From radically manipulated samples to original compositions played by live musicians, no particular method suits Arrington best here. The highlights fall across the spectrum.

Without applying any analysis, there is much to enjoy here; their raucous energy shines just as bright, but underneath the surface Ultra Mono lacks the sparkle that made their first two records truly special.

Blue on Blue shuts down any arguments that Simmons is a dilettante when it comes to performing; she's an artist who has made a satisfying and expressive work of art not once, but twice.

Generations finds Butler offering up another set of passionate songs rich with complex but understated arrangements.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In) demonstrates Sharon Jones gave 150 percent every time she stepped up to the microphone, regardless of the circumstances, and this album is a testament to her great talent as well as her gift for putting her own stamp on any song she chose to try on for size.