Highlights cohere into another solid project, but at this stage in Jenkins’ career, adding some new parts to his formula feels pertinent. Getting into a groove is cool, but staying in that groove for too long can become a detriment.

It's a document of what he needed to get out in that moment.

The band's personal choices--to abandon rock iconography for smaller, more fulfilling family units--will be Grace's fate as well: a record without broader narratives, meant for those who grew up with the Rapture, or want to.

It’s good, sure. Curry is rapping his ass off. But Kenny Beats’ production isn’t anything new. There are no imperfections, no colors outside of the lines, and with that, it misses some of the heart that makes regional rap special.

In the sure hands of Pinhas and his comrades, Reverse is big enough to contain emotional multitudes.

All told, Fleeting isn't as distinct or as instant as its predecessors, particularly Jones' 2011 masterpiece, The Wanting.

Musically, Pale Horses functions as a kind of career summary, compressing their musical digressions into a coherent whole.

If in places the album feels somewhat transitory—a sequel to Debris, rather than a new statement in its own right—it lands with a grace and power that’s hard to deny.

Yes, the bassline on “Water” is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time, but a moment like this feels like a consolation, not a highlight. Kanye albums used to stretch our perspectives and imaginations. Now they illuminate the contours of his increasingly shrunken world.

As such, it's perhaps a little less satisfying and immediate than IV, which is still the band's finest album, but it seems to set them up to do anything they want on their next record. And it's also likely to help build their audience outward a bit.

The most compelling section of “Anomaly” is the first, one that Kotche realized electronically instead of with the quartet.

Groove Denied can’t help but feel like a minor effort. It’s essentially his answer to McCartney II—the sound of a veteran artist with two beloved bands under his belt reveling in the freedom to indulge a latent fascination with the latest gadgets.

Far from perfect-- at times even dull-- these songs balance their heavy despair with genuine, if hesitant, hope.

When the Neptunes step out of their accepted hip-hop box, they find their greatest success.

Spooked sounds closer to folk-inspired songs Hitchcock performed very early in his career, his recent forays into Dylaniana, and Welch's prefab Americana. For Hitchcock, it's both a departure and a return to his roots.

Sometimes, Pelican suffers from being too weighed down by its roots. That said, when Pelican rages--in a way they never have before--they prove they still have plenty of life left.

It’s an album of fun, feminist pop that is simultaneously wise beyond its years (four of its five members are still in their teens) and refreshingly age-appropriate—and it effortlessly embodies the ideals grasped at by the girl power think piece wave, with a sharp, nuanced perspective that can only come from lived experience.

They've managed to broaden the nervous-tic angst-rock of their previous band into something more readily adaptable without reducing it to mealy-mouthed pop regurge.

From its gentle textures come a calm centeredness, from its soft words a sense of strength.

This is a slow, steady album; if you thought MJ Lenderman was uncompromising in his lolling tempos, this album might make you feel like time is flowing backward after a few tracks.

Still curious, still appraising, Bird offers an intellect remarkably porous to change.

The band has pretty much stayed the course, adding some orchestral flourishes to a few songs on new LP Threadbare, but generally hewing to its acoustic guitar/secular spiritual awakening formula.

Though too scattered to stand alone, The Greatest Gift adds new dimension to Carrie & Lowell.

The looseness of Oblivion Hunter is a nice reminder that the core of their appeal isn't so much that they're pushing their sound into new places, but that they're two guys who can't hide how happy they are that they get to spend their lives making this kind of a racket.

Thanks to Jónsi's impeccable vocals, a rare falsetto that loses none of its power in a live setting, everything remains indubitably the work of Sigur Rós.

while Surfing occasionally fails and does so loudly, but there's something thrillingly unfashionable about how Klaxons take aim at their grayer peers with a tommy gun full of glowsticks--they don't always hit their target, but it's a gloriously fun mess all the same.

It’s dance music interested in the loneliness of late-night partying, and Minus tends to the subject with a subtle hand.

