That’s the trick of Middle of Nowhere: it never rushes to define what comes next. Instead, Musgraves lingers in the in-between, finding humor, heartbreak and a surprising amount of peace along the way.

From beginning to end, LP4 is remarkably expansive. Not louder, necessarily – just deeper, messier and quite willing to tolerate discomfort. Middle age has never felt, or sounded, like a more beautiful bummer.

Sexistential (Young) arrives not as a nostalgia exercise or victory lap, but as proof that Robyn’s particular synthesis of pleasure, vulnerability and pop rigor remains maddeningly hard to replicate.

Ellison has created one of his most concentrated and fascinating releases.

At any given moment, Gordon’s sing-speak Sprechgesang of catchphrases, commands, Post-It note poetry and cultural keywords (“Bye Bye 25!”) comes off clipped, desperate, laconic, near-death, dominating, erotic, craven, jaded, resigned, empowered. Captivating.

The swathe of great moments here is impressive. .... Indeed, Trixies might be the duo’s personal masterpiece.

Whenever the party gets too polite, Gorillaz drop an unruly banger like the kaleidoscopic “Damascus” featuring frequent running mates Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def), reminding us that everyone’s always welcome on the dance floor.

The 10 tracks on Love Is Not Enough are more than just a physical workout: they’re cardio for the brain.

Even if your knowledge of Turkish is zilch, you can’t help feeling these 10 songs deeply. Verily, Garip is sonic alchemy.

Throughout, the musicians seem to be cooking in their own worlds, but their parts fortuitously interlock and tasty grooves frequently arise. There’s so much going on in How You Been, and it’s all interesting.

This is a deceptively pretty album in which all of the experiments succeed.

A curious collab from some unlikely bedfellows, these nine songs carry the propensity to become a gateway drug to discover legendary works from Lee Hazlewood to Scott Walker to Ennio Morricone to such modern askew prairie- and desert-dwellers as Jim White and Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb.

Tortoise are still on a creative roll, even if it’s a very slow, drawn-out one.

Viewfinder might not have any hard answers, but it does find a kind of ambiguous truth that lies beyond the perceptible.

While nothing here feels as urgent or frenetic as his 2002 debut, Memoryhouse, selections such as “And Some Will Fall” and “Late and Soon” rank among the most beautiful in Richter’s catalog. However, In a Landscape doesn’t always work. Richter staggers a series of nine “Life Studies” throughout the 19 tracks—comprised in part of tape delays, reverb, and vocoder, these short ambient sections break the natural flow of beauty.

Compassion is more mature but also more daring than any of his previous work—wiser but more innocent, weirder but more focused.

From the vulnerability in Berdan’s scream to the elegant (no, really) arrangements, American Standard is never corny or contrived. It’s the year’s most intimate, most savage feel-bad music.

On Amelia, Anderson resurrects this courageous woman and gives her breath, heart, and soul. It is impossible to hear this aerial ballet and walk away unaffected.

In their third decade, Melt-Banana have, indisputably, made their most insane record and, arguably, their masterpiece.

Though not every experiment lands—the ethereal “Sundowner” comes across like Slowdive-lite—Romance is thrilling in its willingness to subvert what you thought you knew about Fontaines D.C.

She keeps an eye on trends without succumbing to them. Add Quantum Baby to the winning streak.

Another Day isn’t quite as good as the best Fucked Up records; that bar is just a little too high. But it’s still a Fucked Up record.

You won’t hear much new on Vertigo, but what’s there is lovingly, potently rendered.

Dr. Dog can capture the irreverence and fun of their influences, but the Dylan-esque rambling and McCartney-indebted harmonies ultimately click too briefly, only inducing nostalgia for the moments when Dr. Dog shines.

Red Mile is thus far Crack Cloud’s ultimate rock odyssey—a combination of epic poem-leaning lyrics with spacious, anthemic compositions that recall everyone from Gary Numan and early ‘80s David Bowie to Broken Social Scene. .... A disarmingly earnest exercise in philosophizing, its dense meta-ness more outlined with every listen.

