The pop genre is in control of Kiyoko rather than the other way around. Instead of defining a unique sound, Panorama carries the unmistakable metallic tang of reverse engineering.

As with Cheap Queen, Hold On Baby doesn’t achieve any great innovations, but thanks to their stylistic and structural instincts, and their innate star power, Straus still manages to thrill.

Staying mostly faithful to the spirit of the originals, Mesmerism aligns itself with Bill Evans’ piano trio albums or Duke Ellington’s collaboration with Max Roach and Charles Mingus on Money Jungle. The sound of the new trio is warm and intimate, putting melody and rhythm at the forefront.

It feels personal rather than global, and as gnarly as it is, it’s not quite extreme enough to work as a visualization of the horrors of war. It works much better as a record of a man of the wild wandering through the modern world, anxious and a little amused.

Jumbled presentation can dull the impact of even the most sincere music, and Rico’s skill and imagination can’t save songs like “Black Punk” and “Dance Scream” from the filler bin. But beneath the technicolor pileup lies some of Rico’s most vicious (“Vaderz,” “Gotsta Get Paid”) and most sensitive (“Skullflower,” “Easy”) material yet. With a little finesse and better sequencing, it could’ve been greater than the sum of its parts.

It sounds very busy, but Silva never loses the balance of these productions.

Renaissance is a commanding prescription to be perceived again, without judgment. Listening to the album, you can feel the synapses coming back together one by one, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of feeling good, if only for its hour-long duration.

For all its anguish, it’s underpinned by the joyful realization that she’s finally free to record on her own terms.

Because the interludes outnumber the actual songs, it is difficult to call this Florist’s most accessible album, but it is certainly their most physical. ... ou get to explore each of those components: the band members convening, the songs falling into place, the woods themselves. It’s best experienced as a whole, but some tracks stand on their own.

Sun’s Signature is among Fraser’s most illuminating and eloquent music to date, the work of a flesh-and-blood person rather than the chimerical Cocteau Twin of myth.

Barbarism is a deranged playground, a portal to uncomfortable feelings in an increasingly uncomfortable world. Like a half-remembered dream, it seems to continuously promise access to hidden answers, if only we could penetrate the chaos. And though it’s grating, uneven, and perplexing, Barbarism feels familiar.

Even the more lighthearted moments are rich with subtext. Like a De La Soul project, ISTHISFORREAL? gestures at a running talk-show concept without really committing to the bit. Instead, KTO deploys a breadth of styles to match the record’s expansive themes.

The constant malaise keeps these songs from generating the ridiculous, heart-swelling feeling of transcendence that the best big-room dance music can achieve, while the duo’s relentless approach keeps the music from feeling particularly intimate.

Toggling between merely pleasant and overly precious, Melt Away is such a low-stakes endeavor that it never even registers as a comeback.

It’s refreshing to see Milli step out with both her classic approach and new attempts at claiming selfhood. You Still Here Ho ? meets Flo Milli in her most adventurous form yet.

On Surrender, she sounds renewed, submitting to the pull of her heart without apology.

The wide-ranging production often makes it easy to ignore the rough spots. Classy instrumental interpolations (Chris McClenney and Erick the Architect’s piano-led strut on “The Baddest,” every Statik Selektah beat here) sit next to glossy boom-bap (Chuck Strangers’ “Wanna Be Loved”) and crossover beats (Mike WiLL Made-It’s “Cruise Control,” BBEARDED’s “Welcome Back”). It’s a testament to Joey’s growing ear that he sounds good on all of them.

Heaven suffers because its settings imply a compositional weight that the songs just don’t carry; Fear has a clearer sense of itself as a collection of shiny amusements.

Even as the music expands in length, it feels more immediately emotionally satisfying than any of Prekop’s previous electronic music.

He is fully equipped to construct bold new sonic edifices, but on New Pleasures, Georgopoulos too often settles for the skyscrapers we already know; shiny, but ordinary.

The dead space and repetition are what give the album its momentum, and the ambling detours have an idiosyncratic charm that belongs entirely to Segall.

Candy defile hardcore’s typical structures with elements of industrial techno and noise. While their spewed condemnations of society feel expected, Candy occasionally wade into the muck of lust. It is their love songs that feel the most extreme.

Throughout the record there are subtle hints of growth—both personal and musical—but they’re often dragged down by the redundancy of her thematic concerns.

It’s endearing, really, the way this band goes the extra mile, even when it hardly matters, but the best thing about Bleed Here Now is how it rarely feels like work, despite all the work that clearly went into it. In their own overachieving way, Trail of Dead have made a hangout record.

