Flat and unbelievable, Vultures 2 makes so little impact it's forgotten almost the moment it's over.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's a potent celebration of life amidst chaos and cruel fate, and while it still doesn't sound exactly happy, in its way it is the most optimistic LP Cave has ever made.

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."

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.

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.

The Bed I Made is easily the equal of any of their earlier work. It should make old fans very happy, while giving anyone lucky enough to come across the record a chance to discover that one of the best bands to come out of the indie rock scene of the 1990s is now one of the best bands of the 2020s too.

Bird's Eye is more of a grower than Hypnos, but it gradually reveals itself to be another marvelous, multifaceted record.

Beabadoobee refuses to be boxed in as she grows as a woman and artist, and on This Is How Tomorrow Moves, she dares her listeners to keep up with her changes.

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.

Stepping up significantly from the sometimes personality-light commercial sounds of her earlier work, Latto cultivates an atmosphere of palpable Deep South humidity and salacious fun on these songs.

Power more than lives up to the high standards Sarah Tudzin established on Let Me Do One More, and if you're in the mood for smart, insightful indie pop that's not afraid to rock, Illuminati Hotties is a band you need to hear.

By probing the heart's most vulnerable places on Meditations on Love, Susanna uncovers new angles on well-worn feelings and her music alike.

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.

With Imaginal Disk, Magdalena Bay straddle pop worlds, bringing together a maximalist dance club atmosphere and ecstasy-laced, burning Wicker Man euphoria, all filtered through a dial-up computer dream of the pop future.

When all is said and done, they remain fantastic songwriters, able to convey a variety of emotions without relying on the trappings of punk. The corners may have been sanded off, but it has only revealed new and interesting textures underneath.

Oyster Cuts is a softly triumphant album, one that replaces the noncommittal vagueness that plagues so much indie rock with songs that tackle difficult feelings directly. It's a sound as beautiful as it is weary, and one that gets better the more involved you become with it.

Beneath the Neon Glow is thoroughly welcoming. It's a dynamic production adorned by polished songcraft, excellent charts, and peerless lyrics.

While it might be nice to see a little more focus on something nearer to a composite sound, Wishy have already got a good thing going on an auspicious debut LP.

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

Belong rides the line between dreamy songs and noisy nightmares expertly throughout the album. Most of the band's records are best experienced in full, front to back, and Realistic IX is the same but in a different way.

With Paradise State of Mind, Foster the People have made an end-of-summer album full of cathartic grooves.

It's an album that one can't help but to imagine making for impactful concert moments.

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

This does not add up to a Great Lost Justin Townes Earle Album. Instead, these bits and pieces he left behind testify to his gifts as a writer and performer, and remind us of just how much was lost when Earle died, as well as demonstrating that someone should have convinced him to do a solo acoustic album.

Devil Rides In is lovingly curated and offers surprises even for listeners who think they know the era's music well.

A Dancefloor in Ndola provides a valuable history lesson, but it also functions as a collection of great, uplifting dance music.

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.

Punk without guitars has been done before -- everything has. Few have done it with the blend of skill, imagination, and flat-out commitment that Osees exhibit on SORCS 80.

While there's plenty of dreamy heartache, it's the often bewildering beauty Chrystabell and Lynch achieve on this album that makes it an artistic milestone for both of them.

Sadly, Flight b741 is the first record they've made where it might make more sense to avoid the journey and stick to revisiting some of their glorious excursions of the past instead.

Even without its publicity stunt release, No Name would doubtless clicked with an awful lot of Jack White's fans, and it's the sort of idiosyncratic but lean and mean rock album he's needed to make for a while.

With Aghori Mhori Mei, Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins have made an album for those grown-up kids, their fans; a rock & roll pyre lit with myth and memory.

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.

At the center of all this are Nascimento and Spalding, whose smiling interplay helps make Milton + Esperanza feel like both a capstone to a monumental career and continuation of a musical legacy.

It's an absolute must for fans, but also a great starting point for anyone who's a little more than just a casual listener, but not quite ready to venture too deep into the vaults.

If you appreciate Metheny's acoustic guitar recordings, MoonDial will undoubtedly delight, and its elegance folds seamlessly into its predecessors'.

SMILE! :D was clearly created with the intention of dealing with sharply conflicting emotions, but it still ends up being more uneven than expected, and it's just not as successful as Nurture.

If Smoke & Fiction proves to be X's final musical statement, they go out as they came in – unique, ferociously talented, and with plenty to say that's worth hearing, and they've stayed that way as the curtain falls.

