The eight songs on the new record are all original compositions written and developed over the past six years, yet there’s no mistaking it for anything other than a Cabaret Voltaire album. While not as pulverizing as the group’s early recordings nor as sleek as the techno and house-inspired work found on 1993’s International Language, it blends the various eras of the group into a mostly satisfying whole.

Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy.

Victim of Love is ultimately a less successful record than No Time for Dreaming. For one, Bradley seems less connected with this set.

Although Doja clearly envisions Vie as her poppiest album, with ’80s pop as her aesthetic of choice, the record is most interesting when she’s ignoring such distinctions rather than embracing them.

This album may not be their most compelling release to date, but it remains the work of two uniquely complementary musicians set on an ever-evolving path.

Discipline & Desire--the title’s a tip-off--is aloof and commanding, with an expertly honed sense of how far to take the tension it builds before offering relief.

Women's Rights is an album created entirely for the moment, which keeps the spirit lighthearted even when they're dealing with heavy-handed subject matter.

Ruff Draft still feels like a limited-edition collectors-only curiosity.

Perhaps when performed live these songs will accrue the desperation and dynamism their studio versions lack, but for now The Silver Gymnasium too often makes the act of remembering sound like a consequence-free undertaking, as though certain horrors are too far in the past to do us much harm in the present.

The only outright misstep is “Cocoon,” where a generic 2010s-indie rock arrangement flattens some of the record’s most intense lines (“I’ve become a taxidermied version of myself”). Throughout the rest of the album, the production only elevates her writing.

The tracks vary greatly in span, but beyond that there’s not as much of a dynamic as on prior Jesu full-lengths.

Thankfully, it's not just dour missives and desolation--there's life in these songs.

If you're striving to restore faith in a world of "prophets, pimps, angels" and "whores," you gotta do better than Sarah McLachlan melodies and a rented Haitian choir.

These arrangements may help give definition to a tune as fragile as Vernon’s “Dedicated” but, more than anything, casting these recent songs in the same light as “Touch a Hand” or “Let’s Do It Again”--a number one hit for the Staple Singers back in 1975, but rarely remembered as well as “Respect Yourself"”--helps shift the focus to how Mavis still sounds mighty as ever.

DaBaby’s charm gets diluted; he sounds measured and restrained, not words typically associated with DaBaby. This is music to bob your head at, not lose your shit to. Ever the savvy marketer, DaBaby does manage a few highlights that seem packaged to go viral.

A great deal of Death Set's charm lies in how their toothsome double-guitar attack is deliberately undermined by their tinkertoy beats and new-waved keys; when the band try to overcompensate with the aggro.

In essence, Overjoyed is the sound of the Fairs playing along with themselves, or at least the sweet, weird boys they used to be--not always with as much spark or chaos, but mashing up the fruits just as gleefully.

Despite its sprawling architecture, the album is one of the band’s most consistent, unified works.

Since the memorable tracks on Metalmania are so good, the tracks that don’t quite rise to the occasion feel all the more frustrating.

Unfortunately, the duo's apparent ambitions to be something more hold it back from reaching serotonin-peaking heights (like Carly Rae Jepsen's E•MO•TION).

Even when the music intentionally plays dumb, Bentham and Nardi are clever lyricists, and Higher Power could almost be a narrative concept record about salvation if you play it out of order.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, The Ways We Separate still leaves its mark.

Its flimsiness usually finds a way to sound purposeful, and that makes Aqueduct's personal, cerebral pop worth coming back to.

Even though the tempo barely tops 100 bpm, all the far-flung fusions of Asian pop, Nigerian reggae, and Korean boogie leave Khruangbin’s set feeling a little like a busy touring schedule on the international festival circuit: both awe-inspiring and exhausting.

Mura Masa is best when he sticks to the script and cranks up the heat.

This isn't the kind of stuff you're going to walk around humming. It's too weirdly shaped to really abide in you--you have to be willing lose yourself in it instead.

The album falters in spots because of the disparity of its urges. Age Against the Machine seems to want to ease Cee-Lo back into the Goodie Mob’s world while not-so-gently tugging them into his.

Fifty percent of the lyrics are bad (“Back on my bullshit, devil emoji”) and the other 50 percent are also bad, but then they get stuck in your head and ultimately turn good (“Tell me your darkest secret shit you wouldn’t even tell Jesus”). ... Death Race For Love feels like the real Juice WRLD, wearing his influences and heart on his sleeve, putting his ups and downs into the music in real time.