While not reaching the heights of Love Is Not Enough, there's still a great deal to enjoy on Hum of Hurt.

In transforming personal anguish into shared material, BIG|BRAVE provide listeners with a tangible reminder that grief will never belong to them alone, and make critical contact with a transcendent reality we can conceive of, even if it remains beyond full reach.

you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love has real strengths, and the bones of a brilliant artist and a savvy creative team are very much intact. If it sometimes feels overly managed and anxious to belong to the moment, the best of it proves Rodrigo can still reach the heights of her first two records when she swings for them.

With its warm, welcome rejection of apathy and cynicism, The Boys of Dungeon Lane is an inviting, accessible and surprisingly memorable listen.

This may be something different than what fans wanted or expected, but it's a project full of things that undoubtedly need to be said and heard.

In many ways, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter is the band's most refined album to date, despite its compulsive and swift development.

With Be Sweet to Me, Violet Grohl has shifted the weight of expectation with the expertise of a powerlifter. Outrunning a long-cast shadow, she's proven why she deserves your attention.

"Does Inferno live up to the hype?" Thankfully, it unequivocally does.

It's time to wake the hell up. Cost of Living Adjustment hits like piping hot, full-bodied espresso right to the heart, and it's the band's best work yet.

Political music only works with a strong point of view, which MUNA lack on this record. That said, it has at least a couple niche hits to round out summer playlists and Pride party sets. Even without the depth, MUNA know how to please a crowd — but the impression is fleeting.

A dozen listens to Train on the Island, the New Zealand songwriter's mesmerizing fifth record, will yield a dozen interpretations, a century's worth of pondering and re-pondering condensed into 40 minutes.

The irony of Kneecap's urgent political potency is that FENIAN is fun as hell.

Rashad has delivered yet another excellent project, striking a delicate balance between exploring new sounds and remaining true to what has always made his music so appealing.

With her sharp pen and a deft balance of traditional and modern sounds, Middle of Nowhere is a reminder of why Musgraves is a lone star of her calibre.

On Your Favorite Toy, it's all loud and all fast all the time. (One notable exception is "If You Only Knew," a relatively straightforward rock song that nonetheless stands out thanks to an excellent hook.) Compounding this problem is the fact that Grohl remains a frustratingly boring lyricist.

There are moments on Long Long Road where Burnett almost makes his case: the rollicking "Baby Don't Go" is endearing, and Ringo is especially having fun on line dance-ready "Why." Much like Brian Wilson's feature-heavy No Pier Pressure, however, Starr mostly feels like a guest on his own album.

Friko play with more lift and propulsion, creating songs that sprint and bloom with a confidence their debut, 2024's Where we've been, Where we go from here, only hinted at.

This far into their career, you don't need a They Might Be Giants album to be classic — you just need it to be a reminder of how great they are, and have been since before you were born, probably.

Much of what set WU LYF apart from other UK pop-rockers has been dulled to match their ambitions and ages. It's maximalist minimalism (or is that minimalist maximalism?) at its most heartfelt and bland, similar to other heartsick stadium "rockers" like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons.

Her sophomore LP embraces the more straightforward impulses of her pristine pop songcraft — to results that feel more jubilant and whimsical than anything else she's ever done.

A pretty perfect soundtrack to the never-ending battle against conformity, complacency and chords. .... There's a ferocity and alienness to the complexity. While Angine de Poitrine are certainly not alone in their explorations of microtonality, experimentation and funk, the music is nevertheless demanding in a way that other popular contemporary sounds are not.

It's a leap of faith, a self-assured reinvention, and a testament to Parks' chameleonic staying power.

On their 10th album, The Former Site Of, bandleader A.C. Newman has honed his playful gibberish to the point that it's become his signature style, delightful rather than simply a way to fill the syllables of his towering power pop melodies.

The beauty of Hurts Like Hell is rooted in this catharsis: transmuting pain — the good, the bad and the ugly — into a unit of strength and perseverance.

Honora feels a bit like a few different projects in one, its moments of revelatory beauty refracted through a slightly convoluted structure.

Altogether, Ö feels like candy: addictive, sweet, glossy; the ultimate sugar rush. While it remains to be seen if there's a crash coming, Fcukers are undeniably the life of the party.

While there's arguably nothing here that will dethrone your favourite all-time Robyn tracks ("Call Your Girlfriend" forever wins the March Madness bracket, doesn't it?), a great many stand proudly amongst them — and for most fans, this is very much enough right now.

Saputjiji is not an easy listen; at times, it's downright ugly. But as the empire's war machine kicks back into high gear, Tagaq's courageous offering is a much-needed wake-up call.