The Unseen in Between may be his most stationary album, with as many songs about being somewhere as getting somewhere.

It's a miracle Reed was able to turn one of the most hermetic albums of all time into a communal experience, but Live at St. Ann's was also a one-time-only slight of hand: Berlin will forever be a record best enjoyed alone.

Airy and danceable, There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light revives our faith in Stars.

Not to underestimate the experiences behind Reid's lyrics, but the loss of faith that unravels throughout the record comes off a little grave, reminiscent of those fogged post-heartbreak moments where it's impossible to believe you'll ever be happy again.... But there are also beautiful, revealing turns of phrase.

On the whole, it's more entertaining than resonant.

Be Right Back’s most appealing quality remains Smith’s voice, which stretches at will as she taps into various emotional states.

Hadsel is a new beginning for Beirut that sounds like old times, a record born of despair and solitude that still feels full of life.

The sentiments are never cryptic or coded; the duo simply express what’s top of mind. That face-value approach to lyrics is well-suited for a subject as universal as a global pandemic. There’s comfort in hearing somebody sing what we’re all thinking, and comfort has always been what Damon & Naomi do best.

Hovvdy are still craning their necks back to the past, but on True Love they cruise the open road, porous and wide-eyed in the face of new beginnings.

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.

A step left of center yet still striking familiar chords right on time, Allen Toussaint show us his understated brilliance one final time.

Yes, it's "sprawling," "massive," "has lots of filler," "should have been one disc," etc.-- but guess what: It's cocksure and it works.

The Voyager is not quite so easily summed up. It’s not anchored in one particular scene, but plays as broadly California, with sly nods to the Byrds in the guitars, the Go-Go’s in the vocals, and Randy Newman in the wry humor.

Dennis is an album of floor-fillers, especially in its first half, that plays out like a bad hangover, one song shifting into the next like Dante passing through the circles of Hell.

Mew’s most consistently engaging record, even if it’s also the longest on both a cumulative and per-song basis.

On Rock and Roll Night Club, he gets weirder and churns out an unsettling brand of soft rock.

What Garnier can lack in feeling, he makes up for with years of technical know-how, on The Cloud Making Machine as before.

Pre-Human Ideas is a step toward breaking the barrier between disparate environments--mountains and websites--all by creating something using a simple computer program. Meditate on that during the organ prologue and epilogue here, and better know Phil Elverum.

Remixes may dominate the 24-track collection, but the group’s original work wins out in spirit.

While undeniably beautiful, Vespertine fails to give electronic music the forward push it received on Björk's preceding albums. Rather than designing sounds never before imagined, the album merely sounds current, relying on the technology of standard studio software and the explorations of the Powerbook elite.... Still, Vespertine makes for an intriguing listen, and manages to hold its own after hours on repeat.

If you’re in this emotionally combustible state, you’ll relate to You’re Gonna Miss It All directly and deeply. If you at least recognize it in retrospect, you can just as easily appreciate its wealth of infectious songs that are both sharply observed and sharply written.

The album is full of similar tableaux: These songs are dioramas depicting the New Mexico wilderness as a reverberation of the couple's desires.

The dead space and repetition are what give the album its momentum, and the ambling detours have an idiosyncratic charm that belongs entirely to Segall.

Javelin's best tracks may hold up under professional production in a year where many a group's cassette-tape flaws will likely sabotage similar leaps, but trading in their boombox for a proper stereo isn't necessarily an upgrade.

It's softer feel also illustrates the dynamic range Cohen has as a songwriter on his first solo outing, one that isn't especially revelatory or inventive, but does offer a solid starting point for the second chapter of his career.

The Drought’s glacial intensity and dead-eyed focus force you to approach it on its own terms, but one senses that Hoffmeier is just getting started.

While Campbell's contributions to the album are far from negligible, the thing reeks of Lanegan, aligning itself with the hard-bitten American roots music of his solo albums.

