There are a couple of moments when these banalities briefly turn transcendent. ... There are too few of those bright spots, though.

As expected, Don Toliver’s latest album Life of a DON is hollow. ... But miraculously, the emptiness of it all is an afterthought—it sounds so damn good that who even cares if Don Toliver is an emotionless robot or not (he is). The hooks are catchy and slick. The beats are lush and radiant. And he has this distinctly piercing voice, with a wide range of melodies that could make an extremely basic line jotted down on a dinner napkin sound heartfelt.

Garden feels like a refinement of the same sound [on 2019’s Weeping Choir], pulling them to greater, if somewhat less accessible, heights.

While Seventeen Going Under excels when Fender looks inward, the intimacy is disrupted by scattered political musings.

It is the most technically proficient and hard-hitting music in their discography, albeit at the cost of their unique intimacy and warmth.

Geist, an album largely focused on spiritual shifts and ruptures, is a quiet, lovely, undramatic rendering of the dramatic.

Established! is perfectly placed to twang heartstrings and hamstrings alike, bursting with audacious energy, liberal sass, and mountains of soul.

These are some of Maine’s most generous and indelible songs, so much so that the album’s 25 minutes feel too brief. Like the best summers, it’s done in an instant—but the feeling lasts long after it’s over.

Hovvdy are still craning their necks back to the past, but on True Love they cruise the open road, porous and wide-eyed in the face of new beginnings.

BADBADNOTGOOD are known for turning tradition inside out, but Talk Memory is not just their finest album—it’s evidence of the historic appreciation that roots their reverence.

The compositions on Luminol are precarious balancing acts, perched somewhere between the locating sensation of pain and the dislocation of trauma.

Even if the music remains more ambitious than that aspiration, perhaps the most groundbreaking thing about Friends That Break Your Heart is that James Blake has never sounded so safe.

Levy is at her best when she’s retreating into fantasy.

Its introspection and chest-thumping are just enough to keep the stakes reasonably high.

Liminal Soul is a little more modern, and dead serious in contrast with Pure Moods’ chintzy gloss, but both albums feel designed to put you back in your body and back in the real world.

Let Me Do One More is full of high highs and low lows, but thanks to Tudzin’s extensive experience as an engineer and producer (Pom Pom Squad, Weyes Blood), the two extremes—and they are often extreme—are meticulously balanced.

These new songs are energizing for González, but they lack that sense of genuine discovery, of a songwriter being lifted away from his usual comforts. Instead of letting the drum machine reshape his songwriting, he mostly uses it as a metronome.

As Colourgrade highlights, love, family, intimacy are central to her everyday. Luckily, she allows us to partake in these familial affairs, and the outcome is spellbinding.

Thanks to their gently intertwined voices, most name-drops or direct references, like the shout-out to stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen on “Olympus,” don’t feel forced.

Music has always been just one aspect of the Poppy multimedia experience, but Flux makes it finally feel like the most important one.

The themes Cara explores here are moving and mature, but she dilutes them when she relies too much on metaphor and conceit.

And Then Life Was Beautiful expands her musical range while deepening its emotional impact.

While it’s hard to imagine how anyone involved with the VU’s album would feel about this tasteful tribute, its very existence still speaks to the force of the original vision. After all this time, artists are still peeling back layers of the banana.

At its best, Remember Her Name captures her steadfastness and grace in equal measure.

Just as this band once broke the rules of hardcore, they have also reinvented the concept album, transforming the most indulgent exercise in the classic-rock playbook into an egalitarian, community endeavor.

On By the Time I Get to Phoenix, they reintroduce themselves as wide-eyed explorers, a rep that suits their fascination with rap’s mechanics, its margins, and its future.

The most memorable revisions on Dawn of Chromatica create new links to other standout moments in the Gaga discography. ... A few other highlights tilt in the other direction, teleporting Gaga into established worlds of sound with satisfying results.

There’s a thrill in watching a talented artist reach beyond her comfort zone, but the result is disappointingly flat. When she’s in her element, though, she’s singular and sparkling.