Walking Proof winds through moments of incandescent joy, gentleness, cathartic noise, and even unease (“Scream” ends the hopeful album with an eerie crawl). It’s as if Hiatt has emerged from a dark, uncertain period as a stronger, bolder artist, winding up with an album that encompasses a full spectrum of feeling as it rocks with abandon.

It’s a collage of striking songs from a band that may have shied away from making some tough calls about what to cut and what to lean into during the long process of self-recording.

Marshall traipses around on just about everybody's hallowed ground here and pulls it off without inducing winces.

By downplaying the elements that made the Depreciation Guild initially stand out from the crowd, Spirit Youth is a decidedly less distinctive album than their debut. However, by making that choice, they've made what turns out to be their best.

So Darnielle doesn't sing about anger; he sings about loss, and in a way the results are as dark and brutal as The Sunset Tree.

The arrangements are lean and pared back, even as the lyrics erupt with florid descriptions that feel like direct entreaties to the senses.

Though there have always been plenty of bands mining the same era, with reverbed vocals and drummers that don't sit down, Stay Home captures attitude and devil-may-care confidence better than most of today's bands worth their weight in Nuggets compilations.

To be clear, Metz haven’t turned into a pop band. They’ve actually done the opposite, incorporating harmony without going soft. The fact that so few heavy bands have been able to pull that off attests to how difficult it is. With Strange Peace, Metz make it sound easy.

When No Birds Sang is the rare metal album whose greatest virtue is its delicacy.

Slippery and cryptic, Negro Swan blurs boundaries between the finished and the unfinished; between focused deliberation and thrown-together spontaneity; between fly-on-the-wall conversations and self-contained songs; between indie experimentalism and overground pop; between insider and outsider, black and white, straight and gay, trans and cis; between taxing depletion and invigorating replenishment.

Molina's songwriting here is much stronger than on last year's Axxess and Ace, but he's abandoned some of the guests who helped make the album so affecting when he opted to record in Scotland, rather than the U.S. ... making The Lioness a decidedly more resigned and less passionate affair.

Kidjo’s music flows most easily, and the messages land with the greatest impact, when she’s not proselytizing, as she does on the Sampa the Great-assisted “Free and Equal” and the album’s title track.

Idols of Exile is consistently solid; the songs are fully realized and, ultimately, memorable.

Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep is the latest chapter in the chaotic yet deliberate evolution of a no-holds-barred performer who’s only now reaching their apex.

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.

The basic material remains familiar—gated synth tones arranged in taut melodies and spindly arpeggios—but Senni has found a new flamboyance in these astoundingly ornate, often song-like pieces.

It would be simple for Day Wilson to cut an album of Stax-style soul tunes or smooth jazz standards and call it a day. The immaculately mixed Alpha is instead built on weighty writing and daring arrangements in which Day Wilson stays front and center, never allowing the production to overshadow her presence.

The lyrical coarseness serves an important function, reinforcing the urgency of O'Connor's performances and creating the impression that she has worked hard and fast to document her emotions at their rawest and wildest.

They've rediscovered their broad range and proud, sleeve-worn strangeness.

Invariable Heartache sounds more like one of Lambchop's more countrified records, which is to say the music is both lush and minimal, the sound of so many musicians giving themselves over completely to the song. It's a gateway album to Chart's back catalog, as well as to an adventurous era in Nashville history.

Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package.

While she may borrow from R&B and pop, Klein’s output has more in common with the abstract impressionism of Jackson Pollock. Such intensity makes Tommy a difficult and even exhausting listen, despite a running time of just 25 minutes. But as Captain Beefheart and the Shaggs have shown in the past--and as Klein demonstrates now—-stepping off the musical path that leads to standardized perfection can prove hugely rewarding.

Hotel Shampoo manages to strike the right balance between Rhys' desire to indulge odd whims, lyrical humor, outright pop, and heartfelt sentiment. More importantly, he always makes it sound effortless.

The record’s innovations are modestly hidden in clever programming, while Paradinas himself is too level-headed to inspire Aphex Twin-style devotion. But he does make a compelling case for the genre as a living entity that’s open to new ideas, and not nearly as persnickety as its reputation suggests.

The While We Wait mixtape remains their best-written release, but Kehlani, with “Folded” leading the way, proves she wants to compete in the marketplace.

While Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 had all the indications of starting out as a stopgap project to stave off between-album downtime, it wound up being a solid exhibition of his chops.

As Chopper reaffirms, Kiwi Jr. may never be the kind of band that deals in linear narratives or grand conceptual statements. But like the background bit actors that fill out the frames of a big-screen epic, their songs amass minor details to major effect.

The album dips in and out of tempos, themes, and varying degrees of intensity without losing any of its urgency.