Barlow is still in touch with what was best about his old work while maturing in the ways that truly matter.

Forest of Your Problems is unlikely to win over anyone not already sold on their particularly odd formula, but there is something admirable about the continuation of their off-kilter approach, making this record a victory lap for their existing fan base and a promise that the rhythms won't stop anytime soon.

Solid Gold U-Roy is a fittingly triumphant final act from an artist who dedicated his life to the advancement of art. It's at once traditional and futuristic, returning to some of U-Roy's past victories and somehow rendering them even brighter and more invigorating.

Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) offers an astonishing portrait of the many places Metheny has been, and intimates where he may yet go. It's an album that virtually all of his fans can celebrate. It may also lead to another generation discovering him.

The Sound of Yourself is another heart-breaking, spirit-lifting highlight in McCaughan's long and captivating career and shouldn't be missed by long-time fans or new converts.

Both acts channel traditional folk music's power to express extreme desire, sorrow, and emptiness, occasionally driving the bitterness home by pushing the decibels into the red.

Thanks to their renewed focus, their willingness to embrace new ideas, Cleveland's songs, and the symbiotic relationship between the group and Younge, this feels like a fresh start for the band and some of the best psychedelic rock around in the early 2020s.

Like nearly all of Calix's music, absent origin is complex and challenging, but it reflects an unmistakably unique perspective on the world.

Observatory is a satisfying listen and deserves to be heard on its own merits. On whether or not it will appease longtime Wrens fans as a vestige of a long-promised return, the jury remains out.

Guests including Big Thief's Buck Meek, Mauno's Eliza Niemi, and pedal steel guitarist Aaron Goldstein also contributed to the album's gentle, textured palette. It opens with a sparse, Renaissance-style folk tune, the dulcimer-accompanied "Take On Me," which introduces Le Ren's lithe and lucid vocal delivery alongside evocative lyrics.

The Sun Is Shining Down sounds hungry and vital. Mayall delivers these rough-and-ready blues like a champ.

Shenfeld's debut blurs lines between post-minimalism, drone, noise, progressive electronic, and ambient. Its nonconformity is a major part of why it's so captivating and refreshing, but even beyond that, it's simply a joyous listening experience.

It might scare off some of the fans drawn to the pop side of Toro, but for those who appreciate the subtle twists and turns of his early work -- and especially those who wish he had expanded on What For? -- this is Bear and band at their most exciting, most inventive. and most fun.

Only completists will need to collect every volume of the series. Despite their similarities, each volume is an excellent document of any given night on-stage with Neil Young, and Royce Hall 1971 finds him in just as fine form as the best of his solo performances from this time.

More D4ta is Moderat's most introverted album, artfully expressing the tension of lockdown and facing an uncertain future.

Promise of the Real give Noise & Flowers the muscle the music needs, which means the album never sounds nostalgic or stiff: it's a warm celebration of the music made while Elliot Roberts stood by Neil Young's side.

It's a tense and impatient record, even by Megadeth's standards, and re-affirms the band's status as completely essential metal deities who are still operating on a level of excellence most of their peers fell from decades ago.

While lyrically bleak, Gulp! delivers its pessimism with fist-pumping enthusiasm for the most part, at least until the meditative, Kinks-evoking closer "Light Industry" emphasizes life's repetition on the album's one true outlier, like a final wink and a nod.

Grander in scope than Gibbs' rightly praised single-producer efforts, $oul $old $eparately is nearly as consistent, as the project is driven by his unyielding focus.

Incredible songs like "Dusted" and "Kisses to the Crying Cooks" from the Fast Japanese Spin Cycle EP don't make the final cut. Despite these omissions, the compilation does a good job of weeding out the filler, and exists as an annex of even more fleetingly amazing songwriting from GbV's defining era.

A maverick saxophonist and sonic experimentalist, Sam Gendel applies his distinctive approach to contemporary R&B hits on his inventive 2023 covers album, COOKUP.

Plastic Eternity shows Mudhoney are capable of surprising us (and themselves) thirty-five years in, and judging from the results, it won't be the last time they'll pull that off.

Where her peers have scaled down their ambitions, she's reaching for grand ideas and emotions on Keep Your Courage, turning her personal journey into something universal.

These final four compositions on The Forest in Me invite listeners to eavesdrop on a creative process, in the process of emerging, from musicians undaunted by physical separation. They always find a compelling way of establishing a collective voice.

There's joy in every moment.

A record that's as catchy as it is emotionally overpowering.

JID018 is an absolutely simmering set, with one of Afrobeat's creators showing us how it's done once again.

Ashnikko is part rage rapper, part feminist pop star, part disaffected rocker with emo-goth tendencies, but still somehow categorically none of the above, donning a new mask for each new expression.