This album is just as vibrant, innovative and exciting as Alfredo was five years ago.

The love is undeniably deep – overflowing, perhaps – and moisturizer is a proud and expressive declaration of both a newfound queer identity and queer endearment. That it sometimes misses the mark due to its rose-tinted vision is hard to be too miffed at.

Headlights solidifies Alex G’s gift for tapping into the familiarity across our individual experiences. His melodies are oftentimes warm and inviting while also imbued with quirky flourishes that evoke a potent nostalgia. His lyrics bring to life scenes that are specific, relatable, and very often painful.

All through No Sign of Weakness, Burna Boy strikes a balance between catchy tunes and in-your-face lyrics, showing he’s not backing down and is as strong as ever, no matter what challenges come his way.

Different Rooms is more evidence of the duo’s quality, and its main downside is that it doesn’t reach the magical highs of their debut album. Still, in different places, different results will be yielded; Different Rooms may have familiar qualities, but it makes for a different excursion.

With this new record, Winter’s fortitude is on full display. It feels unabridged yet restrained, folksy yet contemporary, busy yet bucolic – a matter of perspective, a trick of the light.

With Scratch It, it’s hard to image a finer U.S. Girls album.

The record pleasantly showcases Kesha’s impressive vocal range, emotive delivery and riff performance, but the final song is a spark that serves to highlight the unevenness of the album.

There’s just something slightly underdeveloped about the thing as a whole, as if Lorde was excited to excise these meditations and get them into some interesting musical passages.

By linking up wuth the most expansive list of collaborators she’s tapped to date (BADBADNOTGOOD, Exaktly and Butcher Brown are among the producers), it also finds her weaving through arguably the most layered, fine musical backdrops she’s yet presented.

Phantom Island is a beautiful album that occasionally misses the mark lyrically. The album’s big sound and intense optimism offer a lot of brightness to take in. But anyone listening to a band called King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard should not expect subtlety.

It’s the soundtrack of a summer; the music playing during first intimacies and turning 18. Anyone that isn’t old and cynical can embrace this sentiment, and maybe find a piece of themselves in this.

On Lifetime, de Casier not only manages to create a truly hypnagogic aura, but captured this elusive quality of oneiric purity and grace. It’s the sound of an existence beyond our own, prismatic and startlingly beautiful.

The surreal and whimsical electric guitar licks that slice through the track’s acoustic backbone achieve a sense of flippantness that foreshadows the thesis of I’ll Be Waving.

It’s a rewarding and fun listen – but it also magnifies the inescapable fact that Pulp, just like their audience, have matured.

Get Sunk is not a flawless affair – it sometimes still feels a little torn between emotional poignancy and comfortable adult defeatism, and some moments almost demand a more aggressive, forlorn brevity. But Berninger’s second solo effort is a rich and satisfying listen, evading the generic bland arrogance of The National’s low points.

Each track very much lives and breathes in a world of its own, all while coming together to present a cohesive feeling.

Despite running for over 2 hours, the album feels notably succinct, even concise.

Evangelic Girl is a Gun would be parallel to [David Bowie's] Young Americans.

Ambitious and heartfelt, Crooked Wing might have needed more time – or anger – to fully reveal qualities we manage to briefly glimpse only.

Metalhorse, like a carousel in the conceptual bedraggled funfair, spins itself in circles for its own sake. It’s honest about its origins and inspiration, but hurts itself by not seeing that it’s repeating itself as it goes on.

The Scholars doesn’t reinvent Car Seat Headrest so much as it lays them bare.

Yes, Mclusky are still here, but they’ve returned to the well balanced noise rock of their debut, My Pain and Sadness is more Sad and Painful than Yours, where things aren’t quite as thrilling as on Do Dallas and The Difference Between….

A significant experiment for woods. Lyrically, he’s as eloquent as ever, moving from abstract images to direct statements, from confessional rants to journalistic quips, from the troughs of despair to the apexes of mania. His use of multiple producers pays off, as well, helping to sustain a liminal space.

This kaleidoscopic vista is the album’s ultimate strength, arguing that all these sonic formations can be united within one band. Just as we, as individuals, include multitudes, so do Model/Actriz. In a world that is uniquely broken, they persist unwaveringly.

Overall, Noble and Godlike in Ruin is a wonder.

Corners are filled and silences left for dramatic effect. Sometimes the effect saturates, leaving certain numbers in the shadows of the grandest moments. .... However, some of the best moments come when Taylor sets aside the strings and choir, putting the focus on a driving beat.

A less talented songwriter would allow their music to collapse under the weight of such subject matter, but such never comes close to being true on Bloodless. Part of this is due to the compulsive replayability of these tunes.