Save for a digital flourish or two on the pop songs that make up much of the film’s back half, there’s very little here that would’ve sounded out of place on blockbuster film soundtracks of decades past. At its peaks, the album delivers on the promise of its star-wattage with some of the most affecting and emotionally overwhelming pop songs of the year.

Electric Messiah leans more on the Sabbath side of Pike’s patented MotörSabbath blend, suggesting that Sleep’s renewal is rubbing off on him.

Street Worms, their debut album, is a grand introduction. Viagra Boys manage to mock everyday negative qualities--boasted virility, misplaced classism, and blissful ignorance--with sincerity and ambivalence.

While the album introduces some intriguing new looks—like the Eastern-psych strut of “Cicada (Land on Your Back)”--the Joy Formidable still have a tendency to pummel their tunes into a modern-rock mush.

Despite Haliechuk and Falco’s bombastic concept, Dose Your Dreams functions similar to the recent hip-hop blockbusters that share its 82-minute length, best enjoyed in chunks or humming in the background between the singles.

Working mostly chronologically, this set flows so that you feel you’re riding alongside him.

The songs that follow range in scope from atmospheric brooding on “Blue Vapor” to hyper-specific autobiography on “Said Goodbye to That Car.”

Wanderer drags just the tiniest bit. It speaks softly from the echoes of the best Cat Power moments, which means it doesn’t ice-pick you in the center of your most treasured insecurities the way some of her most celebrated music has.

Salvant has found a fine match in Fortner, a New Orleans native who has played with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, and Paul Simon. He doesn’t accompany her so much as join in the conversation she’s having with these songs, occasionally even arguing with her about them.

Logic’s lyrical prowess continues to get in his way on songs like “The Return,” which sounds like a motivational song made for a late night Nike ad.

Born Again in the Voltage as an essential document of contemporary modular-synth music from one of the instrument’s great new explorers.

It’s not a conventionally sequenced DJ mix, either: Segments of seamlessly beat-matched tracks (almost certainly Kode9’s handiwork, given the style of them) abruptly give way to left turns and trapdoors.

15 only offers glimpses of the real Bregoli, while the Bhad Bhabie on display is one-dimensional, painfully predictable, and derivative of what a rapper is expected to be like.

In the progression of addiction, we’re past the “fun with problems” stage and right into “problems.” The tuneful first half of Aftering could blur this distinction, but Thomas’ chipper melodies add insult to injury, a mocking reminder of what it felt like to get your hopes up in the first place. ... Aftering’s second half of ambient tone poems puts Thomas in direct comparison with guys he’s been tangentially evoking over the span of the trilogy: Mark Kozelek and Phil Elverum, mercurial, prolific songwriters.

It is an accomplished album full of puckish invention, singular production twists, and ambient murk that offers scintillating hints at where Jlin might go on her third album proper.

A major leap musically and an unflinching reflection on the courage of rejecting easy comforts.

What makes Drogas Wave especially frustrating is the way you can squint and see the shape of his possible masterpiece inside.

Though Crow and Now Only are spare records, Jacobikerk makes the versions on (after) sound hollow but full. Elverum’s voice, impossibly soft, fills the space with solemn clarity. But the most striking thing about (after) is that, even after so many performances, these songs sound as raw as they did when Elverum first committed them to paper and tape.

Strummer’s career was a testament for open borders and open hearts. While such compassion may have fallen out of fashion, Strummer’s messy, impassioned music now sounds even more urgent and necessary.

Even Arm’s most acidic lyrics are tempered by some of the band’s tidiest performances to date.

The most surprising takeaway from Tha Carter V, it turns out, isn’t that Wayne still has music this vital in him. It’s that after all these years, there’s still more to learn about him.

By stepping out of focus and receding into his assembled ranks, Hecker has found a renewed compositional approach. And on the most fascinating album of his career, he has, at last, expressed an idea he has pursued for a decade.

Mother of My Children is particularly elegant in the way it demonstrates how grief and love share space when something precious is taken from you, how the distinction between those emotions can blur.

Unlike 2015’s Pagans in Vegas, where the band went fully synthpop at a time when seemingly 75% of the music world population was doing the same, Art of Doubt is decidedly rock: guitar and bass loud in the mix, first riffs in the first seconds.

Holley does with music what he’s done with visual art for decades: He collects our ugliest obscured objects and transforms them into singular reflections on our troubled world.

Though the lyrical themes may lack potency, Thunder Follows the Light highlights Lee’s knack for composing beautiful melodies.

The world might be an unrelentingly bleak place right now, but Amnesia Scanner find new strengths under pressure on Another Life. In more ways than one, they’re only just finding their voice.

Quiet River of Dust Vol. 1 is an enchanted forest of a record--deceptively tranquil, but always buzzing with hidden life. Parry’s other band famously told of us of a place where no cars go. This is what it feels like to actually be there.