Aly & AJ are releasing career-defining music (and have been for the past six years), and With Love From might top a touch of the beat as their best album to date.

Say What You Like delivers more of the same qualities that made Paisley your Riding A Bike Friend.

Like any artist following up a successful record, 10000 gecs was always going to suffer from great expectations. While it keeps the duo’s cocky, chaotic spirit at its core, the material never feels like a step forward, nor does it ever capture the magic of their debut.

V is a fun, water-glistening record that waves hi to the palm trees and lies down to take a sun-nap with the sleepy sand dunes. Neilson’s reclamation of his identity in the context of space, sound and story is executed beautifully and is heard with authenticity and keenness.

Though the album contains some of the most straightforward rock songs of Bowie’s career so far, their search for a savior still scales to grandiose heights.

Oddly enough, it’s in the moments where the duo get separated—or neither appears at all—that we get to hear just how fruitful their creative bond actually was. ... There’s no denying the effort that went into this material, and the elegant presentation of this box matches the music’s tone and character perfectly.

What makes Radical Romantics, like the best of Dreijer’s work, a cut above merely great pop is its subversive streak.

To give oneself over to the world of colorful unpredictability is easier said than done, but it makes for a rewarding experience that leaves one grinning ear to ear.

The opening half of Food for Worms is split between exhausting punk ragers and introspective indie-rock numbers. ... With Food for Worms, Shame does manage to reach new heights on the closer, a winding, Glastonbury-sized anthem entitled “All the People.”

That Lucero often focuses on guys like that [screw-ups] doesn’t diminish the power of those songs, but it makes it harder for any one of them to stand out when there are so many solid options. On the other hand, the fact that Lucero has made it 25 years singing about bad luck and worse choices is, in its own counterintuitive way, something worth celebrating.

That’s what makes the sonic pivot on All Fiction feel so special; the band changed because they wanted to, not because they had to.

Its arrangements are intricate and densely layered so that every song reveals itself to you more and more upon revisiting.

Here, they sound self-assured and steady, like a group that understands what they have and makes the most of it.

Paul centers the intricacies of home/coming across 12 pristine tracks, each pushing post-rock to its most beautiful extreme.

This Stupid World, the Hoboken trio’s first proper full-length in five years (not counting the ambient lockdown quickie We Have Amnesia Sometimes), is very good indeed, a dreamy and reflective song cycle that welcomes us into Yo La Tengo’s private world while leaving ample mysteries unexplained and secrets untold.

The artist’s stories work as not-quite-parables, with no message tumbling through and pushing everything along, but certainly asking the listener to spend time with whatever part of themselves they see in the twists and turns. And even when it’s hard, Shauf’s music makes self-reflection a temptation too inviting to resist.

After forays into other sounds over the past decade, The Men have come back to their old digs, kicked in the door and cranked up the amplifiers. It’s as if they had never been away.

Cyclamen is a bold reintroduction to Núria Graham, a confident demonstration that, nudged into fresh sunlight, experience can always blossom into beautiful new forms.

Every Acre is a profound listen, one that reveals more wisdom the more you surrender to it. McEntire has discovered painful truths in the process, without ever letting herself or our history off the hook.

Ultimately, One Day comes with an interesting narrative that gives people like me something to write about, and as an experiment, it was surely a challenge and a creative accelerant. These are all good things.

Where Honey celebrates the diverse community that informs Samia’s experience as a person and an artist, Honey does not necessarily give back, returning an inconsistent set of identities that do not always highlight what makes her a promising artist. Samia instead sinks into the honey like quicksand, encasing her to the point of occlusion.

Along with the mesmerizing musical arrangements, what makes Carvings compelling is the balance Habel finds between acknowledging the fleeting span of any one life, and her determination to find meaning in the transience. In that regard, Carvings is at once a eulogy and a celebration.

The result is familiar—it’s undeniably a Margo Price record—but a little extra fiery.

Miraculously, Moin sound like every band they have been influenced by while remaining completely inimitable.

SAP does not contain a single bad song, but the record is lengthy.

Please Have a Seat is a testament to NNAMDÏ’s unconventional musical vision and how no matter what genre he wanders into—whether it be hip-hop, indie rock, electronica or bubblegum pop—he stays true to who he is. It’s also a wondrous adventure for anyone who is willing to hold on through its twists and turns. Most importantly, it represents the complexity Black artists possess.

At its best, The Ruby Cord is able to convey as much story via the timbre of Dawson’s voice as it does through his verbose lyricism. Dawson brings no shortage of compelling narratives to this record, continuing Peasant and 2020’s propensity for song-length vignettes that thematically snap together when put in sequence.

A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is playful at its core, taking familiar images and refracting them or replacing them with changelings.