With their documentarian dispatches from the meanest streets, Crack Cloud could never be accused of faking it. But the strange beauty of Pain Olympics is that it fills your heart even as it’s kicking you in the kidneys.

Trading the timbral menagerie of an expanded chamber ensemble for something more barren and monochromatic, Moore is occasionally forced out of his comfort zone into abstraction and dissonance. These forays can feel like a significant artistic leap, but complacency flattens some of this music.

There’s a nagging instinct that pop songs are supposed to have more pieces to them, or that drummer Eric McGrady is supposed to be using more than half of a drum set. Stick with it, though, and something even better emerges from those gaps. By leaving their songs exposed, Dehd show how much they believe in them, and rightfully so. Their confidence in their concision is the best part.

Even as it soothes, Violence in a Quiet Mind is more concerned with demonstrating how it feels to get better. It takes patience, attention, and self-awareness, qualities Black’s music amply displays.

XOXO is a battle-scarred but unbroken collection, worthy of being filed alongside venerable mid-career milestones like Wildflowers and Time Out of Mind.

Casey, having already plumbed the depths of sorrow, still has room to go deeper as Protomartyr’s sound continues to become much richer and more rewarding.

Beyond the Pale contains plenty of sharp songwriting, but despite the intrigue of its premise, it may have benefitted from a more thorough commitment to making a proper album.

Though Younge and Shaheed Muhammad may enjoy casting themselves as career revivalists, Roy Ayers JID 002, as pleasant and groovy as it is, never quite feels like a true Roy Ayers work.

The gripping parts of Legends Never Die come when Juice is speaking from the heart.

Reading his explanations for choosing the guest rappers, it’s clear they moved him, but he might’ve been better off simply ceding them the space and stepping away. With this new tape, the Streets are officially back, but Skinner never convinces us why they should stay.

As ever, MacKaye shrewdly distills macro calamities to personal, almost prosaic vignettes.

On Healing Is a Miracle, she’s never been further from the category of background music. Sincerity this pure draws attention to itself. It’s a genuine revelation.

Rumors buffs away some of the rougher edges that made her so much more compelling than so many of Nashville’s aspiring singer-songwriters. Those albums made the fight sound worthwhile, but there’s too little fight in these songs.

The 35-song soundtrack runs to nearly two hours, and the very elements that make it work as a score—the repeating melodic motifs and moments of lingering disquiet—make it a difficult listening experience. Much like the film’s demonic dress, it feels at times like In Fabric owns you, more than you own it. Still, scattered throughout are numerous examples of the melodic dexterity, genre agnosticism, and rhythmic poise that made records like Hormone Lemonade and Emperor Tomato Ketchup such shape-shifting delights.

The Avalanche wallows, but the realization rather than the anticipation of karmic retribution lends it emotional urgency even as Kinsella works in his familiar modes of meandering melodies, exquisite acoustic arpeggios, and the occasional lapse into cringe-posting that threatens to break the whole spell.

The guests skillfully mold the originals into creations of their own, while still preserving some of the songs’ initial ideas.

Their debut feels ragged in all the right places, a testament from a band that shoulders the weight of disappointment, lost years, and heartbreak without allowing it to become a burden.

Tidbits keep the sense of fun in The Beths’ music, they aren’t enough to fully invigorate their second album among the more sluggish songs. They’re mostly a reminder of what’s missing.

The best moments here are the most direct, the least demonstrative.

The Post-Nothing cuts fare best; they had fewer moving parts and thus didn’t suffer from being played sloppily or off-key.

The album’s sound is sleek and full of grand, sweeping climaxes that occasionally oversell the songwriting. But if Unfollow the Rules is sometimes in want of a unifying idea or theme, Wainwright’s dreamy voice provides a throughline.

6lack’s great instinct is knowing when to do a little less, and on 6pc Hot it pays off sublimely. He no longer sounds like a replacement-level R&B singer. He's starting to sound like a master.

Buried under the fluff somewhere is a good album.

This isn’t escapism, but a meditative retreat—give it an hour of your time and return to the material world more grounded than ever.

Frequently the sharpest Chloe x Halle songs are the ones where the sisters are the most hands-on.

Payten’s writing is strong enough that she pulls off worthwhile takes on familiar themes. ... Her lyrics only falter when Payten sounds aware of her audience, becoming self-consciously clever.

Ellis seems to have inadvertently wound up splitting the difference between nostalgia and innovation. What’s left is a scattered effort, and one can only wonder what Reality Tunnels might have sounded like if Ellis hadn’t followed so many of them down such sentimental pathways.

A record that takes bolder swings than its predecessor while falling even flatter.