Equal parts brittle and brazen, Shitty Hits is the work of a well-past-promising newcomer.

While one occasionally wishes that Frankie Rose could get a few paces further out from under her own shadow, the best of Cage Tropical does something similar, taking her own retro influences and using them to leapfrog her way out of a creative rut.

Cost of Living revels in the gleaming, multi-tracked expanse of a professional recording studio. It’s a richer, fuller sound; the stereo imaging is wider and the saxophone (they’ve stripped down to just one, now played by Joe DeGeorge, who also handles keyboards) has more presence in the mix. The bigger, brighter sound often serves them well.

Rembo is an album that prizes function as much as idiosyncrasy; much like Differ-Ent’s It’s Good To Be Differ-Ent, the yearning for experimentation is always kept in check by an intuitive appreciation for what dancers desire. It’s a talent to be cherished.

Smart but never intellectual, given more to the words we use over the words we know, Newman peppers these stories with little references to the Great Migration, climate change (the swells on Willie’s beach keep getting bigger), global politics, and American myth.

An occasional stab of synthesizer is the closest these songs come to pomp, and the production is still scruffy around the edges, hi-fi only by the standards of her early self-recordings. But the improved fidelity lets her words and voice come across clearer than they did from the bedroom, revealing how much more elegant Allison’s wordplay is than it can seem at first blush, and her gift for detailing conflict with the economy of a young adult novel.

The result is Manchester Orchestra’s most confounding, thrilling, and unintentionally loopy album yet.

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.

Yes, the music this band makes is undeniably fun--Dead Cross bounces along with so much pep you could almost consider it a party record. But they stick to a fairly straight-ahead take on thrash and hardcore that doesn’t shed much new light on the players involved.

Bits of space rock, dub, leftfield disco, and post-punk all feed into Square One, but despite the Scandinavian disco pedigree of its two participants, it’s less a dancefloor weapon than a soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing.

As impressive as Frost’s music is, he seems always a bit too eager to impress, a sure turn-off. It’s less a matter of the parts Frost writes, which are often lovely and/or awesomely grand, and more in the way he frames them.

The lack of anything like a pained or ecstatic voice in Call It Love can make its emotional core tricky to access. Instead of reading it in her voice, you have to read it in her lyrics and the environments in which she’s chosen to nestle them. That doesn’t detract from Call It Love’s prettiness.

Sodium is liable to leave you just as drained as its creator, but it’s the sort of exhaustion that feels valorous and victorious. After all, losing your voice is a small price to pay for saving your sanity.

Good for You finds the Portland rapper, born Adam Daniel, sounding charming, clever, and carefree.

His message loses strength, in part, because he doesn’t fully commit to it.

With Raft, he drifts past all of the above touchstones and ventures a bit further out, with each of the album’s seven tracks delving deeper into the 74-year-old musician’s idiosyncratic sound.

Theirs is a meaty, swollen approach to garage rock that leaves ample room for diversions into exploratory psych and shredded rockabilly, and these moments turn out to be the best on Emerge.

Mensa is also writerly. His bars can sound productively picked at and pored over, or clunky and pent-up when overly pampered. The Autobiography splits those tendencies down the middle, casting its star as a remarkable, easy-to-digest rapper with an affinity for half-baked wordplay.

Even while making a turn towards formalism, Golden Retriever remain as inventive as ever. Rotations is also richly emotional.

Butler’s commitment to the detached frontman where singing occurs barely or not at all robs songs of their emotional largesse, that basic thing we licensed to Arcade Fire and upon which their entire identity relies. What saving grace there is on Everything Now is scattered throughout its mercifully short 47 minutes.

Frustrates as much as it entices, even more so than the Mikael Jorgensen & Greg O’Keeffe album, its older spiritual twin. ... For the third album in a row, Jorgensen has proven himself to be masterful at carving arrangements so that all the parts work in tandem in a perfect balance between form and function, not a skill to be taken lightly or under-utilized.

Mullen’s personality goes a long way in setting him apart from the pack. The same goes for Suffocation as a whole, whose staying power on ...Of the Dark Night is undeniable.

