It’s a warm, appealingly ragged collection suffused with wisdom and reassurance.

It’s a short record, clocking in at just over 20 minutes, but the Long Beach linguist crams in a lot of syllables and welcomes into the mix compadres including Earl Sweatshirt, Ty Dolla Sign and San Francisco legend E-40. Though he presents the material playfully, Staples has more on his mind than hot fun.

Certainly, there is no small number of Dylan completists who will lap up every shred of tape he ever used. But there emerges a feeling of diminishing returns for anyone not cursed with OCD--obsessive-compulsive-Dylanism--during a stretch on the second disc with nine consecutive versions of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” Likewise the eight takes of “Buckets of Rain” on the fourth disc that are interrupted just long enough for a pair of performances of “Up to Me.”

It veers wildly among mechanized garage rock, ’80s-era soft pop, atmospheric dance music and lush acoustic balladry; one song strongly recalls Justin Bieber’s “Sorry,” while another looks back to the Great American Songbook. ... Excellent, often thrilling album.

Musically, Sweatshirt couples the words with rhythmically skewed, sampled loops of vintage soul artists including singer Linda Clifford, funk band the Endeavors and Stax Records group the Soul Children. Unlike the boom-bap producers who did the same in the ’90s, though, Sweatshirt busts the bars into cubist, Earl-descending-a-staircase increments.

What arrives is an accomplished roots-music album that serves as a reminder of the band’s legacy.

Mixing warm, New Age-suggestive electronic tones with conversational, heart-to-heart lyrics meant to stick on first listen, her work floats through space with a glistening, emotionally rich shimmer.

That none of this comes off as preachy or simply lame is a testament to both singers’ astute record-making skills. Though the streaming age requires pop stars to be fluent in multiple genres, Pink and Lizzo are expert in more than most.

That none of this comes off as preachy or simply lame is a testament to both singers’ astute record-making skills. Though the streaming age requires pop stars to be fluent in multiple genres, Pink and Lizzo are expert in more than most.

His sixth album is a left turn away from his menacing, comic-book-villain rap persona and toward his indie-curious, experimental, Stereolab-citing self. He mixes noodly, ’80s-sounding synth beats (“What’s Good”) with funky boom-bap (“Running Out of Time”), and draws on quiet-storm R&B (“Puppet”) and hallucinatory beat music (“Gone Gone/Thank You”). Crucially, Tyler’s aesthetic connects the work across disciplines.

The EP has a daffy energy that reminds you why it was fun to pay attention to Cyrus in the first place.

The singer dials down his boisterous rock ’n’ roll attack in pretty, midtempo songs lush with the type of string-and-horn arrangements that once kept session players busy in recording studios up and down Sunset Boulevard. ... What lifts this album above the other is the shapeliness of Springsteen’s tunes, catchier than they’ve been in years, and the vivid images in his lyrics.

These songs, simply put, are great: vivid, funny, full of feeling and supremely catchy, even if they don’t quite offer a clear picture of who Lil Nas X is offstage or off-screen.

Silly mortals. This is Madlib, lord of the freaky loop, who in collaboration with Gibbs across this album proves he can sketch out a classic rhythm with the minimalist precision of Picasso drawing a butt. For his part, Gibbs is an unapologetic street rapper who cusses his way through verses with glee, tossing f-bombs as he relays couplets.

Like the late Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis’ only solo album, Spirit offers lessons in musical restraint and ways in which whispers can sometimes overwhelm even the loudest howls.

Birgy harnesses her voice, a breathy, elastic instrument that she flexes in myriad ways, in service of songs in which no two measures are alike. Like Joni Mitchell, Caetano Veloso or Tim Buckley, she phrases her lines with the ear of an actor, conveying emotional info and drama with each oblong couplet.

The songs are sleek and propulsive, with glistening melodic hooks that make even macho boasts feel sensual.

For all the natural force of her singing — best displayed here in “Otherside,” a stripped-down piano ballad, and the grand Oscar-bait closer, “Spirit” — Beyoncé puts more thought into her records than anybody else in music, and what’s on her mind now isn’t just where all these sounds came from but how useful they remain.

The singer, born Claire Cottrill, delivers on that early promise on Immunity, which widens her sound without sacrificing the intimacy or the charm of “Pretty Girl.”

Very impressive.

The gratifying thing about this album — beyond its gorgeous melodies and Del Rey’s singing, which has never been more vivid — is that even as she’s mellowed her attack, her sense of humor has grown more pointed.

