When you're operating on such a grand scale, and the exultant, openhearted Enemy/Lover is rarely outpaced by its lofty ambitions.

It makes for a fascinating listen, one filled with catharsis and inspiration. Rae doesn’t directly mention her past struggles, but her light permeates this record, leaving a shining example of strength and perseverance.

The resulting psych-folk arrangements are wandering and iterative. These songs are less inclined to tell a story from start to finish than transport you into a space of pure feeling.

It's not her finest work, but it's plenty good enough to rope a cohort of new fans into what's promising to be one hell of a creative ride.

Fierce as Donnelly’s writing can be, it’s empathetic to the core.

Her striking lyrics take aim at present-day bigots who clamor for closed borders—“Look how these brown hands cook all your meals/But mama says you want us all to disappear”—but she’s more concerned with the persistence of this foundational hatred, and with the people she loves, who have thrived “through so many moons” and continue to thrive in spite of racist brutality.

Bound Stems have the rarefied ability to make that mess sound gorgeous, as if all were in its right place even when it's held together by chewing gum in some spots.

The music on Authenticity may initially sound remedial and elemental, even saccharine, but further listens reveal new intricacies.

Acquiesce always goes deeper rather than bigger. TALsounds has always been an inwardly focused project by nature, but these songs feel uniquely designed to pull you into them. The album grows darker in its second half, but there’s a warmth and safety there just like the dimly lit shot of the bedside table on its cover.

This album basks in the greenness of youth. .... There is a palpable maturity, however, in the production of her sound. While staying true to her earlier Afro-fusion works, TYIT21 taps into dancehall, Nigerian highlife, and amapiano, demonstrating an expanded range, restraint, and purpose for Starr.

If A Billion Little Lights doesn't always awe quite like it should, given its considerable zeal and craftsmanship, it's because of that familiarity. The album has a big heart and big ambitions to match. The only thing missing is the very thing these songs long for the most: the thrill of discovery.

It doesn’t always work—it’s hard to ignore the shortcomings of his singing voice, and the otherwise relatable lyrics on “Cigarettes & Cush” are mired by a trite composition. But from the themes to the production choices to the sequencing, it’s a remarkably well thought out debut from the ascendant 23-year-old MC.

There’s always a risk that an album like this one will be received as novelty music, but the compositional integrity is there, and the music is engaging purely on the level of sound.

His new EP, Meantime, is an unabashedly beautiful, even sensuous 17 minutes of music.

Despite all its aggrieved poses and statements, the often astonishing rapping, the fastidious attention to detail, and its theme of self-affirmation, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers ironically never settles on a portrait of Kendrick.

Alex Leonard’s rumbling drums back Scott Davidson and Greg Ahee’s ominous simmer, but all the heft falls away for a few overwhelming melodic tones—bursts of light through the darkness. Casey doesn’t always sound particularly convinced, but Formal Growth feels like an earnest attempt to get there.

Still, sparse as it may be, her music offers its own richness, and these songs often reach full-band conclusions that feel warm and inviting.

It's a dense, ambitious record that finally has the confidence needed to pull of the swagger they've been approximating.

WU LYF’s ambitions have not abated in the slightest since Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, an album that eased its path towards the rafters with cathedral reverb sourced from an actual abandoned church. They’ve just become more clarified, stripping away the booming echo that once obscured that group’s limber musicianship, while Roberts has sheared the most jagged nodes from his trachea and, with them, a language of completely unprecedented vowel sounds.

Whatever plane The Fifth State of Consciousness represents, Peaking Lights make it sound like gold at the end of a rainbow.

Rankin possesses the sort of radiant but deceptively deadpan voice that lets her to infuse these lovelorn laments with sly, sometimes sinister wit.

Only in Dreams isn't a perfect record, but a little while down the line it might end up looking like the beginning of something--the first steps forward for the band, or perhaps a raising of the bar for this entire revival.

It’s a shame there’s no such thing as a subtitled listening experience because OUÏ is rich with brilliant, funny ideas about conception, nurture, and identity.

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.

Neil Young set the template, but Tillman puts his stamp on every note, wringing bare-bones poetry from evocative couplets.

More inventive than Soundtrack of Our Lives and less chillily austere than Oldham, Mercury Rev prove to be his most dynamic partners, framing his songs but never infringing on them.

It’s not so much that Senyawa are unlike anything you’ve ever heard but the way they unify disparate genres under a single umbrella that makes the band’s approach so striking.

The album is much larger and brasher than it would first appear--the closer it hews to a mix of sad-sack indie pop and elegant, monied Patrick Bateman commercial 80s sounds, the better it works.