Four or five less tracks and a little less time spent extrapolating on the end of the world would have made for a far more engaging listen, even taking into consideration how rare new material from Busta Rhymes can be in this phase of his work.

The faintly cosmopolitan dance-pop grooves and finely measured ballads offer few unexpected turns. They're set apart more by a lack of gospel and soul, consequently rendering Love Goes plain by Smith's standard -- unfortunate for an artist whose instrument is anything but that.

Dizzee has accomplished a lot in two decades, from pioneering a genre as a hotly tipped teenage prodigy to collaborating with pop stars on chart-topping hits, but his dedication to his craft has never been stronger, and E3 AF is proof of his lasting vitality.

SURVIVAL HORROR is one of the band's best distillations of their extremes, providing just enough brutality without sacrificing their evolving vision of how melodic and experimental a metal band can be.

Such an intense, sustained focus does mean Positions succeeds in sounding sexy but it doesn't do much outside of that: apart from the title track, few songs stand out as individual songs, the rhythm and productions are all painted in shades of grey, and Grande disappears into the setting of her own design.

Hitting the same highs as her triumphant 2000s stretch -- namely Light Years, Fever, X, and Aphrodite -- this glittery, feel-good set is nothing short of euphoric, a dozen near-perfect gems that pay respect to the album's namesake era while updating the production with thrilling results

The boogie that was the trademark of his best-known work is almost entirely absent, and while Bolan's wordplay was often marvelous, many of these artists opt to treat them as grand philosophical statements, ignoring the wit that was so much of his lyrics. A few of the performers make this work, notably Lucinda Williams, who sounds beatific on "Life's a Gas," and Nick Cave, who somehow finds a mournful nostalgia in "Cosmic Dancer."

Though Sour Cherry Bell delves into gloomier, more despairing moods than Precious Systems, it maintains a balance through radiant energy and never descends into overpowering hopelessness.

Inward-looking, mysterious, and awash in found sounds, bucolic electronics, and naturalistic imagery, Don't Shy Away is both inexplicable and compelling, and is easily Loma's most rewarding outing to date.

Burden of Proof finds Benny the Butcher fully formed after years of development and growth. There's even a marked upgrade in production compared to his 2018 outing Tana Talk 3.

Sleepless Night is as warm and comforting as a cup of hot chocolate, and while it hardly seems like a major work (and it isn't), it's thoroughly enjoyable and a reminder that you can hardly do better than Yo La Tengo in making a playlist of treasured oldies.

For all of its epic grandiosity, May Our Chambers Be Full only clocks in at a mere 37 minutes, but in doing so leaves a more indelible impression.

Effectively, this evolution is a biography in the form of archival tapes, and the results are not only historically important, they're absorbing on a sheer musical level.

It's a long album but stays on full power for its entirety, with the endlessly catchy songs of alien worlds standing as some of the brightest and strangest material the Rentals have ever delivered.

Although lacking the silly and immature content found in their early output, the group retain their cheeky spirit, using that irreverence to process a society on the verge of collapse in a manner that's still uniquely Puscifer. As the world burns, Keenan and company hold a mirror to the calamity, forcing us to face reality and figure out a way to move forward.

Each of the tracks took a while to prepare, as Frusciante would fine-tune synth patches and arrange breakbeats, but the actual recordings were bashed out pretty quickly, and they all maintain that sense of elaborately designed spontaneity, making it easily the artist's most successful electronic work.

At a compact 12 tracks, Music Is the Weapon provides just enough inspiration to get the party started, but it is so good that -- if left on repeat -- it would be enough to fuel an entire night of hedonism.

Getting into Knives reminds us he's at the peak of his abilities in the art of record-making, and reminds us it's possible for a band to be brilliant without a shred of arrogance.

Throughout what is also an evocative set, Emmy the Great conjures images of musician-studded street corners and windblown flower petals alongside characters like "Mary," the unreliable fortune teller.

This time Nothing are in full command of their sound and technique. By adding back the metal and amping up the melodies, the result is an assured and powerful album that delivers on the promise of the group's debut without copying it. Their growth as a band has been faltering at times, but now that they've arrived, it's good to see and wonderful to hear.

It shows Costello's mastery of mood and storytelling, the kind of skill he's acquired over the course of a long career, but the key to Hey Clockface is that these techniques are applied to a record that's as restless as anything Costello made in his younger days.

Earth to Dora is well-written and imaginatively produced pop for grown-ups that reminds us Mark Oliver Everett is crazy enough to try anything once -- even feeling OK for a while.

By tuning in to his past, Lopatin shares something special with his audience. Equally challenging and comforting, Magic Oneohtrix Point Never just might be the album that moves listeners who appreciated, but didn't fully embrace, his previous music.