Em is largely in defense mode; it’s a self-consciousness that leans closer to stagnation than catharsis.

If Oneida are feeling hunted or hemmed in, they haven’t gone to ground: Expensive Air is, above all else, a barreling rush over the barricades and a frenzied, defiant dash toward whatever remains of freedom on the other side. Here it comes, indeed.

At its best, Big Ideas jostles with brilliant songcraft that signifies her rapid growth as an artist—if the essential aesthetic is little changed, the execution is often warmer, more mature and expansive.

For fans expecting Dirty Three to pick up safely where they left off in 2012, Love Changes Everything will likely shock. Rather than slide back into comfortable routine, the trio have distilled their past 12 years of sonic travels into something exciting and new.

Within the milieu of creative, atmospheric, tradition-defying music termed alternative jazz by default, this is important work.

Decades deep into a monumental career, you wouldn’t expect Redd Kross to hit a power-pop zenith. But they’ve done just that with their self-titled double album—all in their trademark flying colors.

While it offers clear highlights—“Run On,” “Holy Winter,” and “Time Goes By” feel like hallmark songs—its loud-quiet-loud pattern is predictable. This is well-trod territory for MONO, never reaching the emotional heights and cerebral intensity of Hymn to the Immortal Wind, the surprising instrumentation or disco-like drums of Pilgrimage of the Soul, or the more nuanced thematic play of the Dante-inspired Requiem for Hell.

The record maintains their signatures, with breaks and samples undergirding or woven through indie rock guitar figures and extremely regular-person vocals. Barlow has a bit more control over his vibe now, but he still sounds like the ultimate ‘90s indie guy, detached and overly intense at the same time; Davis like the eccentric bedroom genius who wandered in from the Shire.

Tems’ silky delivery reaches a deeper level of connectivity on Born in the Wild. .... Her biggest, boldest, and most earnest project to date.

From the blocky organ chunks that lead “I’m Angry” to the fuzzed-out almost-boogie of “Shark-Shark,” the diversity of POPtical Illusion teases its way out after subsequent listens.

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, feels more like a collage of sounds and styles than a coherent, considered statement.

“Mother and Son” plants its feet and doesn’t move. Much better is “Meek AF,” in which the electro-groove matches Grant’s growl.

The Dream of Delphi paints boldly at times, but the overall picture is uneven.

By record’s end, Garcia emerges in full command of this mercurial spirit world—a high priestess with a synth and a killer sixth sense.

Far from a diminishing return, Timeless is the sound of a master getting back into the groove and finding his muse burning bright as ever.

With Night Reign, Aftab makes an emotional and sonic pivot. Across nine vibrant, experimental compositions, she reclaims darkness, positioning the night as a time of mischief and enchantment.

Albini, drummer Todd Trainer, and bassist Bob Weston lock in together one last time—a wiry whirlwind of concision, all jokes and referents (including a wink to the late Mark E. Smith of the Fall) and honed dynamics on their leanest LP, at 28 minutes.

This is not groovy indie finery; there’s a rock-as-high-art vision at work here.

On Frog Boiling in Water, DIIV have once again shrewdly adapted, pivoting away from the chonky riffs of Deceiver and delivering the most tense, subtle, and cerebral music of their whole career.

With her remarkable voice—slippery, shadowy, haunted by the ghost of itself—and dolorous melodic sensibility, Gendron renders whatever she’s feeling (grief, awe, bittersweet joy) as a complex continuum. .... Utilizing a proper studio for the first time, with Dirty Three drummer Jim White and improvisational guitarist Marisa Anderson joining on several tracks, Gendron adds new layers of intuitive fluidity to her songs, while also carving out time just for herself and her fermented sorrow.

