Beer has opted for a generally more cohesive sound. While some tracks do run the risk of sounding samey in terms of production, the main strengths of this album lie in Beer’s powerful voice and transparent lyrics.

Thundercat has a giant heart, and It Is What It Is is the best display of his enormous empathy yet, even if it does have a few unnecessary goofs along the way.

Who knows whether the notoriously megalomaniacal Jackson would approve of this album-people on both sides of that argument have valid points-but as a start-to-finish collection of songs it's more enjoyable and less filler-stuffed than anything he's released since Bad, a minor miracle given the circumstances.

Taken all together, Fake It Flowers is a resoundingly confident and addictive debut from someone who sounds like she’s ready to take on the world.

While A Foul Form honors the history of hardcore, it also occurs as smartly topical, the band’s turbid rage and anti-aesthetic stance conjuring a post-capitalistic malaise and the decay of global culture. And though this set marks a pivot from previous work, spotlighting the band as they navigate a fresh battery of sonics, it’s unmistakably them.

The project as a whole, despite its unabashed expressiveness, is characterized by subtle restraint, particularly on the part of Chubb. Flirting with histrionics while employing a semi-confessional MO, she largely avoids collapsing into hackneyed postures or melodrama.

The young choristers’ bright, buoyant singing brings an airy freshness to this singular set of synth-laden art-pop songs, a well-suited sonic palette for Jenn Wasner’s thoughtful musings on contemporary life.

All the arrangements feel organic and overflow from track to track. Rossen’s crafted a purposeful exploitation of his emotions as always, but this time it’s fully under his control.

It pushes and pulls the listener into its warm underbelly whilst being contradictory in nature from one minute to the next. The more jarring elements of the album are counterpointed with soothing cascades of sound that envelope the listener before being jettisoned off again before too long.

On one hand, Muddy Time is clearly a love letter to Doyle’s beloved predecessors, most readily perhaps Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom as well as Eno’s earlier vocal flirtations. But it’s also perhaps the most complete vision of Doyle’s works yet.

It's worth giving Castlemania a few more chances, because beneath what feels like constant disharmony, is something quite refreshing.

Overall, Asphalt Meadows is a fine record from a band so deep into their career they really have nothing left to prove — except, it seems, to themselves.

More than anything, the album allows the trio to not only appeal to the variety within their followers, it also shows they’ve still got plenty of ground ahead of them.

On Half A Human, they’ve taken steps to create songs that better reflect their states of mind and, as a result, have uncovered a new confidence and self-assuredness. Regardless of their music’s reception, their changing circumstances, the world at large, they’re right where they want to be.

With a twisted approach to a tried sound, The C.I.A. expand on their declarations of their debut, enhancing every note, every string, every crash, and a lot of it comes from how well the three synchronize their unique sounds.

There is plenty of fun and escapism of the sort that gave Jepsen her well-earned reputation in the popsphere, but in terms of her progression as an artist, its most striking tracks prove to be the ones that are more self-focused.

This isn't yet Tucker's masterpiece. But it's surely a step in that direction.

Blood is an undeniably fun album brimming with indie-pop sensibilities and anthemic energy that makes listeners want to sing along.

Despite the leaps and bounds that this effort makes songwriting wise, it just feels less unique than it did before.

Desire Lines is undoubtedly a Camera Obscura album, but it might be their first that is more suited to quiet winter nights inside, rather than the sunny side of things that dominated their sound on their previous albums.

Foxing are aware they’re alienating some fans, but that makes it the kind of evolution one should admire and value. And with Murphy’s melancholic poetry persisting as the band’s heavy heart and soul, the genre’s most polarizing band, whether you like it or not, has reached yet another new level of boldness and grandeur.

It is perhaps her most approachable and her most celebratory, and a solid reminder of why she garnered our attention in the first place.

Although it’s not without some flaws, mainly lying within its familiarity, Anything Can’t Happen is a terrific album from Dorothea Paas, whose career will hopefully only go up from here.

Bully’s third album is nonetheless breezy, it’s unapologetic in its raggedness, and even if they aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel they still align perfectly with each other and support Bognanno wonderfully. Bully are still pushing the painful narrative begun on Feels Like, and SUGAREGG is a continuation of those themes in a way that works powerfully for them.

The Hill comes alive and is best enjoyed when under close inspection. With each subsequent release, the band have placed greater value in texture as a driving force for eliciting emotional reactions, and this album continues that trend.

Devoid of meaty pop nuggets, Mythopoetics sounds like an unstable wormhole that travels from 2020’s critically-lauded The Caretaker to wherever the heck the Half Waif project lands next.

They still may not make an incredibly fashionable brand of music, but this new record shows that they're pretty great at it.

While Personality is worthy of praise for its feverous energy and detailed, hot-iron arrangements, there isn't a lot to make the album really stick.