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.