Some tracks accordingly veer toward the solipsistic—”Exodus” pushes the newfound Arthur Russell-meets-Tim Buckley vibe a little past the point of viability. But even at his most bleakly compressed, McMahon can still produce a striking melody.

Kings dial their usual bellow and wallow routine way down, while mustering just enough passion for the album’s occasional rock setpieces: “Hesitation Gen” and “Seen” are their most effective rippers in several albums.

Though she made Ten Fold in part to “flee [her] sadness,” the music feels buoyant, spotlighting the transformation that happens underneath life’s unbearable weight.

What’s important is how Ambarchi uses his transmogrified tones to both stretch and ground his group’s highly intuitive songs, lending grainy texture to transcendental zone-outs and twinkling, ultraviolet color to propulsive toe-tappers.

There are a few lulls in which the band seems to be capably but perfunctorily going through the motions. (Raspy cheerleader vocals; cheeky rhythms; chunky, anthemic guitars—we get it!) But they’re outnumbered by the more inspired stuff.

Pratt’s music remains gentle and beguiling, carefully crafted with graceful melodies, gauzy vibes, unshakeable patience, and the kind of intimate room-sound that makes you feel like the voice is coming from inside your head.

Funeral For Justice represents another step in decentralizing the public discourse from Western normative standards, hopefully allowing for a better understanding of others and ourselves.

He’s not shaking those defining qualities on Light Verse. Instead, that distinctive voice is a foundation for towering songs, an album that grows and blooms with epic crescendos (“Yellow Jacket”), slow-burn earworm hooks (“Anyone’s Game”), and tongue-in-cheek, Shakespearean clown wisdom (“Nobody’s perfect or as dumb as their luck”).

Ultimately, Fearless Movement bolsters Washington’s prowess as a jazz bandleader engaged in cultural and musical curation. Rather than transforming the actual language of composition or harmony or improvisation, he stacks his influences and relationships to form an ensemble sound that is monumental, and thoroughly his own. In or out of jazz, that means so much.

He does have a sharp facility for steely Bakersfield guitar licks and cinematic countrypolitan strings and clever honkytonk wordplay and so many other elements that defined country in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. But he never feels out of time on $10 Cowboy.

Hovvdy houses their most eclectic transitions and banger-certified pop songs.

With help from Squid producer Dan Carey, the band’s core trio (Donald Johnson, Jez Kerr, and Martin Moscrop) have generated a wealth of modern beats and future-shocked textures, all while remaining in touch with their trademark spongy grooves and sharp rhythmic corners.

Is Dark Matter that different from immediate predecessors Backspacer, Lightning Bolt, and Gigaton? Not really. But is it somehow Pearl Jammier, in an ineffable sense? Yep—in fact, it’s something special.

On this generous double album (with Lloyd on sax and flute, Jason Moran on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Brian Blade on drums), he draws on impressionism, post-bop glory, and gospel-soul. Passages sparkle lyrical here, spark with friction there, always marked by depth and humanity, inventive and engaging and always illuminating.

With her deft band, the New York-raised, New Orleans-based musician (on cello, banjo, and guitar) pairs music from her Haitian-American roots with threads of its Caribbean, Latin-American, and African family tree. .... It’s the most engaging, dynamic and, crucially, personal of her five solo albums.

Mount Kimbie are letting their songs smolder into life’s discontent. That uncomfortable tension is The Sunset Violent’s beauty.

Perceive is ethereal, sure, but it’s also multilayered and compelling, staving off New Age-ness with pensive beauty and trenchant spoken-word (Saul Williams, Elucid, Anum Iyapo).

With Don’t Forget Me, Rogers sounds fully confident abandoning the glossiness of her earliest work—she doesn’t need studio flourishes to bolster her transcendent songwriting.

