At times “Mothership” can get a little wearying. Part of that comes from the grab-you-by-the-shoulders urgency of the paired vocalists, who can be a bit much even once you’ve bought into their good-guy bad-guy conceit.

While those [early] songs lay the base for Springsteen’s eventual legend, the other tracks whip through his catalog quickly and almost too efficiently.

Shape Shift With Me is a sharply penned love letter both to the idea of romance and the people who engage in it, brimming with deep yet concisely expressed emotions that can only be worked out through top-of-the-lungs bellowing.

A world-weary yet ultimately optimistic statement about the power people may not even know they possess.

It’s a roller coaster, to be sure, but it’s one that Olsen controls with a steady hand even as she sings for her life.

Zedek’s voice, neither conventional nor wholly tamed, serves her ends potently, its warp and grain enhancing unvarnished solidity.

A pop album that operates on its own terms, partly thanks to the way the white-hot notoriety of the star at its center allowed her to, after all these years, rule her own pop fiefdom.

Time might have pushed along, but it was obvious how much Ocean’s rich, detailed, and urgent storytelling had been missed once it was here again.

There’s plenty here--the sinuous “Drunk Like You,” anthemic “Graffiti,” sly “Ship Faced,” and crunchy “Peace Love & Dixie”--to prove the Cadillac Three’s figurative truck has plenty of gas in the tank, its dog still hunts.

Loveless continues to manifest a remarkable combination of bruised vulnerability and desperate longing, alongside a tough, self-deprecating resilience, but there’s more of the former and less of the latter this time.

Young the Giant’s finely tuned ear for pop is on grand display here, and frontman Sameer Gadhia excels at playing ringmaster, testing the edges of his vocal range while spinning yarns with brio.

Heart devotees should appreciate these new updates on their classic sound.

There’s less party and more perspective. He sees the troubles he went through before prison for what they are.

What results is an album to live with, and to live inside: engrossing and necessary.

The net result is an assured and engaging country music debut.

An out of the ordinary offering, the disc proves Beck still hasn’t stopped growing.

Much of Somewhere sounds remarkably consistent, even organic. Tyler, who co-wrote all of the album’s strongest material, proves a solid storyteller with a gift for melody.

Even at its moodiest, this is a deliriously inventive and often whimsical dance record.

His deeply felt meditations on matters of the heart and the soul are matched by the meticulously detailed, gorgeously rendered music that surrounds them.

While her sonic template, modern and spare yet lush, works wonders for “Don’t Go,” it’s otherwise isolated moments — the discordant saxophone blats pulling her toward St. Vincent in the danceable and lopsided “Waste”; the chewy synth bassline of “Crazy [Expletive]”; and the line “When you left me, I was ready for you to leave” in “Walls”--that suggest an excitement the songs can’t quite sustain.

This is soul music with personality and real instruments; best of all, it’s unflinchingly honest.

The Mountain Will Fall utilizes a wealth of live performances and ingenious programming to create an album that’s funky, futuristic, and thrilling for new fans and old heads alike.

The earworm riff of java paean “Kafe Mania!”; the huffy boom-bap funk of “Life Is Suffering”; the TV-metal urgency of “Learning to Apologize Effectively,” urgent synths nicked from Bon Jovi; the claustrophobic electropop revamp of “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”; the power-pop jangle of “Plastic Thrills”--it’s all irresistible.

[An] unapologetically polished album, which reframes their music without sapping their identity.

This fourth release from the Texas native is in a singer-songwriter mode; four songs feature just Jarosz and acoustic guitar, while others are tautly arranged progressive-folk gems with backup from guitarists Luke Reynolds (Guster) and Jedd Hughes (Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell).

Her songs have the sophistication and idiosyncracy of a singular talent. At times (“Show Me Love”) the ethereal arranging meanders, but mostly (“Bread,” “Kiss My Feet,” “Angel”) it has the authority of a signature.

The album is simultaneously beautiful and shocking, its razor-sharp originality infinitely relatable.

Here, it’s less about what Y.G. does than how he does it; digging deeper into vintage G-funk flavors with a blend of personal, party, and political tracks, the young Compton rapper takes a sizzling step forward.