The visual [video] gambit falls uneasily between a critique of hip-hop’s relationship with corporate sportswear brands and, once again, a flimsy attempt to muster up attention. Pure Beauty plays out in a similar fashion, committing wholly to neither SHIRT’s appealing raw rap chops nor his grander concepts.

Although the record has a number of aesthetically appealing moments, Dead Start Program never quite coalesces.

With Crooked Shadows, Carrabba aims to bring together his competing production impulses. Unfortunately, the results are all over the place.

When Wallumrød emerges from the long shadows of her source material, elevate Go Dig My Grave beyond the beautifully rendered, if rather pointless, collection of covers it sometimes threatens to be.

His fourth solo album, Transangelic Exodus, is his most thematically cohesive work to date: a loose narrative about supernatural queer lovers on the run from the law. The misfit feelings surging through his back catalog crystallize here into detailed imagery, giving the album a lurid, cinematic sheen.

It’s fitting that this slightly convoluted, sometimes generic offering largely delivers on its promise, much like the larger comic world it now occupies. A fun, rap-centric album is now Marvel canon. In their first roles as bit players, the TDE roster delivers a product benefiting the whole. Their effort is one befitting the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its blackest entry.

Beautiful Despair is a rough sketch, and its worth extends only as far as one’s interest in such a document.

The Two Worlds finds ways to communicate between these modes [fantasy and emotional urgency], interior and exterior, resulting in a portrait that feels full and honest.

If Little Dark Age is a new start, it’s a promising one.

Her fifth full-length Air Lows feels like a goth psychedelic ritual intended to plumb the depths of the listener’s unconscious; while the record doesn’t always hit its mark, the moments that do sustain momentum radiate a delectably gnostic hum.

If their debut fails to offer a consistent, forceful message the way their riot grrrl heroes once did, they have at least figured out how to capture some of those predecessors’ energy. For now, Dream Wife leaves you revved up and ready to go with nowhere suggested.

Pissing Stars feels purposefully small, a personal retreat from full-band compromise by someone who is trying to understand the world and his role in it. The result is indulgent, neurotic, and harrowing, a reminder of the complete mess we’ve made. But it’s oddly reassuring, too.

The return of synths and disco-ish atmospherics serves, unsurprisingly, to obscure the fact that a nontrivial reinvention still eludes them. But to their credit, Franz Ferdinand are persistently resourceful, and in their theatrical suave and helter-skelter choruses there lingers an obvious knack for starting fires armed only with indie-pop panache.

Vasquez’s new album, Criminal, batters down the restraints that choked back his voice in the past, letting him break from a whisper into, finally, a scream. If it isn’t his most nuanced record, it’s certainly his most decisive.

As a standalone suite of songs, like a tuxedo you only dust off every now and then, it is beautiful, but only appropriate when the occasion demands it.

Distinguished by her sure-footed stride, Quit the Curse sounds like an album by an artist who at last knows where she’s going.

This album often sounds like a studio-crafted simulacrum of a full-band performance, every element a bit too polished.

The adherence to krautrockin’ repetition remains, but the proto-punk engine has been replaced by electronic loops and glacial synths. Suddenly, a band that once sounded most at home in strobe-lit basement dives now sounds primed for a late-afternoon slot at your roving summer festival of choice.

On the whole, though, the women Craft expends so much breath obsessing over drift in and out of his songs like cardboard cutouts from a bygone era, there to be lusted after and then blamed when they don’t fit into his fantasy.

It’s easy to indulge a reverie when it’s a vivid one, and Messes invites you to lose track of time for awhile with it.

Lionheart is brought to life by McEntire’s soulful voice, by a sweeping Nashville sound, but more so by a deep sense of conviction.

With Open Here, Field Music rises to the challenge with a set of newly crystallized talking points, offered up along with a glorious mess of noise.

Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

Khruangbin’s takes this new mode of listening and injects its own singular and developing personality into the playlisting of modern music.

Follow Them True, Stick in the Wheel continue their attack. About half of the album refines the acoustic folk sound of their debut, with lyrics emphasizing the pride of craftsmen and laborers as well as the desperation driving the poor.

Love Jail goes beyond a mere glance in the rearview mirror. It sounds vintage, but it feels current. Dommengang find some potential for escape in this music, some freedom in that absence of a destination.

