Dusk to Dawn has moments of real drama and surprise, as when a klaxon-like siren cuts sharply through interstellar glitter on Part III’s “Thoth,” or when the AI voice of “Solitude” poses the alarming question, “Why even wear a heart/When you could store it in a chest freezer?” But seemingly every interesting transformation is counterbalanced by slow changes, like the glacial “Indecision.”

Keepsake is an album filled with small, inspired moments like this, but they don’t add up to much. Sugary but hollow, Keepsake melts like cotton candy, dissolving on impact.

Here he and Godrich have perfected a sound of their own, one that doesn’t take Radiohead’s achievements as its primary unit of measurement.

The songs of Help Us Stranger often succeed only because they succeeded before, decades ago, as better songs.

Baroness convince their disparate influences to gel beautifully without lapsing into the homogeneity (or self-indulgent drudgery) that remains a common defect of long, proggy albums. The second half is noticeably quieter and spookier than the more bombastic first half, easing down gently into more melodic and even acoustic fare.

There’s a roominess to the music, a jovial looseness in its rhythmic complexity, and something like celebration in its exploration of these grave subjects. Nothing on here sounds rehearsed or calculated.

It is primordial and juvenile, dumb and clever, arch and true, and captures a band at that rare time before any self-conscious tones creep into their music. All the while, black midi discover what has been pioneered by countless bands before, and still present it as something entirely new.

A Productive Cough felt more like a genre exercise than a passion project, and that’s true of An Obelisk, too, except this time the genre is a far better fit.

Without the hooks of their previous albums, never mind those of their better-known bands, the songs on III take a while to sink in. In return for the slow approach, Bad Books offer a serious body of work that can stand on its own, a testament to the friendship that brought them together in the first place.

A 19-minute EP bookended with the Billy Ray Cyrus remix and the original version of “Old Town Road”--he opens himself up to the criticism that “Old Town Road” bypassed. Each new song on 7 is an attempt at stumbling into another lighthearted hit. ... For the entirety of 7, it’s unclear if Lil Nas X actually likes music.

There’s a fine line between escapist and naïve, though, and Nelson and company aren’t afraid to toe it. The extent to which listeners enjoy this record depends on how much they buy into the fantasy of Nelson and his famous pals clinking Coronas around the pool while the rest of the world goes to hell. If it feels a little hollow, well, that’s by design.

The profane marriage of old and new, big ugly riffs and shrieking noise, beauty and brutality seems like the clearest marker indicating where Full of Hell may intend to head next.

For the most part, it’s compulsively listenable, oddly moving, and stranger than it first appears, as the band gets existential on the dance floor.

Nighttime Stories plays like one seamless expression—its 50-minute runtime passes remarkably quickly—but it’s a statement heavy with meaning and memories.

Though the album doesn’t really step outside of neo-soul conventions, it is nevertheless as stirring and lifting as a memory-triggering scent.

Mustard and 03 Greedo make the most of each other’s talents; Greedo’s crooning and rapping melt into the plush spaces of Mustard’s sweltering cookout beats.

[“XanaX Damage” is] a flash of greatness bogged down by poor execution, which could stand as a theme for the EP as a whole.

Her pop exists to exploit and sand off edges, packaging esotericism for the masses. It’s just that on Madame X, she is not merely dining out on other cultures; she’s whipping around drive-thrus.

The Age of Immunology better highlights the individual personalities and nationalities that inform the group’s unique alchemy.

The album’s hypnotic quality grows ever more romantic and tense with repeat listens, a prescient-feeling experience that matches a zeitgeist: strung-out maintaining in the face of impending doom.

Comparing the two releases, it’s clear that Calexico and Iron & Wine have found a way over the years to leave a little more mystery in the words and let the music provide more of the clues.

Happiness Begins is by no means an extraordinary album, but it’s a respectable showing from a group that has long deserved more respect than they’ve received.

These avatars introduce a record that favors new sounds and perspectives—he often sings as a shadow or a visitor, giving credence to a recently revealed habit for crashing strangers’ funerals—but remains carefully rooted in his history.

A slight and unwaveringly safe 30 minutes, it goes down easier than anything the band has ever done, while making less of an impression.

This ungainly sprawl suits the Rolling Thunder Revue, which was meant not as a mere evening of entertainment but rather an immersive theatrical experience. ... The heart of the box sets lies in those five full concerts, all sharing the same basic momentum, all distinguished by passion. The vigor doesn’t belong to Dylan alone. The Guam band is unwieldy and enthusiastic, taking the time to let all their disparate voices mesh.

