As Guided by Voices approach their fourth decade as a band, Strut of Kings reminds us that they're not only at the top of their game, but they're still growing and trying new things, and succeeding admirably.

The laid-back "Time Will Tell" is bound to prompt comparisons to certain late-'70s soft rock hits but has a lonesome if sanguine character all its own. Even lighter in touch, "Dime" ("tell me") is a lush, Tropicália-inspired duet with Chilean singer/drummer Cancamusa that flashes back to when Frazer's romance was blossoming.

It may not change the minds of those who think there isn't much to Cigarettes After Sex's music, but X's delivers enough glamorous brooding to keep fans happily miserable.

Given how packed the guest list is, it's not surprising that this party runs a little long, but ultimately, each of Harmonics' tracks reflects the warmth and generosity of Goddard's creativity.

Also involving contributions from PJ, Jennifer Hudson, J Rocc, and Tuamie, the album is an inspired extension of hip-hop's 50th anniversary celebrations.

There are enough good things in Hear the Children Sing the Evidence to understand why Salsburg wanted to document this experiment for posterity, but don't be surprised if you feel the need for a cup of coffee after putting this on repeat.

Things shift a bit toward the end with the stomping neo-gospel of "On My Knees," a bit of testifying that recalls the bluster of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats more than a Sunday service. The rest of Made by These Moments hums along to a neo-soul vibe that places the Red Clay Strays in Rateliff's wheelhouse, an expansion that doesn't necessarily seem like an evolution even if it broadens the band's appeal.

Alex Izenberg & the Exiles is an album for late nights, back porches, and lonely weekends, and another intriguing entry in the growing catalog of a distinctive music personality.

Cults still aren't as easy to pin down as might be expected, but To the Ghosts reflects how they've endured without compromising the innocence and artful popcraft at the heart of their sound.

Stampede is the work of a singer who is a star and obviously excited by the possibilities it offers him as a performer, but the best moments suggest he should offer a little more space for Orville Peck the Artist, who deserves his share of the spotlight.

JPEGMAFIA's confrontational personality can be overbearing at times, especially to listeners who don't consider themselves to be chronically online, but his production is always stellar, and his sheer creativity is unparalleled. I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU is up there with LP! as the artist's most accessible work to date.

The songs take agile twists and turns, the guitar interplay between Mike Haliechuk and Josh Zucker is satisfying and makes room for far more than the traditional four/four downstroke, and bassist Sandy Miranda and drummer Jonah Falco power this music with muscle and panache. And if the mix doesn't always put Abraham's vocals front and center, making it something of a challenge to understand all the lyrics, what's audible hits an admirable balance between rage and hope.

Lungu Boy has some great material, but having risen to the top with back-to-back successes, Asake appears to be experiencing a few growing pains.

Dune Rats' attempts to kinda sorta reinvent themselves aren't always a roaring success, but none of them are abject failures either. If It Sucks, Turn It Up reveals they can change if they need to, though they are probably most comfortable just being their snotty, weed-addled selves.

The combination of bright, '80s artifice, '90s cynicism, and 2020s uncertainty here works, if the "fun" is often tinged with consternation.

This exercise works surprisingly well and, if one is a fan of this genre, F-1 Trillion knocks it out of the park.

With most of the songs clocking in at under three minutes, when the album ends on the dramatic, 127-second "Blue Monday," with its tight, Beatles-styled harmonies and death-stained lyrics, it feels abrupt, but that may be also due to Konschuh's refusal to deliver catharsis, breaks in the clouds, or healing.

It's still hard to listen to his more ambient material without comparing it to the sweeping rush of his dance music, which arrives at some truly staggering highs. Still, Ritual is an engaging experience that succeeds at transporting the listener and replenishing the soul.

They haven't stopped being unpredictable and confounding, and they're even exploring deeper emotional territory than before, yet their work becomes more cohesive the more one becomes familiar with it.

Amelia might have worked better if Anderson had kept the focus on Earhart's internal dialogue as she struggled to live up to the goal she set for herself and why she chose such a brave and challenging feat, but as it is, it's a collection of interesting ideas and striking moments where the whole doesn't quite equal the sum of the parts.

They never clear the chateau dancefloor, and they add flashes of '80s synths on tracks like "Don't Change," video game music on "Kiki, You Complete Me," glockenspiel and fluttery effects on the mysterious "It's About Time," and a sense of urgency on the fiery "La Bomba." It all makes for a good time for all while at the same time offering to recede nicely into a groove-heavy background as needed.

A more consistently angsty, saturated sound results that's in harmony with lyrics about struggle, self-examination, and challenging life events on songs with titles like "Change," "Sink," and "Fall Came Too Soon and Now I Wanna Throw Up."

Everything Squared is nearly as engrossing as anything from the group's past.

