Even if you don’t track all the references, Sleaford Mods’ sense of fatigued resignation resonates. UK GRIM is their most varied album to date, but they don’t want to dull the shitstorm’s stench—they’re just here to blow off the steam.

“Denver” drags on for six relatively static minutes, while the limp synth pop of “Athens at Night” never quite matches the wooziness of its imagery. Fortunately, Milk for Flowers’ third act is its richest.

Radical Romantics is essentially a collection of notes on love. Love—whether sexy, overwhelming, or vengeful—links together the recurring motivations of the Fever Ray catalog: curiosity and exploration, family born and chosen, sexual freedom and pleasure.

Soul’d Out is the real deal: a portrait of a pop label at its imperial peak, presenting its unmediated vision of Blackness for a rapt audience.

Despite its long, solitary genesis, I Play My Bass Loud is anything but a lonely bedroom-pop album.

Ugly sounds like something far less interesting: the sort of generically angsty guitar music that only a ’90s major label executive could love.

The Songs of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach sounds like a heartfelt eulogy to an artist who helped pop fans find great beauty and even greater solace in all those lonely, uncertain moments.

You couldn’t say that WOW is about anything. Instead, it’s defined by its aesthetic cohesion, a beautiful sense of formal seriousness that holds court over the record’s surrealistic menagerie.

Thirty-six songs is too many. ... He seems to have lost a great deal of energy as a singer and performer, leading to a ton of uninspired retreads and some truly generic filler.

Red Moon in Venus luxuriates in the most sublime sounds of Uchis’ career. It’s a fantastical record, illustrating lush, lovesick vignettes and high-femme escapism without relinquishing control.

The dramatic crescendos and ostensibly cathartic payoffs of “Little Things” and “The Heart of It All” suggest profundity but mostly draw attention to its absence. Strip away the bombast and these are humble little songs. Humble treatment might suit them.

Though 7s is a step down in scale and inspiration from Cows on Hourglass Pond, the triumph of Time Skiffs means it’s hardly a worrying sign for his career.

Good Riddance is, in a word, nice. But there are plenty of other diaristic artists, ones whose music displays a certain sense of individuality.

It’s also a disco-funk explosion, ecstatic from every direction. Even when the satire wanes, the potency of the music remains. Like the rest of the album, Remy shakes free her sorrows and stretches loose her limbs, sanguine as she moves across the dancefloor.

Usually, it’s easier to fit the pieces together if you’re familiar with the political references, or if you’ve already been living under colonialism’s yolk. But Shook feels more urgent, more arresting, with performances that draw you into their world.

Don’t Get Too Close, the more adventurous but marginally less successful of the two, scores the interior world of our hero’s adventure in a very-now merger of emo, rap, J-pop, memecore, video game music, and angsty boy-girl duets.

They’re always the butt of their own jokes, which makes them good company for a late night but also makes these songs hit a little harder the next morning.

The songwriting is the group’s sharpest to date. They can still whip up the staccato panic-attack special (see: “Alibis”), but that’s no longer the main attraction, nor the most compelling material.

This sense of tragedy seeps through nearly every song. It’s what unites the vast material and makes Workin’ on a World feel pivotal in her catalog. These high points also help recontextualize DeMent’s continuing evolution as an observer of American life.

Screaming Females’ entire existence has been a rare testament to consistency and, despite being five years in the making and inspired by a devastating breakup, Desire Pathway can’t help but be their most consistent album yet.

It’s a dream-pop distillation of the classic Khotin sound—and a suggestion that this master of atmosphere might have a future in actual songs.

[Tormenta's] eccentric angles and willingness to take risks show up the slightly humdrum nature of much of Cracker Island, an album that walks a very thin line between playing to the band’s strengths and relying too heavily on old tricks.

Everything rolls along like it’s actually going somewhere—not a flatulent dubstep waddle, but an aerodynamic gallop that brings to mind a deeper lineage of loud and obnoxious dance music, from the technical end of drum’n’bass to “proper” dubstep, Northern bassline, and Chicago juke.

Let Her Burn is so, so dry.

You have to bristle and tug at it to get past the barbed wire around these recordings, but once you do, you’re immersed in a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rock.

These are love songs to a community and a lineage that taught Paul how to survive.

Continuing the trend of 2018’s King of Cowards and 2020’s Viscerals, Land of Sleeper feels a shade crisper than what came before. Whereas they once prioritised the churn and burn, now their songs are leaner and tighter.

If you come to Girl in the Half Pearl looking to find a soothing voice in the wilderness, you will instead find a complex maze of battered beats and warped shouts. The gripping soundscape doesn’t allow you to watch its protagonist’s transformation from the safety of the back row—it shoves you through the screen.