Even in its busiest moments, the album has a soothing effect. Its rough charms begin to feel like an acceptance of a world in disarray, refining its chaos into compact moments of beauty.

At first listen, it’s as perplexing as its immediate antecedent Not the Actual Events. ... The EP’s final track is both the strongest and strangest.

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

Her skepticism reflects a self-awareness that pairs nicely with the wide-eyed wonderment in her music. Korkejian strikes this balance with such delicacy that it’s sometimes hard to believe this is her first album.

Though its songs are lightly augmented with overdubs and outside voices, as well as the faintest outlines of orchestrations from Eyvind Kang, Eucalyptus retains its air of bedroom intimacy.

There are moments on Lust for Life that, while less successful on a pure songwriting level than some of Del Rey’s more focused work, are fascinating distillations of what a Lana Del Rey song mean.

Even at less than a half hour, Lo Tom suffers from redundancy, not surprising when you’ve made more than one song reminiscent of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and you’re not actually AC/DC.

Sacred Hearts Club splits the difference between the bookending acts on that Grammys tribute: Maroon 5 and the Beach Boys.

The mix won’t convince diehards that Snaith is a dance music demiurge. At crucial moments, it sacrifices momentum for eclecticism. It’s less for club puritans than for adventurous Caribou fans who are willing to follow Snaith no matter which rabbit hole he dives down.

Flower Boy shows thoughtfulness can be freeing. As Tyler, the Creator embarks on a journey of self-discovery, he becomes close to whole.

Grime at its best is defined by its steely economy, which makes Raskit’s rambling length and diluted focus frustrating. As a platform for Dizzee's flashy lyrical dexterity, Raskit does more than enough to shift the bitter aftertaste of The Fifth. With more of the laser-eyed focus that marked Boy in Da Corner, it could have been a triumph.

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.

It’s as subdued an album as Oyamada has made. ... But thankfully “subdued,” by Cornelius’s standards, still entails unceasing rhythmic invention, perhaps the central musical theme of his career. Filling the stereo horizon with flickering instrumental flashes that often careen off each other in intricately syncopated arrangements, even the album’s most lulling moments have non-mellow currents churning beneath the surface.

The digs may occasionally seem claustrophobic, the host a bit eccentric, but it’s still a stay worth remembering.

He has evolved quite a bit since Excuse My French, coming up with moments of sharpness, but he is still limited in what he can do.

If the concert starts off jittery, with the frenetic 13-minute “Invitation”--the band seems almost too hyped-up--the remaining two-hours are a seamless, pitch-perfect display of A-game professionalism married to virtuoso sparkle.

Kaleidoscope isn’t going to kickstart Coldplay’s critical reappraisal, nor does it deserve to. But it rewards those of us who’ve stuck around with a few songs that capture the band at its best.

On his self-produced debut, Crossan works the city’s spidery Tube maps into an exhilarating electronic framework where the conflicting sounds of the modern-day Tower of Babel can harmoniously coexist.

As with Psychopomp, the album’s most powerful moments come when Zauner examines seeming contradictions that actually aren’t or shouldn’t be.

The discrepancy between Steadman’s skill set and the kind of music he’s trying to make here is hard to overlook.

As always, Integrity’s affinity for chaos supplies much of Howling’s latent gravitas, especially on the first few listens. The record’s lurching pace is powered by a bludgeoning type of bait-and-switch mechanic; For every extended, arduous trudge through the trenches, there’s a shot of good, unclean fun.

As good as the remaster sounds, the primary attraction of this edition is its second disc, 11 tracks from Prince’s vault of unreleased songs, all cut between 1983 to 1984. ... The vault tracks sound like fully-formed Prince songs—animated, vibrant, reflexive, fluid, almost vehicular in their design and velocity.

The free-jazz vibe still makes for a visceral experience, regardless of whether not you can actually follow Quazarz’ path. They continue to eschew standard song structures in favor of free-flowing compositions whose direction is guided by instinct.