Shepherd feels like his most something album ever—his warmest, his most generous, possibly his most profound. It is his longest, for sure, lounging comfortably across four sides of vinyl, none of it wasted. It is a high note, fond and deep and sustained.

On a purely sonic level, TIM is an easy listen to a fault, but taking in this final artistic statement is more difficult when focusing on the lyrics. ... The effect of these [guest] contributors effectively recasting his personal sentiments over once-unfinished music is haunting in all the wrong ways.

Midnight is a growth spurt without the usual growing pains. Toledo contributes subtle handiwork throughout, but no studio trickery could replicate Chura’s intensity.

Even at their most rigorous, these compositions manage to hold the listener close—a bare but rewarding intimacy.

Sirens’ unrelenting nervous abstraction can be difficult to take over 14 songs, but perhaps that’s the point.

Widows’ Weeds contains little in the way of electrifying suspense or carefully-hidden, internalized trinkets—only empty gestures and lazy execution. Nearly 20 years into Silversun Pickups’ existence, we see them for what they are: a little big, a little brooding, but mostly boring.

Kempner has excelled at tracing anxiety, fear, and shame through expertly crafted rock songs, and there’s still plenty of those emotions throughout Black Friday. ... But on her third record, she also allows herself to experience pure joy, and what a treat it is to feel that euphoria along with her.

It offers a window onto the playfulness of his improvisations and, in a structure that mimics the range of an actual Prince album, shifts nimbly between up-tempo songs and ballads, sweat and tears, near impossible to stay sitting still while listening.

The gloriously mopey sound of new wave might be novel to Norrvide and Fischer, but there's not much here that stands out in synth-pop's always-crowded field. In a sense, that's fine; Lust for Youth wear this sound well. But Lust for Youth shows they might have escaped coldwave’s dead end only to settle into a rut.

Greys tear down everything they’ve ever known about making music, and piece it back together from the ragged-but-arresting wreckage. This dark incarnation of the band is one that their 2011 selves wouldn’t recognize—and they wear the change well.

For all its wholesome ingredients and folk-on-sleeve earnestness, Out of Sight settles into a space out of time, one immediately adjacent to our own, where perhaps the ancient magic hasn’t dissipated.

Zoospa’s musical elements feel cohesive, even as they bounce across genres and eras, often within the same song.

For a six-track EP, She Is Coming is remarkably repetitive, but it does manage a few OK spots.

There are few forces more powerful than the feeling of belonging. In creating his stunning Miami rap opus, Denzel Curry taps into that, demonstrating that he belongs among its most distinguished representatives in the process.

Fortunately, one song on the album is unhindered by Artaud’s ramblings: the only track that Smith wrote, “Ivry.” ... It is a moment of clarity on an otherwise foggy and disappointing record, and it leaves you feeling full of light and ease, at least for a moment.

Cooper has been tinkering with this record for years, and happily, it sounds like he spent much of that time paring it down. There’s no grandstanding in his playing, nothing inessential, nothing hidden in the fixed but flexible figures.

Speed is perhaps the point here; whereas 2017’s Strike a Match punctuated energetic pacing with more meandering tracks, Run Around the Sun barely stops for breath.

There is no grand thesis or groundbreaking concept on Boat, but Pip Blom provide a welcoming nook for spacing out.

Rainford marks a welcome return for an artist who for far too long had been rendered all but invisible behind his abstruse wit, esoteric demeanor, and all those mirrors.

As the album plays out with its series of sketches that flip between the trivial and contemplative, and as Skepta tussles to find his place in the world, you’re left wondering whether he craves the bliss of youthful innocence or the responsibility of being a voice for a generation. Unfortunately, Ignorance Is Bliss is a deferral, splitting the difference with a series of half-measures.

Forward motion makes So Full Upon Her Burning Lips more than just a return to a classic sound. There are enough surprises here that what could’ve been just a comfortable glance backward.

For an album whose highlight is a song about the urge to extend beyond the limits of your own experience and find solace in collective acceptance, it all feels surprisingly timid. Apollo XXI is centered on the interior self, but it’s not self-centered--it just seems a little weighed down by Lacy’s still-palpable reluctance to claim the spotlight his talents warrant.

On her debut album, There’s Always Glimmer, Margaret’s violent view of songwriting translates to 34 minutes of serene and perceptive storytelling.

