The album has a telepathic quality to it, like Sandy Denny working with Richard Thompson and John Wood on The North Star Grassman and the Raven, or Elliott Smith mind-melding with Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock for Either/Or. Lay’s lyrics find depth and meaning in everyday moments.

How To Live uncovers an internal landscape just as wide open, much easier to get to, and even harder to escape from.

A Distant Call is an album with depth of production, more deliberate songwriting, and a commitment to style.

Though uneven, Lover is a bright, fun album with great emotional honesty.

Even the prettiest BROCKHAMPTON songs can feel cramped, but many of these songs, though each endowed with their little moments, are disorganized or inefficient.

The 2004 session at Maida Vale favors songs from 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound; there are hints at that record’s more extemporaneous approach here. ... The second session, recorded with a live studio audience shortly after Peel’s untimely death, feels like a funeral procession cut with an air of irony. ... As far as Shellac songs go, “The End of Radio” is a postmodern masterwork, balancing Albini’s nihilism with an evergreen critique of the centrality of mass media.

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire gleefully hits Efil4zaggin levels of expletives—his lyrics have always offered savvy political commentary and catharsis for those prepared to hear it.

If previous Blanck Mass albums were each a step out from the shadow of Fuck Buttons, Animated Violence Mild shows that he’s outgrown the comparison altogether.

The most enjoyable moments feel like controlled chaos. Redd’s songs used to be looser and more free-flowing. He does at least sound more composed. That’s to his credit as a person but it’s not to his advantage as an artist.

The Durk-Meek Mill team-up “Bougie” lacks chemistry. Sleazy sex jam “Extravagant” comes close, but it’s held back by Nicki Minaj’s ill-suited bombastic verse and a few laughable Durk one-liners. Culling these missteps would have helped the tape’s batting average, but they can’t mask Durk’s undeniable strengths.

The uneven second half of Love’s Last Chance fails to match the charms of the first. But by trimming the guest list and writing lyrics inspired by personal experience, McFerrin has found a clearer sense of purpose.

Despite all the collaborations on So Much Fun, the album is about Young Thug. He might not mystify as he did in the early stages of his career, when he was stumbling into new flows and deliveries at an inhuman pace, but now he’s able to wield the madness with ease, satisfying in many modes.

In many ways, Thrashing Thru The Passion is so alive and elated that, if not for Hold Steady’s well-documented track record, it could be mistaken for the work of a band just hitting its peak.

Even if tracks like “Can I Go On” or “RUINS” don’t manifest themselves as solidly as some of the others, they’re still interesting, well-constructed, complete thoughts. The Center Won’t Hold is a Sleater-Kinney record not only because their name is on the cover, but because all of the elements you first fell in love with are still here.

It can sometimes seem as though Friendly Fires are playing catch up for a post-EDM scene that largely sprung up in their absence. The cooing vocals and build-up/drop patterns grow a little tiring across the album despite their careful production, because they’re working in well-trodden territory in a post-Flume landscape. But there is a winning warmth to their music.

Because of its indistinct nature, Equivalents feels infinitely deep, with details left undiscovered even after repeat listens. It is easy to get lost in its doldrums, and can sometimes feel inconspicuous to a fault.

As the Gizzard’s two releases this year respectively prove, they’re not afraid to push their sound to its most playful and punishing extremes. But it’s always been more thrilling to hear them excavate the uncharted territory in between.

Lilitri’s dedication to concision and coherence doesn’t come at the expense of subtle, sharp songwriting.

NF also shares Eminem’s shrillness and distorted sense of volume, rapping like he’s putting on the world’s loudest Punch and Judy show. He spends much of The Search darting in and out of an overbearing rappity-rap snarl-yell that can cut right through you if you don’t relate to his roiling anger.

Mae’s Jack White-produced 2017 album Forever and Then Some had a hard-rocking veneer, but Other Girls (still under White’s label Third Man Records, this time produced by Dave Cobb) invites more natural light into the mix.

The first dozen times through, I had trouble making sense of the overloaded midrange and upper register: the horns, guitars, call-and-response vocals, and insistent shakers and maracas. But eventually, it all settles into place, yielding both a rich diversity of complementary styles.

Muldrow and Perkins root their work in the present by paying homage to the sound and radical spirit of their West Coast home.

Shura is at her most convincing, and her most alive, when she’s fully embodying her own experience rather than narrating someone else’s.

This Is Not a Safe Place is not, in the end, the classic Ride Mark 2 release that its first three songs so casually tease. But it has enough joy, verve and invention to suggest that Ride could get there one day.

