Untitled is, crucially, not nihilistic. WALL point out the state of reality and attempt to exist within the never-ending nightmare. Together, the songs on Untitled paint a picture of a city in a time of uncertainty.

Glory instead settles into grooves and revisit territories. Stetson plies us with all his best techniques.

BNQT (pronounced “banquet”) is not a push outside the comfort zone for those involved, but further indication of restlessness from a collection of indie rock lifers, each of whose primary acts made their dent in the blog-rock boom and find their relevance dimming. At that, the optimistically titled Volume 1 serves more to elaborate on its characters than it does to recapture past glory.

And yet, as loaded as the subject matter is, it does amazingly little to diminish Hatfield’s bright spirit. Even on this, her angriest record by a landslide, the singer retains the intrinsic tunefulness that’s marked every record she’s made since she was a teenager.

async is more closely aligned with his 21st-century experimental side and his ongoing collaborations with the likes of Christian Fennesz, Alva Noto, and Christopher Willits. But there’s a warmth and fragility to the album here that makes it stand apart from these works.

Lanegan all too often prevents the audience from seeing the artist that lives behind his dour exterior. Gargoyle is most engaging when it invites glimpses, however fleeting.

Strength of a Woman finds its power in going back to basics. As a whole experience, it luxuriates within the magisterial hip-hop-soul queendom she formulated in the ’90s and the attendant themes that trace back to wronged-woman blues.

At times, Nelson’s nonchalance makes some of the more topical concerns on God’s Problem Child feel a tad hackneyed. ... That leaves plenty of space for the other veteran songwriters to slip Nelson their own meditations on aging.

It’s an intergalactic screening turned sci-fi odyssey. There are visions of interstellar travel, premonitions of the moon landing, and parallels to the mythical, relating the scientific with the divine.

There’s a moment in virtually every song where a single loose strand seems to break free and float skyward and it’s there, in the languid sway, where Snow truly takes hold.

Where The Best Day proffered a somewhat uneven mix of extended odysseys and rough-hewn sketches, Rock n Roll Consciousness is much more cohesive and smoothly sequenced.

All the masks and cameos aside, this still feels like a Damon Albarn solo project, a place for him to treat the studio like the welcoming arms of oblivion, and for us to join him.

Pleasure features a number of songs that stretch towards the five-minute mark, making more sense as part of the whole rather than individually.

From its gentle textures come a calm centeredness, from its soft words a sense of strength.

Playboi Carti feels like a break from life, the soundtrack to a mindless good time.

At Saint Thomas feels drier. The virtuosically unspooling vocal runs of “Die Stunde Kommt” feel particularly embodied, like you’re watching her vocal cords come unraveled there in person.

If you’re looking for pop with a light outer frosting of edginess, Visuals hits the spot and then some. But if you’d like to hear Mew explore those edges and break free from the stultifying safety of their music, Visuals leaves you frustrated.

While remaining as obtuse as ever, O’Neil’s newfound appreciation for singer-songwriter-dom presents some of her most personal work yet.

When Meath and Sanborn ease into a slower lane, they find a sweetness that isn’t entirely likable. There is a bitterness to their Southern bless-your-heart feel, swaddling sharp observations in mannered dance-pop.

Look at the Powerful People begins with 54 of the most exciting seconds of music I’ve heard in 2017. And then they start talking.

The ease of his melody is matched by his own ideas. It might be a small notion, but that’s where Woods operate most efficiently, for a moment achieving the solidarity that Love Is Love desperately seeks.

These hooks are delivery mechanisms for often acerbic, often exhausted lyrics about the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl.

The music carves out a space that always leaves plenty of room for the music’s most important component, the one that, in this artistic sphere, ultimately determines what it all means: the listener.

Its six songs shine just as bright as those on Talk Tight, but they cast longer, darker shadows.

Her voice and affectations are so guided by the heavy hands of Turner and Ford that Belladonna of Sadness is largely indistinguishable from their work: At best, Savior is a muse for her own introduction; at worst, she’s a conduit who’s yet to prove that she can hold her own with the company she keeps.

The downside of Belong’s greater tilt toward pop and feelings is an occasional lurch into treacle.

It’s progress, probably, that Mayer keeps the condescension to a dull sneer, but this also makes everything sound that much more anodyne.

No matter where he dwells, Davies remains an outsider, and that alienation unites Americana’s jumble of eras and places.