Her storytelling is masterful, filled with earnest lyricism and a knack for arresting imagery.

Despite the vexations Rutili espouses here, these are some of the warmest and most welcoming songs in Califone’s lengthy catalog, postcards meant to lure new visitors to an old landmark.

The few deviations from the dreamy production are hit and miss.

Sus Dog is warm and immediately gratifying, offering the musician’s fragile falsetto as a graceful counterpoint to his intricate and sometimes breakneck production.

At its best, the music of Romantic Piano approaches the promise of that sentiment, speaking the feelings that words cannot.

If The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte reaffirms Sparks’ status as rock’s most reliable fabulists, the album’s grand finale brings forth an uncharacteristic introspection.

Ultimately, it’s not the hazy discontent that makes Everyone’s Crushed indelible but its livewire sound.

It is easily the most solitary record Simon has made since his early solo work. The restraint is the point; just as he’s found inspiration in wide-ranging rhythms and textures from around the world, he now seems thrilled by just how much quiet he can conjure.

For decades, this kind of shambolic aesthetic has signified immediacy over virtuosity, heart over chops. But it’s hard not to be distracted by the moments when the lyrics fall flat or the singing goes awry. Their chord progressions are smart and the production is appealing, but neither is enough to carry the record on its own.

This album is far more challenging than the lush, sprightly Life, and Another; although a good deal shorter, it’s more dense, and it can feel overwhelming. For that reason, it can sometimes feel more rewarding, too.

Even on the merely good ones, there’s always the sense of someone living in Clark’s lyrics, making decisions about how to transform those feelings into melodies and rhymes.

Sometimes the writing on The Answer Is Always Yes is more generic than you’d expect from Lahey. .... But Lahey’s gift for imagery shines on songs like the hazy acoustic trip “The Sky Is Melting,” a rowdy story of misadventure: She spars with a deadbeat pal while high on melted weed gummies, trading conspiracy theories and belting out corny yacht rock before vomiting into a ravine.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me captures the messy, confusing headspace that precedes future growth.

The music is abrasive, but in its most shocking moments, the band allows beauty to shine through the grime and static.

I cannot remember an album that suffered from such an extreme case of risk-aversion, nor demonstrated so little faith in an artist’s potential, nor any notion that their fanbase might be willing to grow with them. If anything, it shrinks his already narrow proposition.

[Jarmusch] brings a rich history to the proceedings, experimenting with passerelle bridges, cigar box guitars, and radio static. Just as in his films, he spins strange yet strangely familiar stories from everyday stuff.

In Rubin—as much a guru as he is a producer—Kesha’s found a collaborator willing to indulge her spiritualist tangents. But neither the ideas nor the audio clips feel fully integrated into a broader theme of the album. Her ambivalence is more potent.

Romantiq doesn’t dispose of the past. It just situates old habits amid a more vibrant and fully realized present.

A decade later, RP Boo offers us Legacy Vol. 2, a sequel equally worthy of the title.

When he’s not over-intellectualizing his emotions, Caesar can be disarmingly raw. If only he didn’t write like a cyborg the rest of the time.

As a collective, the Impossible Truth maintains the spiritual minimalism of Tyler’s solo work while expanding the sound.

The album burns brightest on a pair of songs in which Marea recognizes the limits of his grace in the face of emotionally unavailable lovers.

There are moments when these elements come together beautifully, as with the nostalgic dreamscape that surrounds Lola Young’s soaring vocals on “Trying.” At other times, Fred again..’s songcraft struggles, and fails, to break through.

The Love Invention introduces “Alison Goldfrapp, house diva,” a pivot she doesn’t totally sell. ... The record’s best moments are its quietest.

Good Lies toes a fine and, yes, functional, balance. There’s beauty in all this precision too—like an Eames chair, a perfectly weighted spoon, or the cone of a 15-inch subwoofer pushing air out of the bass scoops.

Euphoric Recall falters when the band forgets that her voice is the main event. ... Braids may still be searching for a distinct identity. But what Euphoric Recall makes clear is that Standell-Preston knows her voice better than ever before.

Even if Live at Bush Hall wasn’t intended to be the next official entry in their canon, the accompanying soundtrack album certainly earns its right to be considered as such. Notwithstanding the occasional bit of stage banter that makes no sense without the film (“Happy prom night!”), Live at Bush Hall is as cohesive a statement as any other record in the band’s discography.

ATUM doesn’t necessarily suffer by comparison to past albums. Its highs are more modest. The ferocity is long gone. But in its own ponderous way, it is generous.