A pleasantly surprising return on My Finest Work Yet, his most plainly and darkly funny album in a long time.

Even if the results are uneven at times. Grande does not need to force any sort of spirit, she is full of it already. She just needs to find the Dangerous Woman within herself and let her break free.

Sons of Kemet are most effective when they transpose concept to instrument this way. But despite the group’s skill for conversing between genres and generations, words are Your Queen’s greatest weakness.

Jean-Jacques Perrey et son Ondioline is deceptively experimental music in the lineage of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or Tomita: lush musical soundscapes that still come alive to modern ears, more than a half-century after they were recorded.

They’ve managed to smuggle working-class subject matter into grand, gleaming Britpop without sacrificing their hardcore ethos or the scrappy hope that keeps them in forward motion.

We’re All Alone in This Together isn’t Dave’s magnum opus. But the best thing is, he’s just getting started. We’re barely past the opening credits.

It’s difficult to tell if the emcee is mocking a trend in rap—or simply perpetuating it. The air of poetic abstraction on the album doesn’t clear anything up. But elsewhere, the contrast in styles works more successfully.

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

Nux Vomica retains its predecessor's flair for the grandiose, but repositions the Veils as purveyors of a gothic Americana, inhabiting desert-stormy vistas that are just expansive enough to house the band's most valuable asset: Andrews' magnetic, outsize persona.

I’m Up doesn’t muster up the highs of the Slime Season series—the infectiousness of “Best Friend,” the sublime structuring of “Draw Down,” or the woozy euphoria of “Raw”--but Thug manages to compile many of his best attributes into a tightly-wound 38 minutes.

If you take it as a whole, Uh Huh Her is deeply engrossing: Harvey has never explored the minimal-verging-on-primitive side of her music so thoroughly, or captured so exactly the sound of a mood swing.

Despite the evolution of their sound, Tilly and the Wall haven't forgotten about what made them appealing in the first place: bright co-ed harmonies, rousing choruses, and their overall open-hearted good nature.

Closing track “New Moon,” whose title signals the completion of a cycle and rebirth, might have come off as meandering and repetitive at the beginning of the record. But in its final moments, once you’ve adjusted your ears, Bachman’s delicate gestures sound at once extremely private and cosmically vast.

Where the experimentation often succeeds, the editing fails.

The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations. While some of Metheny’s best original work this century has spoken to his ambition as a composer (2005’s The Way Up), his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting.

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

The moments of direct storytelling feel more tantalizing considering how little we know about the writer.

Walking Proof winds through moments of incandescent joy, gentleness, cathartic noise, and even unease (“Scream” ends the hopeful album with an eerie crawl). It’s as if Hiatt has emerged from a dark, uncertain period as a stronger, bolder artist, winding up with an album that encompasses a full spectrum of feeling as it rocks with abandon.

It’s a collage of striking songs from a band that may have shied away from making some tough calls about what to cut and what to lean into during the long process of self-recording.

Marshall traipses around on just about everybody's hallowed ground here and pulls it off without inducing winces.

By downplaying the elements that made the Depreciation Guild initially stand out from the crowd, Spirit Youth is a decidedly less distinctive album than their debut. However, by making that choice, they've made what turns out to be their best.

So Darnielle doesn't sing about anger; he sings about loss, and in a way the results are as dark and brutal as The Sunset Tree.

The arrangements are lean and pared back, even as the lyrics erupt with florid descriptions that feel like direct entreaties to the senses.

Though there have always been plenty of bands mining the same era, with reverbed vocals and drummers that don't sit down, Stay Home captures attitude and devil-may-care confidence better than most of today's bands worth their weight in Nuggets compilations.

To be clear, Metz haven’t turned into a pop band. They’ve actually done the opposite, incorporating harmony without going soft. The fact that so few heavy bands have been able to pull that off attests to how difficult it is. With Strange Peace, Metz make it sound easy.

When No Birds Sang is the rare metal album whose greatest virtue is its delicacy.

Slippery and cryptic, Negro Swan blurs boundaries between the finished and the unfinished; between focused deliberation and thrown-together spontaneity; between fly-on-the-wall conversations and self-contained songs; between indie experimentalism and overground pop; between insider and outsider, black and white, straight and gay, trans and cis; between taxing depletion and invigorating replenishment.

Molina's songwriting here is much stronger than on last year's Axxess and Ace, but he's abandoned some of the guests who helped make the album so affecting when he opted to record in Scotland, rather than the U.S. ... making The Lioness a decidedly more resigned and less passionate affair.

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.

Idols of Exile is consistently solid; the songs are fully realized and, ultimately, memorable.

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.

BBNG’s Late Night Tales certainly unwinds as it goes on, getting more and more hushed with each passing moment, but it never settles into any single sonic space, constantly shifting and advancing.