Infinite Health offers enough variation on his style so that it doesn't seem like he's covering old ground, even though it's actually some of his most nostalgic work.

Disconsolate, intricately produced, and surprisingly varied, all things considered, The Well I Fell Into should appeal to sympathetic fans as well as the less-folky sad-song set.

Not all of the melodies are as striking, however, and song for song, it's not quite as memorable as the previous two Molchat Doma records. Still, it's a massive step forward in terms of production, sound design, and overall ambition, and it signals the beginning of a new era for the band.

More or less what fans would expect from a Fred again.. album at this point, Ten Days is a diaristic emotional whirlwind with a handful of highlights.

The album is certain to satisfy Richter's fans from all around the classical-to-pop spectrum.

It establishes Pearson as an artist who's eager to experiment but in command of her musical identity.

Odyssey isn't a next step for the artist, but a giant leap into unbridled inspiration, focus, and creativity. Like Source before it, this arrives at a captivating juncture in Great Britain's wildly diverse jazz scene, and will no doubt influence it.

The overall effect of the album's variability is less vibey but more emotionally resonant than the debut -- perhaps an even tradeoff given that they both have the quality of feeling like records the band had to make.

Oberst's storytelling songwriting remains despairing and maudlin, but he seems more self-aware of this than ever before, injecting some triumph and levity into these songs that suggest he's not just smiling through the pain, but laughing at how ridiculous life can be, and maybe even secretly a little bit grateful for being able to experience it all.

Throughout their career, Ed Schrader has retained energy and spirit, even as their direction has shifted from noisy, primal blues-punk shouting to dramatic, new romantic-style crooning. Orchestra Hits reflects the sophistication of aging, and relating to the past while continuing to artistically evolve.

It seems this was collected from material recorded over the space of several years. But Wynn was right to hold on to this stuff, as these ten tracks cohere into a very pleasing album.

He's as present and raw beneath the computer voice as he's ever been, but with these darkroom synth tracks, Sparhawk makes his audience work a little harder to locate him.

Just because it's fun doesn't make it a divertissement, as Ishibashi brings complex feelings to the table alongside some virtuosic genre exercises.

If there's any bone to pick, it's that some of the slower, more atmospheric numbers don't quite gel as well as the rest of the tracks. Still, the high points make Cutouts every bit as worthy of devoted listening as the first two Smile albums.

The Hard Quartet reject no idea on their debut, and the results are usually familiar, strange, and fun, and at its strongest, the album reframes the individualized sounds of all four powerhouses as something new.

This collection is at its most intriguing in the brief moments where listeners can hear Reed experimenting with these ideas, ones he'd fully realize a little further down the road with the Velvet Underground. These moments show up fairly unambiguously in the sadistic sneering of the Primitives, but they're also there to be found just a little bit deeper below the surface of songs where Reed was trying his best to emulate simplistic pop music but couldn't keep his inherent darkness from showing.

Its lyrics are concerned mainly with current- or post-relationship malaise, whether he regrets ever getting together in the first place (the somewhat cringy "Starfucker"), feels distant ("2001," "Same Old Story"), wonders if he's leaving any impression at all ("What's It Gonna Take to Break Your Heart?"), or ambivalently philosophizes "Maybe love is a way to kill time," which could have been the title for the album.

Generally even more affecting are relatively spare entries like the lilting, piano-centric ballad "Sunset Hunting," the eerie "Violetlight" ("Enclosing a disaster"), and the environmental "Mother Tongue" ("I should be angry/But I'm just tired"), although nothing on See You at the Maypole is simple or without determination.

The album levels up with its final four tracks, which fully commit to the rapid tempo of drum'n'bass.

The guys are aging gracefully, playing to their strengths -- catchy, high-energy anthems that blend pop-punk with good ol' fashioned hardcore -- rather than trying to rehash any of that youthful intensity and rawness of their early albums.

While fans are bound to miss Abbott, Heaton's still got more to say, and his crew is in fine form.

Addiction and mental health, subjects that are interwoven throughout the potent 22-track set with the rawness and renewal born of having been caught in their grips.

Though Heavy Lifting isn't quite up to the level of Kramer's 1990s work, it comes close enough that it would have reaffirmed his status as a veteran guitar hero and proto-punk sage, full of hard-won wisdom, good tunes, and an admirable reserve of piss and vinegar.

Karate exhibit more verve and fun here than on much of their previous output, and continue to push themselves into new forms regardless of how dissimilar to their earlier iterations those forms may be. That ethos on its own is commendable, and the best results of it on Make It Fit are proof that Karate's ever-evolving approach is working.

The Night the Zombies Came is at its best when the band leans into the drama that has always made them stand out from the crowd. "Chicken" is one such moment, a sidewinding mood piece that swings between pride and desperation as wildly as Santiago's twanging, squalling fretwork. However, the album's brightest gem is "Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)."

