The very pleasant surprise is that Nance and his bandmates -- guitarist James Schroeder, bassist Derrick Higgins, and drummer Kevin Donahue, with some extra guests sitting in -- slip into this music with an easy authority, more languid but no less emotionally engaged than his more raucous efforts, and the spare acoustic closer, "In Orlando," leaves no doubt that Nance can do heartache at 3 A.M. every bit as well as he can summon a wall of fuzzy mania.

Underneath the burnished surface, the album is every bit as vital as its predecessors, examining situations fraught with private and political pitfalls.

This is Real Estate at their best, giving us the same bright and bittersweet indie perfection as always, only better with age and experience.

A rather inoffensive listening experience, a middle ground that Idles have mostly been able to avoid until now.

The album is relatively streamlined and sleek, containing no guest appearances and showing no overt attempts at chasing trends.

Kanye has shown the world his unfiltered megalomania, heartbreak, self-obsession, self-contempt, and confusion, and even at its most ghastly, it's always been at least a little bit exciting or provocative. On Vultures 1, he struggles to show much of anything, crafting songs that are loud and shiny, but still largely blank.

A more playful, song-oriented set, if one where the lighter tone proves to be more than a little ironic.

Compassion is a hefty companion to Uneasy. Musically, it's deeper and wider. Their mature group invention is heightened by their playing together live. They bring a fresh, intensely interactive, seemingly time-elasticizing approach to the jazz piano trio that is at once bracingly kinetic, intimate, and lyrical.

More than just a bright spot in their career, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a beacon of romantic punk defiance.

It all works well together sonically and conceptually, resulting in an album that is Itasca's most cohesive and mystical yet -- and that's saying something.

"Dig a Hole" has a big, funky swagger, "Be So Lucky" rides its chunky tremolo riff into the sunset, and "Other Side of the Light" is a sunkissed open-road anthem worthy of the Marshall Tucker Band. These tunes provide Be Right Here with a solid foundation to endure multiple plays, but it's immediately appealing upon first spin thanks to that burnished Cobb production.

The result is indie rock, and Omni, at their 100% best and most exhilarating.

If one is looking for the more adventurous and off-kilter band of their earlier days, steer clear. If it’s introspective, somewhat epic country rock balladry one desires, then Blu Wav might be just the thing. It's certainly the band's most focused record to date and if that seems a little unexciting, the emotional payoff will make it worthwhile in the end.

This isn't an acoustic album: it's a lean, nervy rock album that uses its mess and its contradictions to its own advantage.

The individual tracks matter less than the collective experience. Isolated songs may hint at Howard expanded emotional and musical pallette, but What Now is a proper album, where each segment expands and interlocks, providing a whole that's greater than its separate parts.

Despite its thorny history, this is an exhilarating portrait of the band's shift from their no wave beginnings to the more complex and melodic style that defined their later work.

Personal but still very fun, Venus is a bold but totally sensical evolution in sound that avoids a third LP of the same old songs and pushes Larsson's sonic style into the future.

Among the many earnest earworms here (the cringier "KFM" notwithstanding) are songs like "God Person" ("I'm not a god person/But I'm never not searchin'") and "Don't Do Me Good," an early single featuring her friend Kacey Musgraves. Mournful but defiant, the latter song makes catchy country-rock of tough sentiments.

Floating between the interior world and the external one with ephemeral ease, PHASOR is a pleasure to experience -- and another fine example of Lange's receptive, responsive artistry.

Hopeful in a deeply honest way, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She chronicles an evolution that brings out the best, most adventurous aspects of Wolfe's music.

After a few more adequate songs without sonic or lyrical linearity -- a tender collaboration with simpatico Afrobeats producer/singer Pheelz stands out most -- the album hits its stride with a sequence of slow jams demonstrating that Usher is at the top of his game as a singer, still much more than a mere entertainer.

Ducks Ltd. come fully into their own with a combination of heightened production values, arrangements that lean into discrete synthesizers and vocal layers, and sneakily depressive lyrics hidden in songs overflowing with brisk pop charm.

While not all of Magic 2 is this strong, there are several moments like this one ["One Mic, One Gun"] that can contend with the best of the King's Disease material.

Magic 3 sits alongside King's Disease III and Magic at the apex of this legendary run. This is hip-hop history, indeed.

Robby Krieger & The Soul Savages is hip, relaxed, and confident. The quartet sounds like they're having an exceptionally good time and that translates to aural gold for the listener.

Alternately affectionate, suspenseful, weird, and poignant, TPTGATKOMDM is a journey, but it's brought to you by straight-up good songs.