This time around, the edges of the Quazarz universe feel smoother, the ride less jarring. The low end is still intense, but it feels more like a deep tissue massage than a trunk-rattling rumble.

Need to Feel Your Love continues to dance along the line separating proto-metal and power pop, but leans more often toward the latter. Bassist Hart Seely’s slightly crisper production lets you better savor the jangly acoustic strums underpinning the power chords, while liberating Halladay’s singing from the payphone fidelity of those earlier recordings.

He is so compelling when he digs deeper into his psyche this way, providing more than superficiality, but there aren’t enough of these moments to sustain Issa Album, which is as basic as its title.

The new album finds Boris honing in on their most essential quality: their ability to wrest a kind of endless subtlety from thick layers of distortion and volume.

Exquisite as a great deal of Lifetime of Love sounds, it is not an album especially rich in emotional depth or apparent meaning. Its merits, not to be shrugged off, are nevertheless mainly superficial—the slight but definite virtues of a decidedly minor record.

While lacking the close mic’d intimacy of her early work, Out in the Storm is equally immersive, with songs that play like fiery exorcisms.

This is incredibly heavy music made light (joyful, even) by the zeal and power of its players. By plowing into, through, and ultimately out of the dark, Ex Eye is an ecstatic fusion--an exhilarating exclamation of defiance, no warning required.

For all the missteps, there are gratifying moments littered throughout. For the most part, the production, spearheaded by David “CDOC” Snyder, is patched together smartly and with regard to tradition.

Though often framed as the band’s discovery of R&B, Sunshine Tomorrow reveals Wild Honey to contain almost as many connections to brother Brian’s sad-boy masterpieces and psych-pop as it does to the surf-rockers of yore.

It’s been more than a half-decade wait for Chronology, but in a genre known for singles, Chronixx has produced a complete, solid album.

The momentum generated by “Mirage” and the equally limber funk workouts that bookend Boo Boo end up compensating for the tedious midsection of neither-here-nor-there experimentation.

It's remarkably cohesive both in mood and style: energetic but never wanton, bittersweet but never wallowing.

Several of the new versions on Crime Rock just amount to tighter, better-quality recordings. In other cases, the changes are quite dramatic.

There's something more deliberately approachable about the melodies he uses here. He meditates in the spaces in between phrasings, allowing the more volatile segments to linger like light trails in your vision.

Many of the songs on the second half slide into each other in a forgettable jumble, but Grateful’s best songs are here, too.

More so than Forgiveness Rock Record, Hug of Thunder presents Broken Social Scene as a rock band making rock songs, a coherent montage rather than a patched-together highlight reel.

Again and again, Woodstock promises a protest but delivers a party.

There is rarely nuance to Baio’s lyrics, and everything is offered up with little in the way of poetry or insight.

Neither reinventing pop nor changing the course of dance music, it’s a vacation of an album that doubles as the producer’s own stopgap until his next wave comes along.

As on Days Are Gone, its sheen is current and its spirit out of step. Beat by beat, Haim are the classic sound of heartbreak alleviated, if only for a moment.

Though the majority of B-Sides and Rarities can be easily found by those inclined to find it (the piano sketch “Rain in Numbers” is a hidden track at the end of Beach House’s self-titled debut, making it not much of a B-side or a rarity), the impulse to gather up loose ends into a cohesive package feels like a solid effort at future-proofing recordings peripheral to the band’s primary discography.

Wintres Woma is an album that makes itself easy to like.

TLC's letting-go is bittersweet and good, a sometimes somber, sometimes playful requiem for their time together (and with us).

Algiers have produced a record that is timely and necessary but also scatterbrained and messy, one that is so over the top it becomes a political melodrama, undercutting the issues it seeks to amplify.

Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful.

He surveys ideas on wealth and success with a confidence that makes even his most clumsy boasts about not going ham on the ’Gram seem sophisticated. Rap’s biggest winner coolly sustains his biggest losses.

