Beachwood Sparks hit the cosmic canyon touchpoints and beyond on their short but sweet return to recording Across The River Of Stars.

Whether it’s McKenna’s most personal album yet is up for debate. After all, she has ten of them. What’s not debatable are her well-crafted songs and this being another gem that joins her last two.

There’s a depth to the sonics that belies the skeletal two guitars/bass/drums arrangement even as the mix highlights the aforementioned Nitzsche’s electric piano on “Winterlong”). The latter composition has only appeared before as an inclusion in the 1977 anthology Decade. But that piece of forlorn glory was nonetheless different from this one, as is also the case with a jovial rendering of “Wonderin’,” a Young original that would eventually appear on 1983’s ever-so-quirky Everybody’s Rockin’.

LOWER is a profoundly personal outing that gathers Booker’s influences and life experiences together and filters them through a psychedelic lens to emerge with chaotic arrangements that act as the perfect canvas for Booker’s open conversation about feelings most would try to hide.

Throughout these eleven spellbinding performances, Buck Meek emerges with the most assured and innovative music of his solo career, skyrocketing his artistry to new heights through raw, genre-defying folk music that touches the heart and shocks the brain.

The Boy Named If, has a lot in common with Hey Clockface, whether it be the four noticeably weaker tracks or the similarly bloated 52-minute runtime. ... What does work about The Boy Named If, like any other Costello album, is the songwriting. ... When The Boy Named If hits, and it mostly does, it gives us a Costello Halloween song and yet another track about a waitress who looks like an actress, two things that are not easy to pull off. Costello is still an artist to watch.

Forever Howlong is more of the daring prog-rock Black Country has become known for, and while their growth is subtle, it is far from a non-factor. Across these eleven songs, the band spins fascinating, folksy tales and whimsically delivers them, giving the album’s dark subject matter a soft edge.

While Gabriels wear their influences on their sleeves, they are able to melt them down to form their own forward-thinking take that is as free and courageous as the genre has sounded in a long time.

Seek Shelter finds its success, not in the unabashed vibrancy of the performances, as was the case on the previous Iceage albums, but in the band’s need to experiment farther more than they ever have before.

Carpenter takes long solo walks around her property to aid in the songwriting process, the fruits of which are evident in the opening “Farther Along and Further In,” about recognizing that something has changed gradually but distinctly. Perhaps with age comes respecting the spiritual over the practical. Empathy becomes the theme of the explicitly stated “It’s Ok To Be Sad” and the standout “All Broken Hearts Break Differently,” which evokes Band-like chord patterns and great dissolving organ-like runs played by Nick Pini on Moog.

Shooting for the sweet spot of artists like Radiohead and The National, Other Lives embraces their tense, dramatic, theatrical, orchestral sound, and scope on For [Their] Love.

Taj has a one-of-a-kind personality. and the arrangements are solid in what potentially could be a great album. However, although the background vocalists are not on every track, their presence on enough of them mars the album. For whatever reason, they just don’t match the vibe and are incompatible with Taj’s vocals. His phrasing and Simon’s arrangements are the real pluses.

Overall “World on the Ground” is a work of quiet beauty that brims with irresistible melodies and compelling storytelling. These songs showcase Jarosz’s growth as a songwriter as they linger with the listener long after the album ends.

Spread over nearly a dozen tracks, the band leans more into classic funk and jazz this time around, while carrying over their other influences for one of their finest records yet.

Alice, long regarded as one of the pillars of spiritual jazz, is at her most deeply spiritual in this setting, one that has only minute traces, if any, associated with jazz.

At the same time, that wide scope can work against the album’s cohesion. Some of the transitions feel abrupt, particularly in the middle run, and the pacing can be uneven as a result. But the trade-off is that the record rarely drags and creates a sense of anticipation for what is coming next.

The chemistry shared between The Roots vocalist and Danger Mouse on Cheat Codes is so high caliber that it’s almost impossible to believe the two artists walk amongst the common man. The term “God Level” is thrown around a bit within the hip-hop community, and once people hear Cheat Codes, that saying is going to have a new definition.

Magic, Alive! feels like our first proper introduction to Dixon’s wide-ranging artistry and acrobatic vocals. The tracklist is chaotic yet never feels disconnected.

Heaven Is A Junkyard marks the most powerful and personal album from Powers yet.

A varied effort that showcases a lot of rocking touchpoints, The Window feels like a solid new beginning from Ratboys as they expand their sound.

While not a must-own for non-fans, it is the truest testament possible to the finale of The Stooges original lineup.

Live in Maui is an average show, with below-average sound, which has taken on a higher standard coming so close to Hendrix’s untimely death and the hippie nonsense surrounding it. However, Live in Maui is still an interesting listen for long-time fans and completists just not a place new listeners should start. In truth, any Hendrix concert is worth hearing, but this one doesn’t contend with many other fantastic releases already out there.

Albums don’t get much more soulful than the Memphis sound the two channeled on Robert Cray & Hi Rhythm, yet this continues in a similar vein, plunging deeper to include not just soul but some deep gospel too.

Bocoum seems to have certainly mastered the art of collaboration judging on the assemblage gathered for this jubilant set.

The Nude Party’s strong 2018 debut found the sextet knocking loudly on the door. With Midnight Manor, they kick it off its hinges. ... The result is undeniably an impressive overshadowing of that debut album.

The multi-Grammy Award winner deserves to be proud of such deeply personal, readily identifiable work as Side-Eye III+.

Lyrically, this is mixed but has its strong points. Few write with his kind of insight. Yet, musically it fails to generate enough sparks with most of the songs stuck in similar mid-tempo modes. The true ballads are strong.

While the album dips into lows, the highs make it all worthwhile. Phonetics On and On is a daring second album with the band seemingly coming out as a new band, one obsessed with infectious melodies and fanciful harmonies dancing around glimmering acoustics and cinematic strings.