The rare box set that’s actually more than the sum of its parts. The highs on here are higher than the lows are low, and, more significantly, the warts-and-all approach creates a compelling context for Dick Jensen and the O’Jays alike.

Stand for Myself, with its themes of inner fortitude only brightening the white-hot star at its center, vaults Yola to another place in the pop world, with her boundless curiosity and vocal brawn establishing her as a knowing, honest voice for those who need help summoning their own strength from within.

King Woman’s ability to outdo themselves continues apace, and the bar continues to rise each time Esfandiari sheds her skin anew.

Burning projects newfound poise and even joy through a sophisticated collage. Rashad’s collection of references and phrases plays like the inside of a jumbled but vibrant brain.

It was and is a spotty album from a time when Prince was making a lot of those.

It is an album of quiet delights, but at times it feels like the songs are simply stretched too thin: three-star meals served with five-star service.

It’s a confused album that sounds like it wants to sit on the shelf next to do-it-all pop savants like Jeff Lynne or Todd Rundgren, yet retreats to the safety of Antonoff’s alt-pop impulses before anything spectacular really develops.

Some of Happier Than Ever’s quieter tracks drag—“Everybody Dies”’s dreary grasps at existentialism barely leave an impression. That said, as the beat change on “My Future” shows, Happier Than Ever’s best songs are the ones where Eilish and Finneas allow one small idea to mutate into two or three bigger ones.

Thirstier is exuberant and unguarded—the kind of music you make when you’re no longer testing out a new skin and instead reveling in the fervent joy that it brings you. At their best, these songs ride the contact high of a love so consuming that it shifts your worldview and makes you write songs loaded with screamable choruses and conventional hooks.

MIKE’s rhythmic passion manifests in a firm self-awareness absent from his earlier work. He hasn’t exactly outrun his demons, but his place in the vanguard of New York’s underground rap scene has invigorated him.

He mostly manages to boil down the macho bloat of his sources to graceful essences without underplaying the pomp.

Change is pleasant and breezy, a cozy place where she can explore the outer limits of her voice. Listening can feel like walking into one of those gallery shows with just three sculptures, where everyone is wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of mustard-colored slacks. It sounds cool, and you feel cool listening to it—but that’s about as much as you feel.

We’re All Alone in This Together isn’t Dave’s magnum opus. But the best thing is, he’s just getting started. We’re barely past the opening credits.

Few people would dream up an album as endearingly obtuse and gleefully dysfunctional as Yellow, let alone have the skill to realize it.

Banned is stronger when the pair sound more invested, when the songs feel more composed and can unspool without as many distractions.

It is a record that is whimsical and sensual; weird and romantic.

On this album, every time it feels as if he’s close to breaking out—and the album’s best songs are replete with moments in which Bridges seems a hair’s breadth away from true passion—he recedes into the background and lets the technical expertise of his studio players, or that timeless-seeming studio itself, take over.

Jaar and Harrington’s individual visions only grew more vast in the eight years leading up to Darkside’s return with Spiral, a work of unexpected and even unprecedented familiarity—less a portal than a kiosk existing entirely within the boundaries set by Psychic.

Only once, on the wallowing “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” does the record get so caught up in its imagined misery that it becomes an actual buzzkill. Otherwise, Gillespie and Beth execute these songs with the tact of seasoned studio pros and the vigor of a couple crushing shared Righteous Brothers favorites at karaoke.

It’s evocative and complex enough to establish Snoh Aalegra as a name worth remembering, even as it leaves you wondering what it might sound like when she finally faces the full extent of her feelings.

TWICE sound most self-assured when eschewing maximalist bombast for subtler evocations.

Like a great sacred text, the music of Kirtan: Turiya Sings is concentrated and rigorous, yet simple and full of ease. Like the original Turiya Sings, it’s also a pleasure.

Her ambitions are bold, but the album has a sense of polished remove that prevents it from scaling real emotional heights.

Beyond stripping Pop of his personality, the most offensively bad [tracks] on Faith are the ones that have no shame in hiding their financial intentions.

On occasion the music feels market-tested, straddling a few too many demographics at once—chords and vibes still take precedence over ideas.

The EP moves deliberately from chaos to catharsis, with tighter performances than we’ve heard from A Place to Bury Strangers in a long time.

This band lives or dies by its hooks, and in truth most of Hideaway’s are only OK. They’re straightforward to a fault, and short on those small, sometimes barely even perceptible deviations from expectation that distinguish a sublime hook from a routine one. Williams’ greatest strength and weakness as a songwriter is that he always follows the path of least resistance.

Sling may be an album concerned with time, fears of obsolescence instilled by a vampiric music industry. But it also finds exuberance in stillness, a kind of gentle unburdening.