Metro is great when he makes Metro-type beats, shaky when he ventures outside of his comfort zone. On Heroes & Villains, he surpasses his standard quota of bangers while also taking a few fun risks.

Live at the Fillmore sounds and feels vibrant and inviting, and it is curated with obvious attention and care.

Still impossible to pigeonhole, his hybrid of classical, chamber pop, baroque, and jazz is as thrilling as ever, while the newly stripped-back arrangements heighten the intimacy of a songwriter seeing himself clearly.

Often, the band feels like they’re deliberately avoiding their old tricks, finding new ways to arrive at the same destination. Generally, the proceedings have a light touch, a gentleness that is readily apparent on the opening shuffle “Love Earth” but also on the thicker rock’n’roll of “The World (Is in Trouble Now).”

If Stormzy’s last album, and the pressure to speak for a generation, weighed heavily, then This Is What I Mean feels lighter, freer.

Inspired by a dream and grounded in no concrete narrative, the magic is in the satiny vocals and paisley compositions, a world unto itself.

Wrangling together dozens of technical ideas and arranging them with idiosyncratic flair, NNAMDÏ enters this challenging middle zone without compromising his priorities. It’s what makes Please Have a Seat the best he’s ever sounded.

A frustrating listen from a brilliantly talented artist. For all of its angels and prophecies and mid-century decadence, what we are left with is a very quiet collection of songs with all the weight of ephemera.

Dijon is in her element here, eager to expand house music’s limits. For every pulse-racing dance breakdown, there’s a surprise.

With Both, it was exciting to see an underground lifer finally getting his due; Through a Room confirms Nace’s inquisitive spirit and formidable skills.

The record has a calculated fishbowl quality, chronicling the group’s rise and accelerated decline through the lens of a mercurial Svengali. It’s a victory lap with a slightly bitter aftertaste, like champagne left uncorked in a trashed hotel suite.

Her pursuits on softCORE prove that it’s possible for pop-punk and R&B to exist in the same space, which adds a fresh take on the nostalgia train steering the former’s resurgence. While the endeavor is admirable and audacious, its execution isn’t as seamless as the fluidity of Fousheé’s own voice.

Until now, Okay Kaya records have often felt like a compelling viewpoint in search of a sound, but on SAP, Wilkins’ arrangements have finally caught up to her free-roaming mind.

KD3’s most effective songs are the ones pulled toward opposite poles:.

It’s the sound of an artist drawing from his repertoire while demonstrating that he is still looking to the future.

Its demanding hour-and-a-half runtime never pushes Dawson’s music to places it hasn’t gone before, even if it’s all executed with his typically handwoven sense of craft. The insights feel slightly stunted, as Dawson trades out the pained, everyday compassion that he’s conveyed so deeply in his more earthbound music for dystopian scenarios that can’t quite settle on a clear premise.

CAZIMI, Rose’s long-delayed third record, makes a complete song cycle out of those entanglements, with each cut reflecting the proper amount of neon.

The rhythms are stately and unsyncopated. The arrangements are lushly orchestral. The songs are mostly around six minutes long, proceeding at the unhurried pace of guided meditations. And, perhaps owing to the sense of communion-via-solitude espoused in the first track, the lyrics are concerned with “we” nearly as often as they are with “I”.

My Heart was Shoman’s breakout moment as a songwriter, and A Swollen River is foremost a triumph for Tenci, the band.

Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room.

Love’s rapture is on full display on the lyrics sheet, but throughout Myself in the Way, the chemistry feels lab-sterilized.

Die Cut / City Planning feels like a record without a center of gravity, no matter how enjoyable the drifting may be.

Listeners who have struggled to appreciate previous releases will hear more of the same in Comradely Objects. Those who are attuned, who find that the band’s smallest pivots can induce a feeling approaching euphoria, will encounter the album as a carnival of delights.

It’s got character, and more than that, it’s got energy: Springsteen has never sounded quite so lighthearted, so unburdened, on record.

Written and recorded during an extended stay on Ireland’s windswept west coast, the follow-up to Land of No Junction reaps lucidity from family bonding and fleeing the city in search of peace. With it, Frances’ psych-folk soliloquies arrive like postcards from a friend who’s just beginning to open up.

After a while, the songs on Alpha Zulu begin to mimic the experience of observing objects in a museum—you can admire all you want, but please don’t touch.

They each bring out some of each other’s best work. ... The tracks where Richard takes a back seat spotlight Zahn’s remarkable maturation as a composer; overcoming the slightly somnolent pleasantness of his previous work, he creates rich, mesmerizing arrangements that subtly shift the mood from piece to piece.

There are moments of considered writing and bursts of Drake at or near his mischievous best, but in its middle, the record becomes inert, making the bits of self-conscious misanthropy scan as strained rather than gleeful, as if the id could be focus-grouped.