It’s a more straightforward and accessible sound that might leave past admirers missing the all-out weirdness of albums past, but the evolution that Tasmania represents also speaks to the fact that the main constant in Pond’s approach is change. Even as the sea levels keep rising, they’ll doubtless find new waves to ride.

Wanting to seem OK while secretly falling apart is a tricky dance that placeholder deftly captures. But hearing about a riot is not the same as listening to one. Duffy excels at mapping resolution, which might make you want to hear about the conflict.

All My Relations boasts a syncopated charm that stems from the freedom of groove inherent in jam sessions. But the album’s spiritual elevation comes from Gastelum’s songwriting process.

Big Bad... is yet another example of his continued career elevation, signaling what is possible if you stick to your guns while caring little for what others think.

DJ-Kicks has long given reign to both dedicated DJs (Nina Kraviz, Seth Troxler) and artists who are better known as producers than disc jockeys (Nicolette, Erlend Øye), with frequently brilliant results. Vynehall’s mix sits firmly within the latter territory: more selector sensation than DJ spotlight, but still an impressive showcase of the producer’s ear.

His bars vary from the goofy (“She made me bust a nut, that’s a starburst”) to the confusingly profound (“Time is poured on me when I ride that Maybach”), but it’s his ability to apply his signature inflection to just about any rhythm he conjures up that can make Drip or Drown 2 nearly hypnotizing.

Pump’s only motivation is to stunt on his old high school teachers. That theme is heavy-handed on the album, as Pump bashes us with a running joke about how he used to go to Harvard before dropping out.

It’s remarkable how Crush on Me comes off as two albums in one. One album, containing “Heels” and “Haunted House,” is a less abrasive version of SOPHIE’s work with Mozart’s Sister, which ends up as a hyperventilating version of the alt-pop singles that litter playlists everywhere. They’re all executed well; they’re certainly done with the most gusto possible. But the familiarity gets a bit much. ... The other, better album in Crush on Me is an alt-rock throwback.

Father of 4 ultimately works as a solo outing because Offset is such a force of nature, but it’s too often cautious where it could be candid, or dull where it should be sharp. Still, the record is a progression for Offset and for Migos.

It’s hard not to tumble into Crushing’s vast emotional depths and look past everything else that makes the album exquisite, but lyrics like this showcase just how clever Jacklin’s songwriting can be.

Helium moves with the numbing pace of a stubborn hangover, and its drums have the grain and snap of limp celery.

In the end, Charles didn’t just fit in; he revolutionized the genre by sparking a rush of Nashville/pop crossover acts. This music remains a tribute to and rejoinder of the futile divisions we so often take for granted.

You Will Not Die is a strikingly intimate album that succeeds despite some occasionally lead-footed pacing and stilted theatrics.

A clumsier artist might turn this self-excoriating streak into something brutally caustic, stripping back the layers until only rawness remains. Houghton resists that impulse on Lung Bread’s later songs, purging her past while leaving her strange, spiky magic intact.

Silences, the second LP from Nashville’s Adia Victoria, scans like a biting, lush indie rock record, but it’s a blues album in this pure sense.

Cabral explodes our ideas about texture and terror on Mazy Fly as she snuggles into a deeper connection to her own songwriting, making an album that connects on a more concrete wavelength.

The FEELS we hear on Post Earth sound more musically focused and emotionally unsettled, with producer Tim Green (ex-Nation of Ulysses) helping sculpt the playfully shaggy sound of their debut into taut post-punk precision.

Gorgeous and overstuffed, ALL features Tiersen’s tearjerker melodies and his tendency to crowd them from all sides.

This ambient music is not psychedelic. It never evokes outer space or the cosmos or, for that matter, the natural world, even when it uses the sound of water. It’s music for the indoors, music for doing things, there for you if you want to listen closely but also content to exist on a subliminal plane.

Hello Happiness is a messy, overproduced, anonymous set of hotel-lobby beats that makes woeful use of one of the greatest voices of all time. ... There’s a moment when Hello Happiness works. On the sensual and affirming closing track, “Ladylike,” Chaka Khan finally breaks free of vocal effects.

Everything about Cast, from its high-end synths and imperious production to Biliński’s alabaster vocals, is superficially flawless and taken at face value; most of one’s time with the album is spent looking for cracks, hooks, or anything resembling a personality. The thing about perfection in art isn’t just that it’s unattainable--it’s also uninteresting.

Head Above Water marks a new chapter in the singer’s lengthy body of work; it’s a shame that Lavigne thinks her high notes are all she has to give.

Every Ladytron album has a few extremely low points, and on Ladytron those are “Run” (a part two to “The Animals,” not a particularly necessary one) and “Paper Highways” (the first part is great, as if wrought from iron wreckage, but it veers into a saccharine, completely misplaced chorus, like they handed it to Disney for a second). Much better as a ray of solace is the quietly experimental “Tomorrow Is Another Day.”

“If I May Be So Bold” and “I Will Stay” are sweet songs about determination and devotion, but they lack a certain, well, je ne sais quoi. Carll’s sharpest instincts don’t show here, so it sounds like he’s writing about self-reflection without doing much self-reflecting, solving equations without showing the math.

After that early-onset dizziness subsides, Girl With Basket of Fruit loses its power and makes little impact, as if these songs were menacing storm clouds that simply drift into and out of town without leaving a trace. It is heavy but hollow, muscular but oddly meaningless, built with streams of images that, however vivid, are the lyrical equivalent of inert gas inside combustion chambers.

Most Droogs inclusions are fairly frivolous affairs lyrically--anthems of lust, celebrations of rocking out--but Third World War anticipate punk themes with the proletarian plaint and Strummer-like sandpaper vocals of “Working Class Man.” Hustler forge a link between the Faces and Cockney Rejects with “Get Outta My ’Ouse,” which is like Magic’s “Rude” recast as pub boogie.

The groove takes precedence over the words, and Murphy gives his studio meticulousness over to the energy of the group. The synths run bright and juicy. The bass sounds like it could knock you out if you stood too close. The drums hit fast and sharp. Murphy slips from his throne as record-geek auteur and dissolves into the group--one musician among many, and better for it.

Buoys is a sad and wistful album, though in a non-specific way.