The album is relatively streamlined and sleek, containing no guest appearances and showing no overt attempts at chasing trends.

A more playful, song-oriented set, if one where the lighter tone proves to be more than a little ironic.

Compassion is a hefty companion to Uneasy. Musically, it's deeper and wider. Their mature group invention is heightened by their playing together live. They bring a fresh, intensely interactive, seemingly time-elasticizing approach to the jazz piano trio that is at once bracingly kinetic, intimate, and lyrical.

More than just a bright spot in their career, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a beacon of romantic punk defiance.

It all works well together sonically and conceptually, resulting in an album that is Itasca's most cohesive and mystical yet -- and that's saying something.

"Dig a Hole" has a big, funky swagger, "Be So Lucky" rides its chunky tremolo riff into the sunset, and "Other Side of the Light" is a sunkissed open-road anthem worthy of the Marshall Tucker Band. These tunes provide Be Right Here with a solid foundation to endure multiple plays, but it's immediately appealing upon first spin thanks to that burnished Cobb production.

The result is indie rock, and Omni, at their 100% best and most exhilarating.

If one is looking for the more adventurous and off-kilter band of their earlier days, steer clear. If it’s introspective, somewhat epic country rock balladry one desires, then Blu Wav might be just the thing. It's certainly the band's most focused record to date and if that seems a little unexciting, the emotional payoff will make it worthwhile in the end.

This isn't an acoustic album: it's a lean, nervy rock album that uses its mess and its contradictions to its own advantage.

The individual tracks matter less than the collective experience. Isolated songs may hint at Howard expanded emotional and musical pallette, but What Now is a proper album, where each segment expands and interlocks, providing a whole that's greater than its separate parts.

Despite its thorny history, this is an exhilarating portrait of the band's shift from their no wave beginnings to the more complex and melodic style that defined their later work.

Personal but still very fun, Venus is a bold but totally sensical evolution in sound that avoids a third LP of the same old songs and pushes Larsson's sonic style into the future.

Among the many earnest earworms here (the cringier "KFM" notwithstanding) are songs like "God Person" ("I'm not a god person/But I'm never not searchin'") and "Don't Do Me Good," an early single featuring her friend Kacey Musgraves. Mournful but defiant, the latter song makes catchy country-rock of tough sentiments.

Floating between the interior world and the external one with ephemeral ease, PHASOR is a pleasure to experience -- and another fine example of Lange's receptive, responsive artistry.

Hopeful in a deeply honest way, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She chronicles an evolution that brings out the best, most adventurous aspects of Wolfe's music.

After a few more adequate songs without sonic or lyrical linearity -- a tender collaboration with simpatico Afrobeats producer/singer Pheelz stands out most -- the album hits its stride with a sequence of slow jams demonstrating that Usher is at the top of his game as a singer, still much more than a mere entertainer.

Ducks Ltd. come fully into their own with a combination of heightened production values, arrangements that lean into discrete synthesizers and vocal layers, and sneakily depressive lyrics hidden in songs overflowing with brisk pop charm.

While not all of Magic 2 is this strong, there are several moments like this one ["One Mic, One Gun"] that can contend with the best of the King's Disease material.

Magic 3 sits alongside King's Disease III and Magic at the apex of this legendary run. This is hip-hop history, indeed.

Robby Krieger & The Soul Savages is hip, relaxed, and confident. The quartet sounds like they're having an exceptionally good time and that translates to aural gold for the listener.

Alternately affectionate, suspenseful, weird, and poignant, TPTGATKOMDM is a journey, but it's brought to you by straight-up good songs.

While Everybody Can't Go won't surprise anyone who has been following Benny, it does live up to his standards, and confirms his status as a major player in the rap industry.

King Perry doesn't rank among the pioneering artist's classics, but it's an enjoyable late-period effort that reminds listeners of his adventurous spirit and inimitable character.

Vera Sola's blurring of past and present sounds especially apt to the early 2020s here, but more often, Peacemaker's dreamlike world has a timeless appeal that fans of Calexico, Timber Timbre, and Marissa Nadler will love.

These songs are ten of his better solo offerings, and they further refine his particular brand of hazy, half-awake beauty.

The main directive of the album is paisley jangle, as with standout tracks like the enthusiastically poppy "Gone" or the fiendishly catchy "Goodbye," but the Umbrellas stretch their sound in all directions as Fairweather Friend plays out, calling on various corners of indie pop history yet translating it all into their own songwriting language.

Along the way, despite some familiar musical touchpoints, she establishes a personality that's all her own.

On his third studio album American Dream, rap superstar 21 Savage delivers a set of the kind of stone-faced trap he's known for glossed over with another layer of big-budget production to keep him in the charts.