Woptober slogs towards the end, but it moves too quickly to feel like a chore to sit through. It has all the markings of what we’ve come to expect from Gucci’s music only this time—rather than drowning in his addictions—he’s found a way to integrate drugs and violence into his new outlook.

Rather than feel cathartic or caustic, it’s oddly cold and rote.

It boasts the sort of large-scale electronic compositions that can often feel monolithically lonely, and she does it all by herself. And yet the album sounds and feels collaborative, as if it were the product of multiple viewpoints and inputs.

Sadly, they seem content for the kind of mediocrity that designates you as the headliner Firefly and Bonnaroo call when someone else isn’t available.

Every Now & Then is often vivid and enjoyable, but after a few listens, you may find yourself switching back to one of the band’s predecessors. The former is a fun ride, but Screamadelica could still blow your mind.

What’s astonishing here is the way they manage to forge a sound nearly as rich and original as that of America’s most blunted.

Throughout, Sport is crude, queasy, sometimes shockingly ugly, and often quite funny, in a madcap, slightly threatening way. It thrills and it mystifies in equal measure.

As much of a throwback as Mering can seem, at her best she captures her era in her words.

In Spektor’s catalogue, Remember Us to Life balances comfort food for Spektor fans with the maturity and wisdom you'd expect from a singer-songwriter passing the 15th year of her career.

If you’re in the mood for a good-enough orchestral rock album that lifts and falls in all the expected ways, you might as well queue up one you haven’t heard before. Mono are doing their part to keep you in a steady supply of them.

If you’re happy to ride some riffs into the sunset, High Bias is a worthwhile trip.

It’s a party vibe that doesn’t entirely know the party’s about to end in the worst way. But while it lasts—through the Afrobeat fusion of “Mad Dog in Yoruba” and the upfront yet faraway-sounding horn blasts in “Macumba 3000” and the baile/bossa simmer of “Todos Os Terreiros”--it’s enough to make you wish the background music was up front.

If this is his new beginning, it’s an unambitious one: Lidell has never sounded like more of a traditionalist than he does on this amiable but uncomplicated record.

COW has some of the Orb’s most gentle moments to date, but in eschewing their own classic album and instead oddly reflecting on one from their peers, they fail to get beyond the Ultraworld and the world of Chill Out, at times mimicking little more than some BBC sound effects.

Outer, fittingly enough, projects its energies relentlessly outward, broadcasting its emotional content in a way that too often feels heavy-handed.

The result is a vision of a prospective future both strange and alluring, a journey through virtual spaces and experimental technologies that, at heart, feels human after all.

In a sense, this turgid collection is the ultimate expression of Be Here Now: as bloated and indulgent as the record itself, the music a secondary concern to the product’s status.

This is heavy stuff and as fun as it can be, Cashmere is an unabashedly political record, careening from one geopolitical issue to the next the way that most rap albums treat boasts. Ultimately, though, its most impactful moments lie in the simple act of representation.

While it doesn’t always work, it’s Yves Tumor’s use of field recordings that gives Serpent Music an ambulatory quality.

The Altar has a lot in common with Goddess, including its fatal flaw: its attempts to position Banks as edgy or dangerous, despite all musical evidence to the contrary.

Ruminations is Oberst’s most emotionally legible work since Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, also defined by its similarly cloistered worldview and sonic cohesion.

Cody finds a more grown-up Joyce Manor, but every track contains enough blunt expressions of existential despair to tie them to their angsty past.

Crooked Man’s overall vibe is the timeless aspiration of people who share great parts of their lives on dark dance-floors. All these songs boil down to the idea of community and its desires and rules, a set of signposts to keep the party going in the right direction.

Day Breaks grows a bit tedious near the middle, and it's easy to forget it's playing if you aren't paying attention.

Taylor’s graceful accountability and invigorating songcraft makes him an anomaly. His own dose of perspective arrives at the end of the plainly gorgeous Heart Like a Levee.

As with The Things We Think, it feels like the sound of a curious band still working out how to make music as distinct as its influences; whether lyrically or sonically, they come across as either unknowable or proudly workmanlike.

Departed Glories’ strongest individual tracks are uncompromisingly abstract. ... Less profound, on their own, are the tracks that let edge-of-intelligibility vocal collages in the manner of Julianna Barwick do most of the work. But they play a flattering role in the album as a whole, which is how it should be heard

Opeth have gotten better at self-editing with Sorceress; still, their jammier tendencies fail them in the album’s lackadaisical middle, showing they may just be a little too cool.