In its effort to reach the masses, Special has the unfortunate fault of both trying too hard to hit the zeitgeist—like the nonsensical Tesla metaphor on opener “The Sign”—and striving for pure blahtitude. ... In fact, when it comes to happiness, some of the most satisfying songs on Special—the ones that come closest to finding inner peace—are also the most subdued.

Thankfully, the execution often surpasses the ideas—these are intricate tracks, twinkling through layers of texture. But they get clogged in swerves and side-steps.

For the first time, Lacy’s virtuosity is in service of his vision rather than the extent of it.

Too often, the trio sounds like they’re writing over or past each other instead of locking in.

Beabadoobee is well-suited to imaginary worlds: Her lyrics are often more form than function, her words merely vessels for sounds.

If the intellect on Hellfire is feverish, the emotional temperature often dips to morgue levels; their music is better equipped to comment on emotion than to feel it, or express it. They continue to get over, as they always do, on pure conviction, riding the knife’s edge between clinical precision and crazed abandon.

Gwenno is in the business of pop artistry, not broccoli-boiling, so Tresor’s touch is light and breezy, even as its songs dive into analytical psychology, the patriarchy, the colonizer lurking up and to the right.

You have to have the grit to handle some vulgarity to even begin the job of really remembering. In Jazz Codes’ promiscuity, Moor Mother plots an escape from the oppressive confines of institutional memory.

The occasional bluebird-embroidered country-folk tune pleasantly drifts by, but most often, Found Light is riveting, and even its plainer moments are essential to its narrative arc.

Glaring errors keep Love, Damini from reaching the heights of Burna Boy’s prior work, but his intentions are admirable, even when the execution goes awry. Modern Afropop is the poster kid for good times, but with this ambitious yet flawed album, he reminds us that it can be a space to work out much messier emotions.

What Cave World lacks in bite, it tends to make up for in groove. The production is cleaner than Viagra Boys’ first two albums, bringing their ever-present drive to the fore.

It doesn’t all quite land. ... But with the glow of “Doomscroller” acting as a foil, even those lesser songs still manage to productively contribute to that contradictory posture of solidarity-oriented striving that suffuses Formentera.

Thankfully, once the album gathers the necessary steam, LOGGERHEAD’s world-weary portraits of survival take on a sharper focus.

It’s easy to understand why Young felt these songs didn’t fit in with the lovelorn mood of Are You Passionate?, but they’re all worth hearing at least once.

No one song matches the widespread appeal of Lupe’s best work. Still, the overall impression makes up for that lack of dynamism; the understated tracks give his intricate riddles room to breathe and Drill Music in Zion gives Lupe’s humanity and command of language plenty of space to exhale.

The writing, at least, is often remarkable. ... The accompaniment for these curious lyrical snapshots, though, never rises to meet their idiosyncrasy—it is often bland enough to distract from them.

The Giveon of Take Time experimented with melody and challenged himself vocally; Give or Take stunts that growth in favor of secluding himself in his comfort zone.

Ignoring the shadow of its predecessor may be difficult, but Love Is Yours is still a compelling album of off-center power pop and is proof that the long-held bonds of Baker and Mulitz remain just as strong.

Giant Palm is a holistic and distinctly contemporary work, always rooted in the landscape of the present, never coming across as postmodern pastiche. Bock is a deeply idiosyncratic songwriter, and Burton is thoroughly attuned to her peculiarities.

On Universal Credit, he proffers downbeat tales that invite empathy, and they deserve, more than anything, to be heard.

Prince and the Revolution: Live is the culmination of months of tireless practice, a refined gem so filtered of imperfections you could hardly believe it came together in one take.

On Seven Psalms, the speeches are the main event: The fact there is music playing at all seems largely incidental. Cave is a much more reliable narrator this time around, ditching the previous album’s flashes of mania and hilarity in favor of solemnity and sobriety.

Household Name could easily feel too formulaic, but with tongue partially in cheek, moments like “Speeding 72” come as a welcome indicator of a band that isn’t taking itself too seriously.

It’s satisfying to hear Shelley’s sound growing more verdant, the way carefully tended topiary fills out in spring. But the words and her phrasing remain the heart of what she does, and the judicious spaciousness of these settings feels both admirable and essential, crafting austerity that’s as much bounty as balm, and as celebratory as it is reflective.

Guv IV is a fun summer spin, but doesn’t coalesce into the memorable statement a pop songwriter like Cook could be capable of.

