Musgraves hits one high note after another on Golden Hour; her talent as a songwriter and melody-maker is second to none, and each song is thoughtful, well-formed, and a delightful experience on its own. Together, the tracks on Golden Hour add up to an honest, cohesive musical experience that will linger in your mind and heart long after the final notes have faded.

Remastered by Page himself, this is the best digital version of Physical Graffiti available and the definitive way to hear the album if you don’t own a turntable.

Embury took this record as an opportunity to redefine what the band’s sound can successfully encompass. Together with Greenway’s thought-provoking lyrics, Embury delivered a set of songs so good that they made the band’s recent victories seem conservative in retrospect. Even the bonus tracks course with vitality. In 2020, Napalm Death remain — to quote one their series of cover albums — leaders not followers.

Slowdive delivers nearly everything their fans desire in a return: familiarity, innovation, and vast atmospheres to get lost in.

Despite the fact that Stranger in the Alps ends with stories of prisoners, murderers, and arsonists, it’s a gentle, wistful, even mournful record that makes for an outstanding coming-out party for Bridgers and a haunting experience for the listener, with melodies and sentiments that linger, softly and poignantly, long after the music ends.

Gojira have delivered a brisk, eminently listenable record that expands on their melodic sensibilities without abandoning their experimental tendencies, environmentalist policies, and emotional potency.

This is music inspired by what you remember hearing as a kid from your parents’ and grandparents’ record collections, but it’s been made fresh and totally original again.

Fans hoping for a repeat of the accessibility and groove of the self-titled album or the spasticity and rawness of earlier albums might be disappointed, but You Won’t Get What You Want is a brave and excellent addition to Daughters’ discography.

Every track hits, and this album will certainly leave people clamoring for more.

As a lot of Lady Gaga’s work has done in the past, it offers up some honest-to-God bangers side by side with some honest-to-oneself reckonings with trauma, pain, addiction, and the very idea of what it means to be flawed and how this idea shifts depending on who’s defining it.

Its audacity and stylistic shifts may have resulted in an album that’s not quite as much like coming home as Sunbather, but it shows a genuine and fascinating maturation in a band that deserves to remain in the spotlight for all the right reasons.

The pleasure of Room 25 is in hearing a master wordsmith turn words into feelings so that the feelings linger long after the words have stopped.

There’s something to be said for the potential for personal growth inherent in traveling without a destination, and every song here is the sound of Julie Byrne making peace with her restlessness.

The complexity of Run the Jewels 4 is its strongest asset. Killer Mike and El-P, just like their listeners, are still trying to navigate nefarious ideologies while remaining steadfast in their desire to destroy them. Their latest work is a political manifesto that antagonizes a system that never had the marginalized and vulnerable in mind. Though it comes several albums into their discography, RTJ4, with its empowering proclamations, buoyant production, and ferocious soundscapes, feels like just the beginning of something even greater.

His time alongside Gesaffelstein added to his understanding of the space between beats, and the emotive power of these hesitations.

The record is purposefully compact, genre-blending, unifying, reaffirming, devoid of corniness, with just two well-selected features that heighten but do not overshadow her performance. If other artists are clever, they’ll take note: Lizzo has just set the standard for how to make a perfect pop record.

De Augustine is the perfect match for Sufjan’s gentle vocal style — the two have very similar voices, to the point that sometimes it’s almost hard to differentiate them, but the similarity works in the album’s favor and lends each duet a feeling of tenderness and proximity.

Though the album came out of the same sessions as last year’s looser, wilder, and intentionally irreverent Star Wars, there’s now a deliberate quietness and gentleness to the core instrumentation.

Rat Saw God is the type of kaleidoscopic album that offers up something new to appreciate with each listen. It’s a record worth hearing, recommending, and obsessing over – Google search results be damned.

Saint Cloud offers us the best possible version of Crutchfield she could possibly give us. The record is made by someone who was always whispering, finally having the confidence and courage to speak up and sing unrestrained. It demands to be listened to.

It’s groovy and funky and sultry, and it takes things seriously while still being joyful. It encourages freedom of form, in the sense of both body and art. It’s the perfect second album for Christine and the Queens.

The Ascension is one of Sufjan Stevens’ grandest, most ambitious works yet.

By closing the door on the philosophies and musical approaches he used to take, Tyler discovers an open window, leading him to new, peaceful strength and mastery of his craft.

An explosive expression of unity in the face of strife and an exuberant expression of hope. ... But beneath the pomp and circumstance, Welch is traditionally known for, Dance Fever is a deeper look at a woman who unapologetically bares it all.

To Be Kind does as much soul exposure lyrically as it does musically, Gira’s simple, howled lines finding the vein incredibly easily.

The artists for whom Clark now carries the torch were never satisfied with their past accomplishments and were always pushing forward. MASSEDUCTION cements her in this camp.

With Jaime, Howard proves what many of us already speculated: The magic behind Alabama Shakes was Brittany Howard.

Currents is all about the wide lens. It’s not the landscape worth falling in love with, but the way Parker gives us a tour. Let it happen, and it will carry you off somewhere much further away than you realized was worth visiting.