When you view the tracklist for Springsteen on Broadway and evaluate it from the perspective of one night’s performance, it’s an impressive list of songs. But when you look at it as representative of a body of work spanning four decades--which this production decidedly cannot escape representing--it is a more than suitable tribute to what Springsteen himself refers to as both his service and his “long and noisy prayer.”

The album never makes a case for X as anything other than a thinly subversive figure and never even rationalizes the baggage that comes saddled with it. X’s musical legacy will forever be interlinked to violence. Skins is merely a shallow attempt to overwrite that legacy gone awry.

The result is his best album to date--his most mystical and earthbound, all at once.

Just as Mandy strikes a nerve with nihilistic noise, he sweeps back to a gorgeous, heart-rending theme, like “Death and Ashes.”

Her third album in five years, İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir crackles with a live energy that stems from the 18 months of touring following its predecessor, 2016’s Hologram Ĭmparatorluğu. Producing the album with longtime guitarist Ali Güçlü Şimşek, Su Akyol is in firm command of her powers, adding a few more electronic textures to push to new heights.

Each of her songs has a steely core built from lyrics that examine heartache and vulnerability.

His songs are about joy and hunger and reflection and fun. Not one of them feels as if it’s trying to save hip-hop.

The band works much better when the material allows it to lean into its sleazy, session-pro sound.

She is at her most winning when she sounds like she is having fun.

Whack World morphs into a clever exercise in economy and using only what you need. It’s a visual album prepackaged for optimum social media consumption; every tiny piece stands on its own without losing sight of the larger picture. At its core, though, Whack’s sense of humor--her captivating depiction of a black woman’s imagination--is an opportunity to celebrate an aspect of art that often goes uncelebrated, an opportunity for Whack to celebrate herself.

Songs for Judy now feels like a concept album whose concept is just as far out as prog rock, if less flashy and more soothing. It’s a high fantasy of meadows and moons and canyons, of shows that start after midnight, of possessing or creating enough space to let Neil Young play some quiet songs for you.

Protomartyr has commented, too, on how Deal’s sense of melody added “femininity” to their music of Consolation; her voice certainly adds life and levity. If Protomartyr learned anything from Odyshape, it might be the audacity to explore, to locate new methods of release—and they found a bracing clarity.

Ens tables the queries, at least temporarily, for a strictly personal statement. However you approach its aesthetic beauty, that is a much less satisfying response.

While the Good, the Bad & the Queen are skilled at providing a wide breadth of styles here--from the woozy, carnivalesque organ of “The Last Man to Leave” to “The Truce of Twilight”’s militaristic chants--they especially succeed at conveying a crumbling and isolated Britain.

In creating space for such a rich spectrum of expression, Self and his many families of collaborators have created a timely and timeless document of the kinship possibilities that await when ears and hearts stay open.

After the maze-like worlds conjured by Age Of and Garden of Delete, Love in the Time of Lexapro plays it disappointingly straight.

Mostly the record commits to what he does best: substantial rap with clear stakes and an uncommon sense of purpose. After a career marked too often by botched opportunities and wasted potential, Meek Mill has finally risen to the moment.

One night in January 1979, Bauhaus ventured into the bat cave and came out with a unicorn.

Mostly the standard fare of Tekashi throwing sounds and flows at the wall, praying something sticks.

Even as pop culture continues to diverge sharply from Spencer’s definition of cool, he remains too spirited and unhinged as a performer to harden into cranky-old-man bitterness.

Alive and inspired, WARM is a different type of reinvention--as daring as Wilco’s early landmarks but more subtle and sustainable. He’s not trying to break your heart. He just is.

The generational chasm between parents and children can feel deep and dark, but Anne, both the album and the person, builds a bridge with light and tremendous empathy.

The project is distinctly rough around the edges, to great effect; there’s the sound of dust popping off vinyl and cassette hiss throughout. ... His uncle and father are gone, but Earl is still here, carrying on their artistic legacy--and, with the help of his collaborators, building his own.

The Dream My Bones Dream grapples with memories that aren’t one’s own and tries to find some kernel of wisdom within them. It’s a multilayered, foggy work and one of Ishibashi’s fullest collections to date, showing us how the past can propel us forward.

Ouch is utterly, unapologetically about Krgovich’s own [breakup], an album of unvarnished particulars and graphic details. That doesn’t make “Ouch” less relatable. It has the opposite effect. Its specificity is what makes it ring true.

The members of the 1975 began playing together in their teens as an emo band, and they are still interested in wringing out unadulterated feeling from everything they touch. This is the thread that grounds even their most dubious dabblings, and makes their dilettantism amount to more than a series of stunts.

The tape is a short, sweet, and potent mix of what Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs, and producer Alchemist do best. It is also an example of the good that can happen when seasoned vets link up and operate under the radar and outside of the major label system.

This is ambient folk, shot through with ambient anxiety.