She hasn’t yet sorted out the particular combination of influences that fit her strengths, and few of the songs’ melodies are compelling enough to overcome the album’s strangely stale take on alternative pop.

A quick glance at a recent list of his favorite hip-hop records of all-time--rooted firmly in the golden and silver ages of hip-hop--reveals what inspires him most. When Raekwon leans into those sounds and themes, the rhymes that flow through him are evidence that this OG can still hang with the best of them.

It's so clinical that it works better as an audition reel for their next round of features than it does its own statement.

They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish--again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition--while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.

For all its artfully-deployed discordance, AZD maintains a musicality that holds the listener close.

Siberia faithfully captures the wistfulness of the pilgrim’s journey--but it also suggests that the ears may be fickle traveling companions.

After over 30 years in pursuit of the perfect song, Pollard has finally started to recognize the album for everything it can be.

At What Cost is ambitious, slickly-produced, and relies a great deal on live instrumentation. However, where Attention Deficit’s jumbled tracklist smacked of design-by-committee compromise, At What Cost is clearly guided by GoldLink’s vision from start to finish.

It is an anodyne pop record for a post-EDM world, one where trap and trop-house mix with pale imitations of the Migos flow and Coldplay’s cornball sentimentality.

The World’s Best American Band is mixed significantly louder than anything else you’re probably listening to right now and it’s equally glittery and gritty like a blood-caked switchblade—far more polished than the similarly indebted Sheer Mag, but with more edge to rule out any comparisons to the ’70s LARPing of Free Energy.

Whiteout Conditions packs the most blanket pep of the power-pop group’s seven albums, dense with that particular new wave brand of electronic two-for-one.

While constant one-liners were a bit leaden on B4.DA.$$, they are sorely missed on AABA.

While it doesn’t break much new musical ground, and plays against Future Islands’ reputation for excess, The Far Field’s breathtaking sorrow is transformative.

Adios sounds more like Hola. Nearly 15 years into his career, Branan sounds like he’s finally found the right balance between audacity and subtlety, between humor and heartbreak.

While it doesn’t have quite the artistic heft of his self-titled album, the bright, punched-out shapes are more fun to listen to, with an emotional accessibility that makes me imagine a kind of post-rave Eluvium.

They arrive at the settled creative space they’ve hinted at but never quite reached in the past.

Diet Cig’s debut is almost entirely made of other people’s gestures hastily collected and cheaply executed.

After that opening suite--“Pure Comedy,” “Total Entertainment Forever,” and “Revolution”--the music settles into a tonal plateau. Even the most gripping songs unspool with acoustic leisure, and they can be long and lofty trips.

One does get the sense of life behind these performances, of private experience refracted through universal sentiment, of hard knocks transubstantiated into easy wisdom, but, as is often the case with Bob Dylan, the drama remains mostly internal.

It’s a Myth is the natural progression from Gymnastics, and so across the record, Moolchan refines her sound within these limits. Inside and outside of the music, she embraces the self-built space that she crafted for herself.

The discoveries Ghersi makes on Arca allow him to write his most relaxed and intimate songs. His work is still mysterious, but not as opaque--it doesn’t keep you at an arm’s length, instead he offers up his pleasures more readily.

Rosebudd’s Revenge isn’t as seamless as Marcberg or Reloaded, suffering from some fidelity issues and perhaps being a bit back-loaded, but it’s endlessly, almost impossibly entertaining.

Deep into their career, Dieng at times reveals the advanced stage of its players. The songs are taken a step slower, the rhumbas show a consideration for the pulse as well as the spaces between them, and the themes in some manner or another touch upon mortality.

There are a few spots on Silver/Lead where Wire succumbs to its own subtlety, as words empty and the tempos deflate toward flatness. But the group catches itself quickly, producing the album’s best track, “Sleep on the Wing.”

They’re still figuring it out, but somehow, even their mistakes feel fresh.

Rather You Than Me is a smooth, enjoyable attempt to wrestle the spotlight back onto his solo work.

Freed from the desire to make people move, Joakim put together a record that’s unified in its oddity.

Brood X’s quiet closers are no less visceral than their high-voltage predecessors, providing a more intimate manifestation of the agitated feelings coursing throughout the record.