A brief, somber meditation on his health problems and on the stresses of supporting dozens of friends and family members.

Full Circle is like an afternoon on the front porch listening to Lynn tell you her life story, a trajectory with an impact that no single disc could ever fully sum up.

The album is full of catchy guitar rock anthems that recall their '90s alt-rock heyday but also showcases some of the maturity and experience they've gotten since then.

The Art of Hustle is about more than misleading filters, though: it’s a thorough testament to how and why Gotti has carried the banner for Memphis since 2005: “Law,” featuring E-40, is superbly ageless.

The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums--a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified.

With their fourth album Värähtelijä they’ve finally made a record that fully follows through on the paradoxical promise of their component parts.

Four years later, with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, he’s dropped the album that Kanye haters wanted Kanye to make.

The music itself sounds a little more factory-made than White may have intended.

It’s carefully and competently constructed, palatable but perilously short on whimsy.

These songs have strong, familiar features, but they build off of one another; every one of them is full of hyperactive, bats**t detail that makes it immediately attributable to this band alone.

She follows up 2007’s covers and remixes album Yes, I’m a Witch with another collection that’s just as strong and intriguing, mainly because of the smorgasbord of indie and electro-pop oddballs and A-lister names attached to it.

Where Marina’s appeal lies in her writing her emotions large through her music, Christine achieves something more challenging and arguably richer in gleefully obfuscating hers--making her as difficult to read in song as on her minimalist and tonally flat LP cover, but essentially inviting you to come and be puzzling with her.

For all the paradoxical production agendas in play, Mr. West’s guiding hand in constructing the album’s boldly going flow is everywhere in evidence. As glacially paced, mood-enhancing music, Pablo is a hypnotic slam-dunk.

The sound isn’t funereal, but exultant, the slashing and stoned pinnacle of everything the trio had built to over the course of their decade of existence.

Void beats enjoys advantages over lesser Stereolab releases like 2001’s Sound-Dust by offering a rockish danceability they never explored. But the Faustian bargain also ensures there’s no easy pop song like 1996’s “Cybele’s Reverie” or 2008’s “Self-Portrait With ‘Electric Brain’” to break up the largely instrumental bleep-sweep.

Principe doesn’t carve any revolutionary niches on or off the dance floor so much as it patiently, oh so patiently, chips away at Thomas’ own reputation as a space-disco purveyor

The more down-the-middle SVIIB shows that these postscripts aren’t always special, but we’re grateful for the closing chapter nonetheless.

Though they might always hit the sweet spots of DJDS’ first album, Stand Up and Speak’s comprehensive offerings--more substantial in structure and content than your average EDM--nod to the gilded early days of dance music across the country.

Ultimate Care II is reliably dream-like, the sort of album you never quite hear in the same way twice; passages jut out or fly under the radar.

Confident, intimate, and weirdly glammy, Life of Pause is worth taking five for.

Animal Collective’s latest sees them painting with confidence, acrylics, dinosaurs, Bob Ross, a twist, and a wipe out.

Even haters will have to acknowledge Opus as being undeniable for what it is, an iconic collection of 21st-century house music that’s so expansive and far-reaching it outgrows its very genre, unable to be contained within any four-walled enclosure.

Wiz has a decent feel for hooks and occasionally does some interesting things with melody. But it’s simply not enough to retain interest.

Pinegrove could have ridden a self-assured record like this to widespread indie acclaim. Instead, it feels like an act of generosity, a record lovingly crafted and intimately written, full of sounds, observations, and emotional realizations that you didn’t know you wanted in 2016, but, in fact, needed desperately.

We Are KING’s quiet moments have more churn than most bands’ fast ones.

EVOL, along with the Purple Reign mixtape, doesn’t provide that instant hit that Future’s world-class 2015 was so full of. Instead it crawls into your brain and makes itself at home; you’ll find yourself going back to it over and over without even realizing.

Big Black Coat works best when the music is as committed to frenzied, all-consuming libidinousness as the lyrics, and on those grounds, it’s a surprisingly successful reinvention for the duo: one that feels more in line than recent efforts with the strengths (if not the tones) of their earliest material.

I’m Up is not a major work in Thug’s catalog. It’s brief and feels disconnected at the beginning and end, and for the most part doesn’t exercise his considerable chorus-crafting muscles. But it’s a fascinating creative time capsule, and feels like a welcome detour during a hugely prolific four-year period.