Emerald Sea is audibly crafted with tremendous skill and love, but its uniformity keeps it from soaring, no matter how many deities fly through the upper reaches.

Wilson first walked away when he felt the band’s songwriting had become too formulaic. Closure/Continuation is admirable in its attempts to reject that formula, but in the end, it also proves just how good they were at it.

On their self-titled third album, MUNA step fully into their role as pop stars and mentors, offering gentle instructions for falling in love, dusting yourself off, and joyfully living your truth.

It’s a pleasantly shapeless record, an album of experiments and small upheavals that bring new, occasionally mismatched, textures into her world.

There are albums born of a burning need to create and express, and there are albums that exist simply because the artist had the spare time and inclination to make them. Magic Sign never pretends to be anything other than the latter.

On those early records, like Soviet Kitsch, there was a bracing sense of raw possibility. Songs could swing from kooky anti-folk to cabaret to punk outbursts on a whim. Home, before and after, by contrast, sounds like the work of a seasoned professional. Every note is meticulous; every orchestral swell magnificently labored over.

Throughout Sometimes, Forever, she and Lopatin expand on the ’90s palette that has characterized previous Soccer Mommy releases. Bolstering the lingering imprints of Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, and Sleater-Kinney is a healthy dose of Loveless worship: glide guitars and tendrils of haze.

If it doesn’t achieve the long-promised outcome of “filler-free” Foals, Life Is Yours unexpectedly thrives when it reintegrates the studio trickery that used to weigh down previous side Bs.

Cloaked in reverb and atmospheric keys, it doesn’t quite bite, but it does gnaw. Even in his new role as free-jazz bandleader, Taylor’s work is strongest when left unresolved.

The self-produced Teeth Marks is a sharp and thoughtful distillation of these modern American small-town complexities. Religious hypocrisy, financial ruin, systemic addiction, ruinous love, devotion so intense it begins to burn like hatred: Goodman finds space for it all in these 11 tracks, which glide between breathtaking a cappella eulogies and dive-bar R&B, between gnarled rock and plaintive ballads.

It’s as if the goal of Honestly, Nevermind is anonymity—inoffensively, sort of fun music that simmers in the background all summer and beyond.

The best moments on Up and Away reinforce what’s missing in the worst ones.

On Farm to Table, he’s saying many of the same things he said on Live Forever, but more with his chest, with his feet planted even further apart, his gaze more level with ours.

Cola haven’t reinvented the wheel, but these subtle experiments suggest they still have boundaries to push.

On In Amber, Butler may have found a handful more peaks and his share of valleys, but few can emerge from the shadow of what came before.

The collision between acoustic instrumentation and crackerjack production makes for a lush and widescreen experience.

While he’s rarely shied away from humor, on his new album DEATHFAME, he balances broad comedy with pointed satire, providing direct political address with a looseness that keeps it all from sounding like mere cant.

Halvorson is an inventive and generous arranger, organizing Amaryllis in such a way that it never feels like a mere vehicle for dazzling solos, though there are plenty of those. She has a painterly approach to sonority, attuned to all the rich colors at the ensemble’s disposal.

Belladonna removes the buttress of Amaryllis’s horns and rhythm section. At times, the guitar and string quartet move like a single amorphous organism, untethered from any particular pulse. At others, one voice will offer a steady ostinato as a home base for the others to wander away from and return to at will.

True to its title, Magic Pony Ride embraces Paradinas’ sugary side. Synths froth and squeak. Kitschy piano riffs ascend to euphoric heights. ... The lower end of these mixes feels less inspired.

Full of baloney The Versions isn’t. But its muted—and sometimes rather predictable—approach only occasionally gets close to capturing the erratic wonder of Neneh Cherry in full flight.

While tracks like “Credence (Ash in the Winds of Reason)” and “Syndicate II” fit snugly into the band’s previous guitar-driven repertoire (not to mention this current era of peak post-punk), Deliluh are the rare band that can summon the menacing propulsion and imagistic density of the Fall without resorting to Mark E. Smith pantomime-uh.

Two years after WOMB, the graves EP is firmly rooted in the same subtle reconfiguration that comes with each new Purity Ring release. Some songs even sound outright regressive, which isn’t always bad.

The run of “Milkweed,” “Detritivore,” and “Aqaba” is quintessential Shearwater in both their titles and the tendency to let the middle of their albums coast by like a warm, welcome breeze.

