Harkin is most alive when it sprints with that sense of speed and purpose, surging with adrenaline and sparking with twilit excitement. The one or two songs that stumble into a medium-paced chug.

Kirby’s competent home production, and his economic arrangements, amount to a rich product that still manages to sound one-dimensional on repeat listenings, with little sonic depth. And his predilection for the occasional bright melody line works at cross purposes with his atmospheric tendencies. The album can never fully let itself recede into pure ambience.

Making a Door Less Open would inevitably benefit from a willingness to risk spectacular failure—this isn’t the hard left-turn “Can’t Cool Me Down” hinted at.

The basic material remains familiar—gated synth tones arranged in taut melodies and spindly arpeggios—but Senni has found a new flamboyance in these astoundingly ornate, often song-like pieces.

On Wahre Liebe Roedelius is able to conjure many different moods without deviating from the round, bell-like tones of the Farfisa, an instrument he returns to after years of primarily working with acoustic piano and digital processing.

Not only do Dayes and Misch offer an alluring marriage of virtuosity and pop, the album feels like the best recent example of Brian Eno’s theory of scenius as opposed to genius: the theory that it takes community and collaboration to spark something incredible, rather than the work of one gifted individual.

While her recent records have used their sprawl to navigate a wide array of styles and moods, she now finds a range that pulls her into focus. It is roots music, bursting from the ground, changing form in the light of day.

Across Hunted’s seven tracks, Calvi contorts her dance along the spectrum of gender and sexuality into something more of a march, stomping between tenderness and brutality.

Yes, Bishop takes the guitar on a few mesmerizing turns, alternately embracing frenetic strums and pleasant licks familiar from his past. But on an album inspired by the sounds and scenes of his dreams, Bishop finally seems tired of being confined to one instrument.

Like all the best shoegaze records, Agitprop Alterna is a heady, inward-looking listen. But if you’re able to zone out, or simply to begin walking with no destination in mind, its oversized and introspective ideas make welcome company.

Though Antarctica positions itself as an assessment of worldly chaos and isolation, it’s never clear whether the stance is earnest or apathetic. Even Albini-tier fidelity can’t make this formula sound fresh.

The album’s most interesting stretch is a risky three-track run that begins with the playful outro of “Outlandish,” builds into the Baltimore club-referencing “Keep It Going” and crests with the lusty “‘Flawless’ Do It Well, Pt. 3,” featuring Summer Walker in the role of an unflappable stripper. ... Even though there are songs with infinite replay value, the album doesn’t quite have the depth, either.

Tasteful, tentatively adventurous post-Britpop record that would’ve gotten sandwiched between Elbow and South on a “next Radiohead” listicle 20 years ago.

DaBaby’s charm gets diluted; he sounds measured and restrained, not words typically associated with DaBaby. This is music to bob your head at, not lose your shit to. Ever the savvy marketer, DaBaby does manage a few highlights that seem packaged to go viral.

Full of charm, panache, and eccentric raw power, Knuckleball Express makes good on his promise to make something real.

Though still self-produced and recorded in Stoitsiadis’ house, Melee levels up like Dogleg are clutching some kind of glowing orb that allows them to jump the gap between their rowdy live shows and 2015’s scrappy Remember Alderaan? EP.

Pimienta has ably realized her potential and silenced those who doubted her deservingness.

By stripping away everything extraneous, Piñeyro has further refined the sound of his invented genre. Deep reggaeton has never sounded deeper.

For years now, Shabazz Palaces have oozed a kind of creative wisdom, the type that can only come with age and years of lived experience, but The Don of Diamond Dreams demonstrates a sign of even deeper wisdom: living an entire life of your own, and realizing that there’s still value in learning and listening from the youth.

Most of the album, though, is absolutely irony-free, and better for it.

Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a wildstyle symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it.

Uniformly and unashamedly sentimental, Born Again leaves too little to remember her by.

On the one hand, it is an empowering statement of wholeness and self-sufficiency; and yet, in Fohr’s resonant voice, it is weighted with sadness.

These new songs savor a wider variety of sounds, like the prismatic strings and woodwinds that flutter just under the surface of “Tempering Moon,” or the pile-up of voices on the psychedelic title track. Even Elkington’s vocals, which don’t have the range or the texture of his playing, sound more commanding here.

Musically and emotionally, Lost in the Country is a decisive step forward.

The Loves of Your Life feels like a neighborhood that’s deeply familiar, yet so packed with life that new details emerge on each stroll.

Migration Stories simply drifts along at its own lazy pace, letting its pretty textures become the connective tissue. Sometimes, Ward’s words break through the haze.

Song for Our Daughter brims with peaceful reflections that, even though Marling herself is just grazing her 30s, could seem like the work of an artist in their twilight years.