P2 shows a man who is patient and relentless in honing his craft, getting closer to the debut with each track.

Oh My feels like a pocket-sized chapbook set to music: some songs inspire, some feel thin. When NADINE’s strange poetry does convince you to dog-ear a song, though, returning to it feels as creatively refreshing as when you heard it for the first time.

It’s still a joy to hear the Migos rap, which is why it’s especially depressing that Culture II ultimately feels like a drag--a formless grab bag compiled without much care.

Total Control make an EP of curveballs sound puzzlingly coherent thanks in no small part to their fine craftsmanship.

It’s a pleasant oddity in the Shins’ catalogue—neither a dazzling reinvention of the original release (see: Massive Attack V Mad Professor’s towering No Protection) nor a hastily-assembled insult to the band’s creative work .

Perhaps they figured dark times call for bright music, but this overly polished record often feels like a missed opportunity.

No Age’s name seems self-actualizing. And in their psycho-candied sound, which has progressively gotten better, they still know how to locate the timeless, fever-pitched feeling of a beginning.

By the end of Vessel of Love, it is apparent that an interest in reggae is far from the only thing Cook learned from Ari Up, or the most important thing. She learned to find her voice and make it heard.

This is a band that absolutely revels in the possibilities suggested by its obsidian thrills, no matter the potential changes in the audience’s size and scope. Down Below is about death and hell, sure, but it’s proudly, defiantly not meant for an underground anymore.

For an album called The Time Is Now, David spends too much of his time looking like he's trying to catch up.

Freedom’s Goblin is ultimately a celebration of Segall’s aesthetic and emotional freedom--a definitive capstone to the first decade of a scuzzy, heartfelt songwriter nonpareil.

Calexico have made records that sound like this one before, but they’ve never made one with quite this much fight in it.

While Marble Skies doesn’t always quite get there, the planets it frantically orbits while awaiting touchdown are worth the journey.

Across 12 songs and 74 minutes, All Melody functions as a single, cohesive piece of music, with recurring themes interwoven throughout. It’s easy to get lost in the album and then, hearing a familiar motif, come up short, as if turning a corner in a long hallway and wondering if you hadn’t passed the same spot just a moment ago. It’s a pleasantly disorienting sensation.

There isn’t a moment where Perico is upstaged, and his immediate charm is in the stylish near yelp of his rapping voice, the way he struts over a beat. He seems to always be at the top of his register, but he tucks a deceptive range of perky melody into each verse and hook. All of this plays out over a sleek G-funk backdrop, with plenty of playful nuance in the production.

There are brief glints of enlightenment to be heard here, but more often than not, Laraaji’s makeshift songs come across like daily affirmations as heard in a hotel lounge.

It’s frequently a difficult listen, and not for the reasons Garbus intended.

Blue Madonna’s main value over replacement synth-pop is his falsetto, capable of reaching a glam-rock frenzy but constrained in songs that never quite allow him to go there.

Between Two Shores was cobbled together out of songs left over from past sessions and home demos. This helps explain the album’s lack of focus. What’s missing is a singular idea for a listener to rest her headphones on. Instead, we get a hodgepodge of sentimental tunes that aren’t quite parallel, perpendicular, or adjacent to each other.

Punctuating The House’s actual songs are occasionally baffling interludes (one, “Åkeren,” is sung entirely in Norwegian, a first for Porches), which play more like unfinished sketches than intentional moments of quiet.

It can be hard to square the bleakness of the lyrics with the verdant excess of the sound, though its lo-fi sonics certainly match the rawness of the emotions contained within.

The trio is so refreshing and exhilarating because of the space they elbow-out for themselves and the vibrant spirit they pump into the exhausted genre, proving that simply adding some cavernous echo to a track isn’t enough.

Their voices complement each other so naturally and so gracefully that it’s easy to forget how much craft there is in these songs, and how much ingenuity they put into their vocals.

After five albums, it’s nostalgic sleight-of-hand for the Go! Team to continually look back on the sounds of the ’60s yet still tune out the underlying noise of that radical decade.

It’s taut but it’s also a shambles; cramped and ready to rupture with the despair of five unruly lads.

Camila shines when it’s light and breezy, giving Cabello the space she needs to cook.

While they’re not radically altering their own musical DNA, they are still in their own way trying to figure out what they can and cannot do. While that probably sounds like a backhanded compliment for these rock‘n’roll veterans, it might actually be the secret to their longevity.