Too often on Port of Miami 2, he locks into the flow of least resistance and simply lets it ride, hiding behind his production instead of asserting his dominion over it. And while his music remains sumptuous as always, that luster alone is no longer enough to wow.

For better or for worse, Kind is a Slipknot record, one that has more to offer than expected and is still sometimes frustratingly short-sighted.

Despite the glossy guestlist, The Lost Boy remains Cordae’s show. At 15 songs, it could have used an edit, another voice in the room telling him to tone it down. But still, it’s an assured debut.

Certainly, there’s a few corny or dated moments—listening through Care Package, you’ll hear hashtag rap (“I got that Courtney Love for you/Crazy shit”), epically cloying vocal runs, and overly cutesy wordplay like, “Brunch with Qatar royals all my cups is oil.” However, the best songs here stand up with Drake’s best music.

The resulting collection of cavernous electro-rock, elaborately adorned psych-pop, and winsome ambient-folk is polished and professional-sounding, but it’s also as tedious and unmemorable as the group’s name. There are glimmers of promise.

There are a few dull moments, like “Conventional Ride,” which explores how it feels to be the object of other people’s sexual curiosity. ... Any Human Friend reaches its high point with the quietest song.

While unassuming on paper, there’s something about Possible Humans’ music that sticks; there are hooks hidden in these songs, obscured by Macfarlane’s production but present enough that you might hum them after even a passive listen.

Vernon himself sings with more texture and conviction than ever before. He’s shifted fully from vessel to commander, steering the music instead of seeping into it.

On Live at Troxy, we get the chance to hear Fever Ray—a band, now—exalt all of that good human love as a collective, a chosen family thrilled to share their music and their play.

WHY? has never been a subtle band, but they’ve also never been this overwrought.

At its best, Blume is a testament to the rich aesthetic diversity of London’s jazz scene.

The album is stacked with cartoonish approximations of what she thinks a rap song should sound like: shivers of bass, the occasional “skrrrt,” Mad Libs of designer brands and bodily fluids. Many sound like direct imitations of the rappers she admires.

With Caligula, she has created a murderous amalgam of opera, metal, and noise that uses her classical training like a Trojan Horse, burning misogyny to ash from its Judeo-Christian roots.

At times GUV I can feel like indie rock cosplay, especially coming from a shapeshifter like Cook. When an artist genre-hops with such agility and totality, with titles and performances as goofy as Young Guv’s can be, it’s harder to lose yourself in the familiar comforts of a fuzz pedal and a charmingly off-key vocal. Even so, there’s an ease to the mimicry.

Stuart Duncan’s fiddle reinforces the small-town details of “Matthew,” about simply trying to make ends meet while enjoying a little bit of joy in between the trials. That’s a theme common to country and folk music, yet on Country Squire Childers invests it with enough insight and immediacy to make those hardships sound perfectly present tense.

First Taste is sharply paced, sequenced for maximum impact as two separate vinyl sides but also effective as a seamless 41-minute listen. ... If the songs don’t linger as long as the sound, chalk that up to Segall being a “first idea, best idea” kind of guy. This time, he concentrated on production. Maybe next time around, he’ll turn his attention to the tunes.

The one negative of this project is its inaccessibility. Rhino only manufactured 1,969 box sets; each one retails at $799.98, and there are no plans to make the 38-disc version available on streaming services. For those with smaller budgets, the 10xCD version is still worthwhile. ... What the 38-disc box set succeeds at is not just righting the record, or presenting a mammoth set of live songs, but in creating an environment that effectively transports the listener to that muddy pasture in upstate New York.

Few verses on the album are particularly memorable outside of spots from Maxo Kream, Vince Staples, a string of appearances from the consistently good J.I.D, and the standalone moments of introspection from J. Cole himself. But the comp works because it never feels forced or closed off to ideas.

Like all of neo soul’s greats, BJ seamlessly blurs R&B’s past and present, but 1123 tends to sidestep the most obvious tropes, both modern and retro. ... In its final stretch, though, 1123 does toss out a few of-the-moment tracks that radio might be able to work with.

K.R.I.T. Iz Here captures K.R.I.T. the same as he always is: perfectly likable, admirably sincere, predictably dependable and dependably predictable.

The uptempo tracks are breezy and chill; the ballads are lush and deeply felt.

The record is expertly mixed and produced: It brims with fully realized moments, like a synth bit on “Anxious” that conjures the exact feeling of seeing an ex like someone else’s post on Instagram; the portamentos on “Slow Burn” should come with a vertigo warning. But the album’s mood is just sour.

This is no garden-variety chill. It’s lush and heady, and shot through with an undercurrent of wistful contemplation, but none of it sounds like an exercise in presets, whether musical or emotional.

