In the moments when The Magic Whip is most interested in sounding like a Blur album, it is perhaps too interested.

Who Is the Sender? effectively doubles his recorded output and moves him from the category of a curiosity who returned after a four-decade absence to make a third great album to someone perhaps capable of doing so in perpetuity.

Though the pieces are fleshed out with other small touches—other horns at the periphery, and uncanny wordless vocals--the foundation of the album rests on the power and warmth Stetson and Neufeld generate by themselves.

Thug’s rapping itself, known for its unpredictability, is sharper than ever; his voice feels clarified, strengthened.

There’s moments where the Very Best show that rather than merely parlay exuberance and global harmony, they can also manage the somber aspect of their music.

Unlike ...For the Whole World to See, N.E.W. does not sound like a lost proto-punk classic; it's just a pretty good rock record made by guys who have been at it for a long time.

Sound & Color is not an electronic record. But it is strange and mystical and unexpected.

Edge of the Sun sounds newly invigorated and inspired as Calexico reconsider their own past and find new music to explore.

Too often, he strays from the hushed mode he's mastered and ends up supplanting the band’s strengths with its weaknesses.

It’s only 10 songs, and the songs themselves are more interested in speed and economy.

The-Dream's deft "That's My Shit" is a return to that just-right poise of the serious and silly.... The rest of The Crown EP does not thread the needle quite so gracefully.

All that touring and woodshedding has apparently taught them not to waste a note, because the first side of No News from Home has a determined cohesion, sequenced to evoke the choppy rhythms of the road. Almost inevitably they lose some of that focus on side two, whose songs don’t have quite the same sense of purpose or that same sense of movement.

Wire feels at first almost strangely normal. Lewis is credited with most of the lyrics, Newman does most of the vocals in his gentler speak/sing mode, and the feeling generally is calmly inviting.

If you’ve loved Built to Spill’s music your whole life, Untethered Moon will have this same comforting, classic feel.

As an album, it feels complete but transient: True Romance has the capacity to lift and inspire, but that feeling doesn’t linger.

Dead is a frustrating record, one that finds the band on the cusp of making something truly great. While consistency and better production do work in Ascension's favor, some of the spontaneity of the first record would have been rendered even more powerfully here.

The mercurial, combustible potential within suggests we may not be laughing at it for much long.

Even on an album as wholly electronic-sounding as Damogen Furies, Jenkinson's musicality remains organic and responsive.

As the band continues to evolve around and with her, Speedy Ortiz’s music finally sounds as complex as its leader dares to be.

The wearying volume of Jackrabbit is the most taxing aspect of a record that already arrives intentionally overstuffed.

She is an artist who knows who she is, and Froot luxuriates in the confidence that we do, too, relaxing in the space and power that Diamandis has claimed.

Fast-Moving Clouds benefits immensely from its mid-fi, almost homemade sound, which lends weight to her inventive pop flourishes.

The intensity rises and falls with the rolling hills, but the vistas remain the same, and the horizon never gets any closer. Despite the uniformity, there are clear highlights.

His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve.

Dark Energy has all the hallmarks of footwork--its frenzied pacing, arrhythmic kick drums, a graphic command of blank space--executed with clear-eyed self-determination. This gives the album an opaque, thoughtful quality.

Sure, stylistic and mechanical hesitations pepper these seven songs, but even those instances feel mostly like the charming reservations of a brilliant beginner.

These new songs don’t sound terribly different from Stables’ first recordings nearly a decade ago, but the music is bolder and more purposeful, with a broader, richer palette of sounds.

In Calder's songs solace proves elusive and fleeting, but when she finds it, it's always during moments of calm.