Constant if fluid oscillations between diaphanous ballads, pulsing slow jams, and modern street soul bangers are just as suited for the greater number of songs based in relationships. The water and flotation metaphors keep flowing, too. ... In several other songs, Kelela is dealing with a lover who is noncommittal, elusive, and inexpressive. They're just as affecting.

Just when you think they've hit an artistic plateau, they take another creative leap into the unknown, only to return with what feels like a deeper, more heartfelt statement of who they are. With This Is Why, Paramore underline that notion, pulling the artistic and emotional threads of their career into a cohesive, ardent whole.

While there are moments of quiet reflection and affection here, Paul still embraces dissonant alt-rock textures on parts of the album, including on opener "My Blood Runs Through This Land," a noisy, borderline shoegaze-metal entry with menacing chords and barely intelligible lyrics.

Eye of I showcases the immediacy and range in Lewis' musical imagination in composition, improvisation, and communication with a freer, more immediately instinctive persona on full display. All killer, no filler.

The album was reportedly rush-released due to hackers threatening to leak the album unless he paid them a million dollars; the album wasn't fully mixed yet, making it seem raw and unfinished. (Trippie stated plans to later release a cleaned-up mix of the album.) On top of its sheer roughness, the album is as bloated as 2020's Pegasus, lasting 76 minutes and 25 songs.

Every Acre is H.C. McEntire's third solo album, and with each release she has demonstrated that she's a major talent who deserves to be recognized by anyone with a taste for a well-told story of one woman's life.

A meeting of the minds that will satisfy and excite fans of either or both artists, Colours of Air is a testament to Morgan and English's artistry that grows richer with each listen.

The follow-up, Portrait of a Dog, leans more heavily into jazz influences, including instrumental explorations and improvisation, while still processing the familial and adding a breakup to the mix.

The songs are honest, deep, and direct, but never heavy-handed. Mostly, The Candle and the Flame finds Forster taking stock of his long and storied life, and grasping at some of the many moments of love and beauty he experienced along the way.

It's largely unobtrusive and serviceable, distinguished mostly by Smith's elastic voice and increased specificity and complexity to the reflective and romantic songs.

Furling never feels like a mixed bag, primarily due to the control with which she moves through her songs. The softer acoustic folk tunes and heavier, more far-reaching dives into piano and densely stacked arrangement all feel like similar parts of a whole, and the album flutters by beautifully like an unbothered mind wandering through various thoughts on a sunny day.

The first Get Up Sequence showed that the Go! Team was firmly back on the course they embarked on with Thunder, Lightning, Strike; the second might just be its equal. It certainly has the right sound, the right songs, and the same sense of bonkers experimentalism and life-affirming spirit to be at least in the running.

Tightening up some loose ends might have made The Waeve more cohesive, but at its best, it's elegant, unpredictable music made for the sheer rejuvenating pleasure of it.

Let's Start Here. may be more loud guitars than 808s, but Lil Yachty still commands the songs powerfully, making vessels of expression out of whatever sounds he chooses.

Deftly executed and ideal for repeat listens, Diamonds & Dancefloors makes it two-for-two for Max's catalog, delivering on the promise of her debut and pushing her even further toward the top of the early-2020s pop pantheon.

The album is a grower, and its odd confluence of reference points is better absorbed than examined. Getting too caught up on the particulars how U.K. folk and jangly college rock fit together only distracts from the Tubs' neat presentation of their first batch of deceptively complex and solidly constructed tunes.

In some ways, Compositions feels more like a film score than other Deathprod albums, not quite resembling variations on a theme, but aurally illustrating a specific scene with each track. Unfortunately, nothing here really expands past being interesting sounds or settings, and these pieces don't elevate to the haunting, mesmerizing level of Deathprod's best work.

Heavier than ever, Oozing Wound find no resolution or peace with these songs, but continue banging their heads against the wall in beautiful fits of rage and exhilaration.

It's that feeling of needing to get out of the house and away from your family, or perhaps yourself, that We Are Scientists distill with lab precision on Lobes.

With Say I Won't, Bass Drum of Death evoke the sweaty album rock of the '70s, infusing it with an undeniably raw and sultry immediacy all their own.

Aided by Ashworth's sure hand, the new leaf Thomas turns over here means that Smalltown Stardust is just as good a mellow, meaningful King Tuff album as Was Dead is a rollicking, down and dirty rock record. Which is to say, really, really good indeed.

It's an intelligent, compassionate, heartfelt album from a man who knows how to make them, and we should all be as grateful as Joe Henry that he's around to sing these songs.

It's as viscerally effective as anything Fucked Up have ever recorded and smart enough to speak to the mind as well as the heart. If this is what the band can do in just one day, imagine what they could have done if they'd given themselves a week.

Whether autobiographical or a thought exercise, Honey is evocative and often relatable, if in turn inevitably alienating and mercurial.

It's a lot of samey-sounding material to wade through just to find a slightly different version of "Mississippi." While the remix is instructive, offering insight into Dylan's intentions and making Time Out of Mind seem less like an outlier in his discography, this set is ultimately for the hardcore heads, who don't mind hearing minute variations on familiar themes.

Much like the natural world it describes, Complete Mountain Almanac is a deeply nuanced record of layers and unseen details that only reveal themselves with time.

The resulting album is perhaps surprisingly uplifting and affectionate in tone. Based in a reflective, if dance-minded, bedroom-R&B zone for the most part.

The wonderful paradox of John Cale's music is his best albums don't often sound like one another, but they're all driven by music no one else could create, and his heart, soul, and vision are visible and intact through the dense, free-flowing atmospheres of Mercy.