Jaar and Harrington’s individual visions only grew more vast in the eight years leading up to Darkside’s return with Spiral, a work of unexpected and even unprecedented familiarity—less a portal than a kiosk existing entirely within the boundaries set by Psychic.

Only once, on the wallowing “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” does the record get so caught up in its imagined misery that it becomes an actual buzzkill. Otherwise, Gillespie and Beth execute these songs with the tact of seasoned studio pros and the vigor of a couple crushing shared Righteous Brothers favorites at karaoke.

It’s evocative and complex enough to establish Snoh Aalegra as a name worth remembering, even as it leaves you wondering what it might sound like when she finally faces the full extent of her feelings.

TWICE sound most self-assured when eschewing maximalist bombast for subtler evocations.

Like a great sacred text, the music of Kirtan: Turiya Sings is concentrated and rigorous, yet simple and full of ease. Like the original Turiya Sings, it’s also a pleasure.

Her ambitions are bold, but the album has a sense of polished remove that prevents it from scaling real emotional heights.

Beyond stripping Pop of his personality, the most offensively bad [tracks] on Faith are the ones that have no shame in hiding their financial intentions.

On occasion the music feels market-tested, straddling a few too many demographics at once—chords and vibes still take precedence over ideas.

The EP moves deliberately from chaos to catharsis, with tighter performances than we’ve heard from A Place to Bury Strangers in a long time.

This band lives or dies by its hooks, and in truth most of Hideaway’s are only OK. They’re straightforward to a fault, and short on those small, sometimes barely even perceptible deviations from expectation that distinguish a sublime hook from a routine one. Williams’ greatest strength and weakness as a songwriter is that he always follows the path of least resistance.

Sling may be an album concerned with time, fears of obsolescence instilled by a vampiric music industry. But it also finds exuberance in stillness, a kind of gentle unburdening.

The truth is he could have amped it up in both departments—more hunger to prove himself beyond his influences, more fearlessness to work outside his comfort zone. Even if this is one of his stronger albums, the whole thing feels self-consciously minor.

Mythopoetics advances Half Waif’s tendency toward plurality of voice.

A Color of the Sky wears its derivative textures as a superhero might don a form-fitting costume, transforming tales of creative defeat into high-definition triumphs.

Far from a downer, the album is breathlessly chic, less chaos-for-chaos’-sake than their previous work but kookier where it counts.

On Exit Wounds, the Wallflowers finally turn into the classic rock band they always ached to be.

It would be simple for Day Wilson to cut an album of Stax-style soul tunes or smooth jazz standards and call it a day. The immaculately mixed Alpha is instead built on weighty writing and daring arrangements in which Day Wilson stays front and center, never allowing the production to overshadow her presence.

Vince Staples has movement but lacks velocity, which casts his words in the most intimate light imaginable. ... Even if you’re looking for the booming pastel energy of Kenny’s recent collaboration with TiaCorine or the breathless vibes of his work on Vince’s FM!, Vince Staples still has plenty to recommend. The sonic palette is grayscale without being boring, stoic without missing bounce.

Its power, both in spite and because of its core ethos, is undeniable.

Former Things is packed with Campbell’s busy, weaponized arrangements. The lyrics, too, are deliberate and dense—she’s one of those uncommon songwriters whose words work equally well on paper.

Planet (i) is bigger and bolder than Squirrel Flower’s previous work, augmenting Williams’ alternate tunings and folkie charm with grand gestures and abrupt tonal shifts. ... Like I Was Born Swimming, Planet (i) grows a bit listless towards the back half (“Desert Wildflowers”), and some of its song fragments don’t quite land.

Deep Fried Grandeur has a certain shelf life, but then again, the spirit of its origins was all about bright, short-lived sparks. You savor the brief chemistry, and then part ways, remembering it fondly. Above all, Deep Fried Grandeur is just a joy to visualize.

Get Up Sequences Part One is often sweet, but it only rarely breaks the skin.

This is a readymade soundtrack for humidity-choked summer nights spent getting up to no good and going crazy from the heat.

With NINE, they add new layers—of mystery but also flippant humor—to their sound.