The basic material remains familiar—gated synth tones arranged in taut melodies and spindly arpeggios—but Senni has found a new flamboyance in these astoundingly ornate, often song-like pieces.

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.

The lyrical coarseness serves an important function, reinforcing the urgency of O'Connor's performances and creating the impression that she has worked hard and fast to document her emotions at their rawest and wildest.

They've rediscovered their broad range and proud, sleeve-worn strangeness.

Invariable Heartache sounds more like one of Lambchop's more countrified records, which is to say the music is both lush and minimal, the sound of so many musicians giving themselves over completely to the song. It's a gateway album to Chart's back catalog, as well as to an adventurous era in Nashville history.

Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package.

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.

Hotel Shampoo manages to strike the right balance between Rhys' desire to indulge odd whims, lyrical humor, outright pop, and heartfelt sentiment. More importantly, he always makes it sound effortless.

The record’s innovations are modestly hidden in clever programming, while Paradinas himself is too level-headed to inspire Aphex Twin-style devotion. But he does make a compelling case for the genre as a living entity that’s open to new ideas, and not nearly as persnickety as its reputation suggests.

The While We Wait mixtape remains their best-written release, but Kehlani, with “Folded” leading the way, proves she wants to compete in the marketplace.

While Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 had all the indications of starting out as a stopgap project to stave off between-album downtime, it wound up being a solid exhibition of his chops.

As Chopper reaffirms, Kiwi Jr. may never be the kind of band that deals in linear narratives or grand conceptual statements. But like the background bit actors that fill out the frames of a big-screen epic, their songs amass minor details to major effect.

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

At heart these are songs about living with the weight of sadness, about the accumulation of severed relationships and missed connections and regrets both big and small. Change all the names and the album can still hit you like a speeding car.

All waves of revivalism and nostalgia aside, Are You Falling Love? sounds like it was beamed in straight from 1993.

Barbieri’s dualities—holy and profane, ancient and newfangled, ecstatic and doomed—give Spirit Exit its potency.

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.

While not as pristine as the self-titled, their debut record for Epitaph is much denser, often overwhelming.

The scrapbook-like cover of All Delighted People makes sense then, as its contents serve as a humble and friendly keepsake, songs that deserve to be heard, but belonging to a chapter in Stevens' artistic livelihood that he needed to close to maintain his vitality.

Death After Life gets a little cute here and there (cf. the extended roboseizure freakout outro to "III"), and it starts to lose a little steam near the end, when the downtempo digression of "VI" and the hopped-up yet unsurprising "VII" roll towards the official conclusion.

Nothing on this album is intended to be heard from a distance, and at its best, it’s terrifying.

Though it can feel a bit too calm and sedate, the album also reflects the group’s greatest and most instantly recognizable strengths. Their sound might suggest that they’re wound up in nostalgia, but that’s never been the case: They are able to tap into a performative naïvete.

ArtScience is the Robert Glasper Experiment’s most realized effort, mainly because they’ve stopped relying on outside talent to get their point across. They’ve created their own vibe, one that needed their own voices to truly resonate.

Thug's best songs are carefully structured, even if they appear effortlessly thrown together, and the most effective moments tend to be subtle, sidling up to the listener.... But the album's true highlights don't arrive until its close, with the one-two punch of "Draw Down" and "Wood Would".

Hartlett crafts Ovlov’s breeziest record yet. It’s still wooly and doused in fuzz, but the band sounds more lucid than ever before.

Classic rock is a genre that’s endured through its mythology. With Western Cum, Cory Hanson gives us some new myths to believe in.

Over time, the album’s subtle ambition becomes impossible to miss.

Her strongest, most distilled release. The playlistification of mainstream music has not hindered this refreshingly concise collection of pop, rap, and ’90s R&B resilience.

Holiday Destination is compellingly bleak, but Shah’s defiance and willingness connect the dots to make it hopeful.

Departed Glories’ strongest individual tracks are uncompromisingly abstract. ... Less profound, on their own, are the tracks that let edge-of-intelligibility vocal collages in the manner of Julianna Barwick do most of the work. But they play a flattering role in the album as a whole, which is how it should be heard

Where Stetson’s solo albums use dread and paranoia to undercut his careful attention to post-rock’s sense of limitless possibility, Hereditary feeds off of his darkest impulses.

There's something more naturally personal about Pythagorean Dream, in the way its multitude of vibrations emanate from Chatham alone.

Belle and Sebastian have always been focused on connection, and on Late Developers, they’re unpretentious about sharing that bond and generous in reinforcing it.

In balancing the stridence of his politics with the aesthetic overload of his many influences, All My Heroes reintroduces JPEGMAFIA as an imagineer as well as a provocateur. He remains a hellraiser, but also comes across as bubbly and inventive, technicolor and cyberpunk.

