The new Rainer Maria is slower, heavier, and more methodical than the old one. They swing less but land more blows.

Oh Sees prove that aforementioned Afro-funk excursion is no random one-off experiment, but a reliable rhythmic foundation that can fuse seamlessly with their signature garage-psych sound.

For all of Brand New’s ambitions, it’s hard to recall a popular rock band making an album this crafty, this finely decorated without jettisoning the attributes of rock music.

The record’s best songs are imbued with real emotional weight.

Perhaps they’re too-smart-for-their own good, but in the moments they can get over themselves, Althaea, at least for a flash, can offer more than just a thrill.

Warmth stands to resonate with those seeking a transportive experience whose peaks and valleys never overwhelm.

A rare example of indie-rock insurrection in Britain, A Fever Dream--darkly glamorous, flamboyantly appalled--is a fine monument to the nation’s despair.

Painted Ruins, cursorily an album about battling demons, can feel a little like prestige music. But there’s this moment at the end--a spot where Grizzly Bear records routinely reach their heights--that reminds listeners that tangible realism can be a necessary counterpoint to the quartet’s impressionism.

The wall of sound is strangely, stultifyingly uniform, a thick slab of piano-led clangour--like the din of a bustling room overwhelming a lounge singer’s best efforts.

The moments that work best are when the instrumentation and vocals distill singular, cohesive emotions. Her most literal lyrics are often the strongest.

Good Time invites emotional confusion along multiple vectors. Lopatin’s score opens fissures that let its beauty and ambivalences burrow deep under your skin.

Like all of their work, it’s capable and tuneful and reveals a young band of skilled songwriters that put all their faith in their guitars, even if it’s often hard to pinpoint where their own vision begins and their taste ends.

Neither refinement nor fulfillment, Cuidado Madame serves as a refutation. Lindsay’s lyrics are spare and precise enough to work on the page--and that’s a rare compliment. But even if they were woolier, his band’s rabid imagination won’t let these songs congeal into boutique hotel background music.

It’s hard to imagine a more vocally versatile pair than Lal and Mike, whose interplay adds depth to all of these moods.

On top of polishing up the band’s sound, Guided by Voices’ TVT releases also showcased a newfound clarity and emotional candor in Pollard’s often obtuse, fantastical lyrics, and How Do You Spell Heaven gamely follows suit.

Rainbow is inevitably heavy with subtext and a need to prove something, especially on “Praying.” ... The title track, a collaboration with Ben Folds that blooms into a string arrangement, is an improvement, but still sedate. Thankfully, the rest of Rainbow lets Kesha be her usual OTT self.

When tested to come up with his most insightful work and justify his missteps, he delivers compelling alternate truths. Wins and Losses shows the rap game is much harder to score than one might think.

Equal parts brittle and brazen, Shitty Hits is the work of a well-past-promising newcomer.

While one occasionally wishes that Frankie Rose could get a few paces further out from under her own shadow, the best of Cage Tropical does something similar, taking her own retro influences and using them to leapfrog her way out of a creative rut.

Cost of Living revels in the gleaming, multi-tracked expanse of a professional recording studio. It’s a richer, fuller sound; the stereo imaging is wider and the saxophone (they’ve stripped down to just one, now played by Joe DeGeorge, who also handles keyboards) has more presence in the mix. The bigger, brighter sound often serves them well.

Rembo is an album that prizes function as much as idiosyncrasy; much like Differ-Ent’s It’s Good To Be Differ-Ent, the yearning for experimentation is always kept in check by an intuitive appreciation for what dancers desire. It’s a talent to be cherished.

Smart but never intellectual, given more to the words we use over the words we know, Newman peppers these stories with little references to the Great Migration, climate change (the swells on Willie’s beach keep getting bigger), global politics, and American myth.

An occasional stab of synthesizer is the closest these songs come to pomp, and the production is still scruffy around the edges, hi-fi only by the standards of her early self-recordings. But the improved fidelity lets her words and voice come across clearer than they did from the bedroom, revealing how much more elegant Allison’s wordplay is than it can seem at first blush, and her gift for detailing conflict with the economy of a young adult novel.

The result is Manchester Orchestra’s most confounding, thrilling, and unintentionally loopy album yet.

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.

Yes, the music this band makes is undeniably fun--Dead Cross bounces along with so much pep you could almost consider it a party record. But they stick to a fairly straight-ahead take on thrash and hardcore that doesn’t shed much new light on the players involved.

Bits of space rock, dub, leftfield disco, and post-punk all feed into Square One, but despite the Scandinavian disco pedigree of its two participants, it’s less a dancefloor weapon than a soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing.

As impressive as Frost’s music is, he seems always a bit too eager to impress, a sure turn-off. It’s less a matter of the parts Frost writes, which are often lovely and/or awesomely grand, and more in the way he frames them.