It feels personal rather than global, and as gnarly as it is, it’s not quite extreme enough to work as a visualization of the horrors of war. It works much better as a record of a man of the wild wandering through the modern world, anxious and a little amused.

Jumbled presentation can dull the impact of even the most sincere music, and Rico’s skill and imagination can’t save songs like “Black Punk” and “Dance Scream” from the filler bin. But beneath the technicolor pileup lies some of Rico’s most vicious (“Vaderz,” “Gotsta Get Paid”) and most sensitive (“Skullflower,” “Easy”) material yet. With a little finesse and better sequencing, it could’ve been greater than the sum of its parts.

It sounds very busy, but Silva never loses the balance of these productions.

Renaissance is a commanding prescription to be perceived again, without judgment. Listening to the album, you can feel the synapses coming back together one by one, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of feeling good, if only for its hour-long duration.

For all its anguish, it’s underpinned by the joyful realization that she’s finally free to record on her own terms.

Because the interludes outnumber the actual songs, it is difficult to call this Florist’s most accessible album, but it is certainly their most physical. ... ou get to explore each of those components: the band members convening, the songs falling into place, the woods themselves. It’s best experienced as a whole, but some tracks stand on their own.

Sun’s Signature is among Fraser’s most illuminating and eloquent music to date, the work of a flesh-and-blood person rather than the chimerical Cocteau Twin of myth.

Barbarism is a deranged playground, a portal to uncomfortable feelings in an increasingly uncomfortable world. Like a half-remembered dream, it seems to continuously promise access to hidden answers, if only we could penetrate the chaos. And though it’s grating, uneven, and perplexing, Barbarism feels familiar.

Even the more lighthearted moments are rich with subtext. Like a De La Soul project, ISTHISFORREAL? gestures at a running talk-show concept without really committing to the bit. Instead, KTO deploys a breadth of styles to match the record’s expansive themes.

The constant malaise keeps these songs from generating the ridiculous, heart-swelling feeling of transcendence that the best big-room dance music can achieve, while the duo’s relentless approach keeps the music from feeling particularly intimate.

Toggling between merely pleasant and overly precious, Melt Away is such a low-stakes endeavor that it never even registers as a comeback.

It’s refreshing to see Milli step out with both her classic approach and new attempts at claiming selfhood. You Still Here Ho ? meets Flo Milli in her most adventurous form yet.

On Surrender, she sounds renewed, submitting to the pull of her heart without apology.

The wide-ranging production often makes it easy to ignore the rough spots. Classy instrumental interpolations (Chris McClenney and Erick the Architect’s piano-led strut on “The Baddest,” every Statik Selektah beat here) sit next to glossy boom-bap (Chuck Strangers’ “Wanna Be Loved”) and crossover beats (Mike WiLL Made-It’s “Cruise Control,” BBEARDED’s “Welcome Back”). It’s a testament to Joey’s growing ear that he sounds good on all of them.

Heaven suffers because its settings imply a compositional weight that the songs just don’t carry; Fear has a clearer sense of itself as a collection of shiny amusements.

Even as the music expands in length, it feels more immediately emotionally satisfying than any of Prekop’s previous electronic music.

He is fully equipped to construct bold new sonic edifices, but on New Pleasures, Georgopoulos too often settles for the skyscrapers we already know; shiny, but ordinary.

The dead space and repetition are what give the album its momentum, and the ambling detours have an idiosyncratic charm that belongs entirely to Segall.

Candy defile hardcore’s typical structures with elements of industrial techno and noise. While their spewed condemnations of society feel expected, Candy occasionally wade into the muck of lust. It is their love songs that feel the most extreme.

Throughout the record there are subtle hints of growth—both personal and musical—but they’re often dragged down by the redundancy of her thematic concerns.

It’s endearing, really, the way this band goes the extra mile, even when it hardly matters, but the best thing about Bleed Here Now is how it rarely feels like work, despite all the work that clearly went into it. In their own overachieving way, Trail of Dead have made a hangout record.

In its effort to reach the masses, Special has the unfortunate fault of both trying too hard to hit the zeitgeist—like the nonsensical Tesla metaphor on opener “The Sign”—and striving for pure blahtitude. ... In fact, when it comes to happiness, some of the most satisfying songs on Special—the ones that come closest to finding inner peace—are also the most subdued.

Thankfully, the execution often surpasses the ideas—these are intricate tracks, twinkling through layers of texture. But they get clogged in swerves and side-steps.

For the first time, Lacy’s virtuosity is in service of his vision rather than the extent of it.

Too often, the trio sounds like they’re writing over or past each other instead of locking in.

Beabadoobee is well-suited to imaginary worlds: Her lyrics are often more form than function, her words merely vessels for sounds.

If the intellect on Hellfire is feverish, the emotional temperature often dips to morgue levels; their music is better equipped to comment on emotion than to feel it, or express it. They continue to get over, as they always do, on pure conviction, riding the knife’s edge between clinical precision and crazed abandon.

Gwenno is in the business of pop artistry, not broccoli-boiling, so Tresor’s touch is light and breezy, even as its songs dive into analytical psychology, the patriarchy, the colonizer lurking up and to the right.