His vocals are becoming more textural and less the main focus. That actually works, as Crown has his smartest writing in years, keeping his youthful demons alive, if not running amok. He may have matured, but we don’t want to him to grow up.

Is This the Life’s myriad sonic references to his work with Pink Floyd suggest that Waters is comfortable with his past. The more you accept how much his past reflects in his present, the more receptive you’ll be to this album’s charms.

Though far too long and sometimes aimless, Teenage Emotions is the mind of a child star blown-up and on exhibition at the epicenter of modern rap. It’s there to be gawked at and appreciated, and then maybe enjoyed.

Recording and performing for nearly 20 years with Oneida and spin-offs like People of the North, Colpitts’ drums have sometimes provided an almost melodic key to understanding the full-bore noise-blasts surrounding them. On Play What They Want, those melodies can be heard more directly than ever.

The lyrical setbacks also help emphasize Dreamcar’s greatest strength: It’s a simple labor of love, as opposed to a grandiose spectacle, and in doing so, it sidesteps the usual supergroup cesspool.

A few odd decisions aside, there’s enough between the unforgiving slopes to make this essential for Amidon’s present devotees, if not the perfect mountain for prospective new ones to climb.

It’s pitched almost entirely at “Bob’s” die-hards and listening to this album without being a fan of “Bob’s Burgers” is a fool’s errand. Even for fanatics, the two hours still feels like an ill-advised trek. ... The ease with which the soundtrack switches between novelty ditties and riot grrrl homage--a genre the show is most cozy with--is part of its draw.

You’re Welcome feels stale, dried of both new inspiration or improvisational allure.

As “Dancing Is the Best Revenge” illustrates, !!! are at their best when making dance music that’s both unabashedly celebratory and stridently unsentimental. When the band veer into more typically romantic house terrain (“Our Love (U Can Get)”) and starry-eyed electro-rock (“Throw Yourself in the River”), their peculiar, provocateur personality is muted.

Where Singles the movie was a romantic comedy with Seattle rock as its backdrop, its soundtrack, for anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest or the college radio universe, was a revelation. The 25th-anniversary reissue of the compilation revisits and further contextualizes this moment, with a bonus disc of demos, live versions, and other film ephemera never before issued on CD or vinyl.

The King & I is simultaneously too stingy and too indiscriminate with its star attraction, denying fans new verses yet projecting his hologram raps over every song until the reflexive thrill of hearing one of rap’s greatest voices is extinguished.

The songs on Green Twins feel like attempts to save remnants of the cherished encounters that fill up a lifetime. So few of these moments last long. But Nick Hakim has set out to preserve his any way possible.

Stratton’s ambitions are far more modest, but the new album quite successfully transports your attention away from the banal.

Shine isn’t dark. But it feels like an exercise in avoidance as if Wale took the advice to ease up too far.

Goths is Darnielle’s most evocative work since the occultist All Eternals Deck and even though it remains loosely conceptual like Beat the Champ, it’s all tethered to this palpable, too-casual melancholy, the kind that comes with telling a cautionary tale one too many times.

It’s a proudly ugly Frankenstein, an LP that clambers along at a fitful pace, stopping for the occasional smoke break.

What it reveals is someone of talent, ambition, and enough wit and self-awareness to keep that ambition grounded in reality. It’s an excellent debut from an artist on the cusp.

Sometimes, there really is no substitute for the revelations that come when an artist unlocks the mysteries of their work. But it’s certainly the reason why Rocket feels like one of the year’s most endlessly generous records, as Alex G’s restraint is our gift that keeps on giving.

Black Origami is a gorgeous and overwhelming piece of musical architecture, an epic treatise on where rhythm comes from and where it can go.

By staying the course after their risky pivot rather than retrenching, they’ve done their heroes one better.

A solid, consistent return that sounds like the band never left.

The album is easy to let play through, but sometimes hard to feel intimate with its complexity. It makes for music that’s wonderful to live with, encouraging repetition while allowing for unconcentrated listening.

On its best songs, he trades his breezy pop chops for earnest, soul-seeking Americana.

As an exercise in baking their sound into a decadent dessert, Vol. 2 is pretty convincing--and, more importantly, totally satisfying.

The versatility of core members Auscherman, Kevin Krauter, and Keagan Beresford--each of whom writes, sings, and swaps instruments--affords them chances to try on different masks, a huge strength despite some inevitable flat results.

Take issue with Styles’ taste at your leisure, but there’s no denying his comprehensiveness. His vocal performances are invariably the best parts of these songs.

Just as this album highlights Williams’ most existentially despondent musings to date, it is also the most fizzy record Paramore have ever recorded.

Lovely Creatures presents the definitive display of these anguished labors and sweet fruits they bore over twenty years--an unmovable feast, immortalized.