In the rare spots where the production is grating and the writing limp, Grande makes up for it with skill and intuition. thank u, next may be an imperfect album but it’s a perfect next chapter.

This box isn't exactly a grand opening of the vaults: as nice as it is to have all this stuff in one place, less than a quarter of it hasn't been officially issued before, and it's not like there's a shortage of Velvet Underground live recordings that could stand to be released for real. On the other hand, you can think of The Complete Matrix Tapes as a greatly expanded, better-mixed version of 1969 with less perfect sequencing and four songs missing, and considered that way, it's a jewel with a chip knocked off its top.

The union of players and material inspires a new synthesis: the sound of Iyer consolidating strengths and discovering some new ones as he settles into the vibe created by his most potent band yet.

This album is an affirmation of global connectivity and an emerging global culture that transcends and repurposes tradition as it sees fit--the sound of Mali merging with the world at large.

Every song here could be a single, but taken together, they add up to a sum greater than its parts.

A warm, intimate debut album that leaves space for darker contemplation—those stray thoughts that light you up at the end of the night.

A Sailor's Guide to Earth is such a rearrangement of Simpson's sonic universe that any previous categorization now seems out of date.

Mirrored is a breathtaking aesthetic left-turn that sounds less like rock circa 2007 than rock circa 2097, a world where Marshall stacks and micro-processing go hand in hand.

On this pristinely preserved live document, the entire underdog-comeback narrative of a Rocky movie plays out and repeats itself in recurring five-minute intervals.

Are We There may be her most present-tense album to date, her most immediate and urgent--the peak of a steady upward trajectory.

It is the most relaxed of her recent LPs and by far the best, a return to form that privileges the emotional immediacy and kinetic sensation that’s defined the best of her music for years.

The tracks on this album coalesce and morph, more than they progress. They get more traction from a good drone than from an elegant harmonic resolution. There’s a process of real-time exchange and dynamic micro-attunement that only jazz musicians can achieve, but not many of the cathartic peaks you might expect from a jazz performance. What matters is a vibe.

He plays with fewer frills than he did on Uneasy—but his fantastic instincts make the consistency of his beats another motor behind the record’s forward locomotion.

It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest".

What makes How I Got Over work is its sense of purpose. After the jaw-clenching stress rap of their last two excellent Def Jam releases, Game Theory and Rising Down, this record operates as a slow-build mission statement on how to overcome.

Smith may have abandoned his trench-coat persona in favor of a more honest self-portrait, but the line between the authentic self and the larger-than-life character remains provocatively fuzzy.

Afrique Victime is the fullest portrait of Moctar’s gifts that he has offered yet.

While it’s a creative step forward for Kiwanuka, it’s still tough to get a sense of just who he is at times.

If ever an album rewarded repeated listening, it's this one.

Masta Killa has delivered one the most urgent, straightforward Wu releases since the group's debut over a decade ago.

Simply put, this album sounds absolutely huge, its relentless attention to detail eclipsed only by the stunning emotional power it conveys.

However convoluted things get, you still wanna pump fist and bang head, even if you're not always sure when you should be doing so.

With Four Tet’s ninth album, New Energy, Hebden does something unexpected: He revisits previous sounds. There’s the low-key warmth of 2003’s Rounds, the free jazz at the heart of 2005’s Everything Ecstatic, the friendly thump of 2012’s Pink, the sprawl of 2015’s Morning/Evening. Downtempo nodders, beatless passages that flow into big bangers—he synthesizes all this into his most accessible listen since There is Love in You.

This is still a staggering monument all the same, an elaborately detailed portrait of a shambolic artist whose astonishing productivity, creative restlessness, and utter disdain for the niceties of civil society know no bounds.

The bluntness of Monroe’s lyrics lends depth to the self-portrait she sculpts in these songs, revealing just how much she longs for and cherishes human connection.

More than 25 years later, O’Rourke and Grubbs have polished and stitched together every scrap and forgotten rarity into one final album, closing off their beloved project as finely as a tape loop.

The chain reaction these nine songs generate together produces enough fog and smoke to keep the spell going strong—and to keep whatever secret she’s trying to tell us just on the other side of the speakers.

Lush, melancholic, gregarious, generous, both precise and a little bit unhinged--this is the most original American dance album in a long while.