Black Sarabande’s calm surface proves illusory the more listens you give it.

Try as he may, Tomlinson has not quite progressed from featured voice to solo artist. For all the major changes in his life, his music seems to be stuck in place. You can take the boy out of the boyband, but not the boyband out of the boy.

Likewise is more minimal and elegant than any Hop Along record.

For a record born from a second chance at life, When We Stay Alive sounds disenchanted with its own message.

Across the hour, Funeral sounds less like last rites for Wayne and more like a resurrection.

Land of No Junction is the sort of record that seems to acquire more confidence and force with each passing track.

I Was Born Swimming is her most expansive and professional-sounding record to date, and on the whole, does more right than wrong. But it’s an MFA of an album. As a project, it’s admirable. As an album, it leaves you cold.

Even as Scott’s ambition sometimes clashes with the content of the actual songs, Tongue is both her most intimate and eclectic album thus far.

High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

While Deacon’s instrumental command has demonstrably strengthened in the past few years, his lyrics have only gotten more pat, as evidenced by two songs near album’s end.

Keeping Up Appearances, released under the moniker Basic Plumbing, collects the tracks Doyle and Skinner finished. Their beauty is immediate, accessible, and, at least for the moment, almost inextricable from all the loss surrounding them.

The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow.

The overload of nostalgia keeps the album from feeling fresh. As thrilling as those vintage Squarepusher records were (and still are), it wasn’t necessary that Jenkinson make another one.

Compared to 2017’s ken, a gothic-sounding record distinguished by chillier tones and pared-down lyrics, his masterful new album Have We Met sets a larger canvas. Produced by bandmate John Collins, the music is sweeping and bold and surprising.

On Hotspot, the best-selling duo in UK pop dampen the euphoria; the result is a tuneful, wan album: a mid-tier effort.

The Neon Skyline doesn’t require deep investment in its narrative to enjoy. Still, the closer you listen, the more rewarding it becomes.

She has a pleasant, lilting voice to listen to while resting your head against a window. But these slow-moving repetitions—a few plucked strings, a murmured confession—leave you hungry for grittier self-scrutiny.

His pivot toward interiority gives his songs a new dimension. His bars are simple, straightforward, and can occasionally lean toward fortune-cookie wisdom (“Get the bread, avoid the drama/You can avoid the feds but not the karma,” he raps on “Fight For Your Right”), but throughout the album, he seems to be growing more secure in himself.

Bonny Light Horseman gently cut these songs free from aging roots, transplanting them to the present.

At their best, Pulse Emitter’s tracks trade ambient music’s aimless drift for deep compositional structure.

Just Like Moby Dick is worthy of an earnest listen.

The key to Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s most successful music is balance, and while the band struggles to recapture some of their old magic, Huntley finds that same sweet spot in his lovingly unromantic storytelling.

That split between sound and spirit lends another layer to the forlorn songs she’s been singing her whole career. In the genteel melodies and floating arrangements, she suggests that it’s still possible to find meaning when you’re weighed down by these feelings.

At times the honesty on Watch This Liquid Pour Itself might be its worst fault, but it’s usually its finest quality.

Wolf Parade’s sound was once state of the art, but Thin Mind captures only intermittent reminders of how wild and wonderful their moment was.

Concrete and Glass won’t shock, sparkle, or challenge cultural norms, but it’s a (mostly) lovely place to inhabit.

It is not, strictly speaking, a good record—Eminem hasn’t made one of those in a decade—but it boasts enough technical command and generates just enough arresting ideas to hold your attention.

Elaborate but rarely ostentatious, The Godless Void is a true revelation from a band 25 years into the game—the rare Trail of Dead record that lets Keely’s shell-shocked performances chart the necessary emotional peaks without needing the music to follow suit.