Although The Baby flirted with electronic elements, it mostly stuck to an intimate indie-rock sound; in comparison, Scout sounds big.

Though the album is staid and formulaic by design, it doesn’t always color inside the lines: It feels more like background music failing up than ambient music failing down.

Draw Down the Moon most often plays like a collection of Total Life Forever extended cuts, moments of thoughtful lateral thinking tacked onto the beginnings and endings of otherwise familiar indie rock songs.

Rarely is electronic music so utterly human as on Still Slipping, its emotional draw as reassuringly complex as a grand family reunion.

Ultimately, though, Pressure Machine rarely escapes Flowers’ Brandon Flowers-ness: try as he might—and you do get the sense that he’s trying so, so hard—his usual wide-tipped brush can’t do justice to what should be finely detailed scenes.

Unlike the spiteful divinity that stalks these songs, Hayter’s music is full of reverence and empathy for our most challenging task: to be human.

Nas’ kingship goes down easy over Hit-Boy’s clean drums and neat arrangements, which indulge Nas’ nostalgia without kowtowing to it. ... When Nas’ rhymes aren’t clumsy, his storytelling is.

Apart from splicing “Bluebird” and “For What It’s Worth” into a Buffalo Springfield medley, Los Lobos stay faithful to these original arrangements, which doesn’t mean they’re replicating records. They’re relying on their collective strengths as a rock’n’roll band.

It could often pass for Nick Cave as produced by John Carpenter, which is the sort of gloss these Mute lifers usually repel, yet it’s striated with layers of their past and their characteristic strangeness. It’s the best thing Andrew has done in at least a decade.

The resulting project is dimmed down and diluted.

It is slightly bizarre to hear aging punks perform the songs of their youth, music that would become foundational to scenes that produced the likes of Blink-182 and Weezer. But as the missing link that connects Descendents’ humble beginnings to their most iconic sounds, it’s essential.

The rare box set that’s actually more than the sum of its parts. The highs on here are higher than the lows are low, and, more significantly, the warts-and-all approach creates a compelling context for Dick Jensen and the O’Jays alike.

Stand for Myself, with its themes of inner fortitude only brightening the white-hot star at its center, vaults Yola to another place in the pop world, with her boundless curiosity and vocal brawn establishing her as a knowing, honest voice for those who need help summoning their own strength from within.

King Woman’s ability to outdo themselves continues apace, and the bar continues to rise each time Esfandiari sheds her skin anew.

Burning projects newfound poise and even joy through a sophisticated collage. Rashad’s collection of references and phrases plays like the inside of a jumbled but vibrant brain.

It was and is a spotty album from a time when Prince was making a lot of those.

It is an album of quiet delights, but at times it feels like the songs are simply stretched too thin: three-star meals served with five-star service.

It’s a confused album that sounds like it wants to sit on the shelf next to do-it-all pop savants like Jeff Lynne or Todd Rundgren, yet retreats to the safety of Antonoff’s alt-pop impulses before anything spectacular really develops.

Some of Happier Than Ever’s quieter tracks drag—“Everybody Dies”’s dreary grasps at existentialism barely leave an impression. That said, as the beat change on “My Future” shows, Happier Than Ever’s best songs are the ones where Eilish and Finneas allow one small idea to mutate into two or three bigger ones.

Thirstier is exuberant and unguarded—the kind of music you make when you’re no longer testing out a new skin and instead reveling in the fervent joy that it brings you. At their best, these songs ride the contact high of a love so consuming that it shifts your worldview and makes you write songs loaded with screamable choruses and conventional hooks.

MIKE’s rhythmic passion manifests in a firm self-awareness absent from his earlier work. He hasn’t exactly outrun his demons, but his place in the vanguard of New York’s underground rap scene has invigorated him.

He mostly manages to boil down the macho bloat of his sources to graceful essences without underplaying the pomp.

Change is pleasant and breezy, a cozy place where she can explore the outer limits of her voice. Listening can feel like walking into one of those gallery shows with just three sculptures, where everyone is wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of mustard-colored slacks. It sounds cool, and you feel cool listening to it—but that’s about as much as you feel.

We’re All Alone in This Together isn’t Dave’s magnum opus. But the best thing is, he’s just getting started. We’re barely past the opening credits.

Few people would dream up an album as endearingly obtuse and gleefully dysfunctional as Yellow, let alone have the skill to realize it.

Banned is stronger when the pair sound more invested, when the songs feel more composed and can unspool without as many distractions.

It is a record that is whimsical and sensual; weird and romantic.

On this album, every time it feels as if he’s close to breaking out—and the album’s best songs are replete with moments in which Bridges seems a hair’s breadth away from true passion—he recedes into the background and lets the technical expertise of his studio players, or that timeless-seeming studio itself, take over.