Overall, That! Feels Good! stays focused on a mission that never feels like a chore. In its relatively brief 40-minute runtime, Ware takes her task extremely seriously, but she’s unencumbered by its immensity; actually, it seems to unleash her.

The whole is stronger than the sum of its parts.

The chaos comes on the very next track, “Grease in Your Hair,” one of a couple songs that performs the National’s old sleight of hand: working the anxiety around until they pull an anthem out of thin air. As a way to address one of the primary tensions in their catalog—writing songs about dissatisfaction in spite of great conventional success—it’s a great bit. But as Frankenstein moves from wrestling to reckoning, the swells are tamer.

Abrams’ music moves through time gracefully, adjusting to the demands of when and where it is performed, and who’s involved. The awe that his music channels lies in its grasp of mutability, tracking subtle changes in repeating patterns—whether from moment to moment or year to year.

Hardcore will never sound or feel as satisfying on record as it does coming from a stage, and experienced from within the pit, enveloped in the release of sweaty rage and other explosive emotional detritus. But the songs have to come from somewhere, and So Unknown, which bottles that rage and passion with a bit of funk, is a decent place to start.

Full of tactile details and poetic turns of phrase, the songs on Safe to Run have the feel of road-trip musings, as though she were recording stray thoughts from an all-day drive.

Her lyrics often read like prose on the page, but she finds ways to bend them into melodic shapes it’s difficult to imagine anyone else finding.

Her voice has a warmth and a quaver that can wring pathos from even the most conversational lines, and the production by Brad Cook (Hurray for the Riff Raff, The War on Drugs) furnishes her with warm, lived-in atmospheres. Every track has something to sink into, like the pinging, playful background vocals throughout “Pick,” or the airy, breathy coda of “2+2.”

Although the tone can get a little one-note, this personal and cultural lineage deepens the poignancy of Fuse, in which Thorn and Watt broadly consider what we lose and hold on to over the course of a lifetime.

At the very least, it sounds terrific. With imaginative production from Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn and accompaniment from a sterling cast of (largely) North Carolina ringers. ... But across the 42 minutes of Henry St., Matsson rarely responds to them in kind. To put it plainly, the writing is just bad, as though it were some slapdash afterthought to the strong instrumentals already in place.

With these outtakes, Olsen zooms out and reveals some of the rockier steps along her journey toward self-discovery.

Requiem for Jazz is a complex record, requiring sustained attention and careful thought. Though it lacks the fiery rage and visceral immediacy of 2020’s LIVE, its nuanced critique of jazz’s role in Black history is an important and necessary continuation of the conversation that Bland began over six decades ago.

Mythologies sounds like the work of an artist stepping out of his comfort zone in search of personal creative fulfillment. It might be equally rewarding for the listener if only any of these pieces were as memorable as Daft Punk’s songs.

For all of her self-flagellation, Teitelbaum is far more potent when she’s pissed off.

Whereas the distorted tones smeared over 2017’s Pleasure could make it seem as if she were squaring off against her guitar and microphone, Multitudes mostly sounds as cozy as a winter sweater that’s three sizes too big.

72 Seasons, at a marathon 77 minutes long, delivers everything you could possibly want from a Metallica album in 2023, and so much more on top of that. Too much more. Like Hardwired, its predecessor—the same length, incidentally—72 Seasons is both a thrill and a slog.

Compared to the careful sprawl of triple-LP Sr3mm, which artfully unwound the brothers’ divergent styles and production tastes while avoiding lulls, this outing can feel formulaic and less adventurous at times.

Perhaps the point is more about feeling good than seeming interesting, and at least the piano equivalent of cowboy chords makes sense in the Americana context. Any given moment sounds wonderful, though not much lingers beyond a deep sense of calm.

No Highs ultimately works as an example of what ambient music can be, rather than a suggestion of where it might go.

Half of rage is confronting the sorrow that births it and watching it metamorphize. Witnessing the chrysalis is With a Hammer’s most generous gift.

The smaller stakes of Stereo Mind Games feel healthier and rewarding; the music is still vulnerable, but anguish no longer consumes every moment.

As Hartzman’s lyrics delve deeper into a rich, suburban mundanity, her bandmates respond with their most dramatic and explosive performances.

A collection of laid-back grooves and sultry meditations on love, loss, and the human experience.

The full enjoyment of Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities requires some imagination of your own, a sort of listening past the vaporous surface of the music. Like teenage Holden at the radio, you may sense a magical world there, just beyond what you can hear.

1982 is their best album since 1986’s Force. ... Attractive in its distillation of received pleasures, 1982 functions as a history lesson about a fecund era, and, boy, they own the warts too.

Newman’s fastidious, occasionally fussy writing ensures a level of quality control as he tinkers around the margins, even if his bandmates never quite catch the spark.

In these early recordings, Elton’s passion and dedication pleads to be heard. Whether nitpicking intros almost to the point of nausea or infusing vitality into each syllable like a mad scientist, a young Elton is constantly straining towards vein-popping perfection.

Despite some murky production by Josh Kaufman of the Fruit Bats and Bonny Light Horseman, the Hold Steady turn these songs into weird, vivid snapshots.