Like Punken before it, Brandon Banks is a major leap in craft and style as well as refinement of his self-image.

Remembering the Rockets is everything one might expect from an ambitious, reverent band moving to the epicenter of American indie rock: It’s sharper and more purposeful, forged by the pressure of real expectations. The best album of their deep and underappreciated catalog, it also imagines a life after indie rock.

Live From the Artists Den is focused and forceful.

Over the course of 13 songs, though, Dude York wind up mimicking their idols as opposed to referencing them.

The album is a splendid hour of jams, both personal and political, that never sacrifices its bewitching groove even when it’s dressing down corrupt officials. African Giant is more cohesive, more robust in sound, and significantly broader than his previous music.

Kiri Variations feels like an album that has lost its way: a soundtrack (though most of the music never appeared on the show) that shoots for terror but settles for unease; an “anti-muso” work that is far too conventionally musical

hese pieces are more sedate and less distinguished than some of his others. The dulcet murmur of the concert hall seems to be overtaking him as his classical career grows in stature.

The album can become a slog, almost oppressively upbeat, but The Big Day isn’t without wonders. Chance is still one of the most talented rappers working, and there are signs of that latent brilliance across about a dozen songs.

At first, Krlic’s soundtrack captures the instinctive panic that comes with the upset of environmental and cultural norms. But as Aster’s characters grow acclimated to their new surroundings, he relieves us with symphonic moments of clarity (“The Blessing”) and triumph.

With such simple arrangements, Sprague’s writing can sound like an intimate conversation, with larger context left unsaid. ... The more directly she composes her thoughts, the fuller the music becomes.

Its backward-seeming track sequence improves significantly as it goes along; its instrumental interludes are better than most of the songs. Para Mí may have been the result of a near-fatal car crash, but the album is a happy meanderer.

Unlike many similar compilations, the album fits seamlessly into Molina’s existing canon—his work already blurs the line between “impulse” and “finished track.” And where his official albums tend to focus on a specific aesthetic, Songs From San Mateo County touches on every style he’s explored, making it the ideal entry point.

The album dips in and out of tempos, themes, and varying degrees of intensity without losing any of its urgency.

For much of the record, Nas sounds like he’s trying too hard.

On Simian Angel, we get a glimpse of something new: something sensitive, probing, and even whimsical.

CHORDS is a strong, occasionally astonishing next step.

Dunn’s approach has remained so consistent across his career that the difference between this album and its predecessors is one of degree, not type, but it’s safe to say that From Here to Eternity plumbs newfound depths: There is a coppery burnish that was not there before, a tendency to float just beyond the bounds of our usual limits of musical perception.

Though not fully comprehensive or that musically far-reaching (due to its prioritization of African genres that have already experienced crossover success), the album still succeeds in introducing a whole new musical universe to the average American listener.

The riskier these covers get, the better they demonstrate what made Frightened Rabbit’s music compelling.

Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks gets a sparkling remaster and almost an album’s worth of okay-to-pretty-good new tracks.

By reimagining the weighty concept record as light, escapist entertainment, King’s Mouth is as strong a candidate as any for Baby’s First Prog Album.

Beyond a few other fleeting moments of experimentalism on ERYS—the second half of “K,” when the buzzing of an electric razor slowly morphs into a heaving trap beat, or “Fire Dept,” a decent ode to the fast and distorted energy of SoCal punk—it’s mostly a slog, the sound of an artist with a blurry vision and too many resources at his disposal.

Even in its moodboard looseness and nostalgia, Angel’s Pulse has all the charm and careful attention to detail of Blood Orange’s last two magnum opuses.

While she can’t always shake the anodyne songwriting that plagued her past work, it’s still her best album to date.

Ada Lea vacillates between timidity and aggression, are what make what we say in private so exciting. But it’s Levy’s willingness to wrestle with her own vulnerability that leads the album to its highest peaks.

At a time when some ambient music can feel like it’s drafted solely for inclusion on a “chill” playlist to anesthetize the overworked, Cantu-Ledesma’s explorations have been steering towards deeper waters. On Tracing Back the Radiance, his most profound work to date, he finds them.

Pop-metal, stoner rock, doom metal—whatever amalgam of buzzwords you favor, on Admission, Torche remain a reliable supplier of grizzled riffs to test the low end on your stereo. The stylistic guises don’t always fit, but that’s a function of the group’s creative restlessness.

Some songs miss the mark—“I Get What I Need”’s creeping, bluesy bassline proves awkward—but most of them work, if only because the band sounds like they’re truly putting their all into their melodies and riffs, rather than leaving the heavy lifting to distortion.

Few releases have been as baldly transparent and destined for ubiquity as No.6, which has all the conspicuous mining of a Drake album, but very little of the finesse or cultural fluency.