Unlike “Stoney” and “Beerbongs & Bentleys,” this album feels composed of discrete stylistic exercises; no longer is he boiling down rap and rock and a little bit of country into a kind of smearable paste.

The 12 songs on “Memory” reveal musicians who have grown both as artists and technicians, even if their approach is as impatient as ever. ... They’ve dug deeper into their decade-long aesthetic, adding a more accomplished sound below while piling mounds of feathery stuff up top.

A dozen fully formed analog dance tracks into 45 minutes of synth-driven cruising music. ... On “Touch Red,” a distant beat and a few well-chosen keyboard chords offer a monochromatic background onto which Radelet sings, “Touch red, the world needs color.” The shock of luminosity is jarring. Like a rose blossoming in a field blackened by wildfire, it’s one of many moments on the record that capture in equal measure both beauty and bleakness.

As with the free-jazz innovators of the 1960s, Sweatshirt continually pushes against the notion that rap music requires any formulas at all.

There’s also an infectious spirit of adventure to the album’s arrangements that brings you over to Gomez’s side.

As on her earlier records, Halsey can feel like something of a phantom on “Manic,” even when her writing is as vivid as it is in “Graveyard,” which deploys an appealingly creepy metaphor about following a lover way too deep. But her singing, with its pleading tone and its slightly raspy edges, is growing more expressive.

The album is also a fantastic summary of BTS’ accomplishments so far, and charts a path forward in a tumultuous but exciting new era for K-pop. It’s an album about being in a band, about the relationships that form and get tested in the crucible of insane fame, all set to some of the most genre-invigorating music of their career.

There’s something oddly reassuring about these songs — not just “12.38,” a laidback R&B slow jam about a drug-addled sexual encounter, or the sweetly romantic “24.19,” but all 12 of them, even those in which Glover sounds close to overwhelmed by his many misgivings.

The nostalgia in the production — a blend of crisp digital synth textures and ringing grooves drawn directly from '90s house music — further bolsters the shadowed euphoria of a song like "Sour Candy," in which Gaga is joined by the K-pop girl group Blackpink; "Sine from Above," featuring Elton John, gets a similar friction from the interplay between their voices.

The result is hardly dry or academic: The palpable anger coursing through tracks like “Yankee and the Brave” and “JU$T” — the latter featuring Pharrell Williams and Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha — feels as cleansing as an acid bath. And fury isn’t the only sensation the group articulates on its most emotionally complex album so far.

“Gaslighter” turns out to be the Chicks’ most intensely personal effort yet, with song after song apparently inspired by Maines’ 2019 divorce.

There are tunes here, including “Ghosts” and “Burnin’ Train,” that feel more spirited than anything Springsteen has done in years, with a touch of the careening intensity that made him and E Street a legendary live act. ... The tunes on “Letter to You” get over thanks to the E Street Band, which drives the songs with purpose and provides a level of detail in the arrangements that keeps anything from getting too mopey.

For someone so skilled at using social media to cultivate fans’ interest in her personal life, it’s striking — and more than a little moving — to hear her dreaming of seclusion. ... Though Grande’s subject matter shifts after “Shut Up,” the song’s Disney-like strings carry through the rest of “Positions,” which is brighter and sprightlier than the comparatively bleary “Thank U, Next.” ... Prudes can take comfort in the fact that Grande’s sexual liberation hasn’t come at the expense of her winningly earnest theater-kid eccentricities.

A tidy eight tracks defined by restraint and intention. ... The back half of the record parts the clouds for some of the band’s more refined, savvy and uplifting pop yet.

The referents are hipper than with previous Disney stars looking to break out of the Mouse House, and the language is coarser with F-bombs dropping every few tunes. There’s nothing offhand about these songs, though; each has been worked to a kind of exquisitely scuffed polish that suits the album’s hall-of-mirrors vibe.

“Exodus” has a distinctly grown-up quality, with thoughts of nostalgia and fatherhood. ... DMX sounds remarkably driven on “Exodus” — a man with life, not death, heavy on his mind.

Gripping. ... The evolution on display on “Call Me If You Get Lost” is more elemental; he’s rethinking what kinds of stories he wants to use his music to tell and how much of himself his success obliges him to reveal.

From its picture-perfect album cover on down, though, “Sob Rock” — Mayer’s eighth studio LP and his follow-up to 2017’s “The Search for Everything” — is so crisply rendered that it achieves an almost art-project-like quality that transcends those emotional and commercial circumstances.

