Spiel is heavy but nimble, more direct in its arrangements and sentiments, but also moodier, more melancholy; it sounds like shoulders shrugged against a cold wind.

An unbowed creative spirit ran through Perry’s gloriously multifarious career; on King Perry he sounds frustratingly submissive, a passing supplicant in someone else’s court rather than a king on his throne.

Blue Raspberry proves that Kirby is particularly dialed in on these vicissitudes of intimacy. With a little fine-tuning, she could transcend.

The real difficulty lies in the fact that even if this is the most catastrophic heartbreak that’s ever happened to Herring, the band is content to write essentially some version of the same songs they’ve been writing for the past decade. They are good songs, but it’s almost impossible to draw any deeper meaning from Herring’s writing while it seems like the sequel of a sequel of a sequel.

I could say that the twisty guitar and vibraphone lines that envelop “Ultramarine” are like vines growing unpredictably over the song’s rigid scaffolding, or try a more literal approach, examining the way their increasingly dense chromaticism inflects and complicates the otherwise simple underlying harmonic structure. The poetic license of the first risks obscuring the music’s hard reality; the clinical distance of the second risks reducing it to bare formula. The truth, as ever with this beguiling album, is somewhere in between.

Across the 40-minute album, Hunter emerges as a dexterous player and loose but imaginative composer. Rather than succumbing to the often corny tropes of new age music—mawkish melodies, pan flutes, chimes—she cleverly incorporates elements of contemporary R&B, pop, and jazz.

Mascis has written so many songs about the same needs and frustrations—his failures to communicate, to be understood, and ultimately accepted—that they can’t help but bleed together. Still, the album’s light touch and content disposition make it a very easy listen, especially when Mascis leans into tenderness.

Continuing from Thirstier, Scott has traded the cynicism of her earlier work for sincerity, but that doesn’t mean she’s losing her edge.

It’s an ambitious, uncanny, joyously unpredictable album that invites you to get lost within its house-of-mirrors design.

After the debut’s big bang, Wall of Eyes connects the particles into somewhere you, and perhaps these restless musicians, might like to make a home.

An unshowily eclectic record warmed by the glow of new love, is the group’s third and strongest album since signing to Fire Talk in 2021.

Stripped of the urge to reinvent themselves, Green Day hope to ride into the sunset as America’s most affable punks. Even the album’s one sincere stab at acting the band’s age, a reflection on parenthood called “Father to a Son,” seems to give up halfway through, content to repeat its title rather than dig deeper.

He’s never sounded more checked out. Even Cudi doesn’t seem to believe his own hype anymore. To its credit, INSANO is trying to do something different—that different thing, however, is just having DJ Drama provide thin narrative window dressing to a spate of uninspired Kid Cudi songs.

Tucker’s titanic vibrato and ferocious conviction are the anchors of Little Rope. She has audibly risen to the occasion, in every note, to support her friend.

His third solo album attempts to balance reveling in his newfound elevated celebrity and retaining the tortured persona that relishes in recounting the gruesome details of his journey. This produces some missteps, but the 31 year old cuts through the glossy excess with clarity and lyrical self-assuredness, producing enough sterling moments to show that he’s still a star worthy of fanfare.

Letter to Self is a bracing, frantic record designed for both thrashing mosh pits and solo meltdowns, best heard with the volume turned up loud.

Big Sigh is at its best when Hackman resists these broad-stroke urges, and carves out more precise imagery—whether with a pen or an ice pick.

Uchis’ vocal performance across the record represents a leap forward too: 12 years ago, she possessed the more limited—but still soulful—range of a lounge singer; now she stretches her voice to a fluttering whistle register on “¿Cómo Así?” When she dives into Latin American idioms, Uchis is unstoppable.

The songs on Welcome 2 Collegrove too often resemble the tenth pass on ideas no one loved in the first place, tweaked and rearranged until they’re perfectly fine.

THINK LATER is full of homogeneous trap-pop ballads devoted to one-dimensional introspection.

When No Birds Sang is the rare metal album whose greatest virtue is its delicacy.

While Minaj is still rapping valiantly—especially as Red Ruby Da Sleeze, a new persona introduced on the Diwali riddim-sampling single of the same name—the album’s intention is muddled through its scattershot production, which sounds less like genre innovation and more like an insidious ploy to worm its way into as many crevices on TikTok as possible.

Although it’s replete with period photos and memorabilia, 50 Years of De-Evolution doesn’t quite capture the thrilling sense of otherness Devo conveyed at their peak. Heard within the vacuum of their own catalog, Devo seem more eccentric than revolutionary.

A lot of the weaknesses come down to the lyrics. .... His singing is the most unaffected element of these new songs: bold and melodic, equally clear and prominent in each edition.

There are no real songs to speak of—just scenes, which flow together as seamlessly as fields glimpsed from the window of a moving train. The album is clearly meant to be experienced as a single piece of music, and the pacing is immaculate.

Santhosam could use more songs with this level of intentionality—songs that reach beyond proclamations of self-love or dancefloor hedonism to meet the richness and complexity of Ragu’s sound and aesthetic.

Hayter continues to traverse a biblical, deeply American landscape, surveying both its fire and brimstone and its transformative music. Saved! understands both of these qualities—consequently, rage, wonder, and beauty all churn just under its surface.

Lenderman and his band elevate his dreamlike narratives into something joyous, collective, and free.