Michael is an origin story that works best when it examines how worshiping at the altars of sex, money, and Jesus created the man we know today. But when he petulantly doubles down on critiques of his public persona and status as a Black multi-millionaire, the album is harder to stomach.

At times Wish on the Bone can be non-specific, and the universality of Howerton’s feelings becomes untethered and slippery. Perhaps that’s why the album ends with the brief, incisive finale “I Took the Shot.”

Sometimes he hits pure signal, and sometimes it’s just background noise as he gets to wherever he’s going next.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the heavy emotional inspiration behind Sia's trebly moans drags on over the course of 50 minutes.

The integrity of Richard's voice provides the through line, which is often caught in ghostly tangles of itself or locking into prismatic harmonies, similar to how Prince or D’Angelo treated their voices.

Even if there's no transcendent statement to be found, we're still left with these guys sketching out their own little Richard Brautigan short stories, rendering entire lives in quick, mysterious, devastating little strokes. If these guys wanted to make another one of these before another eight years elapse, I wouldn't be mad.

The fearsome symmetry and formidable concision Owens attempts here is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, and while the first half of the album comes on strong, the second half is a little more prone to interrupting itself.

Xiu Xiu's music is all about discomfort, but Stewart and co. have become quite comfortable in this conceptual space, and are able to inhabit it like painters making wild, broad smears that intuitively cohere into a look that is distinctly theirs.

Brood X’s quiet closers are no less visceral than their high-voltage predecessors, providing a more intimate manifestation of the agitated feelings coursing throughout the record.

Suga may not be remembered as a keystone in Megan Thee Stallion’s catalog, but it’s a fine portrait of an artist embracing her full self as her world changes drastically.

Everything could be accepted for what it is and be held to a more manageable standard: how good does a Weezer album have to be before it can be considered actually good? As it turns out, about this good.

This guy is still on a very serious roll, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere near over.

If you're inclined to Tennis negatively, they look like a group of blank people offering bland sweetness devoid of deeper meaning. While the band might've fit that description at one point, they've since grown past it, so if you're one of the listeners who dismissed their earlier work as banal and bourgeois, know that Tennis has since earned another chance.

Rather than forming the second half of a complete statement, Part 2 struggles to differentiate itself.

The Clearing feels lovingly erected, fashioned bit by bit.

With El Pintor, Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol; it’s a sad notion for anyone who once held this band’s music dear to their hearts, but taking into account what came before, it’s a miracle that Interpol still exist in this capacity at all.

The 11 tracks on his self-titled debut are strange and stirring enough to make him one of the genre’s most exciting young voices.

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 interesting to hear how Alvvays nod to their vaunted indie forebears while also stretching against the limitations of being too closely associated with the past.

At just less than 30 minutes, Highway Hypnosis is in fact her longest record, and it feels longer still.

They still occasionally bury vocals in a haze of effects, but their instrumentals are crushing now by design, their synth lines starker, the distortion more piercing. They’ve always been capable of expressing harsh feelings, but they seem now more able than ever to echo such sentiments in their music. Fires in Heaven is a more alluring invitation than ever to join them down in the depths.

There is a good album here. The band’s more characteristically brief songs are flawless, but there’s a lesson in this album for punk bands who may want to explore pop: It ain’t as easy as a great hook.

In a first for PUP, the best tracks on their album are slow songs and mid-tempo romps, which bolster Who Will Look After the Dogs? after its rambunctious opening track.

While I Got Too Sad’s emotional tenor can occasionally feel one-note, its warm, lush sound offers a counterbalance to its gloomy lyrics.

Moving away from the more varied songcraft that speckled the record's earlier tracks, Jinx eventually resigns itself to a pillowy darkness that, while not unpleasant, feels safe and flat.

Rose Mountain might be Screaming Females' most deliberate music yet, but it lacks much of their former wildness.

If their debut fails to offer a consistent, forceful message the way their riot grrrl heroes once did, they have at least figured out how to capture some of those predecessors’ energy. For now, Dream Wife leaves you revved up and ready to go with nowhere suggested.

The most complicated forms of techno and footwork are built simply, from the ground up, and on Nothing, we hear the simplicity of each component and how it all comes together to make the music that we love.