What's best is that Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny doesn't sound like it was brought into the 21st-century kicking and screaming. It does all that and more, but there's so much mad joy at the helm -- this is a band that would close their shows with a faithful cover of the Alan Parsons Project ballad "Time" while masked and covered in blood -- that the material feels bracing, vital, and rooted in the present.

A pleasing amalgam of propulsive uptempo shoegaze, misty psych-pop, and layered acoustic songwriting, The View from Halfway Down offers an attractive compendium of Bell's accumulated strengths.

Bonamassa has plenty of opportunity to show his facility with synthesizing different classic guitarists -- there's a bit of Rory Gallagher and Peter Green to offset his Claptonisms -- but the best moment on Royal Tea is "A Conversation with Alice," a chiming bit of soul-pop where he channels the best moments of Steve Marriott.

Amidon's artistry is on full display on the eponymous album, with its sometimes-uncanny merging of timeless emotions, atmosphere, and musicality.

In spite of its musical intricacy, This Is the Kit remains a relatable portal into the human experience and Off Off On is as appealing as anything Stables has ever released.

Forgotten Days is the album that will likely unite all Pallbearer fans. Its return-to-roots aesthetic is planted in a physical base that carries the band's dark, progressive doom into a new era.

Love Is the King is his very personal reaction to an increasingly difficult time in America's history, and while he doesn't pretend to have answers, this music is his own kind of therapy, recognizing his emotions and working through them before they devour him, and he makes both the process and the challenges well worth hearing.

Razzmatazz is a masterful debut, one that shows promise for a pair of musicians who proudly wear their influences on their sleeves.

The combo of the bludgeoning sound, impressively hooky riffs and songs, and masterful, nearly over-the-top performances work together to make unmissable metallic magic.

On every track, Minus gives listeners a clear sense of her worldview and balances all the elements of her music with an organic sophistication remarkable for a debut album.

Tracks unloading Actress trademarks like clinking and swarming FX ("Diamond X") and fitful kick-drum jabs ("Leaves Against the Sky") are more alluring and welcoming than usual. Six years after he etched a headstone for music, this enigma has made the easiest point of entry into his catalog.

The dread that percolates throughout the album comes from the ominous production and burly subject matter, but Daveed Diggs' quick-witted and masterfully controlled flows amplify the anxiety. Like the masked killer in a scary movie, Diggs seems supernaturally several steps ahead at all times.

The likes of Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent, Elton John, 6lack, Fatoumata Diawara, and Peter Hook help pull the album away from the realm of solipsism, suggesting that even when the world is largely isolated from itself, there is still the common language of music that binds us all.

While not an essential album for fans of Big Thief, admirers of Lenker's solo work will find another reliably solid, touching set of songs here, and the instrumentals may offer ambient comfort for late, late nights or the sequestered.

The album's numerous anime references will be lost on listeners who don't follow the art form, but nearly anyone can relate to his confusion, weariness, and desire to set things back on the right path.

Folks who were expecting Lydia Loveless to be the next savior of country music may be thrown for a loop by Daughter, but anyone who wants to hear one of America's best and boldest songwriters working at the top of her game owes it to themselves to give it a careful listen.

[The E Street Band are] playing not out of a sense of hunger, but communion. This shared warmth carries Letter to You through the moments where the younger Bruce is perhaps a bit too precious and the older Springsteen is a bit too clear, turning a record that's a meditation on mortality into a celebration of what it means to be alive in the moment.

The Ascension ranks with Carrie & Lowell as his most personal and affecting work to date.

Bronson's imagination, vivid as ever, makes up for the decreasing variation in his microphone approach.

The unrelenting Dealing with Demons bears all of the hallmarks of its predecessors, including cover art that belongs on the side of the world's most sinister boogie van, but it aims for catharsis instead of apoplexy.

Intimate, sensitive, and unabashedly vulnerable, Mama's Boy is far and away their quietest and most introverted affair to date, yet it adds a depth and substance to LANY's catalog that had been lacking from their usual feel-good Gen Z anthems.

The desperation in her voice is accentuated by her close-fisted strums on (usually) an acoustic guitar, a combination that underscores how this is music made of and for isolation.

Produced and recorded with a skill that's all the more effective for its unwillingness to intrude on the band, Atlas Vending is a dazzling display of form and content that shows listeners how math rock can be effectively weaponized.

The resulting project is Headie's most complete and compelling set to date. Pulling out all the stops for an expansive statement of self, in EDNA the Tottenham great provides an impeccable portfolio of his varied sonics, concretizing his place among London's finest.

Clipped down to 40 minutes, Nobody Lives Here Anymore would have the potential to be a great album; at 77 minutes, it's quality music that somehow wears out its welcome.