It’s not only Vegyn’s curation of shifting instrumental sound, from jazzy and transcendental to glitchy and trip-hop symphonic, that showcases his dexterity. At the album’s centerfold, three tracks (“Everything Is the Same,” “The Path Less Traveled,” and “Makeshift Tourniquet”) repeat the album’s title in three different tones: one a scratchy, insidiously inhuman voice, the next a distant human echo that feels like a fading memory, and the last that’s closely spoken like a self-reminding mantra. Its meaning morphs and settles like a redemptive exhale and inhale.

The record plays with sonic extremes throughout, but VW stay comfortably in the preppy yet philosophical space they dominate—with the usual voice of God omnipresent in the chaos that is this record’s alpha and omega.

The relative quietude—there are still grooves aplenty—makes you lean in, sizing up elements of songcraft and musicianship that might’ve previously hid underneath the band’s dancy, psychedelic scrim. This serves Khruangbin well, since they make music to Santo & Johnny’s level of wistfulness, and they can play their asses off. The performances are so good, in fact, you sometimes want to divide them into stems.

Taking his cue from predecessors like Clinton, Wonder, and Prince—consummate artists who defied genre and charted their own musical course—Clark relishes in his boundless freedom. His virtuosity throughout is commendable and often quite impressive.

These songs never reach catharsis or resolution to their grand queries, but nonetheless find moments of joy in the process of seeking answers.

In shifting the lyrical focus away from one songwriter’s experience—exemplified by the previous hyper-emotional adrenaline rushes of “Drunk II” and “In Love Again”—some of the lovelorn charisma that made Mannequin Pussy so special has been lost. Nonetheless, the record’s disparate strands mostly hold together, a formidable document of their fire and fury—and one that’s needed more than ever.

WWW stretches Whack’s stylistic range, reintroducing an artist who seems more deeply in tune with her emotions.

Everything presents a harder-edged JT, who tries a little of everything over 77 minutes but adds remarkably little to the pop landscape.

While his desire to evoke the druggy euphoria of early U.K. club music has sometimes jostled against his ear for atmosphere (as on his contributions to the Shock Power of Love split with Blackdown), those two extremes are more fully integrated than ever on these two 13-minute tracks.

This is Lage’s statement, and as both player and composer he seamlessly connects Django Reinhardt to Joe Pass, Charlie Christian to Bill Frisell, all the way forging his own paths, his immense talents given voice by his joyously open spirit.

Webster’s commitment to alt-R&B-style repose, along with some keen sonic quirks, are just a couple of the ways the 26-year-old Atlantan contrasts the ’70s-era singer-songwriters she’s so often compared to. Still, the sheer musicality of what she does deserves boomers’ approval.

When Sheer Mag is on, they’re turned up to 11. Playing Favorites proves that joy can show up defiantly, wearing a sleeveless denim vest, and sometimes, a rollicking good time is the glue holding our hearts together.

Across nine tracks, singer/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger bounce effortlessly from fragile ballads to punk rippers to chamber-pop crescendos, somehow both fully in control and barely holding it together.

The surprise here is less that an album about emerging, stronger, from sorrow’s all-encompassing shroud somehow goes down like a goblet of spiked sunshine. The surprise lies more in how much more emotional power the guitarwork—fluid, generous, measured—brings to bear, how much weight it carries this time.

Stapleton is looser, bolder and surer of himself, a recipe making this his best project yet.

The album isn’t perfect. The pensive closer “Childhood” is too precious in its “where did the time go” wonderings. Lead single “Edging” is a mediocre punk number even Green Day might have left behind, and “When We Were Young” is undercooked and appears to battle its own time signature. But it’s still the band’s best work in 20 years, and rocket fuel for this new chapter and whatever follows.

A collection that is arguably a candidate for jazz album of the year: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)). Branch likely would argue that this is both punk and jazz — or neither.

It’s a bold step forward for the now 20-year-old Rodrigo—an incisive unraveling of the chaos and disappointment of young adulthood, dating and fame with a side of sizzling with zingers and rage. It’s her Melodrama.

