At this stage, they sound both comfortable and ambitious, settling into their familiar chemistry while adding new chapters to a story only they can write.

This is the sound of Simz reconciling with Simbi. And it sounds great. Cue the ovation.

At its best, Only Up evokes a communal feeling of watching a band utterly locked-in, their intertwining parts echoing across a large, open space. Korody never quite conjures the chemistry necessary to transcend his influences, but, like a teenager decorating his bedroom wall with torn-out tabloid photos, he creates a messy, lovable collage.

As on previous albums from the Trio, the overarching vibe remains murky and muddled, like a strong joint on top of a hangover on a humid, overcast day. But they cover more range than ever before.

On Any Shape You Take, De Souza commits herself to being undone, to experiencing the terrible feelings and the beautiful ones. Even when she’s fucked-up, there is something ecstatic in her attempts at loving, her hunger to absorb all she can from life.

The group could have delivered 10 variations on “Clearest Blue” and made (relative) bank. Instead, they let their influences sprawl widely. ... Better yet, they finally build on the darker parts of 2013’s The Bones of What You Believe as they excavate their own career.

Thirty years ago, indie rock was rife with records that sounded like Moot!, and the bands of that era inspired successive waves of followers. But today, an album like this, coming from a context like Moin’s, feels radical.

How Long is frequently gorgeous, but even on a deliberately messy side project, Dessner and Vernon still feel like they’re holding back.

For all the omnipresent menace, it’s often a wildly fun listen.

With each member given ample room for individual showcases, and each coming up with indelible songs and melodies, Feel Flows offers new insight into a creative peak.

Kanye’s tenth album arrives barely finished and with a lot of baggage. Its 27 tracks include euphoric highs that lack connective tissue, a data dump of songs searching for a higher calling.

It maintains a simultaneously sleek and sludgy quality across its 35 minutes, like a cornstarch slurry gluing the whole thing together.

Gunn is not merely the ghost animating Other You’s remarkably ornate machine. The vocal melodies here are among the tenderest he’s ever written, and they carry the same sense of inevitability that he invests in his guitar lines; they sound so natural, it can be easy to overlook their formal complexity.

Love Will Be Reborn feels at once bigger and smaller than her previous material, with each quiet rumination leading her toward grander musings on love, grief, and motherhood.

These songs don’t have the same mythical grandeur as Tyler’s best work, or the same unfurling experimentalism of Anderson’s. Instead, they play like a wandering search for peace, with both artists turning to their guitars—and to each other—as a respite against a country that seemed to be tearing itself apart.

The album is her most accomplished, arresting work yet.

Glow On is not a crossover hardcore album that looks to transcend the genre, but one that tries to elevate it to its highest visibility.

For all the struggle that inspired the record, Shannon and the Clams embrace the change with grace.

The result is alluring and spectral. It’s their best work yet. ... Reznor and Ross spend most of the album experimenting, careening through genres and hinting at a danger that’s never fully realized. They cram songs with texture, reverberating screams and screeching sirens; the busyness can feel like a distraction.

McMurtry sounds more engaged here, more focused, and more generous to his hard-luck characters.

The most striking element of Long Time Coming is the one that made Ferrell go viral in the first place—her voice.

The sentiments are never cryptic or coded; the duo simply express what’s top of mind. That face-value approach to lyrics is well-suited for a subject as universal as a global pandemic. There’s comfort in hearing somebody sing what we’re all thinking, and comfort has always been what Damon & Naomi do best.

The Weavers have no trouble sounding like themselves, but another voice in the room might have helped them flesh out some of the underexplored ideas on Primordial Arcana. Like the still life that adorns its cover, the album can be beautiful, but it’s fundamentally inert.

Aisles is most endearing when it leans into frivolity, largely because there’s little else with such relaxed stakes in Olsen’s discography.

Ultimately, it’s that breezy, impish spirit that most distinguishes 333 and its predecessor from her RCA albums.

If Infinite Granite was a debut by a band with no backstory, it’d be impressive as hell. But knowing Deafheaven’s singular ability to pull off thrilling highwire acts, their latest subversion of expectations feel less like a bold statement and more like a predictable move to gentler pastures.

Dood and Juanita works so well because Simpson sounds comfortable within this form and just beyond it.

No song here is outright bad, and much of their best assets shine through the banalities, but Queendom feels like a signpost of Red Velvet’s former glory.