The Wasted Years, despite its sardonic title, is a worthwhile look back at the path he took to get to those heights. While it’s not a complete document of the band’s start—this set ignores standalone singles and b-sides from this era, like a rollicking cover of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner”--it sets the table for a three-decade-plus journey that continues to surprise, confound, and satisfy.

Though less memorable than its predecessor, Lex succeeds when it is heard as intended: as a conceptual companion to Reassemblage’s opaque experimentation, an appendix of utopian ideas that adds nuance and provocation to a seductive sound world where East meets West, and breath and circuitry are made one.

While the subject matter of POST- ensures its relevance and substance, much like everything else Rosenstock has ever done, it also sounds like the most fun thing one could possibly do. It’s a motivation to, at the very least, get out of bed.

For all its imposing scale, though, it lacks some of the dramatic finesse of classic Prurient. Fernow’s poetic lyrics, spoken or shrieked, have been a key hallmark of the project, and without them, these abstracted noisescapes lack the narrative character of his best work.

Flourishing in his own way outside the Walkmen, Bauer has found a method of combining two dissimilar passions into art that honors them both.

Rooted somewhere in the corporeal fantasies that have always propelled dance music, Hesaitix unravels an imaginary realm that feels genuinely new in form.

Huncho Jack’s liveliness tends to come from everywhere except Quavo and Travis Scott. The protean energy that buoy their respective works are sadly absent.

While she may borrow from R&B and pop, Klein’s output has more in common with the abstract impressionism of Jackson Pollock. Such intensity makes Tommy a difficult and even exhausting listen, despite a running time of just 25 minutes. But as Captain Beefheart and the Shaggs have shown in the past--and as Klein demonstrates now—-stepping off the musical path that leads to standardized perfection can prove hugely rewarding.

Ardor ultimately feels emotionally coherent but tricky to categorize. BIG|BRAVE are the sound of the raw unconscious, turned up loud.

After two releases filled with high-concept fusion, some listeners might be hungry for solos that hang around longer and aren’t so beholden to the mood of the production. Adjuah delivers exactly this on The Emancipation Procrastination.

Neither Future nor Thug is at the peak of his powers on Super Slimey, which forgoes explosiveness and poignancy for streamlined action, and many of the solo cuts shine brighter than the team-ups.

Wood$ does an excellent job of creating a chilled-out vibe--the kind of music that could soundtrack any setting, whether it’s time to club or wind down. That’s a fine quality to have, but there’s a sense that something deeper is tucked beneath the layers of his brand of trappy R&B.

Jeezy is mostly comfortable doing the same things he’s always done and letting others take the leaps. But times are changing and Jeezy is still clearly struggling to adapt to them.

An album of sunlit melodies with the shadows of Detroit looming over it delivers more than expected; it’s not easy creating a doleful aftertaste that never quite dampens spirits, but Bonny Doon pull it off.

It’s full of capable floor-fillers, but it rarely offers listeners much they haven’t heard many times before.

There are no insights to be found here about prestige, depression, or dependency. The whole thing is unbelievably dour and boring.

Both in the events leading up to this album and in the music contained within, Vincent has proven imperfect. That messiness comes to define this album, making for machine music that’s lovingly flawed and human.

On Saturation III, the collective’s objective begins to come into focus. They still paint in broad strokes and their songs sometimes still lack continuity, but they’re truly moving as a unit now, and the star power is all but obvious.

King Gizzard tend to get roped up in the flourishes on Polygondwanaland, before giving way to an instinctive simplicity. At times, it works to their advantage, like when they moderate the dynamics of a feverish tempo on “Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet.” Elsewhere, the band dulls itself by overthinking a section and losing their knack for natural flow.

It’s not just the guest roster that sets Pop 2 so apart from the mainstream pop landscape, it’s the way these voices are integrated, making its 10 tracks feel less like a cool-kid curation project and more like a popping afterparty you’ve stumbled into.

As ambient music, radio play, fetid sustenance for misanthropic shut-ins--it is a singular piece of work, and a bold step forward for Rabit’s inky aesthetic.

While the long tracklist and equally protracted verses make for an exhausting listen, there are rewards for those that endure.

Diggin’ is a remarkable transmission: a document of a wave of heady creativity swept under our headlong rush toward tomorrow.