Slowdive has outdone itself on its fifth full-length, Everything Is Alive, which elevates its pre-breakup work in ways that feel nearly unimaginable. Indeed, Slowdive in 2023 is capable of writing both the hands-down most affecting song of its career (“Andalucia Plays”) as well as its most in-your-face (“The Slab”), while also incorporating modular synths as foundational elements in its creative process for the first time (they’re the first notes you hear on opener “Shanty”).

With so many legacy-artist posthumous sets, it’s hard to avoid a certain level of brain mush. The final stretches often feel like pointlessly processed outtakes of alternate takes of fake takes of imaginary takes. It’s like extracurricular archaeology, and it’s often not very fun. But even when you’re working up a sweat with your shovel, Funky Nothingness rewards the strain.

Fans who pass this latest test of commitment will find another studied and resolute replica of one of Swift’s most compelling and formative albums.

It reads like a book, its impassioned lyricism underscored by reverb, pedal steel guitar, and pattering, stick-clacking drums. The sound builds on the musical spaciousness of Ultimate Success, reflecting the environs of the Tornillo, Tx., ranch at which it was recorded. Indeed, the new album’s title offers a straightforward glimpse into its subject matter.

Rancid doesn’t venture too far outside of its sonic comfort zone on Tomorrow Never Comes and 30 seconds into each song, it’s not difficult to guess their structure and how they’ll likely resolve. Rather than being a weakness, this is one of the album’s strengths.

Grohl (back on drums for the first time on a Foos record since 2005’s In Your Honor), bassist Nate Mendel, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee have imbued But Here We Are with new levels of depth, maturity, songcraft, and storytelling, ensuring it is far more than just an album about grief.

Injecting a familiar formula with a justified newfound seriousness, With a Hammer further cements Yaeji’s place as one of the most valuable producers active in electronic pop today.

A collaborative winner delightfully devoid of ego or pretense. Here, each voice works to create something greater than the sum of its parts, which is rare for supergroups.

Yes, there are a lot of elements put together here. The thing is, this is not about juxtaposition. It’s about synthesis and transformation.

Though a handful of tracks sparkle, Under Ocean Blvd is a chore to ingest across its regularly lulling 77 minutes. ... Yes, Del Rey sings beautifully and will rightfully be recognized as a veritable voice of her generation — both in technique and disillusion — but here the cool distance she’s maintained between herself and listeners feels more expansive than ever.

Her most adventurous album yet. ... On Mañana Será Bonito, the future looks bright for Colombia’s next pop queen.

The project is very human and certainly the band’s most dynamic effort to date. Never has Paramore left so much space in its productions or allowed Williams to sound so sparse in moments, like her tiny frame might finally shatter. Nor has the band ever played so deftly with sounds of comfort and alarm, like a clock radio slicing through the most blissful dream.

This is no mere studio project. The Smile are an actual, organic live band.

As the conviction of his verses grows throughout the album, so does the scope of its production. Building on the more upbeat instrumentals of last year’s Disco!, MIKE continues to expand his musical palette on production, adding dancehall, bossa nova and more to his signature slowed vocal loops. The result is some of his most uplifting songs yet.

Sail on Sailor – 1972 is a fascinating look behind the curtain at the end of the Beach Boys’ most fruitful creative period.

It’s an album of expertly crafted dark-pop confessions with flecks of glitter and aspiration — a purposefully fitful project mimicking her racing thoughts. The high-gloss pop production marks Midnights as a sullen sister to Lover, her honey-dipped 2019 effort, rather than a successor to 2020’s heartstrung Folklore and Evermore.

On Being Funny in a Foreign Language, the lyrics remain flippant. The instrumentals are gone. On the following 10 tracks, you can feel Antonoff taking over to guide the band’s more straightforward pop songs. ... It’s the 2022 Antonoff playlist it was crafted to be. It’ll make a lot of people happy. It sounds like it made the band happy too.