This is the Joyce Manor album for Joyce Manor fans—a loving, uncynical refinement of the band’s best.

You Can’t Kill Me is at its best when it offers surprising, welcome wrinkles to Shake’s sound.

These 11 songs may be meant to chronicle a pointedly personal inner voyage, yet he’s wound up with a warm, collaborative record that feels like a balm for fear and loneliness.

Twelve Carat Toothache, is accordingly slick, streamlined, and a little less vulgar and ostentatious than his earlier work—a sign that Malone is taking himself more seriously, for better or worse.

Rather than holding up a torch, Heart Under adjusts your eyes to the pitch black.

Like Scott-Heron’s last classic, This Is Brian Jackson is a salient reminder that great artists, no matter where they are on their journey, can rediscover themselves.

On Nothing to Declare, DJ Haram challenges Moor Mother with more biting beats, and the rapper responds with a looseness that’s new to her music. Her prophetic delivery retains all its spoken-word eloquence, and she peppers her lyrics with incisive history lessons that highlight America and Europe’s historical pillaging of Black culture. The music is anchored by a mix of frenetic goblet drums and machine percussion, swollen bass, and gristly streaks of noise.

Poliça now appear in search of a middle ground that combines their visceral songwriting with Madness’ inventive textures. At their best, these songs offer hints of that forward trajectory.

For now, Horsegirl aren’t so much carrying the torch as they are keeping the pilot light lit, low and steady.

Louder, faster, fiercer than their 2019 LP Itekoma Hits, the 20-minute, 18-track Super Champon goes down like a tart smattering of face-scrunching, neon candy.

Not particularly easy work. But with Big Time—her clearest and most radiant music—Olsen set out to more deliberately foreground the virtue of ease.

Apart from some missteps—like the excruciating Finneas-produced “i still say goodnight”—i used to think i could fly soars with confidence, a record that remains absolutely sure of itself even as McRae’s emotions vacillate between bravado and self-immolation.

Raw Data Feel might be the most confident album Everything Everything have ever released, but in a way that feels deeply hubristic. If this album were a person, it’d be that pompous, motormouthed philosophy undergraduate who treats seminars like extended soliloquies.

Though Say Sue Me have narrowed their focus, their reverence for the indie-rock lexicon remains broad. ... Some of the styles they play with highlight their strengths more effectively than others.

What we’re left with is a great-sounding Matmos album constructed from bits of Schaeffer’s work. You probably won’t come away knowing much more about either the duo or the composer than you did before, but if it gets stoners curious enough to hit up their local electroacoustic festival, it’s a win all around.

On Blue Skies, they made the best choice, which is the only choice: Change nothing. Not one thing.

Vocals play a prominent role in roughly half of the album’s songs, and while they sometimes work—UK trans activist Kai-Isaiah Jamal’s spoken-word poetry cuts powerfully through the moody “Human Sound”—they sometimes feel like Throssell is straining slightly for gravitas, pasting emotion on top of tracks that communicate plenty of it on their own.

As lovely as they often are, the songs seem to drift and float, and Cruel Country plays less like a sculpted double album than a vividly detailed snapshot of a particular moment in time.

It’s an accomplished record that, given the variety of Jordana’s catalog, feels short on surprises; having mastered the nuances of production and songwriting, she’s still finding ways to make her voice ring clear. Yet her melodies are dynamic, her ballads immune to adolescent melodrama: the toughest hurdles are behind her.

From start to finish, she leads these songs of resilience and long-term redemption with a minister’s conviction. The dozen-plus musicians around her—including her sister Yvonne and Helm’s daughter, Amy—became her de facto choir. Carry Me Home is a jubilant lesson in living history.

With little penchant for bedlam, it’s an album that lacks the exact thing that makes Flume’s music exciting.

The writing remains the main attraction in Finn’s work, and both as a storyteller and a rock songwriter, he has never sounded more in control.

Though these heart-in-her-hand lyrics take center stage, the production across EYEYE is both entrancing and bizarre. The album balances mourning and meditation, filling its vast, gelatinous sound field with phantom backing vocals, floorboard creaks, spaceship synths, and eerie, carnivalesque melodies.

Ballad of a Tryhard is a relatively straightforward collection of orchestral pop, bursting with hooks. Like the heartfelt folk songs of Amen Dunes’ Love, it is a grand step towards traditional songcraft.

So what if Harry’s House isn’t especially bold; innovation is not a requirement of a solid pop album, and working too hard is out of fashion, anyway. Better to slip on your Gucci pajamas and just enjoy.