Even on the merely good ones, there’s always the sense of someone living in Clark’s lyrics, making decisions about how to transform those feelings into melodies and rhymes.

Sometimes the writing on The Answer Is Always Yes is more generic than you’d expect from Lahey. .... But Lahey’s gift for imagery shines on songs like the hazy acoustic trip “The Sky Is Melting,” a rowdy story of misadventure: She spars with a deadbeat pal while high on melted weed gummies, trading conspiracy theories and belting out corny yacht rock before vomiting into a ravine.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me captures the messy, confusing headspace that precedes future growth.

The music is abrasive, but in its most shocking moments, the band allows beauty to shine through the grime and static.

I cannot remember an album that suffered from such an extreme case of risk-aversion, nor demonstrated so little faith in an artist’s potential, nor any notion that their fanbase might be willing to grow with them. If anything, it shrinks his already narrow proposition.

[Jarmusch] brings a rich history to the proceedings, experimenting with passerelle bridges, cigar box guitars, and radio static. Just as in his films, he spins strange yet strangely familiar stories from everyday stuff.

In Rubin—as much a guru as he is a producer—Kesha’s found a collaborator willing to indulge her spiritualist tangents. But neither the ideas nor the audio clips feel fully integrated into a broader theme of the album. Her ambivalence is more potent.

Romantiq doesn’t dispose of the past. It just situates old habits amid a more vibrant and fully realized present.

A decade later, RP Boo offers us Legacy Vol. 2, a sequel equally worthy of the title.

When he’s not over-intellectualizing his emotions, Caesar can be disarmingly raw. If only he didn’t write like a cyborg the rest of the time.

As a collective, the Impossible Truth maintains the spiritual minimalism of Tyler’s solo work while expanding the sound.

The album burns brightest on a pair of songs in which Marea recognizes the limits of his grace in the face of emotionally unavailable lovers.

There are moments when these elements come together beautifully, as with the nostalgic dreamscape that surrounds Lola Young’s soaring vocals on “Trying.” At other times, Fred again..’s songcraft struggles, and fails, to break through.

The Love Invention introduces “Alison Goldfrapp, house diva,” a pivot she doesn’t totally sell. ... The record’s best moments are its quietest.

Good Lies toes a fine and, yes, functional, balance. There’s beauty in all this precision too—like an Eames chair, a perfectly weighted spoon, or the cone of a 15-inch subwoofer pushing air out of the bass scoops.

Euphoric Recall falters when the band forgets that her voice is the main event. ... Braids may still be searching for a distinct identity. But what Euphoric Recall makes clear is that Standell-Preston knows her voice better than ever before.

Even if Live at Bush Hall wasn’t intended to be the next official entry in their canon, the accompanying soundtrack album certainly earns its right to be considered as such. Notwithstanding the occasional bit of stage banter that makes no sense without the film (“Happy prom night!”), Live at Bush Hall is as cohesive a statement as any other record in the band’s discography.

ATUM doesn’t necessarily suffer by comparison to past albums. Its highs are more modest. The ferocity is long gone. But in its own ponderous way, it is generous.

-, pronounced “subtract,” which responds to them much like its predecessor, 2021’s =, did to its themes of turning 30 and becoming a parent: with the usual beige palette, generic hooks, and vapid lyrics. The songs on - are almost uniformly dour, often slow, occasionally drumless.

An Inbuilt Fault becomes a faithful companion for anyone emerging from the trenches of an existential crisis—it’ll loom on the outer edge of your worst days.

The Rat Road offers no easy answers and—frankly—not all that much easy listening. But if you’re looking for a sometimes baffling yet often entertaining adventure, The Rat Road delivers.

With a more cohesive sound, some of the rhythmic quirks and time signature hops from their past output are smoothed out. On occasion, the music is so pristine that it’s easy to miss the evocative lyrics buried in the tightly wound grooves.

The pair’s songwriting is so inventive and electric that even the depths of the late capitalist abyss begin to offer pathways to freedom.

No matter how unambiguous the references, these don’t feel like imitations; they feel like Nathan Fake tracks.

Museum feels like a transitional statement—a small but powerful reflection on an era when everyone and everything ground to a halt. But at their best, these songs also offer hints of how Ákadóttir might start moving again.

It’s a discomfiting listen: In bearing witness to her agony, there’s a kind of transference of pain that occurs in her shredded screams—the sound of an artist stepping into her shadows in order to find her light.

Jackman. takes creative risks in social commentary that often pay off.

It’s dirty, smudged music, bitter with the terroir of suffering.