As bizarre as LANY’s pivot to country pop is, they still manage to infuse it with enough charm where it doesn’t fall flat.

Sundowner is sharper, more in sync with his previous records. It’s certainly referential, but it’s hardly completely retro.

Despite the length (70 songs across 5 hours, in its longest version), it feels designed to be played from front-to-back. For casual fans, all you need is the standard set, which pairs Wildflowers with the 10 outtakes on All the Rest. But there’s no element that feels superfluous, and the very essence of the album is palpable through each part.

It’s a testament to the strength of Clarke’s compositional gifts and his command of mood that even 14 or 15 tracks in, in an album pitched at a consistent campfire glow and midtempo stroll, songs like “The Golden Sky” sound just as fresh as the record’s first notes.

With SIGN, Autechre have managed to do something that machines can’t do nearly as well as humans: surprise us.

The album showcases her curatorial skills—honed from years of DJ sets, streaming playlists, and recently virtual shows as Aluna’s Room—and her range. Maybe as a challenge, Renaissance neither starts nor ends with dance music.

Every Replacements record is extraordinary in its way, but none exemplifies their garbage-to-grandeur alchemy like Pleased To Meet Me, which rocks like early Kinks, swaggers like T. Rex, and pays tribute to their spiritual godfather Alex Chilton.

Dark Hearts is best at its most artificial. The moments that aim for “realness” seem less so.

Throughout Couldn’t Wait to Tell You, Liv.e is becoming an unmistakable and singular artist. Even when it feels like we’re merely privy to what’s inside her head, her thoughts resonate outward.

The record feels like standing water, Herring is so entrenched in the past it’s hard to tell who he really is on so much of this record. There are, however, moments when the light shines in with the vibrancy of stained glass.

There’s no denying METZ’s ability to summon a white-knuckled, visceral disgust where tension and release are indistinguishable. It slaps, but it doesn’t leave much of a mark.

Silver Ladders is energetic yet also deeply calming.

For a band spooked by their status as role models, Touché Amoré still can’t help but lead by example.

Firmly bound to themes of renewal and rebirth, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin is a winning experiment in economy and earthiness from an artist previously known for ornament and excess.

It’s a raw performance and a gleaming example of the album’s ethos: There’s no element Shamir isn’t willing to try on. By collapsing genre boundaries and molding them into his own homespun image, he’s made an unconventional pop album entirely on his own terms.

Sumac are at their most compelling on tracks that occupy an LP’s entire side, where disparate elements can clash at length.

Perhaps grimmer—songwriting, like therapy, has its limits. Loveless understands. With a sober approach to its less-than-sober characters, Daughter takes life one song at a time. She can’t do more but prepare to accept less.

The loops here are less memorable and consistent than his better records. ... It’s these slight inconsistencies that separate the more successful Westside Gunn projects from the forgettable ones. Who Made the Sunshine falls somewhere in the middle, and doesn’t feel like it was devised to be anything more than what it is: Another step toward the expansion of the Griselda Records brand.

The first Savage Mode didn’t become an ATL classic because of celebrity cameos or Billboard numbers; it was because Metro and 21 were at the peak of their powers, and only the producer is close here. 21 Savage is just along for the ride.

Live Forever argues that life is not some march toward a peak, but a closed loop—one that’s tighter if you’re Black. The brilliance of Bartees’ debut is in how it carves out an expansive space within that loop.

Whereas their earlier material veered towards melodic art-rock, the music on Giver Taker sounds radically gentle and confident.

Free Humans is a passionate rebuke to both fatalism and futurism. It’s the sound of four cosmic souls resolutely staying put—not wanderers but wonderers, still in love with their own bizarre planet, and baffled by the senselessness of leaving it behind.

Róisín Murphy aims her tracks at the stars. With Róisín Machine, she’s become one.

It’s an overwhelming amount of material. ... The Dream Factory songs unearthed from the vault are staggering.

It seems unlikely that Monk and his quartet would have known about what was happening in East Palo Alto, but they’ve clearly been buoyed by the crowd’s youthful energy, and they deliver some of the fiercest, most spirited versions of their core repertoire in response.

They’re not attempting to radically shift your notion of what their music can be. For those of us who have stuck around, that’s just fine; a Deftones album that effortlessly twists their familiar components into a few genuinely new shapes is plenty exciting.

Thematically, Tickets to My Downfall is hardly a departure from MGK’s past work, but the new surroundings lightens his music up considerably even amidst the hormones and histrionics. With Travis Barker on his side, he might win over skeptics accusing him of trend-hopping, but the best part of Downfall is that he doesn’t take the whole endeavor too seriously.

Unlike her song-based previous albums, All Thoughts Fly is instrumental, performed entirely on pipe organ. Its lush soundscapes find transcendence in the eerie and the sorrowful, much like Sacro Bosco itself.