Equally indebted to pioneering girl groups as well as her punk heroes, the album is a fiery and compelling—albeit slightly uneven—exploration of love, anger, and coming-of-age.

Taylor writes about big issues—income inequality, political corruption, a society fraying at its edges—but these complex matters are undermined by the rote uplift in his songs, an optimism assumed but never really earned.

And whether he finds it lurking on the brink or actively upheaving his characters’ paths, Darnielle sounds right in his comfort zone, leaning on velvety piano and Jon Wurster’s tight rhythm to build the tension, allowing the record to feel progressively more on-edge as each track bleeds into the next.

It’s a graceful record. ... Cheek and co-producer Andrew Lappin’s work is painterly and methodical, daubing vocal loops over clattering percussion, sweeping strings, and resonant synths to create a shapeshifting strain of experimental pop.

On their best album yet, Hiatus Kaiyote shine by building an architecture around these emotions, coming alive when they allow themselves to be more than just a great band.

What The Golden Casket is missing is the kind of contagious earworm that made Modest Mouse radio mainstays. There’s no “Float On” here. There’s not even a “Dashboard.” But the album rewards the time and patience it demands in a way the last couple haven’t.

While The Turning Wheel was originally planned for release in September of last year, its whimsical presentation and urgent, socially conscious lyrics give it a timeless feeling.

It grants him the freedom to play with tone, to write personally or use his gravelly voice as texture, to treat the harshest raps and the most delicate hooks as mad experiments gone wrong.

Escapades is entirely in line with this gleeful approach, guilelessly reaching beyond musical norms to seek out ecstasy in the patently absurd.

I Know I’m Funny haha is full of this delicious texture. It might come off a little shallow, but it reveals its great depth at its own unconcerned pace. It’s probably one of the best records of the year.

Planet Her is a kaleidoscope of pop versatility that benefits greatly from a market that currently values eclecticism. It feels both premeditated and casual, well-crafted yet trenchantly frivolous.

Home Video is a bold statement, a powerful post-adolescent text in its own right.

Ballads were a staple of H.E.R.’s initial five EPs, and she again uses them frequently on Back of My Mind, for better or worse. Nearly all of them are simple and pretty. ... The choices she makes—from the glossy R&B production to favoring vocal riffing over a good hook—feel altogether safe, like she’s protecting a legacy she was born into.

Pray for Haiti is his most ambitious, definitive project since his 2016 masterpiece Haitian Body Odor, a collage rendered in full.

Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep is the latest chapter in the chaotic yet deliberate evolution of a no-holds-barred performer who’s only now reaching their apex.

Kidjo’s music flows most easily, and the messages land with the greatest impact, when she’s not proselytizing, as she does on the Sampa the Great-assisted “Free and Equal” and the album’s title track.

The follow-up to 2009’s Declaration of Dependence, makes languid, pleasant pop seem deceptively effortless; the album is so smooth that its seams are barely visible. The record’s 11 tracks are a Quaalude dream, a set of gossamer songs so refined that they take on sedative properties.

It is the clearest Dean Blunt has ever sounded and one of his most thrilling releases to date.

Blue Weekend always nails the vibe, they nail everything, but often in a way that sounds micromanaged.

Everything is delicate, but nothing is muted. This aesthetic certainly isn’t for everybody, but after her ambivalent pop experiments, Marina no longer needs her albums to be. It’s a beacon out for the highly emotional people of the world, of whom she clearly is one; it’s for her.

Just a few left-field twists could have gone a long way toward breaking up this very conventional set. Thorburn’s best albums sound like nobody else could have made them. A lot of acts have already made ones like Islomania.

Jordi bounces between smeary electropop haze, wobbles of tropical house, a forgettable Stevie Nicks appearance. It’s too cluttered to sink into, too limp for catharsis.

Like its predecessor, Culture III can become a slog, and at times seems shoddily constructed, its commercial ambitions ill-considered and to the album’s detriment. It’s also girded by songs that recall the Migos’ inspired peak—and a couple that rank among their best.

Sleater-Kinney has made heart-stopping, philosophically challenging rock music. Path of Wellness takes a more pacifist stance, content to let life happen around it.