“Your Power” is the slowest-and-lowest moment on “Happier Than Ever,” but as a whole the album is softer, quieter, more languid than Eilish’s trap-inflected debut. ... The dreamy-jazzy mode suits her singing, which has never sounded better than it does throughout “Happier Than Ever.”

With 21 tracks over 86 minutes somehow still feels tight next to the interminable “Donda” — is an enjoyment even at its bleakest. ... Even minus this get-out-of-jail-free stuff, “Certified Lover Boy” is so sharply composed and performed as to be largely irresistible.

Exquisitely rendered tunes lush with echoes of Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode. ... The songs boogie and shimmer just so; the melodies ache with longing and regret. And these vocals! Over forget-me-not grooves as finely detailed as any Mtume or Patrice Rushen fan could want, the Weeknd sings more beautifully than he ever has on “Dawn FM.” ... The year’s first great album.

His lyrical approach has actually grown more idiosyncratic. It could be hard to glean much of a sense of Styles’ inner life from his early stuff, but these songs are rich with vivid and intimate details.

The desperation with which he details his inability to healthily navigate being a famous person — the amazing lack of vanity in his language — sets him apart from pop’s other rich-and-sad types. ... Malone’s melodies are maybe a bit less sticky than on “Hollywood’s Bleeding,” though hooks still abound, as do snappy guest spots from Roddy Ricch, Gunna and the Weeknd.

Her singing is vivid enough on “Endless Summer Vacation” to make up for some mushy songwriting here and there.

The songs blend the same ingredients the Stones have been using since the beginning — blues, rock, soul, country, gospel — but they’re tighter and punchier than on any of the band’s previous late-era LPs. Catchier too.

The LP turns out to be something of a heel turn; it’s got a proudly villainous energy as Swift embraces her messiest and most chaotic tendencies. .... All this lore — it’s a lot. Yet “The Tortured Poets Department” also showcases Swift’s gifts as a songwriter, musician and producer. Her melodies are sticky and her arrangements grabby; working in the studio with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, she’s honed an electro-acoustic style that’s instantly identifiable.

Trampin'... is not a flashy album, and sometimes what's meant to be stately is sluggish instead. But though the revolutionary jolt of her early work is in abeyance, her fire still burns.

The lyric invention of past Cure albums is missing, but the pop transcendence emerges in fits.

The arrangements are sometimes overblown, but the sentiments, many of them gently philosophical looks at the passage of time, radiate with the captivating warmth and universality that is at the heart of John and Taupin's most memorable works. [14 Nov 2004]

At times there's an almost U2-like expansiveness in lushly atmospheric settings ("Night Drive"), while "Pain" and the closing "23" have a classic power-ballad feel, without pandering to mainstream tastes. [31 Oct 2004]

At 60 minutes, however, the album runs at least three songs too long, spoiling the tension and spirit with material that is plain gushy and, still, lame.

On occasion the band feels as if it's slipping into cruise control, but the musical scenery is so gorgeous you really don't mind going along for the ride. [5 Dec 2004]

At times sprawling and eccentric enough to have her schooling a fictional audience on the flute-accented "Woo," this melding of old-school funk, jazzy instrumentation and dancey bleeps nevertheless flows well.

To Jordan and Kirkland's credit, they let their guest stars shine without sacrificing the Crystal Method sound. [18 Jan 2004]

These songs are accented by the X-ecutioners' deft scratching and energetic beats, resulting in a regularly exciting and inventive album.

It's very moving -- just moving very slowly. [18 Jan 2004]

Here she returns to the stark, acoustic feel of earlier recordings, and the sense of isolation in such numbers as "Swim" is reinforced by her creative approach. [18 Jan 2004]

She isn't exploring new emotional ground, but her personal delivery and self-deprecating tone still go a long way.

Frenetic, wondrous and all over the map, the album sometimes demonstrates an excessive fondness for vocal distortion. But as a whole, "The Printz" is aural collage at its finest.

Chesney doesn't go in much for lyrical subtlety or artfulness but sticks to a heart-on-sleeve directness that makes his a characteristically American voice.

Sounds too clean and constrained.