This is evidence of true artistic growth, but these successes share space on Scars with creative cul-de-sacs and uninspired genre exercise.

Lyrically, Tenderness can be pretty shallow. If these are songs about disconnection and misunderstanding, the lyrics don’t do a great job of fleshing out the concept. ... Still the warm, well-wrought pop of Tenderness is by far the group’s most enjoyable collection of songs.

Film of Life doesn’t quite break new ground for Allen, but it does offer a pretty solid and succinct demonstration of Afrobeat’s adaptability to changing times.

It's punchier; the themes are weightier; the emotional range is more dynamic. And it finds Kodak Black sounding like nobody but himself.

It's easier to listen with fresh ears and hear these strange sounds as something playful, unfamiliar, and approachable, qualities that Gamel definitely possesses.

Even in this marginally more melodic context, it’s still hard to decipher what exactly Shaw is railing against. But when most every aspect of life seems to be a source of chronic anxiety and rage, does it really matter?

Secret Machines remain the same band responsible for 'Now Here Is Nowhere' and 'Ten Silver Drops,' which means the toughest tracks often still devolve into hypnotic grooves and motorik mutations, and the gentlest starts often lead to the most bombastic conclusions.

Bolstered by Jones’ increased visibility and a newly varied instrumental palette, We’re Not Talking stands as proof that speak-singing still has some life left in it for a new generation of indie rockers.

In execution, it's not too different from his previous works for the label. The music is busy and technique-intensive, but tuneful and meditative.

A few tracks are infectious enough to merit standalone listens.

The sparse and largely unobtrusive music, and Jurado’s wanting vocal range place the emphasis on storytelling, one his strongest assets. The results, however, are a mixed bag.

At best Songs Cycled deals in quick-pivot moments.

Come Over Pt. 2 lacks a single, a glittering pop-punk exclamation point like “Awful Things” or “The Brightside” to break up the album’s long drift. But that’s OK, really. The album is a valentine offered to Peep and to his fans, and it is built for immersion, not for persuasion.

Based on Andy and His Grandmother, Kaufman comes off like an asshole, a hopelessly naive loser, a crazy person, a hothead, a hopelessly sweet grandma's boy, a sexually confused teenager, and a manipulative monster. In other words, he comes off like Andy Kaufman.

While the brackish pleasure of beauty and noise isn’t unique to HEALTH, the overwhelming emphasis on the mechanical nature of the music makes CONFLICT DLC uniquely resonant when set against their previous work.

Wet Will Always Dry is tender, intense, and dramatic. But most of all it is fun, in a way that only the pursuit of the most ludicrous aural stimulation can be.

For a genre that wants to evoke mysterious, uncharted territories, it's beginning to show signs of predictability, and while Odd Nosdam hews admirable results from it, it's just about time for an increasingly defined border to be pushed outward, into more nebulous territory, again.

The band makes unexpected dynamic pushes seem easy to pull off and easier to internalize as a listener, but on first listen, each comes as a surprise.

Unlike the other reunited groups of their generation, Medicine doesn’t sound nostalgic at all, and in fact they sound more contemporary than the majority of young guitar bands playing right now.

The Documentary 2 solidifies him a grade-grubbing student of hip-hop, one with far more resources and drive than natural talent, but a student all the same.

The collaborations on Return of the Tender Lover and the design of its production feel traditional, in the sense that they don't attempt to update Babyface's sound and instead lean comfortably on a long, established career. This dedication to tradition and honoring of his craft is less a throwback than a micro-adjustment of an enduring formula.

Style trumps niche every time here, and in its efficiently compact sub-hour runtime there's plenty of opportunity to let that style run through all kind of territory.

Rather than the winners, C91 is musical history written by the also-rans, kind-of-weres and might-have-beens. And it proves far more interesting that way.

The album does rather muddle the group's ongoing identity, but hopefully future releases can serve to confirm this album as the watershed it now appears to be.