4REAL 4REAL doesn’t quite reestablish YG as the album artist of My Krazy Life and Still Brazy, but what it lacks in a satisfying through line it makes up for in highlights.

Idiosyncratic yet understated, Atlanta Millionaires Club wraps in a little of everything without doing too much of anything.

Their version of the band has a lot less boogie but a lot more swamp, a lot more Frank Frazetta fantasy, a lot more majestic doom.

Instead of merely contrasting the tunefully heartfelt Barlow with the more erratic, irascible Loewenstein, the new album finds them mining common topical terrain—namely, the emotional toll of perpetually wading in a sea of misinformation—through their respective personalities.

Her music speaks loudest in its calmest moments, and Reward is an album most remarkable for how it fills its space.

Some of its songs are so intimate that their meanings seem all but impossible for an outsider to parse. But in the moments when he decides to push his music out into the light, Thorpe's self-searching takes on a shape we can all recognize.

When they play it safer, like on their workmanlike strum through Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” or the easy-listening wistfulness of their take on Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over,” the results are less remarkable. And while it’s a relief to be spared Morrissey’s bitterness, sometimes California Son feels too frothy, and he sounds like he doesn’t have any skin in the game at all.

While The Dots is awash in dimensional, multicolored compositions, ALASKALASKA are able to pare things back when necessary.

She has prepared her whole life for the opportunity to challenge the coastal elites for a seat at rap’s table, and Fever is her folding chair.

Because Staples has lost little expressiveness with age, We Get By sounds surprisingly raucous and admirably rough around the edges, especially on the percolating “Anytime.” But these songs are more about the small, quiet spaces where Staples can catch her breath and steel her nerves.

The album exists so thoroughly in the moment that it winds up obliterating the group’s fetishization of the past and just delivers pure, uncut rock’n’roll fun.

Flamagra may not comprise nearly as elaborate a world as those that Lynch conjures, and it doesn’t push Ellison’s art forward in the same way that You’re Dead! did. But the afterlife is a hard act to follow, and in the light of that flame on the hill, Flamagra makes for an engaging way station.

For every track where Barbieri pushes her sound in new directions, there are others where she simply refines it.

On We Fall, Wiggs replicates the continuous momentum of the environment through sound, and she leaves just enough room on the rock to join in her wonderment.

When Corey is at his most inventive, Injury Reserve feels remarkably fresh and singular. ... Too often, though, Injury Reserve gets stuck between its experimental urges and its pop ambitions. In searching for a happy medium, it’s never quite noisy enough or quite catchy enough.

The formula’s limitations are evident on Father of Asahd: There are plenty of voices but no clear message or intention.

Interpol might still be an exceptional act, but it’s a chore to have to squint this hard to see it.

What binds the album is slowthai’s soul: his meticulously drawn characters, his affinity for left-behind outsiders like the glue sniffers sampled on “Doorman,” and his impatience with a profit-motivated world where, as he once put it, “You’re competing constantly without wanting to.”

After over an hour of totally becalmed drift, the bustling pace here at album’s end feels like leaving a day spa only to squeeze onto a rush-hour train. You might find yourself simply wishing the album extended just a few minutes longer.

While much of the instrumentation is thoughtful (the Iranian-British electronic musician Ash Koosha contributed to the delicate “Snowblind” and the raging “Submerged”), nothing is as potent as Tagaq’s voice.

Olden Yolk have big ideas and big dreams about what type of art they want to make, and for the most part, they execute in such a way that feels both strangely soothing and impossibly lovely.

Tyler, the Creator’s sixth album is impressionistic and emotionally charged, the result of an auteur refining his style and bearing more of his soul than ever before.

On their latest album Sombrou Dùvida, they transition from the oft-playful homage and stage-ready jams of previous releases to a serious attempt at tight, kaleidoscopic grooves, and the results are akin to a pleasant, cerebral trip--a little more potent than the edibles sold from wagons in Dolores Park, but nothing quite Leary-caliber.

Like a message from a wise friend, The Best of Luck Club is worth revisiting whenever you’re in need of a little perspective.

She’s doing what she does best, calibrating lovesick or lovelorn synthpop that’s neither too hot nor too cold--and sometimes, regrettably, only lukewarm.

If Pissing Stars reflected the cruel, chaotic world that every new parent worries about bringing their child into, then SING SINCK, SING emits the fragile hope that the next generation will be able to steer toward a better future.