Nightcap at Wits' End is the most complete articulation of their wide-reaching creative range, and stands as the their most focused and engaging work to date.

Album No. 8 is an intensely personal album that feels like Melua made it for herself first and foremost.

Regardless of the thematic angle, Ivey approaches his music with intelligence and heart, serving up concise views of both the inner and outer worlds on this very likeable sophomore set.

Throughout Someone New, on top of its hypnotic mix of the strange and familiar, Deland's vulnerable voice helps make her self-conscious, searching commentaries all the more engrossing.

Dark Hearts may not be entirely successful, but it's impossible to dismiss it as a failure thanks to the heart and soul Annie put into the lyrics and vocals. Also, not too many dance-pop artists are willing to explore the darkness that settles in once the bubble bursts, and she's to be commended for that.

This gift for distilling complex emotions into relatable songs is just as vital to Beabadoobee's music as her rapidly evolving sound, and both shine on Fake It Flowers.

A few of the album's tracks are somewhat formless and not distinctive enough to make a lasting impression, but overall, SIGN is one of the more approachable Autechre releases in quite some time, and an easier starting (or reentry) point for listeners who aren't committed enough to plunge into their headier works.

The album is a strong reaffirmation of Francis' stylistic elasticity. It covers even more territory than AlunaGeorge's preceding second album, I Remember, while coming across as more unified. Francis also challenges herself as a vocalist.

Taken together, it's a sequestered, rainy Sunday type of album with flawed, world-weary vocal performances that are laid bare by such impressionistic accompaniment.

Sundowner recalls the more relaxed and reflective moods of Morby's earlier albums.

Taken as a whole, Private Lives is the richest rock & roll Low Cut Connie have made to date and it's married to Weiner's most emotionally resonant set of songs, a combination that's both potent and moving.

True to form, Shamir continues to push boundaries as the album comes to a close with the dramatic vocals and strings of "In This Hole." Moments like this make it clear that this album isn't a simple return to pop for Shamir; it's a wide embrace of everything he can do with his music -- at this point in his career, anyway.

Róisín Machine is cohesive and spellbinding. Murphy truly is a machine in her consistent creativity, and this is a particularly well-oiled example of her brilliance.

Chronologically sequenced, it presents an alternate, semi-secret MC timeline. It starts with an upbeat Mariah Carey outtake, ends with a 2020 acoustic version of Butterfly track "Close My Eyes," and more importantly contains some prime B-sides.

The stylistic shifts can be jarring, but Taylor sells the hell out it, and in doing so manages to bring some fun into the often-dour Slipknot universe.

Long in the Tooth is easily the most complex album in the Budos Band's catalog. It succeeds because they refuse to graft on too many extras into their sonic and stylistic approach. The music here retains the band's core strength -- they incessantly rely on deep, hard-swinging, intensely delivered grooves, no matter the material.

While much of Moveys sticks to swaying, midrange tempos, they pick up the pace halfway through, on "At It Again," though the song hangs on to the, by then, well-established hazy, ruminative demeanor. Later, the ambling "Montana" incorporates slide guitar and harmonica without leaving this sighing, world-weary state.

The New OK sometimes feels uneven and precarious, which in this context is an asset rather than a failing; as a snapshot of America in October 2020, it's unnervingly accurate and devastatingly relatable, as well as a powerful set of work from a great American band.

With Sad Hunk, Jurvanen has crafted an album about reaching the age where you don't care about being cool anymore, yet he somehow manages to find ever more nuanced and inspired levels of cool musical insight in the process.

An album that's an uneasy mix of a band that's fully in control of their sound, making some good choices as they expand, but also occasionally toppling over as they overreach. It's worth checking out for the songs that work -- the group certainly haven't lost their touch when it comes to uptempo gloomy synth pop -- and the less successful moments aren't enough to sink the album entirely.

After 2016's robust but scattered Everything at Once, the focused 10 Songs is a welcome return to their early style and one of the strongest statements in their catalog.

Silver Ladders doesn't require close listening to locate its emotional currents. It's a gorgeous immersion in loneliness, solitude, and perseverance that immediately sets a mood and could soundtrack the entirety of the colder seasons.

As with any of the band's releases, this one requires extreme patience, as it can go from lengthy passages of near-stillness to unrelenting torrents of sound.

A consistently striking and highly collaborative full-length that, despite its hospitable quality, is the Griselda member's most exemplary solo release yet -- his most considered display of grim street bulletins and snarling admonitions.

Despite its overtly metaphysical esthetic, Holy Smokes Future Jokes goes down fairly easy, as the band conjure up melodies that swaddle Earley's heady yet homespun lyrics in the golden hues of breezy west coast pop and country-folk.