For fans craving more of Kylie's excellent early-2020s output, Tension II delivers, even when it pales next to more immediate cuts on Disco and the first Tension.

Although the songs here are solid enough and likely to sate fans, the overall effect is a soundscape that's somewhere in the in-between, suiting the limbo of Evergreen's ruminations but not warranting superlatives within Soccer Mommy's growing catalog.

The delicate acoustic closer "Stick Man Test" makes the entire journey end up feeling more like a soundtrack than a standard album.

Yeat's off-center linguistic twists and personality-heavy performances are still the stars of the show, and LYFESTYLE balances Yeat's enormous presence with guest appearances from Kodak Black, Lil Durk, and Don Toliver.

In their own oblique way, Rhetoric & Terror's ambling experiments feel confrontational; when so many artists are unwilling to flout the most basic musical conventions, Hemphill and company are still very much on their own path.

The group's reflective take on grunge- and shoegaze-flavored indie rock is still in play -- such as on the shimmery surfaces of "What You Told Me," the churning distortion of "Something Exciting," and the echoey delay of the bittersweet title track -- but with a more polished net sound resulting from sessions produced by bandleader Soph Nathan, her Big Moon bandmate Fern Ford, and none other than longtime PJ Harvey associate John Parish.

Most suited for a contemplative Sunday morning, Small Changes soothes even in its many moments of unease. Whether the songs express loneliness and numbness, or heartache and dejection, each has a conciliatory effect, like Kiwanuka -- his voice more upfront than ever -- knows that anyone in vaguely similar circumstances can relate.

The studio cuts find bandmates Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith in a similar contemporary mode as on their previous release, melding classic elements of their core sound with modern pop flourishes. .... On-stage they sound rich, dynamic, and detailed with a classy touring band that brings the entire catalog, new and old, to life.

Keith Streng's vocals and guitar, Peter Zaremba's vocals and keyboards, Ken Fox's bass, and Bill Milhizer's drumming still lock together like a jigsaw puzzle, with even more enjoyable results.

It's a more lighthearted chapter in the ongoing Papa M story, and some of its moments are among the most enjoyable in the project's entire catalog.

Dorji is simply one person making music in an isolated environment while the world is constantly in a tumultuous state, and his is simply his own feverish, spur-of-the-moment reaction to everything that's going on.

As on every new Telescopes album, the differences can be subtle, but as Halo Moon winds down, the overall feeling is decidedly softer, more contented, and less tortured than previous efforts.

At times, The Neon Gate is transcendent, though it's easy to get lost in its labyrinth of unicorns, demons, and castle grounds. It's certainly a more challenging listen than their earlier albums, but Nap Eyes have never been a mainstream concern. To that end, a sprawling D.I.Y. art-pop composite merely feels like one stop on a larger journey.

"Piece of My Heart," features guest vocals from Brent Faiyaz and an interesting mid-song shift to a lusher sonic palette. The production, while similar to his earlier releases, leans ever more insistently into R&B with subtler Afrobeats touches.

“number one girl” and “drinks or coffee” address unrequited love and ‘talking stages,’ “3am,” “Gameboy,” and “toxic til the end” see ROSÉ weaving around red flags, and “too bad for us” and “dance all night” finish the cycle with post-breakup mourning and the search for closure.

Franz Ferdinand feel more engaged than they have in some time on The Human Fear. It's some of their most self-assured sounding music, but thanks to its naked emotions and eclectic choices, it's also some of their most human-sounding music. All told, it's a respectable -- but not too respectable -- addition to their body of work.

While it can feel a bit dry at times, it shows that Ashworth's songwriting is as strong and affecting as ever.

Wide-ranging yet restrained components make for a quietly cinematic experience, as Jamieson goes on to examine other angles of love.

It’s an album worthy of its co-signs from the Boygenius camp but one that stands solidly on the merits of its own uncompromising creation.

The album's overriding ethos is expressed more clearly on tracks like "I Reach for You in My Sleep" and closer "The Rest of Our Lives," whose warm, layered harmonies, nimble fingerpicking, and gentle background shimmer evoke and encourage sweet dreams.

His second full-length studio album, it's a more optimistic and energized experience than the first, cranking up the accessible pop sheen on his utterly soulful, powerhouse anthems.

With Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, the singer/songwriter fully embraces an icy, mechanical post-punk palette, one that still incorporates elements of guitar rock (and is part analog) but is distinguished by drum machines, eerie synths, and prevailing electronics. It's a sound that's well-suited to the album's anxious and alienated songs.

They still manipulate vocals and apply effects the way they've been known to do, but it often sounds closer to the work of a full band rather than a pair of producers.

The feel of Ebo Taylor Jazz Is Dead 022 is loose, free, and joyous, and highlights this generous spirit with excellent songs and virtuosic musicianship.

