While she has a reputation for making familiar songs sound utterly new, here she finds a way to make Bramblett’s songs tell her story, to let them speak for her. She rewrites his songs simply by singing them.

While exactingly played and produced, Speakers Corner Quartet’s songs don’t always push forward stylistically; a few tracks, like “Can We Do This?,” built around Sampha’s familiar coo, feel like songs you’ve heard many times before. But there are moments of breathtaking originality.

Here, Duffy is at their most instrumentally complex and collaboratively generous. The result of this free-for-all cooperation is Hand Habits’ most engrossing project yet.

On Guy, she takes time to steady herself to her inner metronome, finding her voice with her dad’s help.

With Work of Art, Asake understands that his winning formula needs no adjustments.

This is not an album of passages or movements or suites. It’s best understood and appreciated as a collection of songs, of which there are clear highlights.

The best songs on In Times New Roman… are hiding in the back half, resulting in an unusually lopsided experience.

Remotely self-recorded and produced across various Pittsburgh apartments, its 11 songs are oddball bursts of imagination, whimsy, and discord.

At its very best, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love captures this feverish lightning-in-a-bottle energy. But where Kushner’s many moving parts lock into place, spurring each other on toward a harrowing, rapturous climax, the songs of Chris’s album never quite cohere.

Even though many of the characters are heartbroken or wracked with anxiety, Williamson navigates modern life using timeless tropes that lend Time Ain’t Accidental an immense, gratifying confidence.

Joy’All has an amiable listlessness: It’s loveable, but I wish there was more to love.

Animals is a provocative proposition with flashes of inspired bricolage, by a likable veteran muso, but for something so fussed over, it’s a little half-baked.

The old anxiety and morbid fascination remain, but Powers has never sounded so confident, so at peace within himself.

Jarak Qaribak is a rich, fascinating case of music both carrying history and shaping the future, redrawing the limits of the possible in specific, limited, yet meaningful ways.

Though NV is credited with handling the majority of the album’s production (Deradoorian, in turn, is the record’s principal lyricist), she keeps a loose grip behind the boards, allowing some of Deradoorian’s psychedelic krautrock inclinations to slip through. The results are mixed. .... But Deradoorian shines as a lyricist.

Her themes of desire and fuckery are vivid and emotionally complex.

His songs have always felt close to home, charcoal-smeared with London dusk and the nocturnal cadence of London jazz. On Space Heavy, for the first time, the great London singer-songwriter’s ambitions feel accordingly local, too.

O Monolith raises bigger, more eternal questions about humanity’s relationship to nature, and Squid’s music becomes more open-ended while wrestling with them. This weaving quality means the music is unpredictable and often exhilarating, but the message is blurrier.

The Age of Pleasure isn’t as intricate as their sci-fi novellas or as electrifyingly innovative as The ArchAndroid. It’s a bacchanal in the haven Monáe constructed for themself, cobblestone by cobblestone, tree by tree.

Weathervanes’ unsettled moments wind up making the sun-bleached vibe of the rest of the album feel earned.

Zango is rooted in classic Zamrock, and it builds on the inherent malleability of the genre’s sound.

Revisiting Come on Feel the Lemonheads can be revelatory in spite of its unevenness. .... As with the reissues of Lovey and It’s a Shame About Ray, the deluxe version offers demos and outtakes that justify a physical reissue in 2023 and not much else.

Folkocracy is a fun listen.

Alex Leonard’s rumbling drums back Scott Davidson and Greg Ahee’s ominous simmer, but all the heft falls away for a few overwhelming melodic tones—bursts of light through the darkness. Casey doesn’t always sound particularly convinced, but Formal Growth feels like an earnest attempt to get there.

Despite their detailed imagery and alluring melodies, the songs on Roach are ultimately less complex than Folick’s earlier work.

It lacks the razor-sharp focus that made Just Cause Ya’ll Waited 2, a brutal and affecting listen. Durk’s presence is strong and his endurance is inspiring, but his intentions are as muddied as ever.

Muddy mixing can’t entirely sink her compositions—lead single “Days Move Slow” is among the best rock songs of the year—but several other tracks take on water. It’s heart-wrenching to imagine how much better these songs would be, how much more worthy of showcasing Bognanno’s maturation as an artist, had she presided solely over production.

The most impressive thing about the album is how death is gracefully absorbed into this long-running franchise to reinvigorate the band.