Just Like Moby Dick is worthy of an earnest listen.

The key to Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s most successful music is balance, and while the band struggles to recapture some of their old magic, Huntley finds that same sweet spot in his lovingly unromantic storytelling.

That split between sound and spirit lends another layer to the forlorn songs she’s been singing her whole career. In the genteel melodies and floating arrangements, she suggests that it’s still possible to find meaning when you’re weighed down by these feelings.

At times the honesty on Watch This Liquid Pour Itself might be its worst fault, but it’s usually its finest quality.

Wolf Parade’s sound was once state of the art, but Thin Mind captures only intermittent reminders of how wild and wonderful their moment was.

Concrete and Glass won’t shock, sparkle, or challenge cultural norms, but it’s a (mostly) lovely place to inhabit.

It is not, strictly speaking, a good record—Eminem hasn’t made one of those in a decade—but it boasts enough technical command and generates just enough arresting ideas to hold your attention.

Elaborate but rarely ostentatious, The Godless Void is a true revelation from a band 25 years into the game—the rare Trail of Dead record that lets Keely’s shell-shocked performances chart the necessary emotional peaks without needing the music to follow suit.

This is the sound of an ever-curious, shape-shifting band finally finding the confidence to tell us who they really are. But they are not telling us anything we didn’t already know.

Despite some missteps, Halsey’s appeal is clear: It’s a singularly difficult time to be a young person, and she is warmly attuned to that reality.

Pinegrove’s new album Marigold contains some of their signature warmth but lacks the luster that made their initial run of albums exceptional. Self-produced by Hall and Pinegrove multi-instrumentalist Sam Skinner, Marigold is endearingly rumpled, but the mood is more melancholy, more dreary.

Where R.Y.C. succeeds—and where Crossan reveals a real point of view—is in his ultimate rejection of these initial frameworks in favor of something more fluid, a hybrid space in which these sounds, stylings, and emotional responses work together.

Nothing on this album is intended to be heard from a distance, and at its best, it’s terrifying.

Despite a culminating victory lap in which riffs from the group’s past albums come back for a curtain call, the album doesn’t feel like a nostalgia trip. Instead, it’s a consolidation of the strengths that this band has been amassing over its long life.

UR FUN—a confection, a distraction, a collection of competent and sparkling pop songs—doesn’t open itself to the world as it stands in this moment.

Gaudet has such a witty way with one-liners, and the band is so effervescent in their execution, that it’s easy to overlook the elevated level of craft at work. Football Money clocks in at a lean 10 songs and 27 minutes, with nary a second wasted.

Modus is essentially the antithesis of the half-baked works that arose from Kanye’s Wyoming sessions in 2018. It is the result of a handful of talented collaborators who provide enough eclecticism to balance out the bombastic sound of G.O.O.D. in-house producer Mike Dean.

It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s easy to understand the need to release it. At best, Losst and Founnd is a way to feel closer to Nilsson, no matter how long it’s been since he left us.

Algiers’ audio zines, the last of which invoked the Algerian revolution to explore angst and uncertainty using thickets of drone, show that they are capable of more nuanced writing. But they haven’t yet learned to translate the political into the personal, to turn abstract ideas into matters of the gut.

Swimming hinted at an artist who’d finally cleared his mind and found his footing. Circles provides some resolution and helps finish Miller’s final thoughts.

There’s a familiar, overriding sense of a couple of guys reading something about history and having a lot to report. If you don’t mind the idea of These New Puritans as your dad after a Ken Burns binge, you’ll find signs of life and creativity within Making a New World’s overall confusion. If not, no one could blame you for moving on.

The Circus is measured, soothing, and a suitable accompaniment to brandy and a cigar in a comfortable chair.

No single passage lasts very long, which gives even the prettier moments an unstable feeling, like everything might at any moment crumble into a void of distortion and noise. Throughout, her lyrics are venomous and apocalyptic.

While none of these 13 songs attempt the subtle weirdness of “Bad Liar” and the emotional thesis—self-love!—can be a bit one-note, Rare is the 27-year-old’s most cohesive record to date. ... But it’s difficult to come away from Rare with any real perspective on who Gomez is other than that she doesn’t want to be the person she was, whoever that similarly mysterious shadow was.

The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City is too harmless to hate, but it’s hard to feel much of anything about it—which is a fatal flaw for a band that leverages an uncanny ability to rid people of inhibitions against their better judgment.

Even when it’s clumsy, Seeking Thrills never feels manufactured. It’s a passion project, a result of trial and error, the singular product of someone learning to write for her own voice.

Heavy Rain is a surprisingly inspired piece of late-period dabbling from a dub master.

To stick with the digital-age-anxiety theme, Networker feels not unlike a dating app meetup that went fine, but not great—just entertaining enough to hold your interest for a round or two of drinks until you’ve decided you probably wouldn’t see them again.