The album is beautifully and judiciously arranged, but a collection of bonus tracks on the expanded edition show how Countless Branches might have sounded with more instruments and more people.

The Unraveling takes meticulous care with each mix.

If anything, the four songs leave you wanting more from this collaboration, offering up brief, blurry glimpses of their Texas landscape rather than the expansive vistas that they might arrive at should they ride together a little longer.

For all their wiry energy and staccato sloganeering, Shopping have always embraced pop melody and absurdist humor, and All or Nothing’s more polished production pushes those qualities to the fore.

The ability to live with such contradictions and give them life with his words is part of what made Scott-Heron’s work special, and McCraven’s music inhabits that complicated space and keeps its sharp edges intact.

That Campbell gets away with this broad palette is thanks to her empathetic arrangements and clever songwriting—the pocket chorus of “Ant Life” has the kind of understatement that only experienced writers would dare. She has a knack for making everything sound utterly effortless, as if the songs came to her during an afternoon nap.

The album aims for instant gratification and achieves it so efficiently that it can’t help but burn fast.

Markus Popp isn’t quite there yet, but Scis proves that he’s still following his own path.

Marcielago serves as a capstone for Marci’s decade, a mix of evocative soul samples and stripped-down loops paired with his trademark gnomic flow.

Jme has made the strongest record of his career, chock full of nimble, intricate raps that seamlessly integrate the nerdiest of signifiers.

Black Sarabande’s calm surface proves illusory the more listens you give it.

Try as he may, Tomlinson has not quite progressed from featured voice to solo artist. For all the major changes in his life, his music seems to be stuck in place. You can take the boy out of the boyband, but not the boyband out of the boy.

Likewise is more minimal and elegant than any Hop Along record.

For a record born from a second chance at life, When We Stay Alive sounds disenchanted with its own message.

Across the hour, Funeral sounds less like last rites for Wayne and more like a resurrection.

Land of No Junction is the sort of record that seems to acquire more confidence and force with each passing track.

I Was Born Swimming is her most expansive and professional-sounding record to date, and on the whole, does more right than wrong. But it’s an MFA of an album. As a project, it’s admirable. As an album, it leaves you cold.

Even as Scott’s ambition sometimes clashes with the content of the actual songs, Tongue is both her most intimate and eclectic album thus far.

High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

While Deacon’s instrumental command has demonstrably strengthened in the past few years, his lyrics have only gotten more pat, as evidenced by two songs near album’s end.

Keeping Up Appearances, released under the moniker Basic Plumbing, collects the tracks Doyle and Skinner finished. Their beauty is immediate, accessible, and, at least for the moment, almost inextricable from all the loss surrounding them.

The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow.

The overload of nostalgia keeps the album from feeling fresh. As thrilling as those vintage Squarepusher records were (and still are), it wasn’t necessary that Jenkinson make another one.

Compared to 2017’s ken, a gothic-sounding record distinguished by chillier tones and pared-down lyrics, his masterful new album Have We Met sets a larger canvas. Produced by bandmate John Collins, the music is sweeping and bold and surprising.

On Hotspot, the best-selling duo in UK pop dampen the euphoria; the result is a tuneful, wan album: a mid-tier effort.

The Neon Skyline doesn’t require deep investment in its narrative to enjoy. Still, the closer you listen, the more rewarding it becomes.

She has a pleasant, lilting voice to listen to while resting your head against a window. But these slow-moving repetitions—a few plucked strings, a murmured confession—leave you hungry for grittier self-scrutiny.

His pivot toward interiority gives his songs a new dimension. His bars are simple, straightforward, and can occasionally lean toward fortune-cookie wisdom (“Get the bread, avoid the drama/You can avoid the feds but not the karma,” he raps on “Fight For Your Right”), but throughout the album, he seems to be growing more secure in himself.