While Everybody Can't Go won't surprise anyone who has been following Benny, it does live up to his standards, and confirms his status as a major player in the rap industry.

King Perry doesn't rank among the pioneering artist's classics, but it's an enjoyable late-period effort that reminds listeners of his adventurous spirit and inimitable character.

Vera Sola's blurring of past and present sounds especially apt to the early 2020s here, but more often, Peacemaker's dreamlike world has a timeless appeal that fans of Calexico, Timber Timbre, and Marissa Nadler will love.

These songs are ten of his better solo offerings, and they further refine his particular brand of hazy, half-awake beauty.

The main directive of the album is paisley jangle, as with standout tracks like the enthusiastically poppy "Gone" or the fiendishly catchy "Goodbye," but the Umbrellas stretch their sound in all directions as Fairweather Friend plays out, calling on various corners of indie pop history yet translating it all into their own songwriting language.

Along the way, despite some familiar musical touchpoints, she establishes a personality that's all her own.

On his third studio album American Dream, rap superstar 21 Savage delivers a set of the kind of stone-faced trap he's known for glossed over with another layer of big-budget production to keep him in the charts.

While just about everything here is darkly anxious yet engaging, highlights include the line “Life’s just time chasing your mind with the body you get" (from "In the Red") and the bouncy, utterly infectious "Big Air," which, in keeping with the rest of the album, adds injury to elation: "I got big air/Flew and landed strange."

The result is that Sadness Sets me Free is both uplifting and comforting at once. It's also just different enough from most of his other work that it feels fresh and exciting, providing more evidence that Rhys is one of the most interesting and satisfying singer/songwriters of any era.

A careful listen reveals he's not shy about constructing a pousse café of six-string textures, but he's smart enough to know when to reign himself in, and most of the time Three Bells sound admirably open and dynamic, leaving just enough daylight between the overdubs to allow each to have some personality of its own.

Thirstier's anthems of devotion might be more immediately gratifying, but the eloquent expressions of love's uncomfortable and uncertain parts that fill What an Enormous Room are a testament to Torres' insatiable need to seek out emotional truths.

The resulting songs easily clear the bar for earnest expressions of affection, going into awkward, getting-to-know-you encounters, breakups, fears, and those small, secret moments when one's love grows stronger.

People Who Aren't There Anymore is another refinement rather than a reinvention or bold step forward. It feels slightly less glossy than some of their other 4AD releases, coming a little closer to the lo-fi textures of earlier albums, but from the perspective of artists who have been working hard for nearly two decades.

The Smile take more risks with this follow-up, resulting in a gorgeous, sometimes difficult trip into the unknown that, if only briefly, can make you forget about their main gig.

The album isn't designed for short attention spans or playlists but as a holistic experience that rewards committed listening with a mind-blowing sonic saga that rages, challenges, and changes more times than can be counted.

Fans may be relieved to learn that while Broom did ratchet up the intensity of their sound a notch in the studio, together they keep things raw, frank, fun, and friskily psychedelic on the resulting The Joy of Sects.

With a sharp ear for hooks, quirky phrasing tendencies, and visceral, spontaneous-sounding accompaniment, ultimately making Melt the Honey play out something like a guilty pleasure.

She grafts and threads striated post-bop harmony, edgeless dissonance, and kinetic drama simultaneously, then blurs the edges expressionistically in crafting a detailed, multivalent, resonant, deeply satisfying whole from seemingly disparate individual elements.

With a little editing, Insano could have been one of Kid Cudi's strongest releases to date. Instead, listeners are given an uneven playlist of great highs and should-have-been B-sides that, in the very least, deliver the expected vocal melodics, haunting vibes, tongue-twisting bars, and "tortured" emotions that Cudi has mastered over the years.

Sadness lurks upon the edges of the record, as does rage, but Little Rope ultimately feels cathartic: by processing Brownstein's loss and dwelling upon their shared bonds, Sleater-Kinney once again feels united and purposeful.

Saviors sounds cleaner, stronger, and purposeful, all due to the still-sharp pop instincts of Bille Joe Armstrong. Age may dampen Green Day's roar, but it has also heightened their songcraft, and that's reason enough to give Saviors time to let its hooks sink in.

Russell's story would be compelling enough on its own, but she also happens to be an engaging and unpredictable artist able to translate her vision effectively. The Returner is a very confident second record.

Lovegaze demonstrates Hunter's range from soundscape weaver to art-pop maverick, and her music is never less than bewildering.

Maybe Hackman just needed a little break before delivering her most compelling album to date.

