A mellow blend of low-key, late-night, left-field pop and yearning R&B, the release boasts a number of intriguing high-profile collaborator.

Sparke touches on poetic remembrances of people, places, and joys as well as the more preoccupying struggles, making for a mature and poignant introduction.

The most compelling moments on McCartney III Imagined arrive when artists cut their own version of one of the album's tracks: Phoebe Bridgers finding the sweet, spectral pulse on "Seize the Day," Beck singing along to his funkified version of "Find My Way," and Josh Homme treating "Lavatory Lil" like a Desert Sessions jam. These moments help elevate McCartney III Imagined into something a little more than a curio.

Even if it's not quite as varied as Beabadoobee's debut album, Our Extended Play is still a welcome follow-up to Fake It Flowers' success.

Keem is a necessary, forward-thinking presence in the rap zeitgeist -- but The Melodic Blue is a set of variables and experiments, not the game-changer he's capable of producing.

Disc one is essentially a standard Alicia Keys LP, while the second disc is an album of remixes plus two more new songs. ... The latter half's new songs are two of the album's higher-profile collaborations: a tentative-sounding missed opportunity with Khalid and Lucky Daye, and an intoxicated duet with Swae Lee where Tyrone Davis' coasting 1979 hit "In the Mood" does most of the work.

The main shortcoming of At My Piano is that even though Brian Wilson is playing songs that he wrote, the mellow, elevator music style of these versions doesn't sound any more significantly connected to Wilson than any other session musician or unknown piano player running through familiar tunes as background music at a martini bar would sound. Despite this, it's pleasant to hear these songs in a new form.

This compilation is positively essential for fans of the band and of psychedelia of all kinds.

Radical has all of the mathy riffage, radiant melodies, and neck-snapping energy of a group fresh out of the basement. It also has the emotional maturity and brinksmanship of a seasoned crew who know which buttons to push and for how long, and it's in between those two persuasions that the album achieves greatness.

This slyly crafted collection of big bass and even bigger brags manages to bridge the old school and the new, with Uncle Snoop's encouragement as the host with the most.

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.

Vertigo of Flaws is Trees Speak's most colossal work yet, demonstrating that the group's ambitions are even greater than their previous work indicated.

Tempest Revisited seamlessly twins harmonic lyricism, soundscape textures, and powerful dynamics here. The end result is her most diverse -- and musically compelling -- album.

The clearer, uninterrupted version of the album sounds absolutely gorgeous, and actually gets better as it progresses, as Voigt saves some of the most recognizable elements for the second half, while also adding new details such as the eerie choir which appears during the tenth track.

Much as Nas' Illmatic, Wu Tang's 36 Chambers, and The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die all defined New York hip-hop by offering individualized perspectives on an ungovernable metropolis, Wiki also puts himself in the center of it all on Half God, and in doing so becomes an inextricable part of New York's magic, suffering, and boundless inspiration.

It all goes to show that Carpenter's knack for composing scores that are entertaining in their own right is alive and well, and just as engrossing nearly half a century after the first Halloween slashed its way onto the silver screen.

Delta Estácio Blues is easily the most experimental outing Marçal has yet released. The rhythmic genre fusions across rock and afoxé, glitch, samba, and pop experimentalism combine with seams and scars showing as one of the most ambitious musical projects released this year.

An album that's both intimate and communal, composed of small sounds and textures but expressing bigger feelings, particularly through the guest vocalists. "Fantasy" is easily the album's most memorable tune, cleverly snaking flutes and manipulated vocal hooks around Verushka's passionate, yearning lyrics.

Gay more than succeeds in weaving all of these seemingly disparate sounds together, and Open Arms to Open Us has the engaging feeling of walking through a kaleidoscopic multimedia art installation.

The few '70s selections -- from Sumiko Yamagata, Hiroshi Sato, and Makoto Iwabuchi -- all take easy, pleasant strolls down the middle of the road. Among other more fascinating curiosities are Mizuki Koyama's vivacious pop-R&B hybrid "Oh! Daddy" (with all-English lyrics), Kumi Nakamura's capering "Kimagure" (somewhere between Michael Franks and Seawind), and Haruo Chikada & Vibra-Tones' Kid Creole-indebted "Sofa Bed Blues," the only one that whoops it up (if politely so).

Haunting and gripping, New Decade is one of Mute's most striking releases in some time, and gives Phew a bigger platform to prove what her die-hard fans already know: she's at the peak of her powers.

It's honestly admirable that the Melvins were willing to take a big risk with an album like Five Legged Dog, but the finished product fails more than it succeeds.

Even though Old Friends New Friends doesn't contain any obvious epics similar to the most well-known pieces from Frahm's ambitious albums like All Melody and Spaces, there's still an abundance of highlights, and even his smaller-scale works can resonate in a big way.

Like all of Dwyer's improv collaborations, Gong Splat has the anything-goes feel one would expect from an impromptu jam session, but there's something in this one's combination of cosmic glide and shocked-out panic that elevates it beyond the previous releases.

At 70 minutes, Renewal runs a bit long but its momentum never ceases and the extra space allows for Strings and his supple, intuitive band to push at the boundaries of where traditional and progressive bluegrass meet.

Ayewa's poetry soars above the band, whose attack offers ancient-to-the-future sound narratives; they cross blues, free jazz, Caribbean grooves, and Afro-Latin folk with a universe of African rhythms. Open the Gates is a statement. It authoritatively signifies militant creativity as the only real language for expressing liberation and wisdom.

There's a fair number of meandering moments, but the parts that actually go places are something to behold.

Where the Viaduct Looms is a daring and mostly rewarding undertaking, especially for Smith. Performing the songs of one of alternative music's most acclaimed acts with another backing her, she uncovers meanings and feelings that weren't fully present in the original material -- and that bodes well for what she might be capable of with her own songs.