Lil Baby and Durk’s new joint album, The Voice of the Heroes, is not quite a marquee work for either artist, though it is reliably consistent and casts them as a natural pair—near-ideal complements to one another in writing and execution.

Faster and friskier than expected, No Gods, No Masters is their strongest album since Version 2.0.

It’s a reminder that King Gizzard usually peak when wandering far beyond a clear-cut path. The coming of their most concise and carefree release truly could not have been better timed.

While Kommunity Service only hints at what a true synthesis of those artists could be, at times the implication is enough.

Kempner grounds Duterte’s dreamy abstraction in gritty reality, creating a dissonance that works best when it mirrors the album’s treatment of the darker edges of relationships. At times, though, the collaboration limits these artists’ strengths.

The album’s best and most revealing tracks are those where James herself takes the mic, though she’s careful never to give away too much.

Listeners love Japanese Breakfast because she gives you everything: a buffet of sub-genres, blunt confessions, larger concepts, and on-point orchestration, led by someone with undeniable charisma. Listening to Michelle Zauner go all in on Jubilee provides every bit of the joy she intended.

Soberish succeeds largely because Phair is no longer asking for tolerance. She is simply, fully, being herself.

Sure, 90 minutes of free-flowing instrumental workouts may seem daunting to more casual Can fans who prefer their kosmische musik spiked with more digestible doses of “Vitamin C.” But devoted heads who surrender to the tide will no doubt emerge from Live in Stuttgart 1975 with another Can maxim in mind: I want more.

Even on an album so concerned with fluidity and risk-taking, Rostam mostly stays in his comfort zone. At its best, Changephobia frames the experience of giving in to doubt and ambiguity as a kind of empowerment. Other times, it just feels like giving in.

Perhaps some lo-fi charm has been lost along the way, but these are proper songs, and Trappes has centered herself in the narrative while solidifying a sound that was already spellbinding to begin with.

When Kele’s familiar voice leaps all over the limits of its range, songs like “The One Who Held You Up” take on a stagey quality. But overall, The Waves, Pt. 1 is a mid-career detour worth indulging. The left-of-center UK rock veteran sounds better here than he has at least since the best songs on 2017’s folksy Fatherland, his previous no-frills record. But this time Kele also sounds free.

When Smoke Rises deftly translates Ahmed’s poetry to melody without blunting the truth of the narratives at its core. ... But the choice to build it around folk music’s tropes is an innovative way of avoiding the “conscious” stereotype, notorious in hip-hop for a moralizing impulse that tends to hollow out its messages.

A handful of inspired moments prevent Exodus from fully succumbing to mistakes and whiffs. Swizz seems to be having fun behind the boards.

Perfect is the first Mannequin Pussy release that’s as tender as it is tough.

The music’s relentless complexity, insularity, and high drama can be challenging even for a listener predisposed toward those qualities. The band seems to understand this, and they are more willing to meet you in the middle than you might think.

De Casier’s got a soft voice but a big personality, and even at its most muted, Sensational radiates charm.

The album is a 2010s time capsule of introspective R&B, Jordan’s diaphanous vocals floating over tracks inflected with quiet storm and UK garage. This is still very well-trod territory, but Jordan’s music distinguishes itself with an almost-claustrophobic melancholy.

Recorded in live sessions with the group Rhys assembled for the Babelsberg tour, the album feels like a solo record in name only. It pops with the collaborative energy of Rhys’ supporting cast.

Showtunes doesn’t rival its predecessors, but all the album really lacks is surprise. ... That’s only a minor complaint, especially considering that Showtunes has its own peculiar melancholy.

CHAI generously extend their wonder-filled perspective to anyone who will listen. In turn, they ask us to find our own joy, wherever and whenever we can.

A Little More Time sounds like a record made by someone who has internalized the old music that they love and is now letting it flow out naturally.

Black to the Future is highly accessible, politically engaged jazz that’s more focused on communication than individual experimentation.

The matter of failed romance is central to Sour, a nimble and lightly chaotic grab bag of breakup tunes, filled with both melancholy and mischief.

