my Tokorats. While this album does document a five-year spiritual journey, it was ultimately a fun and luscious experience. I'm lucky I got to know my Tokorats"

On their 2017 self-titled debut album, indie rock trio Cigarettes After Sex honed in on melancholy love songs that evoked imagery of gently rustled sheets, darkened cafe bars, and cigarette smoke drifting from fire escapes on lonely winter nights. Now with Cry, the New York band, fronted by singer/songwriter and guitarist Greg Gonzalez, their intimate approach is still supported by hushed, midtempo grooves, but their point of view has gone a bit more global.

The band recorded Cry during a weeklong respite on the Spanish island of Mallorca, with Gonzalez having gathered scraps of lush melodies, poetic lyrics, and cinematic concepts partially inspired by his travels to Germany, Latvia, and at home in Brooklyn. As a cohesive whole, the album's nine songs address the radical vulnerability of falling in and out of love, exploring everything from nature to sexuality with heartfelt nuance. – Paper Mag

Cigarettes After Sex – if you prefer melody and softness to rhythm and abrasion – are one of the most sonically pleasurable groups of recent years. These are sturdily constructed songs, which would work in other arrangements, and they are presented in such a way that the instrumentation ornaments rather than overwhelms them. – The Guardian