The purpose of Sun City doesn’t seem to be a cohesive project but a vehicle to throw seven different sounds into the world and see what sticks. Khalid comes out of the project, mostly the same, still the least controversial pop star we have right now.

The stylistic left-turns taken on Darker Days are more hit-or-miss than the songs that explicitly recall the band’s native origins. ... But it’s also surprising, and indicative of the fact that even Darker Days’ most glaring missteps go a long way towards renewing interest in what Peter Bjorn and John are up to these days.

The tracks on this album coalesce and morph, more than they progress. They get more traction from a good drone than from an elegant harmonic resolution. There’s a process of real-time exchange and dynamic micro-attunement that only jazz musicians can achieve, but not many of the cathartic peaks you might expect from a jazz performance. What matters is a vibe.

The Drought’s glacial intensity and dead-eyed focus force you to approach it on its own terms, but one senses that Hoffmeier is just getting started.

While not necessarily essential to the UMO catalog, Hanoi finds the band reveling in its psychedelic roots and exploring a primeval darkness that their songs often only hint at.

In its minimalist opacity and Vantablack depths, it’s the polar opposite of Goblin’s playfully neon-hued approach, and it’s in going to that extreme that Yorke has made Suspiria his own.

The album is invigorating and repetitive in the way that walking is invigorating and repetitive.

Since Bohemian Rhapsody is a soundtrack targeted at a wide audience, not an archival release suited for collectors, not all of the Live Aid performance is here; “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “We Will Rock You” are missing. The omissions underscore how superfluous Bohemian Rhapsody is.

Robyn presents them in a way that makes her resolutions feel both instinctive and deeply traveled; melodies and emotions resolve simultaneously, slowly, and imperfectly, without editorialized conclusions.

Many of these dozen imagistic self-avowals have a discouraging sameness. So fluent is their collaboration that their weaknesses become complementary. ... Yet when Broken Politics’ material matches the record’s title, it triggers a sense of unease, a tentative awareness of danger, like smelling something burning in the kitchen.

The Anteroom is full of skittery electronics with hints of ambient and house textures that work as both as a marker for how outside of the margins Krell operates and how narrowly he deviates from his own previous innovations in the underground.

[“Everything Good, Everything Right” is] a high point on an otherwise confused album that knows what it’s good at and what it’s not, and yet still chugs on anyway.

Because its overt politics now feel so inadequate, Warzone works best as a melancholy gesture, a long look back at a time when dreaming of a better world felt invigorating rather than exhausting.

What they lack in self-awareness they more than make up for in rigid self-consciousness, failing to make any fun or campy choices to lift these songs out of a morass of the worst impulses of Rush and Cream. The back half of the album alternates between the ignorable and unforgivable.

A Wonderful Beast shows again how Johnson’s voice adds layers of meaning to his music--and how he’s kept that skill fresh by finding new ways to deploy it, and new people to help.

For the first time in years, he sounds less like a copyright lawyer and more like a contributor to a culture he loves. ... T.I has dabbled in a range of sounds since his debut, but that range resonates as renewal here. The record falters when T.I. gets maudlin.

The songs on First Flower are vibrant and warm--fine dinner party music, if not gripping enough to stop the conversation in its tracks. Still, Burch’s emotional openness and introspection are promising, and her technical skill is undeniable. Her highly versatile vocals add texture, nuance, and depth to everything she sings.

Even in this marginally more melodic context, it’s still hard to decipher what exactly Shaw is railing against. But when most every aspect of life seems to be a source of chronic anxiety and rage, does it really matter?

Loving the Alien offers a reset for listeners--to hear these albums fresh, liberated from their composer’s dismissive opinions.

Rodriguez is an excellent songwriter when she’s on her game. ... It’s frustrating, really: a hugely talented songwriter and producer, thwarted by trends.

Each track seems specifically constructed to get stuck in your head, leaving you humming its tune for a week after, but it’s mostly an empty resonance. These are conspicuously competent club songs that strain for self-importance.

On their pressure cooker of a fifth album, Last Building Burning, they rebound with a magnificent course correction. Volume and fury? Sure, they can do that. Still, they meet the demand with almost passive-aggressive relish.

It works fine as a stopgap or as background music. It sounds like license-free 2010s trap, for which there always seems to be a market. But it is so ordinary, so uniquely uninspiring that it makes it difficult to imagine a solo work from Quavo that would truly grip our attention (or our club nights or car stereos).

While Mudboy is a strong and holistic statement from an upstart rapper, with the early-album run from “Live Sheck Wes” through “Chippi Chippi” being particularly stunning, these songs feel like underscores for the colossal “Mo Bamba.”

As a collection of tunes, Look Now is a triumph for Costello, a showcase for how he can enliven a mastery of form with a dramatist’s eye. But as an album, Look Now is a success because of the Imposters.

A byzantine, feverish album that unravels and pieces itself back together song by song, a mind gradually turning inward on itself.

Visiter stands out within their consistently enjoyable catalog for being the least consistent and most surprising—an unalloyed mix of timely African polyrhythms and freak-folk wooliness, bowl-passing ruminations on the existence of God and one-minute shrugs about getting dumped.

At Bunny’s best, Dear is as slippery as ever. Following in his purple wake and soaking in his twisted tragicomedy is a chase to be savored.