Between their respective spotlight turns, both musicians are on equal footing, challenging and surprising one another, and their listeners, with music that feels alive and wondrous.

The album’s first half sounds relatively strong. ... But No_One Ever Really Dies runs into a wall midway through, as old ideas rear their heads like those nobbly-headed creatures in Whac-a-Mole.

Ultimately, Badu’s reimagining of Fela succeeds better than any of the previous box sets by making his music feel both very much alive and very much her own. Her curation pulls together a sonically and thematically coherent experience that comes close to being the macro-album these album-length macro-grooves seem to demand.

If Eternally Even was James’ aggrieved effort to engage directly with a world in unrest, Tribute To 2 is an attempt to offer succor. It’s a little glimpse of the past James hopes will soothe and reassure us.

From the quality of the production, it seems that Metro knows he wasn’t going to get a progressive performance from Sean. Most of the beats on the album are standard fare with a few gems like “Reason,” which recalls Metro’s What a Time to Be Alive production “Jumpman,” and “Who’s Stopping Me” which samples from Brazilian artist Nazaré Pereira’s “Clarão De Lua,” something a little bit different from Metro’s typically modern approach.

This is still a staggering monument all the same, an elaborately detailed portrait of a shambolic artist whose astonishing productivity, creative restlessness, and utter disdain for the niceties of civil society know no bounds.

For all the racket, there simply isn’t enough focus, enough control, or enough music. Improvisations hints at the duo’s potential but is a fundamentally insubstantial listen.

Fans of Sublime Frequencies and their exhaustive look at Southeast Asian bands taken by surf music will find kinship in “Mirza” and the skronking sax lines of Sudanese track “El Bomba.” And just when it seems the comp is firmly entrenched in an exploration of how ’60s rock and R&B infiltrated the region, the tumbling disco beat and needling reeds make Mallek Mohamed’s “Rouhi Ya Hafida” refreshing.

Vol. 2 leavens its heavier moments with songs that celebrate the simple joys of love and marriage and family, without lapsing into sentimentality.

How to Solve Our Human Problems, Part 1 is the sound of a band deploying its full arsenal of bells and whistles to seize your attention, even when the songs themselves aren’t always strong enough to retain the grip.

The band sell their introspection by marrying it to convincingly urgent music. It’s also a lot of fun; all the flying guitar chords and thumping beats inevitably quicken pulses.

They really leave no space for Palumbo, and while there are distinct choruses, there are no hooks. There are more memorable basslines than vocal melodies.

With Weighing of the Heart, Iqbal adds another couple of strings to her bow, emerging as a pop auteur and songwriter of impressive emotional heft.

The numerous early takes and rough demos have a diehard appeal (there’s a reason Metallica has a dedicated archivist on their payroll), though the live recordings present a band going through its most monumental transition punctuated by monumental tragedy. Recording a masterpiece was the easy part. Genius does not appear out of thin air and Puppets was a culmination of Metallica’s influences and forward direction, so yes, it will give you a more rounded sense of how a masterwork came to be.

Kweli’s flow can feel rushed and sticky, as though he can’t articulate his thoughts as neatly as he can conjure them up. But his fans are loyal. Radio Silence will comfortably shore up the base.

There’s plenty Sia could do with an album entirely of Christmas originals, but too many are underwritten; there’s more consistency in the art direction than the songwriting.

If Young’s recent work has felt like a series of hard-headed dives into his pet obsessions--more interesting for simply existing than for actually listening to--then The Visitor is more all-encompassing, and as a result, more centered.

Brisk, 47-minute runtime aside, Post Self is a daunting listen, as well as an essential one, even by Godflesh’s sterling standards.

Despite the blatant bid to sound modish and rejuvenated, U2 cannot help in certain respects but sound the same.

On War & Leisure, he sounds unconflicted and ready to rumble. The freedom he promises his lovers in his music extends to himself, and he’s better than ever at just letting go.

Morning After challenges listeners to assemble their own puzzle, pull fragments from it, and draw their own conclusions. Trust, aloneness, insecurity, hundreds of nights worth of feelings: dvsn puts them all in the air for you to grab at any moment.

An explicit testament to Lo’s chaotic love life, an unashamedly sexual and emotionally impactful piece of work. Lo ends up baring much more of her soul than her body.