Although The Baby flirted with electronic elements, it mostly stuck to an intimate indie-rock sound; in comparison, Scout sounds big.

Aaron Dessner helps Laufey change wardrobe (on “Castle in Hollywood” and “A Cautionary Tale”) to lean into less mannered storytelling. But formal dress suits her best, at least on this set, which is the fullest expression of the Cinemascope songcraft that’s got her selling out arenas.

Despite the noise and murk, it's easy to listen to—once you're a minute into one of Risveglio's songs, you pretty much know what it is and where it's going. It's music that is alien and strange, but also familiar.

The mix-friendly extended intros and lengthy instrumental passages that dominate many dance albums are replaced here by songs that make their mark in four glorious minutes, then leave triumphantly. This relentless buoyancy ends up a little overwhelming, occasionally spilling into blandness over the album’s 12 songs. But this is easily overlooked among the spell of familiarity that TSHA has spun.

It's chewing up something familiar and making it weird again. Life gives you lemons, so you make Alien in a Garbage Dump.

Araab's willingness to stretch keeps For Professional Use Only engaging throughout, which is no easy task; it's 67 minutes long, about 15 minutes longer than a typical festival set and probably 15 minutes more AraabMuzik than anyone needs in one sitting.

Even with a somewhat diminished speaker-filling capability and a couple of songs that seem to have less actual energy than they should, Velocifero's subtlety will eventually reward further listens.

The seamy din generated by this revolving ensemble provides a well-matched backdrop for the relentless parade of petty violence, drug deals gone sour, and squalid love affairs portrayed in these songs.

Her foibles and off-kilter perspective on heartbreak offer shape and personality to a record that might otherwise be written off as too slick or inert, or indistinguishable from a host of peers making competent, spacious, and downcast pop music.

Rather than shroud themselves in mystery, Belle and Sebastian would rather blow their own cover and, for all its inherent inconsistencies, The Third Eye Centre provides a clear view of how a band that once made music fit for a library is now more liable to get kicked out of one.

There's a sense of discovery to Quarter Turns Over a Living Line, with Andrews and Halstead unveiling the slow evolution of their sound over its 40-minute runtime.

At his finest, most expansive moments, Deacon renders this dilemma beside the point, but on Gliss Riffer, it's hard to avoid it; the battle between song and arrangement is staged in too small of an arena.

So what if Harry’s House isn’t especially bold; innovation is not a requirement of a solid pop album, and working too hard is out of fashion, anyway. Better to slip on your Gucci pajamas and just enjoy.

Even on an album so concerned with fluidity and risk-taking, Rostam mostly stays in his comfort zone. At its best, Changephobia frames the experience of giving in to doubt and ambiguity as a kind of empowerment. Other times, it just feels like giving in.

All kudos go to Boots for parlaying this influence he’s garnered producing the likes of Beyoncé, Run The Jewels and FKA twigs to help craft this record for a band whose breakthrough moment has eluded them for long enough.

If nothing else, Alone reminds us that a lot of those over-ambitious, silly-on-paper ideas often blossomed in Cuomo's hands, and there was more to Weezer in their early days than just crisp power-pop and cute videos.

It’s too frantic, too kinetic, and has too many places to be, which over the course of the album makes the essential beauty of Greep’s singing and the featherlight precision of his band feel like a front they’re tiring of holding up. It’s fitting, even artistically admirable, that such strain makes The New Sound’s music an appropriate wingman for characters who struggle to maintain basic human kindness. But it sure makes for an uncomfortable conversation.

It's just straight rock and roll, really, and I mean really straight rock and roll.

Quinn and Donaldson may be getting somewhat longer in the tooth, but they’re sounding younger. And whatever darkness lurks within Family Crimes is swallowed back down with a wise, dreamy smile.

Sometimes the hooks on Genesis get wonky, there are portions of the record that feel unfinished (like the second half of "Wanderer"), and every now and then Domo will sneak in a groaner. But for the most part, Genesis is a revelation.