Reflections--Mojave Desert is arguably his most ambitious recording to date, if only because he availed himself of the Mojave Desert itself as his recording studio. Clocking in at under half an hour, the soundtrack shows Floating Points in a transitional phase.

Truly, it all feels right on Mister Mellow, which is why it doesn’t leave much of an impression. Even if Mister Mellow asked more of Greene than any prior Washed Out album, it lacks the artistic ambition and tension that made his work endure beyond a blurry moment in the sun.

Murder of the Universe may be built from the band’s now-familiar krautpunk battle plan, but their ability to execute outsized architectural complexity at manic, warp-speed velocity is no less astonishing.

Snoop sounds in great shape and like he’s having the time of his life.

The 11 tracks on his self-titled debut are strange and stirring enough to make him one of the genre’s most exciting young voices.

In a Mood is a referential album, but what ultimately ties it together is Okely’s lyrical simplicity and willingness to let his songs breath.

Dust is a dense and heady record, and from certain angles can seem intimidating, even impenetrable. But between the clever track sequencing and a handful of irresistible outcrops of groove and melody, Halo provides plenty of footholds to cling onto while you acclimatise to her lawless universe.

On Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, Monk is a heavyweight engaging with a middleweight, and middlebrow, in Vadim, whose career was more defined by his romantic conquests than his artistic content. But that’s not on Monk. And his work here, in the middle of 1959, is as thought-provoking as anything he recorded in that prodigious year.

The gifts of Precious Art are more apparent when comedy shades the melody instead of overshadowing it.

This duality of lush, sensual guitar music and entropic noise resonates with the album’s implied textual theme.

With his wry charm absent, the album ultimately shows only a partial picture of Jeff Tweedy as a solo artist.

There are times throughout Iteration when Haley sounds trapped in the same old rut. Overall, though, the album balances between bombast and gestures that are a little harder to read. That contrast gives Iteration a texture that’s missing from previous Com Truise releases.

Ditto’s non-traditional view down a well-trodden path is welcome, but you do wish she’d kick up the dust a bit more.

There is a lot of music about anxiety in the air these days, but Ellen Kempner’s voice is specific and visceral.

Big Fish Theory is a compact rap gem for dancing to or simply sitting with, an album that is as innovative as it is accessible; if not a glimpse into the future, then it’s at least an incisive look at the present.

There’s little of Future’s jadedness. If in the past Thug has made everyday experiences seem chaotic and formless, his achievement here is distilling the murky waters of young love and lust into vital, undeniable pop.

Years removed from its source, its impact is multiplied tenfold. In 1996, it was a path towards adult-contemporary pop radio; today, it’s an exquisitely faded Polaroid.

This is the culmination of an eight-year second-wind. It’s also the most complete 2 Chainz album to date, and places him where he belongs: in the upper echelon of rappers from this era.

The album’s second half slows down a bit, but it maintains the focus on songcraft and mood.

Like much of her work throughout her career, each of these tracks feels like a glimpse of something larger. You won’t get the full picture from any single track, but let the whole album sink in, and you begin hearing the implicit connections that link them all.

Like the best bands of the C86 era, the Drums craft these songs by taking a basic template and perfecting it.

It’s not hard to hear City Music as a lament for lost innocence, a pledge to maintain optimism and humanity at a time when those qualities don’t just feel like vestiges of youth, but of some better civilization that’s rapidly disappearing. In his best album yet, Morby makes a prayer out of the squall.

The Singles traces both Can’s genius and how they ultimately ran out of ideas, losing all of their Vitamin C.

House and Land don’t just make these songs their own: they effectively reclaim them, illustrating that they’ve always been theirs.

It’s a shame there’s no such thing as a subtitled listening experience because OUÏ is rich with brilliant, funny ideas about conception, nurture, and identity.

Whatever plane The Fifth State of Consciousness represents, Peaking Lights make it sound like gold at the end of a rainbow.

The raw, carnal fervor of Booker’s punk numbers is still present--and sometimes it’s more pronounced--on Witness’ acoustic and naked electric blues and soul, when the opposing forces of a lush or refined landscape and Booker’s gravely voice work in concert.