Singles offers a wide-ranging but accessible route to his unearthly sounds.

Here, it feels like a glimpse of foregone possibility on a lower-stakes project, the sound of two pros blowing off steam by proving they can recreate Top 40 spectacle.

Darkness and Light isn’t the political feat Mills and Legend had hoped for, but it’s a step forward in the singer’s evolution. He may never be a firebrand, but Legend proves there’s still strength in humility.

As it is, Häxan occupies an odd slot in Dungen’s hard hitting and respectably consistent discography: a labor of love that is less than essential, rewarding but not attention grabbing, remarkably ambitious and yet strangely ephemeral.

He effortlessly squeezes so many ideas into its barely-there, four-minute frame, it's easy to wish he'd settle in and record an entire album of such quietly masterful pastoral mood-setting.

The music is infinitely interesting, possibly more so than the artist singing it. But then again, you shouldn’t count out anyone releasing an album like Nightride.

If anything, the album now sounds more like the masterpiece it felt just short of at the time, a work nearly on par with its more universally regarded, nocturnal sequel Automatic for the People.

24K Magic is the rest of the park: rebuilt shinier and glitzier and safer, every element engineered to please more than the real thing, and with a hell of a tour guide. It’s not history, not even historical fiction, but harmless fun.

The productions cobble together and iron over a mix of styles appropriated from both the dance underground and Top 40, with results that are structurally varied, but with a uniform surface.

Starboy, by way of contrast [to Trilogy], feels more like an opportunistic compilation of B-sides than an album. Who is the Weeknd? At this point, even the man behind the curtain might not know.

Much of Woman sounds like music designed by committee, better suited to soundtrack a car commercial than to actively engage the listener.

The album plays to his strengths. It is more playful than his last LP, and also more finessed.

Whatever the actual year 2020 will hold, for now, Pavo Pavo's escapism feels cozy, uplifting, and wholly appropriate.

The integrity of Richard's voice provides the through line, which is often caught in ghostly tangles of itself or locking into prismatic harmonies, similar to how Prince or D’Angelo treated their voices.

Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth.

Few artists could assemble a group of musicians like that those found on Hubris at all, but Ambarchi lets everyone do their part, then fade into the background. It's the difference between hubris and vision.

Unsurprisingly, this is heavy listening.

Part of the revelation of Boots No. 1, then, is witnessing Welch’s music made mortal, to hear her navigating her many influences with a young artist’s enlightened uncertainty, and to hear imperfect recordings that may not necessarily conjure universes on their own accord so much as they recall old-fashioned country music that’d sound at home on the radio.

MC4 falls short of Wave Gods, but is a leaps-and-bounds improvement over Excuse My French.

The album isn’t quite the overwhelming achievement that Ten Freedom Summers was, though the refined ensemble playing of Smith’s newly convened “Golden Quintet” is consistently ravishing.

Its twelve songs–the vast majority of which extend well past the five-minute mark–fall into two categories: galloping nods to Ride the Lightning, of which the first disc is primarily composed, and doomier mid-tempo cuts à la Sabbath, which make up the bulk of the second. The LP’s highlights--“Hardwired,” “Moth Into Flame,” “Atlas, Rise!” all fall into the former camp, front-loading the record with fire. The second disc, by contrast, is a slog through nondescript, uniform chug, devoid of dynamics or instrumental nuance.

He’s almost literally stopping to smell the roses, and the result is an album about growth and development, about the virtues of taking your time rather than the crutch of constantly sprinting forward. In the process, it advances Bachman’s oeuvre significantly.

More limber and fiery than ever, the band has risen out the experimental cul-de-sac with a riveting work that should appeal to both its expected audience and to new fans who might have otherwise dismissed this style of music as too antiseptic for their liking.

Highway Songs ultimately feels hopeful rather than weary, upbeat rather than defeated.

No Waves stands as a memorable document on its own and a hopeful harbinger for new material to come.

Thankfully, Marching Church’s sophomore effort scales back the melodrama and ramps up the discipline: Rønnenfelt and company are focused on verses and choruses and dynamics, rather than self-indulgent noodling--and in the case of this album, a little bit goes a long way.

If A Weird Exits was Thee Oh Sees’ Thanksgiving feast, An Odd Entrances is Friday’s turkey and stuffing sandwich--hardly a destination meal, but plenty satisfying in its own way.

Madness is a spacious and satisfying record: what it lacks in standout moments, it makes up for in coherence.