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.

Baldwin's words are woven into eight of the 17 tracks, whether sung by the pained if undaunted Justin Hicks on the rippling funk of "On the Mountain," or recited by Jamaican poet and activist Staceyann Chin on "Baldwin Manifesto I" and "Baldwin Manifesto II." The pieces that don't quote Baldwin are often equally charged, freighted with anguish.

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.

It's a lovely record with a lot of personality and passion that showcases a rarely heard instrumental combo.

The standout songs are great: the relentless bounce of "Did It First" with Central Cee is infectious in its fluidity, the sophomoric and slippery "Think U the Shit (Fart)" matches ridiculous lyrical brags with an undeniably funky instrumental, and "Gimme a Light" amps up a classic Sean Paul sample with a buzzing drill beat and Ice Spice's furious flow. The less substantial tracks blur together, even with help from other rap stars.

It's at times caught between escaping into nostalgic juvenilia and dialing in perfectly manicured indie rock productions, but ultimately, Crack Cloud joyfully exploring that incongruity is the entire point.

While 2016's Two Vines had its merits, Ask That God is a welcome return to the blissful, body-moving spirit of Empire of the Sun's first two classics.

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.

In its moments of both catharsis and ambience, Vertigo maintains a consistent balance. It's a quietly adventurous album that never feels like it's pushing too hard in any one direction, even when the sounds are swinging from blown amplifiers to bubbly flutes.

At times, Dream of Delphi's soothing yet awestruck moods play more like a soundtrack than a set of songs, but those who savor Khan's powers of expression as much as her art pop savvy will find a lot to love here.

There's no heaviness here, no sense of torment. Even when he's singing about a "Swamp of Sadness" and wondering "If the Sun Never Rises Again," it's clear that Simpson has made his way through the darkness, settling into a place where he's utterly comfortable in his skin and scars.

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.

For the most part, however, The Death of Slim Shady is a bewildering slog to get through. The general concept gets old almost immediately, and from there we're left with a painful lack of new ideas

Cohen uses Paint a Room to circle through a deceptively wide spectrum of ideas and arrangements, organizing his various strange and beautiful sounds in a way that keeps drawing the listener's attention back, like trying to focus your eyes on something just out of view and figure out exactly what you're looking at.

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.

There is a wealth of emotions in the material -- some of which is self-critical -- along with some abrupt changes in style, such as the transition from the scruffy ballad "Spite" to the speedy electro-disco track "Less of You," two of many highlights. Even so, there's a flow to God Said No that rewards start-to-finish play.

It's telling that it takes cameos from a pair of rock superstars -- John Mayer helps sculpt "Better Days," Bruce Springsteen haunts the corridors of "Sandpaper" -- to help pull Bryan's aspirations into focus: where the rest of the record seems caught in its own head, these tunes have a forward motion that makes the rest of The Great American Bar Scene seem relatively bereft of musical imagination.

Dreamland may have been the album that made Glass Animals big, but song for song, I Love You So F***ing Much's thoughtful, anxious pop might be more rewarding.

Poetic symmetry drives much of Across the River of Stars and speaks to how our personal memories get intertwined with the music and movies we love, bridging us to the past. It's a poignant, desert-campfire texture they return to on songs like "Falling Forever," "Faded Glory," and "High Noon."

Bando Stone & the New World may not be his best album - it was always going to be impossible to dislodge “Awaken, My Love!” -- but it serves as a fitting summation of all the good-to-great music that has been released under the Gambino banner and might even give some clues as to where he's headed next.

Chaotic, poignant, pretentious, fascinating, and thoroughly entertaining despite or because of it all.

Blackgrass shows he can make a memorable bluegrass album as easily as he can craft a potent soul groove. The surroundings are unexpected, the quality is not.

While The Secret of Us finds her still vulnerable and singing with an audible frown, her delivery is stronger, arrangements are more sweeping and robust, and at least some of the songs are trying to look forward.

Alternating between imaginative reinterpretations and faithful renditions of familiar hits, offering a testament to the resilience of the songbook of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Rateliff leads his crew through a panoply of '70s-touched roots rock, delivered with warmth, sincerity, and occasional bursts of grit. Even amid its themes of anxiety and overcoming trauma, South of Here manages to stay buoyant, and at times playful.

If it's possible to be fun and tedious at the same time, Lady on the Cusp fits the bill.

Orquesta Akokan aren't merely revivalists -- they create their own 21st century jazzy, polyrhythmic innovations, proving that mambo remains relevant musically, culturally, and spiritually.