Ryder-Jones still favors tranquil ballads and laid-back pop songs more than anything else, but the intimate, detailed arrangements and overall sonic scope of Iechyd Da are transformative.

On Orquídeas, Uchis remains true to herself by restlessly expanding her music's stylistic reach, embracing the past as instructor to the present. It is as aesthetically appealing as it is musically adventurous.

It sees her collaborate with German producer DJ Koze on a measured and balanced collection that takes in deep house, art pop, disco, and soul.

The album reshuffles a deck of familiar reference points, but it still deals a hand that's engaging and holds a bothered beauty of its own.

At its best, the album is as potent and apposite as Solange's A Seat at the Table, Laura Mvula's Pink Noise, and Little Simz's No Thank You.

Revealing McRae as a potent voice and keen ear that can deliver emotion and excitement in equal measure.

Pink Friday 2 lacks the cohesion and self-editing that would make it a rightful follow-up to her 2010 mainstream arrival. As it stands, Pink Friday 2 is another collection of Nicki Minaj songs, most of them exhilarating and fun, but some forgettable or awkwardly placed.

It's an especially dreamy -- and seductive -- album and one that seems to find comfort in collaboration.

RAT WARS' abrupt pivots make a visceral impact, but they're never distracting -- they're just more proof that well into their second decade, HEALTH are still discovering formidable expressions of hurting and being hurt.

No one interested in the bleeding edge of New Wave should be without 1978's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and 1980's Freedom of Choice, but if you're looking for a concise yet thorough summation of one of the smartest and most inventive bands of their time, 50 Years of De-Evolution 1973-2023 will fill the void nicely.

The starkness of the arrangements helps draw attention to the distance between the origin of a song and Young's present. Now creeping toward 80, Young doesn't sound fragile yet his vocals display some age-related raggedness. Embracing his weathered, keening voice, Young highlights the tender yearning that runs throughout these songs.

There's a tactile, analog atmosphere to Regal and White Denim's work, marked by woozy synths, vibraphones, and sundry guitar sounds, like on the intro to "Blood," where their shiny guitar and keyboard hits sounds unexpectedly like the opening to a '70s-era TV sitcom like Three's Company. Elsewhere, they conjure a kinetically thrilling, '80s post-punk energy on "Tivoli" and slide into the summery, Stevie Wonder-esque romanticism of "Idle Later."

Not every track on Welcome 2 Collegrove is essential, and the quality gets spottier in the final quarter, but the album stays consistently fun if not entirely engaging.

What makes I/O unique, even special, is that the process of searching isn't central to the finished product. There's no restlessness here, only acceptance, a quality that gives I/O a quiet power that can't help but build over time.

2023's The First Time is a 20-song album that more or less revisits the tones and styles Laroi laid out over the three previous years.

Blockbusta is not without its instances of fun and excitement, but for the most part, Busta Rhymes sounds like he's reaching for something different on almost every track and not quite grabbing ahold of any of it.

Voir Dire pushes the bounds of both Alchemist's old school warmth and Earl's heady verses, landing someplace new that neither would have gotten to on their own.

The Complete Budokan 1978 essentially reveals Dylan sets the record straight about his music at the time, while opening a gauzy curtain on the artist at life's crossroads. This missing link is a monumental addition to Dylan's discography.

"Nothing on Me" adds more variety yet by coming into view as if Cleo and company have found a sweet spot segueing out of a cover of D'Angelo's "Spanish Joint." "Love Will Lead You There," just voice and guitar, closes out the album on a serene note of togetherness.

Anches en Maat isn't one of Grails' more intense records, but it does a fine job of capturing the certain type of melancholy cinematic vibe that they've been exploring for much of their career.

It's not entirely the same rowdy, lascivious joyriding that made up some of his celebrated early work, but the album's fearless expression of a full emotional spectrum makes it remarkable and at times shatteringly beautiful.

This glorious, vulnerable set offers pure collaborative inspiration at once strident and vulnerable, minimal, and aesthetically expansive.

This mix of warmth and wariness permeates Hadsel and, despite its idiosyncratic inspirations and unorthodox instrumentation, may well make it a timely and timeless destination for those who relate to its juxtaposition of comfort and alienation.

It's another page in Vile's ongoing catalog of daydreams and stoned musings, in its best moments reaching the same levels of quality as his fully considered albums.

Moving way beyond their debut, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. is the sound of artistic maturation and sonic expansion, a logical culmination of what they were trying to do in the first place.

A stately and soulful set of songs rooted in the bittersweetness of nostalgia and adulthood.

