The one new track is “Devotion,” a showstopping slab of new-wave twinkle. Outside of a killer opening punchline (“I don’t feel emotion/It completely takes over me”), it’s uncomplicated and blissful, a portrait of codependence that begs to be read as a you’re-the-real-stars diva move. It’s a victory lap, and I don’t begrudge it. But Hot Chip are far more compelling when they’re navigating the course.

My nervous system just can’t endure 17 tracks of uncut Jens at once; it’s a giddy squee! sustained for 80 minutes. But it has variety and inspiration throughout, and it works great when taken in two chunks, one spinning a relationship together and the other gently tugging it apart.

Byrne’s recipe is comfort food, sunny nourishment in troubled times. But his determination to look on the bright side of life yields an album with no ambiguity or subtext. All the joy is right on the surface, delivered with relentless gaiety that becomes hackneyed long before the album is over.

The music on HAGEN isn’t impenetrable, though it is gargantuan.

No One Was Driving the Car is an inspired departure from interpersonal drama in favor of incisive critique, a confident step forward into an uncertain world.

Beth and Hostile have been collaborators for nearly two decades, and together they’re responsible not only for every sound on the record, but for the entire visual package, too. Their mutual force and focus give the album the pressurized insularity and cracked intensity of a one-person project.

The elements are there—the R&B-inflected singing (though Bieber’s comes out more like R&B-affected), guitars so bleary they sound hungover from last night, lite-rock keyboards, little wild squiggle fills—but the dynamism has been flattened, perhaps by other collaborators.

Although his voice doesn’t quiver with emotion and texture like those of serpentwithfeet, Sampha, and FKA twigs, it makes plaintive lines land as dreamy.

Here, she doesn’t limit herself to one cohesive palette. Instead, she and producer Daniel James frame Williams’ multi-octave range in a variety of pop subgenres—indie pop, pop rock, dream pop—giving it ample space to roam and ramble.

Its heavy-handedness drags down otherwise solid material.

It is a graceful but slightly anticlimactic grand finale: a victory lap over well-trodden ground that eagerly commands the spotlight before it goes out for good.

On A Danger to Ourselves she turns the camera on herself and the lens becomes a mirror, revealing an artist even less inhibited than before.

Not every great album hits on the first listen, but Freeman’s second record, Burnover, somehow feels like it’s always existed.

The resulting psych-folk arrangements are wandering and iterative. These songs are less inclined to tell a story from start to finish than transport you into a space of pure feeling.

The band’s tight, canny songwriting is so winsome on most of the album that weaker tracks, or trite phrases like “I’ll always be addicted to your energy” on the otherwise charming “Roundabout,” momentarily break the spell.

Billionaire may showcase the curling intricacy of her voice, but her songwriting seems less invested in striving for a similar complexity.

Its focus on the verities of songcraft suggests an artist confident enough to lean harder into tropes, formulas, and covers (including a spicy take on Waylon Jennings’ “Kissing You Goodbye”). It may feel like fiddling while Rome burns, but artistically it pays off.

Man’s Best Friend is so committed to the part that it begins to approach self-parody—“I bet your light rod’s, like, bigger than Zeus’” is not Carpenter’s best work—but mostly it’s sublime.

He hasn’t lost a step: WHO WATERS THE WILTING GIVING TREE keeps his signature storminess intact while seeking new contours to his breathless style.

There are still some brilliant moments, but safety is hard to fully fall for.

It’s a lonely album with a whopping heart, a hungry siren call for connection.

There’s so much musical and personal inspiration colliding at once, you can feel the passion even when you can’t quite crack it all.

The songs on Who's the Clown fittingly sound like an extension of Abrams’ world: verbose, conversational, unfiltered. .... But the album falters in its second half, where Hobert uses specificity as a crutch, struggling to transcend the biographical details of her own, quite exceptional, life.

Where Erotic Probiotic 2 was hypnagogic in spirit—drawing from ’80s pastiche, sports-television samples, echo-heavy harmonies—this LP foregrounds rawer, more physical elements, without sacrificing Brown’s booming, atmospheric textures.

Unlike many albums to come from its synth-pop cohort, Flux resists being taken apart for playlists. Set almost any similar song against it, and you realize how heady a spell has just been broken.

Staking his place as a fully formed singer, composer, and producer with All Our Knives Are Always Sharp, Njoku unsheathes his blade.

The loose, intuitive instrumental interplay is crucial to the album’s charm. Often, songs feel as if they’re conjured from the air: Lyrics are rudimentary yet keenly felt; melodies drift into view only to evaporate shortly afterward.

If Smith’s earlier albums tended to flush the sound field with twirling synthesized figures like so many kites in the sky, Gush turns up the gravity and clears out more negative space. Each sound bears more weight and locks more readily into prolonged grooves.