While Pursuit of Momentary Happiness draws from a bottomless well of piss and vinegar, it counterbalances those urges with irreverence and grace.

Growing up to the world as Fela Kuti’s son will naturally always cast something of a shadow over Seun Kuti’s music, but Black Times comes across as both a respectful reminder of his legacy and a demonstration of Kuti’s own fresh talent.

Cohen might have made the album for himself as a keepsake, an antidote to the rest of life's pressing noise. It works that way for us, as well.

By enlisting noise goblin Ian Dominick Fernow (Prurient) and Xiu Xiu-graduate Caralee McElroy to pitch in, their full-length debut, Love Comes Close, manages to stand out as a successful collaborative effort with a clear sense of purpose.

Phonte and Big Pooh sound rejuvenated, and while 9th Wonder isn’t on this record (or part of the group), the beats compiled by Khrysis, Nottz, Zo!, Black Milk, and Devin Morrison have a sophisticated bounce, making this feel like an old Little Brother album without dwelling too much in the past.

McCaughan's confidence, in his talents and his songs, is readily apparent throughout this album, and the result is his best non-Superchunk work to date.

This album is more of a mood piece, its melodic rewards teased out over time and drenched in the type of steady rain that his home state is known for.

Bar the rare moments of clunky electronics, almost every sound, touch, and shade on Fall to Pieces feels like it had to be there, in blessed contrast to the rambling dead ends, failed experiments, and misjudged covers of Tricky’s recent records. Fall to Pieces is an audacious cri de coeur that ultimately finds strength in adversity where others might fall apart.

For better or worse, this is not Moon Safari Redux.

There’s nothing on Dark Times that’s surprising and challenging for Staples but little that detracts from what already works.

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.

An unusual mixture of hard funk and soft pop, like Zapp and Burt Bacharach stuck in an elevator together, Cole's is a sly, jubilant sound; it makes good use of the way funk also thrives upon a sense of wrongness, a screw-faced delight at things gone awry.

The melancholy saunter of Henriksen’s lines is isolated and sculpted by glimmering, whirring atmospheres full of emptiness and portent. Testing different ways to contrast eloquent material and enigmatic medium, the record plays like some lost collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and Brian Eno circa Ambient 4: On Land.

These songs bend and stretch like they’re toying with psych pop, even though the music is still delivered through Frankie Cosmos’ now-trademark minimalism.

It’s a discomfiting listen: In bearing witness to her agony, there’s a kind of transference of pain that occurs in her shredded screams—the sound of an artist stepping into her shadows in order to find her light.

Olé! Tarantula isn't his best solo record, but it's in the top tier, and after all these years that's certainly something.

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

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

Often when an artist gets stronger, the music becomes more universal, and reference points become easier to hear. It may sound paradoxical, but these evocations help make Glacial Glow distinct.

[Circles] is an uncharacteristically varied, psych-y noise-pop record that just plain sounds and feels great.

While Neon Cross highlights the versatility of Wyatt’s gorgeous, commanding voice, she finds her comfort zone in singalong anthems like “Goodbye Queen.”

The band reach peak drama on “Station Wagon”—an ambitious number that might have overwhelmed their tastes for unadorned punk just a few years ago. ... “Station Wagon” encapsulates the band’s development as songwriters, shouting back at the bombast of youth and the perilous chore of moving beyond it.

t's a strangely affecting synthesis of sounds and marks Holy Other's short debut out as a darkly oppressive but ultimately rewarding piece of work.

They've focused their maniacal energy into seriously dense and carefully considered songwriting; even the cleaner and deeper production betrays Deerhoof's commitment to letting the songs speak for themselves, and to keeping individual parts as precise and undistracting as possible.

Shopping’s idea of choice doesn't mean one agenda at the expense of another, but establishing a welcoming space for all comers. It works because their naturally scatty, riotous spark means they could never sound neutral.

Where Bloodroot bristled with bright, dissonant clusters, Ultraviolet is consonant and warm, with steady rhythms and reassuring harmonies. It is a spring rain rather than a freak hailstorm.

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.

Sick Scenes, the British group’s sixth album, plays like a love letter to aging indie idealism; to the fans who have reveled in this band’s careening pop-punk singalongs, scathing neuroses, and charmingly specific soccer references.

C.A.R. is an excellent, devastating record, a chronicle of the amiable pessimism and occasional nihilism of a rapping Bukowski who can't seem to find a way out of the condition in which he finds himself.

After spending decades creating music out of undiscovered noises, William Basinski lets his hair down on To Feel Embraced.

Bunny is not as uptempo and optimistic as the punk-adjacent guitar pop that put them on the map; instead it basks in its afterglow, as if spending the morning in bed after a long night out.

Smalhans is a reliably generous gesture from an artist that takes pleasure in indulging himself and his audience.