The record is so soft and slow it can veer into the sleepy. That wasn't a problem with Turn Up the Quiet, whose stillness was compelling, so This Dream of You winds up shining a light on the accomplishment of the final album Krall and LiPuma finished in his lifetime. Together, they knew which songs to select to create a complete listen. What remained behind is nice but not quite absorbing.

Despite the prominent guest stars and radical musical changes, Shiver's focus is always on Jónsi and his innate gift for expressing pure feeling. As he reinvents what is essential to his music, he delivers some previously unimagined thrills.

Relatable and reinvigorated, the catchy and confessional Melanie C is not only a reboot for the artist's sound, but a rebirth for the icon herself.

Overflowing with confidence, Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa conquer each track on The Album with their vocal ability (both singing and rapping) and effortless charm, switching up styles to offer something for every type of fan.

The resulting follow-up, Midnight Manor, finds the six-piece still cranking out riff-fueled, freewheeling rock jams about booze and women (and the music industry). ... Filler-free album.

It's clear that Working Men's Club are talented and there are a couple songs here that work as singles, but in the future they need to discover their own sound and let go of their tight grip on the past, both distant and recent.

Good Luck with Whatever is dad rock at its finest, unapologetically classicist in tone and full of a hard-won gratitude. But the way that it's also struck through with a wry sense of existential dread speaks to the group's decidedly un-dad-like ability to perfectly capture the climate of the present moment.

Detractors will rightfully point out that Free Love utilizes the same sonic architecture as its predecessors, but it's a fairly idiosyncratic template and one that Meath and Sanborn have shown great skill with over three albums now. Besides, the world always needs more dance music for introverts.

Since so much of the album's power resides in its stunning production, this set might be slightly less revelatory than some of Harvey's other demo albums. Nevertheless, die-hard fans will savor the glimpse into her creative process that To Bring You My Love: The Demos provides.

Free Humans is a dense album, with sounds stuffed into every available space and fields of ideas painstakingly arranged on each song. Both precisely calculated and boundlessly imaginative, Free Humans creates an expansive world in which Hen Ogledd can continue to sculpt their bizarre brand of pop music.

On All Thoughts Fly, von Hausswolff yearns to express the unspeakable -- that which lies not just beyond words but stands apart from them. She offers a musical authority that can only be fully realized when openly acknowledging and submitting to one's own vulnerability.

Its pop-R&B foundation is a little slicker, still tricked out with the occasional trap-styled production techniques -- probing bass, rattling percussion -- twisted just enough to not sound overdone.

While some songs are more interesting than others and some tend too close to blink-182 worship, Tickets to My Downfall succeeds more than it falters. While it would rank as a slightly above average album for any given pop-punk band, there's an added excitement in how risky this about-face is for a multi-platinum artist who could have easily turned in the same record he made last time.

It's not the sound of a group resting on their laurels, it's the sound of a band summoning their strengths with a hint of sentiment to figure out how to deal with a world gone mad.

While Versions of the Truth's second half is more subtle and laid-back, it is also more adventurous; it adds dimension and balance to an already deeply resonant outing.

While some may find the two earlier volumes more satisfying due to more dramatic presentations, the "Perfect Vision" trilogy needed Peradam's gentler, decidedly more exploratory texts of a dangerous spiritual quest and discovery to come full-circle. Framed by field-recorded eloquence, Smith's voice delivers on that potential.

There is no other album in Motorpsycho's vast catalog -- including its two companions -- that reaches these exploratory heights. For all of their ambition and excess, Motorpsycho never surrender their focus, their musicality, nor their powerful emotive directness.

At 23 tracks, there's a little something for everyone, and although A Day in a Yellow Beat could benefit from some pruning, it is not without its rewards.

As a collection, Shore emits a sense of coming through something and arriving anew with the welcome bruises that foster greater understanding and compassion.

How Ill Thy World Is Ordered would feel like a grift in lesser hands, but there's no chicanery to be found here, only solid, smart songwriting with a little bit of rock & roll peacocking tossed in for good measure.

Even though Renegade Breakdown intentionally lacks the club energy that drove much of Davidson's best-known material, it's at least as inventive and exploratory.

Carefree Theatre is a well-crafted exercise in sunny indie pop, with clean and fuzzy guitars pairing up for maximum melodic friendliness and contented harmonies keeping the music fresh and warm.

While the busy sonics and intricate wordplay of Haunted Painting mean there's a lot going on, Dupuis juggles it all with flair and heart.

Blue Hearts is a cry of purifying anger in a dark time, and its heat produces a truly necessary light; it's one of the very best solo albums Mould has given us to date.

It's a continuation of what the band did three decades earlier on ACR: MCR, which showed Weatherall and company the way forward, all the way down to the recruitment of Denise Johnson as lead vocalist.