A lot of these songs didn't have hooks, per se, to start with. They expanded and contracted with a kind of cosmic swarm, the percussion providing a delicate skeleton. Loose as it was, without that punctuation, Vulnicura Strings can feel a little formless.

Even when it’s clumsy, Seeking Thrills never feels manufactured. It’s a passion project, a result of trial and error, the singular product of someone learning to write for her own voice.

Rome shows how precise the National’s alchemy is: If Devendorf is replaced with a drum machine, if Dessner confines himself to the piano or quiet noodling, if Berninger rambles too far afield, the whole thing falls apart. It’s Alligator deep cut “The Geese of Beverly Road” where Rome best demonstrates the band’s collective power. On record, it’s patient but stiff, held back by a lo-fi drum recording; live, it’s the massive, sweeping anthem early believers always hoped it would become.

It is a decent entry in her catalog, but by no means essential.

Tracey ensures the album links the UK urban music’s past and present. Which of the mixed bag of styles deployed on AJ Tracey will be further investigated in the future remains a mystery. What is clear is that he has talent and star power for days—talents that could have been better showcased here.

The level on which Russian Roulette works best is experienced in a stoner's sound-design-obsessed bubble, where each crackle of a record and particular melodic line of a funk, fusion, soundtrack, or novelty sample seems to contain a cavernous importance simply for displacing air with sound.

Ultimately, though, after making such an indelible and unique contribution to the language of modern heavy rock, Hamilton continues to show that he's hemmed-in by the style he invented.

Ens tables the queries, at least temporarily, for a strictly personal statement. However you approach its aesthetic beauty, that is a much less satisfying response.

Ignoring the shadow of its predecessor may be difficult, but Love Is Yours is still a compelling album of off-center power pop and is proof that the long-held bonds of Baker and Mulitz remain just as strong.

It might be too humble for its own good, but The Now Now is the rare commercial sojourn that feels like a product of real fascination.

Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city.

The most immediately striking moments on Collapse Into Now are those that sound like explicit retreads of previous R.E.M. songs.

He’s found his voice as a musician, but he’s still searching as a writer, trying to find the sweet spot between autobiographer and novelist. It’s no slight to say that Ewald is still best at his most transparent, singing to the person right in front of him.

While none of these 13 songs attempt the subtle weirdness of “Bad Liar” and the emotional thesis—self-love!—can be a bit one-note, Rare is the 27-year-old’s most cohesive record to date. ... But it’s difficult to come away from Rare with any real perspective on who Gomez is other than that she doesn’t want to be the person she was, whoever that similarly mysterious shadow was.

Skifflin', an enjoyably low-stakes release, feels less like McCombs’ next frontier in tackling the Great American Folk Album than a leisurely sojourn.

With an album replete with Spanish guitar jams, wide-eyed hip-hop, and psychedelic rock k-holes, there isn't much ground left for Raury to cover. Now, he must figure out how to do it all just a little bit better.

Following the "haunted murk" of Amaranthine, Youngs takes a drastic turn on Summer Through My Mind, an album of slightly unhinged but almost relentlessly tuneful Americana songs.

The dynamic between the wobbly production and the sturdy songwriting defines Moon Tides, though I wouldn’t say it causes any tension. Conflict is clearly something avoided within the tenets of Pure Bathing Culture. But it does result in a listening experience that causes more ambivalence than it probably should.

In general-- and despite passages of extreme beauty-- something seems amiss on Exchange Session.

Sun June are interested in daydreams as both playground and prison, and about observing what happens when you collide with the borders of your own interiority. But even in this cloudy, circumscribed world of echoing instruments, where faking and fiction are not only indulged, but necessary, Sun June’s sincerity shines through.

True to its titular subject, Diver constitutes a daring leap for Lemonade, one that, at times, appears destined to result in a belly-flop, but recovers nicely in the end.

Maverick has a more consistent tone than either of Beans' previous records, but it also lacks the stand-outs of its predecessors, settling into bland production strokes that recede behind his always fascinating rhymes.

The move toward emotional exorcism on The Art of Forgetting is nearly as startling as Rose’s previous stylistic pivots. ... But individual songs, as carefully articulated as they are, tend to get swallowed up by the overarching psychological thrust of The Art of Forgetting: This is a mood piece capturing a specific frame of mind, even a particular era.

As an album, Lost Sirens isn't at all an embarrassment: it's a document of a band whose range and reach, rather than power, are what has been diminished.

While they're still a talented band, you can't help but wonder how much more memorable they'd be if they applied as broad a sense of dynamics to their albums as their labelmates.

In the end, though, it’s that feeling of disposability that makes the album’s title resonate more pointedly in the wrong way.

When Hughes tries out more rote pop songs, Cape God can get a little dry. ... Still, the sad world of Cape God is an alluring one, and Hughes’ vocal range is its unequivocal linchpin.

Camila shines when it’s light and breezy, giving Cabello the space she needs to cook.