While there are flashes of wisdom on Case Study 01, there are also a handful of clunky moments when Caesar’s out of his depth. ... Like his contemporaries 6LACK and Brent Faiyaz, Caesar is clearly talented, but he’s got a lot of learning to do.

The strongest cuts on Con Todo El Mundo are also the standouts on Hasta El Cielo, where they’re run through the usual dub effects: echo, flange, drop-outs, and more.

The subject matter of Purple Mountains is grim, but he’s still David Berman, and he can still dazzle with the sheer beauty of his writing or wink at the camera to lighten the mood when necessary.

This new album is in line with what fans of the band’s more recent (as in, post-2006) material have come to expect, but with a new twist—namely, the outsized impact that traditional doom bands like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus seem to have had on the songwriting. Darkthrone still stand firmly in the heavy metal (with a dash of punk) camp, but they’ve definitely got a soft spot for old-school gloom.

Aguayo’s productions have frequently flashed a sly sense of humor, but the mood here is driven, focused, heads-down. His drum programming is as slinky as ever, but there’s a newfound force to it; his drums could double as battering rams.

It’s a record so precise as to be sensory, whose arrangements of harmonies, guitars, and lonesome trills are like the intake of breath before a faltering step.

The music carries within it the idea of form coming into being; it moves away from the freeform drift of her previous albums and glides toward a nascent kind of order.

With Stonechild, Jesca Hoop complicates centuries of feminized folk music by singing about the ugly, violent aspects of motherhood. Stillbirth, spousal abuse, sexism inherited from mother to daughter—all claim vignettes on this record of electro-folk, seeking, much like Love did, to render motherhood in fucking intense terms.

Throughout WARMER he downplays lyrics that a lesser songwriter would have mined for misery, but these songs are no less moving for that understatement. Sometimes it’s the heaviest sentiments that call for the lightest touch.

With its winking humor and percolating rhythms, Plantasia might turn away some human listeners, but there’s a sense of joy and possibility in songs like “Rhapsody in Green” and “A Mellow Mood for Maidenhair.” It’s hard not to smile at the oddball charm of this strange enterprise.

As it is, Bird Songs makes for lovely twilight listening, the kind of reflective and soothing album you play when nestled into a blanket on a porch with the people you love.

“Un Peso” captures the appeal of Oasis; frothy music made by serious talents. ... It’s goofy, but incredibly fun—a soundtrack for beach BBQs and ad hoc fire-hydrant water parks, summer vibes made manifest.

She’s so versatile that it’s difficult to identify her musical ground zero. ... She’s the glue holding everything together—think a female Travis Scott, one who grew up worshipping Madonna and the Spice Girls instead of Drake and Kanye West. At the same time, the sheer intensity of every song on Clarity makes it tough to digest in one sitting.

Even at its most inexplicable, there’s not a moment on Dolphine that feels careless. As her imagination roams, Birgy understands that sometimes irrationality is necessary to make sense of reality.

With TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone on production, Islands polishes Durant’s sound to a resonant and gently rollicking gleam, brightened by dulcimer, guitar, brass, and woodwind. Durant’s songwriting is fine-boned and small-scale, and her lyrics are quietly epic.

Even when Mannequin Pussy venture to truly dark places, Patience is such a pure joy to listen to. In its biggest moments, Dabice’s raw edge is matched by equally colossal riffs, explosive energy, and surging momentum. Patience, is without a doubt, one of the year’s strongest punk rock records.

“Let’s Rock” is upfront about its meat-and-potatoes aspirations. This is an album by the Black Keys called “Let’s Rock.” It does.

Gou’s studied craftsmanship coalesces with her tastemaking abilities. It’s most meditative in its unwavering commitment to methodical bass. Gou has always appeared to have an old soul and with this endeavor, it’s on full display.

75 Dollar Bill slyly nudges you beyond the familiar, so that—no matter your record-nerd knowledge—you’ll wind up someplace new.

For Bandana, the pair taps into that heritage and allow themselves to be shaped by its highs and lows, its heroes and villains. Finding themselves within that slipstream of black thought and life, they plot their course on their terms. Bandana is tradition and transgression: one rapper, one producer, no limitations.

Burton sings about interior voyages and the tracks were usually constructed by no more than two musicians; it’s music made at home, for home listening. That’s all well and good, since the duo has considerable skill, but this existential lonerism underscores a chasm between the pair and their influences. Unlike the icons of the era they find so inspiring, Black Pumas rarely look outside of themselves.

It’s GoldLink’s ability to seem at home in any space that makes Diaspora so coherent, and so specific to him, despite pulling music from all over. He is the anchor.