The fourth and final part of the EP is by far the darkest, with no respite or resolution. The chords loom uneasily throughout, because that’s how Ranaldo must have felt at the time. In moments like these, In Virus Times is best understood as a snapshot of a miserable year, and one person trying to work through it.

Surprisingly enough, the album’s highlight comes in “Sit Around the Fire,” which was surely Hopkins’ riskiest move. The deeply moving piano-synth track features the late spiritual leader Ram Dass speaking to a congregation in 1975.

The band’s decision to expand their swagger and invest in more complex synth work pushes them to new territory, and the most remarkable digressions from their comfort zone point towards a future beyond pastiche—but it feels like this is a half-step, not a full leap.

For all these experimental impulses, Crawler ultimately proves to be more a transitional album than a wholesale reinvention, and it’s not entirely clear if Idles have it in them to go full Kid A.

“Leave the Door Open,” “After Last Night,” and “Smokin Out the Window” are among the highlights, slathering elevated technique—all those key changes—with satisfying molten cheese.

Despite its tight construction, Garbology is at its best when it succumbs to a certain irresolution.

The raincloud hung heavy over her past four records; on Engine of Hell, it breaks open. The personal tragedies that come pouring out are scarier than any of the grisly apparitions she used to conjure.

If you haven’t listened to Red, recently or ever, it’s well worth your time; in its ecstatic, expressive vocals, tart humor, vivid imagery, and tender attention to the nuances of love and loss, you’ll find everything that makes Taylor Swift great. ... Some of the vault tracks feel like they were left off of Red because they weren’t up to snuff.

That deliberate smallness, that inner focus, is the source of much of this understated record’s outsized power. For all its overdubbed layers, “Space 8,” like the album itself, feels as simple and as steadying as breathing.

Wedded to the percussion-and-singer-plus-accompanist format, Barnett sounds marooned. It’s her least interesting album.

Where Vu’s previous releases were vivid and tactile, Public Storage numbs out. But the music is potent.

At its best, the album constitutes a ’70s synthesis 50 years in the making—Sabbath meets electric Miles meets, well, Perry himself, who is able here to simultaneously revisit his most fertile period while breaking heretofore unexplored musical ground.

It’s a little unsettling to hear an artist so fixated with death on her debut, but on Pohorylle, such gravity feels earned, even natural.

The result is oddly refreshing: an artsy, accomplished band turning their second album of the year into a pulpy slasher flick.

Walker understands her strengths as a storyteller, and on Still Over It, she’s at her most commanding when she sings for herself while evoking the pain of other women who’ve been hurt.

Highlights cohere into another solid project, but at this stage in Jenkins’ career, adding some new parts to his formula feels pertinent. Getting into a groove is cool, but staying in that groove for too long can become a detriment.

On Thank You, Diana Ross’ musical star shines strong after six decades of inspiration, offering signs of renaissance even as she teases tender farewells.

It’s undoubtedly a document of the 1995 tour and the exhausted but inspired band they were afterward. The reissue hammers this home by incorporating several early live versions of album tracks that are fascinating for being only a few missing lyrics away from their final incarnations; they display the band’s confidence in the material, in what they were managing to create out of chaos and catastrophe.

The result is songs that often feel anthologized, and without interstitial dialog or music it’s not always clear how the stories they tell relate to one another as part of the narrative arc that will, presumably, someday underpin a stage show. All the same, Mann has created compelling, complex sketches of characters who are more than the cliches of mental illness that so often appear in popular culture.

None of the bonus material on Kid Amnesiae, the third “bonus” disc accompanying the two studio albums, has the same revelatory quality as the inclusions on OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017. ... It was the indelible sounds they made on Kid A and Amnesiac, more than any of the album’s digital age paranoia or its baleful view of the future, that comprise the band’s enduring legacy. Those sounds break free of anything you might want to attach to them.

By ABBA’s own imperial standards, this is more ABBA Silver than ABBA Gold. ... Still, a second-string ABBA record is far better than most pop groups can muster, and Voyage is the rare post-reformation album to build upon the band’s legacy without abandoning what we loved about their classic records in the first place.

Projector is best appreciated not as the work of post-punk’s resurrectors but its cocky, charismatic trust fund kids: unconcerned with the legitimacy of their inheritance and confident that there’s no way they can fail.

Where parts of Lush revealed themselves slowly, saving their secrets for intent listening, Valentine is more immediate, grabbing your gaze and refusing to let go for 32 straight minutes.

They haven’t lost their ability to channel classic rock’s penchant for epic mysticism, but they have learned how to make it work on a more earthly level, revealing the human emotions that lurk behind their happy-go-lucky noodling. It stands as a testament that the best jam sessions can take you on a journey, even from your living room.

The thrills of The Path of the Clouds are far richer than most true crime fiction, but like the best examples of the genre, it leaves you breathless.

His raps land firmly within the established pockets of beats, but each song is so distinct and JPEG’s writing is so fluid and witty that no two moments within the album’s humid atmosphere sound the same.