As on each of Fussell's albums, he moves the songs into his own special, nuanced space, creating a vibe that is unmistakably his own. This sense of personality feels increasingly rare in folk music which often errs in either self-congratulatory retro-ism or indulgent innovation. In avoiding many of the traditional avenues to authenticity, he achieves it naturally.

Unprecedented Sh!t easily marks a new phase recording by DiFranco. She and Burton present her work in an illuminating context that invites close listening, without a hint of compromise.

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.

The stage show in this form is a perfect distillation of all the themes and feelings the book digs into, boiling them down to the truest, most intense nuggets, and Pastel and Thompson's music is a big part of why it works so well both in the show and as a stand-alone album.

It can just as easily function as music for quiet reflection, nature exploration, travel, studying, or most other activities. II is their most distinctive, sophisticated, and emotionally rich work yet.

Her previous album was a breakout success for good reason, but My Light, My Destroyer succeeds in all the right ways, pushing Jenkins' songcraft ever forward and expanding her already impressive catalog.

While Brijean's music is rooted in bossa nova, AM pop, and funk influences, Macro is one of their most stylistically well-rounded productions.

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.

Her previous album was a breakout success for good reason, but My Light, My Destroyer succeeds in all the right ways, pushing Jenkins' songcraft ever forward and expanding her already impressive catalog.

Thanks to the always sympathetic production, Cottrill's dedication, and the overall strength of the songs, it's a living, breathing sound that end sup as Clairo's most inviting and easy to love record yet.

Dig beneath the surface, the lyrics make plain Healy's claim of the album being a personal record but the trick that Travis pulls off with L.A. Times is that it is engaging on the surface thanks to colorful melodies and shifting arrangements--the very things that beg for subsequent listens, the ones where themes reveal themselves.

While Big Ideas could be accused of being uneven, filler is a matter of personal genre preference here, left turns that are fun or even funny dominate, and with a closer like the helium-voiced disco entry "Slay Bitch," any remaining scolds should be few and far between.

Bad Cameo is a compelling picture of two collaborators inspiring each other to try things they might not have on their own.

While nothing quite matches the baddie intensity of "Big Boy," Dopamine works nicely, conjuring a vibe of sultry, post-club afterglow.

Rather than a succinct return to form, As It Ever Was is quite dense, occasionally getting in its own way in trying to do a bit of everything. For that reason, it might not be the record that earns them scads of new listeners, but for longtime fans, there is a lot to love.

Tunes such as "Rainlines," "Dolphin Spray," and the amusingly titled "Cafe del Mars" are among his prettiest and most straightforward, respectively, dealing out throbbing and knackered house, intimate dancehall, and vaporous techno. The few purely ambient pieces, highlighted by "Doves Over Atlantis," are almost as evocative.

While the title track is ostensibly a song about a couple falling in love, the track, as with much of Good Together, could just as easily work as a love letter penned by the members of Lake Street Dive to each other.

Passing through the Valley of Abandoned Songs, it seems, is a little like visiting the Lost & Found, and there's definite value in these reclaimed works of art.

The results are mixed if always entertaining.

Songwriter works well as an important document of a previously underrepresented era for Cash, whose career was about to enter a transformational new phase.

Sounds pleasant enough, but Greene's songs and production are so placid and unbothered by anything remotely emotional that it's hard to imagine the album causing any kind of reaction.

While Megan strays somewhat from the formula of invincible confidence and crowd-pleasing summer anthems that we're used to from MTS, its moments of bitterness and uncertainty do a lot to humanize the larger-than-life rap queen, one whose head has grown heavy from wearing the crown.

The album features a smart balance between serious, inward-looking ballads and dance tracks, and Starr writes from a personal perspective about the mix of emotions and circumstances brought about by early adulthood and stardom.

At its best, C,XOXO is a vibes album, musical perfume -- a spritz of Cabello's "meteor shower" pop moment.

SML lay down some heavy grooves, but their music is less about making people dance than it is about exploring space through communal joy.

While Mercury kept their hit streak going and matured the band with a welcome vulnerability, longtime fans of their aggressive empowerment anthems will delight in this pseudo-"return to form" from the Vegas quartet, one of their most satisfying and immediate sets to date.

On Oath, Mono's seemingly disparate, trademark elements create a universe of sound and emotion to completely immerse oneself in for a moment, an hour, or a lifetime.

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.

While Peyroux expertly commands the styles and forms she always has, her wonderful, songwriting elevates Let's Walk to an entirely different level. Essential.