Despite a handful of highlights, Beauty Marks is marred by filler, moving between frothy pop-R&B and stale empowerment anthems that leave Ciara’s talents largely underused.

Although the album is the band’s biggest yet, with a cast of dozens including 13 violinists alone, it rarely feels bulky. Only the too-Arcade-Fire-for-comfort “Where Is Her Head” succumbs to grandiosity, prioritizing spectacle over purpose.

Nots’ third album is a guerilla campaign against surveillance in the service of systemic control. With 3, Nots make fierce rock music equally apt for moshing in solidarity or smashing an Alexa--all forms of control in chaos.

The seeds of a half-decent album are buried among The Secret of Letting Go’s more experimental tracks. But, in the immortal words of another extremely ’90s act, that don’t impress me much. Modern audiences with no notion of the band’s unusual history are unlikely to be moved by this album’s velvety shrug.

With LEGACY! LEGACY!, Jamila Woods positions herself to join the battle, bridging the gap, once and for all, between our unresolved past and the promise that awaits us all on the horizon.

Herndon and her ensemble displace the human voice from its usual setting just enough that it startles the ear. But that displacement allows you to hear voices as if for the very first time, listening ravenously for proof that out there in the unknown, someone besides yourself exists and is singing.

These are novel variations on the familiar Clinic sound. Some, like the queasy synth refrain in “Rubber Bullets,” work less well than others. And some of the melodies seem rather thin, considering the band had six years to generate them (looking at you, “Mirage” and “Rejoice!”). That’s an ancient weakness of the group, and Wheeltappers and Shunters is nothing if not steeped in the past.

Building off a simple guitar note, the record’s slow-burning title track is perhaps the band’s greatest accomplishment yet.

Tucker and Buck remain an electric match, and minus the lyrics, their songs knit together well. They are great and talented musicians. But the subjects they tackle demand more raw nerve than Filthy Friends seem willing to put to tape.

Hecker’s music is not easy, but it is worthwhile.

It sounds nice, but for a lot of its runtime, it also sounds like DeMarco is exhausted, like he’s ready to move on and try something new but is trapped in a creative holding pattern.

The resulting album incorporates considerably more atmospheric depth, including orchestral and keyboard overdubs. Pile are not growing soft, but they are growing.

With such sparse arrangements, the album’s grandest moments come from Giddens’ vocals. She delivers her originals with the same spirit as more familiar material, like a show-stopping take on “Wayfaring Stranger.”

Lowe’s sophomore album retains a distinct point of view, with her folkloric sensibility and forward-thinking production shining through despite some smoothed-over platitudes. Lowe is only growing as an artist, and YU heralds a bright future.

On Enderness he gathers and subverts modern tools to construct his indictment of the modern world.

It’s fun and messy and you might forget it completely by the next day. No regrets, though.

The album tends to get bleached from velvety black to matte beige, all its chrome spikes sanded down to meet public school safety regulations.

Anger Management is a hell of a rap-production slapper, but most of all it’s a turning point in Rico’s evolution.

Brown’s the sort of singer who’s starting a new sentence before finishing the previous one, and she seems less interested in our apocalyptic headlines themselves than in how we receive them.

Nothing on Your Need exceeds the four-minute mark, landing the album squarely in the electro-pop zone rather than the Russian underground dance scene. Such directness leads to Kedr Livanskiy’s catchiest album to date, even if it means that the best tracks are over too soon. Despite the airy vocal hook and 1990s-inspired breakbeat of a standout like “Sky Kisses,” it tantalizes and then starts to fade away.

Their third and undoubtedly best album, U.F.O.F., a mesmerizing flood of life filtered down into a concentrated drip.

But for all of the globe-trotting that went into Violet Street, Local Natives remain quintessentially SoCal: genial, approachable, and optimistic, even if their surroundings are liable to be on fire or crumbling into the sea.

The 11-song record lacks the forcefulness and murderous moxie that gave L7 their early power. There are hints of it in the frenetic lead guitar line of “Stadium West” and in Sparks’ “Lock us up, lock us up” chant on “Burn Baby,” one of the few subtly political references on the record.

Now we have Father of the Bride—a looser, broader album than Modern Vampires, the great sigh after a long holding of breath. There are still moments of conflict, but in general, you get the sense the band is just relieved to have run the gauntlet of their existential doubts and come out relatively unscathed, grateful to be here.