Medieval Femme, barely half an hour long, uses repetition to suggest open space rather than abundance. Its songs feel like movements of a single composition.

Afrique Victime is the fullest portrait of Moctar’s gifts that he has offered yet.

Be Right Back’s most appealing quality remains Smith’s voice, which stretches at will as she taps into various emotional states.

It is her most personal record to date, telling the story of her father’s incarceration and her own fear of parenthood. It is delivered entirely in costume. The best and truest moments on Daddy’s Home are when Clark refuses to play wife or mother.

He gathers the biggest names in rap, then has them make the same music they’d record on their own anyway. Sometimes staying out of the way works—the album’s first two singles were just Drake solo tracks with Khaled’s name on them. But the returns are never more than the sum of the talent involved.

He pulls back slightly from the narrative form of writing (sorry, to the “Wet Dreamz” heads but no virginity tales on this one) in favor of more punchlines and wordplay. This switch doesn’t suddenly turn him into a Flint rapper, but it does sound like he’s having fun for once.

Colored by the Alchemist’s palette, Haram offers another perspective of New York City’s hard heart, rooted in ruminations on power and how it’s wielded. These are the spiritual descendants of Def Jux, rappers that not only embrace the darkness, but wear it as a protective cloak.

It’s utterly maddening, and to get lost within it feels like the past calendar year: undifferentiated, infinite, and delirious.

By refining their reality, and allowing themselves to be a little more seen, they feel more reachable than ever.

Delta Kream is best seen not as a retreat to the Black Keys’ beginnings but rather a signpost on their journey. By spending the time playing the blues that’s buried deep in their soul, the Black Keys reveal how far they’ve gone in a space of 20 years.

The riveting intensity of the musical exchange throughout Uneasy shows how productive that intermediary space can be when everyone involved embraces it as a challenge.

Van Weezer’s two-handed tapping revels in its hamminess. And for all its pyrotechnic guitars and arena stomp, Van Weezer never actually roars all that hard.

The album is more a warm remembrance than a full-blown celebration.

Ultimately, Slime Language 2 is a label compilation and the usual caveats apply: it’s far too long, the back half is padded out with a few throwaways and hardly anyone is showing up with their best material. That said, Slime Language 2 succeeds as a survey of how pervasive Thug’s influence has become.

Lambert sings about the one who got away, dreaming of a day when they will be reunited. Randall strums his guitar and joins for harmonies with Ingram every time the chorus rolls around. They are singing about better days ahead but they’re making the present moment sound pretty good, too.

Even amid all these choices, Squid’s spinouts are orchestrated stunts, never heady jam-band accidents. More than a canonized style, it’s their level of control that sets them apart.

There Is No End is Allen as his most copacetic, polished self. It doesn’t feel like the finish line, but rather a passing of the baton—to artists who compelled him to evolve, and to fans always willing to be surprised.

Sometimes, you don’t want to think too hard. You want to put on a big sweater and complain. You want to listen to something soft and sad, look out the window and remember how embarrassing you have been. Clark knows that feeling well—her music is made for it.

For 28 tracks Van discusses hidden cabals of dangerous media types so frequently that it verges on a convoluted concept record.

Even at its most sophisticated, Seek Shelter retains Iceage’s restless spirit.

NOW bleeds with the awareness that tomorrow is never guaranteed.

In his synthesis of varied styles, Hayashi’s compositions feel less genre-defying and more genre-unifying.

While if i could make it go quiet is an occasionally uneven listen, it’s a strong declaration of conviction. Although Ulven is still fine-tuning her approach, her eagerness to explore hints at promising potential.

It’s impossible to fully grasp the album’s narrative arc without the aid of a written guide—detailed promotional materials, for instance, or any of the highly personal interviews Shabason has given. Without such thematic grounding, The Fellowship still delivers rich and emotionally engaging ambient-jazz, but some of the more abrasive passages (“13–15,” “Escape from North York”) wind up feeling more like fragmented narrative transitions than satisfying compositions.

Like all GBV albums, it’s slipshod and freewheeling. ... Also like GBV albums, there are bright spots, and they make dismissing the band harder than it should be.