(Self-released, digital, vinyl) The nature of music criticism in 2024 is as weird and transmuted as the industry itself. Long gone are the days when a journalist's pen could derail a musician's career with a scathing review or set them on the path to be the Next Big Thing with a five-star gush over a new record. Those stakes have been erased as music has been demonetized. When listeners had to debate whether to spend their hard-earned dollars on a new record, they often relied on critics to guide their hand before they got to the cash register. In the current world of low- to no-cost music streaming, there's no risk in opening an app, seeing a new song and clicking play. If you think it sucks, just keep scrolling. This new normal has once again made the single king: Artists often release half of a new record as "advance singles" before the LP drops — if there even is an LP. But some artists still fly the flag for the long-form album as an art form. Take Burlington psych-rock band the Dead Shakers, the project of singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Kevin Bloom. Every Dead Shakers album is a movement, a symphony of indie weirdness, vacillating between modes of hippie freak-out and apocalyptic doom whimsy. On both the debut LP All Circles Vanish and 2022's Some Shapes Reappear, Bloom crafted records built on solid foundations with inventive architecture, brick houses in the storm. Yet the psychedelic revelry often obscured the vision and planning coded into their creation. On the Shakers' latest album, So I Guess I Keep Making Albums Until I Die?, which drops on Friday, September 27, there's no mistaking the brilliance of Bloom's designs. A 20-track opus all but overloaded with drugged-out fuzz rockers, ambient field recordings, acid-jazz freak-outs and Bloom's hyperactive, often dichotomous lyrics, this is the long-form album as art. The record kicks off with a fitting mantra: "Take my hand, the world is open / Take my hand, the streets they are crowded," Bloom sings in harmony with a veritable chorus, featuring Robber Robber's Nina Cates and Zack James, singer-songwriter Peg Tassey, indie-soul singer Ivamae, and cellist Izzy Hagerup. If they bid hello to the listener with a pleasant, pop-leaning opening track, they make it plain that things are going to get weird as the song melts into "Graveyard Revisited." A sort of…