With Disaster Trick, Horse Jumper of Love subtly expand their sound without losing the instinctual, otherworldly interplay of their melodies, dizzying guitar lines and serpentine rhythms blurring together in a narcotic ooze.

A Dancefloor in Ndola shows the art of the DJ as selector, joining the dots between musical trends in a way that flows effortlessly onto the dancefloor.

Despite the frequent overtures to grandeur, spectacle, and machismo, these songs are limp and flabby.

What’s fascinating about SORCS 80 is that it feels vaguely rootless—some sounds are familiar but the form is not. That isn’t to say Dwyer has chucked out hooks or melodies the way he did his guitar. SORCS 80 contains some of his sharpest recent songwriting—the tunes just happen to get transformed by the Osees’ execution.

Another Day falters when it gets too ethereal and singy—as on the Haliechuk-led “Follow Fine Feeling,” which doesn’t have the melodic juice of his excellent song “Cicada” on One Day—or too straight-up and untextured, as on the plodding closer “House Lights.” But at its best, Another Day showcases Fucked Up as masters of transformation.

The album’s minimalist moments are its strongest.

Shadows of doubt give the album its quaint, mercurial feel, deepening Lenae’s quest for understanding. Bird’s Eye situates her as a consummate thrill-seeker with limitless curiosity, restricted only by the uncertainties in her own mind.

Listening to Smoke & Fiction in the same sitting as Los Angeles or Wild Gift, the lasting impression isn’t how they’ve changed over the years, but how much of their original spark they’ve sustained.

At times his extremely online subject matter takes the bloom off his writing. But his innate ability to shift between breakneck flows amid chaotic production buoys the album.

The project’s raw immediacy initially suggested it might be throwaway, a palette cleanser before White resumed his usual studio tinkering, but its triple-octane riffage and seething, sticky hooks pointed to something more lasting and substantial.

Songs for Sinners and Saints doesn’t cover as much ground as Michael, which offered the rich multi-genre sprawl of a classic Dungeon Family release. But the narrower palette and lower stakes of the project restore the focus and play of his “Snappin’ & Trappin” days.

Cellophane Memories may be pretty, but it’s not easy.

Birds & Beasts doesn’t necessarily surprise, but it crystallizes this band’s essence, particularly as they find their footing after the shocking loss of Leib.

Five albums in, Cults sound just as eerie and cheery as ever but struggle to transcend the fleeting pleasantries of paint-by-numbers pop.

Banjo-led instrumentals that pay homage to Appalachian folk music is a hyper-specific niche, but Bowles and his band never allow their preferred sounds to hem in their experiments.

Strange Burden is meticulous and crackling—a concise, gripping record that sparks and sizzles like a kinked spike of lightning.

Blur certainly sounds older on Live at Wembley Stadium than they did on their previous live albums, yet those scars lend poignance to these familiar songs. The erosion in Albarn’s voice diminishes his impishness, adding a sense of empathy to his cultural observations.

Gone is their past material’s giddy, lysergic bounce; instead, drummer Evan Burrows pours a spacious, continual foundation where melodies rise through repetition, and rich details (with string and wind arrangements courtesy of Backer) slither and swim.

RiotUSA is behind the boards on every track, and Y2K! is a testament to the strength of their long-running creative partnership. Its weakest moments are those featuring outsiders—Gunna and Travis Scott just get absolutely rinsed here. What makes Y2K! so instantly memorable is Ice Spice’s refusal to be pigeonholed.

Vertigo is very well-studied and primed to reach the rafters of the mega venues she was thrust into early on. It just lacks much sense of her in it.

He’s willing to be chaotic and a little all over the place, and though that does occasionally result in moments that are hard to process, Robinson proves that he’s as adept at wringing moving moments out of pop tropes as he is conjuring alien worlds.

The illusion of continuous chatter and conversation is compelling enough even if you don’t understand any of the languages spoken therein.

It’s hard to grasp who Childish Gambino is supposed to be. So even when he’s genuine, I have a little bit of skepticism on my mind.

Without romanticizing their lives, they do manage to find something meaningful in that pursuit, even if it’s just another song to stave off the darkness.

It’s clear that Lava La Rue’s ambition as an artist burns brightly. Right now, its light and heat is overflowing, a little messy and uncontained; but the stardust is unmistakable.

Harmonics’ collection of relatable songs and interesting ideas could use a stronger hand on the tiller to reach its intended destination.

The astonishing amount of care and detail that went into All Hell might just be the result of seven and a half years of creation, or maybe it’s Los Campesinos! giving us an album big enough to live in case it needs to last a lifetime.

Big Ideas plays like an eclectic compilation of scattered thoughts from her journal. Songs grapple with big questions but offer few answers.