Enter Now Brightness is not only a title but a philosophy on an elegant set of songs that find Reid adapting just fine, thanks, at least with the help of treasured loved ones and music itself.

It’s a different way to experience some familiar tunes, and yet another window into one of the more vibrant periods of Young’s ever-shifting creativity.

The 12-song set ends with the dialogue-heavy "Home Movies (1989-1993)," which, like much of the rest of the album, is full of affection. If there's a knock on Rarely Do I Dream (and it's a light rap), it's that Rarely Do I Dream sometimes seems like an album for an audience of one, like a personal collage of photographs and cards on a pinboard behind the laptop monitor in the den.

The Afrobeats-tinged "Happy People" and "We All Win" spread joy to a communal level. A couple other songs, while inviting, are over-sugared, and certain production choices, mainly with regard to vocal effects, don't play to Nao's strengths. Hearing her so assured and exultant is no small consolation.

The songs on Microtonic simply aren't as memorable as the highlights of their debut. It sounds impressive, but it exists in a sort of netherworld between expansive sonic exploration and fully engaging songwriting.

A bit more low-key than Hecker's other albums, Shards is nevertheless representative of his signature sound, encapsulating the emotional depth and innovative sonic weaving listeners have come to associate with his work.

A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole stands in a direct line behind the rest of DePlume's catalog and brings his spiritual and creative worlds together. It's a brave record that confronts pain while embraces it with humility, acceptance, and yes, vulnerability.

Parasomnia is solid. It channels the band's storied past as well as their current more complex, forward-thinking compositional style with only a few rough edges.

A little refinement in the writing room might be appreciated in the long term, but it's clear that JENNIE has the vision to deliver something spectacular.

If Moonlight Concessions doesn't quite hit the heights of Clear Pond Road, Sun Racket, and Black Pearl, it's still a worthwhile listen -- and reaffirms just how high the bar is when it comes to Hersh's music.

Music is a cyclone of weird turns, big ideas, and choices that don't really make sense together, but are still somehow enjoyable under the banner of blissful confusion that Playboi Carti has made his brand from the start.

"Protest with Love" sounds like his attempt at a radio-ready R&B song, as he sings a simple message of love and perseverance over a sensuous groove. He sings of making the world a better place and turning nothing into something on "The Burden," and he praises the uplifting powers of music on "Strength of a Song." Still, there are moments of harshness.

Assured 11-song set.

Some tracks are easier to digest than others, and the frenzied energy of much of the album might make Dan's Boogie a less-than-ideal starting point for new fans. Paradoxically, some moments here (in particular "Cataract Time") rank among the best work in his catalog.

Moneyball sounds both auspicious and like the 11th album from an unearthed Stephen Malkmus project at the same time, and it's hard to imagine they won't have more music on the way.

There are still some hilarious bon mots to be found throughout, but now there's a sense of maturity and creative evolution that's starting to creep over Justin Hawkins and the gang, adding depth to their catalog whether they intended it or not.

There's not much to latch onto here by way of hooks, but the atmosphere is thick and immaculate.

Akpro sounds like he's still finding himself, but his first album is an evocative mixture of nocturnal city scenes and youthful expression, and there's no telling where he'll go from here.

These two songs ["The Rose of Laura Nyro" and "Never Too Late"] don't ruin the album, though, and no doubt fans of both artists will embrace this project as a great idea that, for the most part, works really well. A little more restraint and a little more Elton taking the lead vocals, and the "most part" could have been stricken from that sentence.

Like Hopper's grand film maudit The Last Movie, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper doesn't quite manage a satisfying ending, but what it delivers along the way is impassioned, literate, and daring, and it's more than worthy of repeated listening.

Bateh's voice sounds a bit more worn and weary, not unlike latter-day Nick Cave, and it feels like there's an increase in electronic textures, but otherwise the band is sticking to their stock-in-trade, down to writing melodies which sound familiar to their body of work. That said, there is more of a conceptual storyline to this album, involving a character named Elena and the man who murdered her boyfriend.

The Velveteers are getting better at what they do, and A Million Knives captures that well, but they still sound best when they let their swaggering rock attitude do the talking.

They tweak their sound in ways that seem to reflect emotional complexity while strengthening hooks and riffs, at least on the more memorable tunes.

The result exists in a middle ground between the band's artful indie rock and a contemporary classical suite. If you like Dirty Projectors, chances are you'll enjoy Song of the Earth, but this music lacks the immediacy and insistent pulse of the band's best work.

After over four decades, the Melvins still sound utterly uncompromised and full of swampy vigor, and Thunderball confirms they haven't finished challenging themselves or their audience, not by a long shot.

Selected Recordings from Grapefruit is heady and highly conceptual, but the Great Learning Orchestra does a good job of understanding the spirit of Ono's texts and honoring all of the loving kindness, curiosity, sprightliness, and righteous resistance of the book.