At first, Ibeyi’s bright rhythms can feel deceptively stable, their harmonies uninhibited as they dip into dissonance, but they are deliberate in revealing the depth of their sadness.

This is where Tell Me You Love Me improves on Lovato’s previous albums: It gives you enough space to see Demi as something other than a no-holds-barred belter.

The album zeroes in on what the band did best (and what sounds best today), its non-chronological sequence making songs recorded several years apart sound as if they sprung from the same session.

Being grounded, after all, is what Wolfe was going for. That you have to work in order to appreciate what she went through to get there is what makes Hiss Spun so intriguing.

While Always Foreign is by no means a happy record, it’s still a joy to listen to, driven by the same belief in community, evolution, and possibility that earned their debut EP the title of Formlessness.

These are pleasant songs, but Twain and Lange’s perfectionism meant even the weakest cuts on The Woman in Me and Come on Over were weapons-grade pop.

When it works, it’s brilliant as ever; when it doesn’t, it can feel unknowable, disjointed, a series of red herrings taking the approximate shape of a song.

Visions of a Life is an expansive trip. Devoutly 4/4 and unsyncopated, it nonetheless carves out raucous passages in which to burst open.

La Confusion offers uplift in a time of global insecurity.

Younger Now blends pop-rock and pablum country fare that is so restrained, so thinly produced, it seems like her lovably goofy personality was hobbled throughout the recording process.

Centre could be categorized as Frost’s first distinctly American record, and it’s a frightening, prophetic portrait that commands undivided attention.

His music is both a challenge and a balm, the starting point of a conversation and a place you can go to meditate on what’s been said.

And yet, however thematically mired in misery, Cold Dark Place plays out as a triumphant march into the darkness: one man’s pain, collectively conjured and conquered.

Roll with the Punches never falls, or even falters, exactly; it’s just a series of punches, whether of the clock or in the air, landing with consistency and specificity and only occasionally drifting into anonymity. To paraphrase Morrison himself, it doesn't pull any punches, but it doesn't push the river.

Fanon believed that romantic love was possible--that, above all else, was why love was worthy of critique and dismantling. Sumney, for his part, seems to have gone down a different path: diving into the bleak void in search of answers, giving us sumptuous music along the way.

In only two years, Wand has mirrored the maturation of the genre itself, moving from the youthful verve of “Tutti Frutti” toward rich, emotional terrain.

The Horrors’ most ambitious album to date. At the same time, it feels like a wasted arsenal of almost-brilliant songs, a record that lacks the essential quirk found in so many of the band’s touchstones.

The sound of New York is occasionally absent on 1992--in moments, her Migos-like repetitive hooks and regionless hashtag punchlines move it somewhere a bit less rooted--but Frasqueri’s loved for the city never wanes.

Laraaji brings a broader array of compositions to the eccentric Bring on the Sun. Where Sun Gong is dark and improvised, Bring on the Sun is made of weightless hypnotic loops (one is called “Laraajazzi”) and contemplative vocal tracks with standard song structures.

The music’s subdued hum brings to mind Eno as well as contemporary artists like Tim Hecker and Oneohtrix Point Never, except the mood feels divine in an almost undefinable way.

I’m a Harmony finds her drawing on the strengths of her current collaborators--several of whom she worked with on The Soul of All Natural Things, or on their own projects--to push her sound outward.

Thrice Woven is WITTR deboned. As welcome as it is that they’ve dropped Celestite’s pseudo-kosmische schtick, they’ve come back with a facsimile of what once was.

The record is not wondrous, but it’s a light listen with a couple of good moments and a handful of clunkers. The weaker moments reveal his shortcomings as a rapper without being provocative or ponderous enough to provoke a firebomb, or even a raspberry, in response.

It’s a slightly deflating end to an album that succeeds through its unnerving, unflinching personality. By now, the most interesting characters in Bridgers’ story are the ones she puts on the page herself.

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.

A twelve-track exercise in mannerism that omits an essential element of what long made the Clientele so captivating. His wake-up call from pleasantry arrives too late to make much of Miracles.

No tens here—sixes and sevens abound, for sure, a few fives, maybe an eight. Even mired among the sixes, though, you can feel the palpable yearning.

The allusions thrum just beneath the surface of these vivid songs, as if to suggest that specific moments of music can get us through hard times or even just move us a little further down the road.