Burton's falsetto feels like part of the tapestry masterminded by Quesada, never quite pulling attention to either his words or melodies. While this ultimately means that Chronicles of a Diamond doesn't leave enough hooks behind to linger in the memory, the pulsating, colorful vibrations it creates as its spins are certainly an enjoyable way to get lost in the ether for a half hour or so.

Morrison has never been a rockabilly cat, he's a blues shouter and he plays precisely to those strengths here, leading his band through lively and loving readings of rock & roll oldies, never apologizing for the unabashed nostalgia of the entire enterprise.

Like Justin Timberlake and Harry Styles before him, it's quite clear that Jung Kook has been christened as his boy band's main breakout, and Golden makes a great case for that push.

Even considering its modest ambitions, it's probably not a surprise that Songs of Silence showcases instincts and inventiveness well beyond that of your typical synth-instrumentals diversion.

By the time Rockstar reaches "Free Bird," the party has been rolling on for two hours and is starting to feel a little tired -- it doesn't help that Parton is duetting with the ghost of Ronnie Van Zant, either -- but that doesn't erase the good spirits created by the rest of the record.

Choosing to transpose strings to guitar and voice helps Hatfield achieve a sense of intimacy while retaining a sense of romantic grandeur, a combination that gives Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO a distinctly warm and comforting feeling without succumbing to the pitfalls of nostalgia.

New Blue Sun is probably not the André 3000 solo debut most OutKast fans had expected or hoped for, but it does continue the integrity and spirit of his creative journey, in a way that's fittingly bizarre and beautiful.

It's hard to believe it took so long for Iron & Wine to document their live incarnation, but it is easy to believe that now that they finally have, it's as sophisticated, burnished, and emotionally true as this.

If you've somehow managed to avoid hearing Billy Bragg's work, The Roaring 40 1983-2023 is an ideal starting point, and if you're already a fan, this is a top-shelf mixtape of the songs that made him a legend. Either way, it's great music with heart, soul, and a conscience.

If Innerstanding favors aural texture to melodic immediacy, there's intrigue in how its electronic pulse intermingles with shimmering mantras, resulting in a record that reveals its mysteries over time.

Les Jardins Mystiques, Vol.1 is certainly a monolithic package, but it's more than that: it's a statement that reveals the vastness of Atwood-Ferguson's inspiration, creative breadth, and musical vision without compromise. Unique? Sure. But also profound.

Superchunk have always strengthened their reputation with music that ranks with the most powerful and important ever made, able to move, inspire, and impress no matter the sound or subject. This collection reinforces that notion, and proves that in their second act, the band remain at the very top of their game.

Metric have always been the kind of band to take big emotions and make them sound stadium-sized. On these two albums, they take stadium-sized emotions and make them painfully real and bleedingly human.

Production-wise, the beats are as on point as ever, typically favoring funky boom-bap with touches of psych-rock guitar, and occasionally drifting close to trip-hop melancholy ("Living Curfew," "Bermuda"). As ever, though, the main attraction is Aesop's compelling wordplay, and his ability to keep the listener's attention while veering into different lyrical and conceptual directions.

Though Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert doesn't -- and couldn't -- have the same revelatory feel of Dylan's original concert, Marshall's wise, loving performances strengthen her reputation as one of her generation's most gifted interpreters.

Even as PinkPantheress explores her deepest, darkest emotions, her songs are vibrant, hook-filled, and wildly inventive, making Heaven Knows just as worthy of repeated listens as To Hell with It, and confirming her status as a pop visionary.

Once again working with co-producer Dave Cobb, Stapleton also has his wife Morgane behind the boards in addition to singing harmony and playing keyboards, a tight, familial group of collaborators that gives Higher a relaxed, familiar feel that keeps things buoyant even in its darkest moments.

Cohesion and comprehension are left on the cutting room floor of I<3UQTINVU, but these untamed reimaginings of the songs extend the album's fun and curiosity.

The lyrics are wryly humorous, the music gritty and steamy. There isn't a dull moment here. Get it.

Goodnight Summerland is a lovely, occasionally profound album with little if anything apart from the intro that could be fairly called filler, and that would be splitting hairs.

It's definitely music for dourer days, although there's also an alluring elegance in play that can make it feel more mysterious than dispiriting. Like a lot of compellingly constructed minimalist music, Acts of Light benefits from repeat listens.

At times, Return to Archive rivals Ultimate Care II when it comes to the more challenging, cerebral side of Matmos' music, but its fascinating reflections on how we build on and reframe the past make for a hip, thoughtful celebration of Smithsonian Folkways' forward-thinking legacy.