Even if some tracks unfold more like political manifestos than songs, Bad Religion has succeeded in expressing its outrage more eloquently while sustaining its musical muscle over the years. [6 Jun 2004]

Even when the emotions don't run especially deep, Jackson always sounds as though he means every word and gives those words his utmost respect. [5 Sep 2004]

Each collection somewhat sticks to its goal, but each has songs that could have easily fit on either release. [26 Sep 2004]

In contrast to the raw, subdued intimacy of Hole's "Live Though This," the sound here is all dressed up and accessorized, hard and aggressive but tuneful and hook-laden.

Harvey generally toils in the realm of cathartic release, but Faithfull mingles in her cabaret/chanteuse qualities to create a subdued tension. [23 Jan 2005]

At times, Cee-Lo does show the value of holding on to some of his rap. But he is more distinctive and effective as a singer, which makes part of this long, 65-minute CD feel like wasted time.

In these moments of reflection, Nelly emerges as a serious songwriter who moves the mind as effectively as he does the body. [26 Sep 2004]

The subject matter eventually becomes a bit emotionally monochromatic, despite the broader sonic palette and the duo's fresh approach to mining such ancient territory. [3 Oct 2004]

More consistent and satisfying than its predecessor. [14 Nov 2004]

While the energy never fails, the themes and melodies feel commonplace at times. [18 Jul 2004]

As this standout collection of songs shows, with its astounding lyrical acumen and stellar beats, De La Soul surely ranks among the best rap groups of all time. [24 Oct 2004]

Ludacris includes thoughtful rhymes on "Child of the Night" and "Hopeless," but his humor is still his biggest asset and the reason he commands respect. [15 Dec 2004]

A little heavy on the lugubrious ballads, but it's all Morrissey all the time. [16 May 2004, p.E40]

West does tend to overextend his songs.... But it's a forgiveable sin for a man whose music and message is so powerful. [12 Feb 2004, p.E16]

The album has a familiar shortcoming: Once again, Eminem is guilty of not knowing when to stop in the studio. [8 Nov 2004]

It sure sounds good. [21 Nov 2004]

There is undeniable sweep to these 13 understated tracks, a modern psychedelic current that is lush, ominous and lovely. [22 May 2005]

This CD is easy to enjoy because it's a triumph of production and persona over performance. [23 Jan 2005]

A joyride of an album that's as fun as it is familiar. [2 Mar 2005, p.E2]

It's also a nice change of pace that the Chiefs avoid the '80s post-punk clichés so much in fashion with their peers, though you have to wonder about the instincts of a band that leads off with its most gimmicky and least involving songs and buries its best toward the end. [10 Apr 2005]

"Silent Alarm" sometimes lapses into facelessness, but at its best it combines dynamic record-making and underlying passion with a rare focus. [10 Apr 2005]

Her walk down the dark side of life and love is often heartbreakingly upfront. [10 Apr 2005]

"Out of Exile" is mostly grand and aggressive, riding the old-fashioned appeal of pipes and chops. [5 Jun 2005]

A refreshingly honest outing that still maintains a high fun factor. [15 May 2005]

Dylan's images are sharper than ever and his vision more focused. [22 May 2005]

It's entirely contrary to conventional CD construction and all the more appealing for being so. [2 Oct 2005]

There's a moment or two of alarm and urgency, but less of the rage that colored the Pumpkins' music. In its place, Corgan summons a liturgical grandeur that makes this an almost religious embrace. [19 Jun 2005]

Their... most ambitious album. [10 Jul 2005]

A love song to American blues, gospel, country dirges and classic songwriting, rife with harmonica, soulful harmonies and dark lyrical themes anchored in notions of loss and redemption. [14 Aug 2005]

A sad and touching meditation on death and distance, handled with a light melodic touch. [28 Aug 2005]

Clapton's vocals here extend the feeling of renewed energy and direction he revealed on the Robert Johnson album, exhibiting gospel fervor and silky soulfulness throughout. [4 Sep 2005]

Banhart's pleas for peace and harmony have a guileless charm, and in "When They Come" they assume an epic urgency. But his whimsy is often slight and indulgent. [9 Oct 2005]

This is the intimate McCartney in the vein of his 1970 solo debut or "London Town," and the comfort allowed him to be as unguarded as he's ever been. [4 Sep 2005]

Part sex fiend, part revolutionary and part party-starter, David Banner certifies himself a rap powerhouse with "Certified." [20 Sep 2005]

An ingeniously clever album. [13 Nov 2005]

The problems in this 72-minute package come chiefly when the exquisite singer-songwriter moves to what you'd think would be the creative heart of the album: material that isn't on her earlier CDs. [9 Oct 2005]