Stories Don’t End is crisper and more overdubbed, sprawling a tad where the first two albums flowed seamlessly.

It’s a fun album, an album that the world is better for having, but hardly something you hope other musicians hear and emulate.

As with most of the band's young oeuvre, there's a sturdiness to Enjoy the Company's booming interstate anthems.

Yelawolf's got personality to spare as long as it's on his own terms. Which is half the time. The rest gets by on unceasing technical skill.

Singing with El Madmo or sampled by Talib Kweli, she doesn't sit comfortably or confidently in every style, but even the less successful forays serve to bust through genre boundaries.

Lust For Youth would be most gratifying as a poetic indulgence or as the perfect music festival set in the dead of night, but their entrancing guitars and synths and exuberant percussion would quench the thirst of anyone looking for a pensive album with tantalizing, well-produced textures.

Grande is making no effort to be discreet, instead explicitly owning her sexuality—the album is called Positions, after all. The juxtaposition of beautiful violin sounds and risqué lyrics has become one of Grande’s signature sounds, and it suits her well.

Take one of the world’s finest singers, pair her with a wide variety of pianists and a selection of impeccably chosen songs, and you get an album of elegant passion and restraint.

Maybe it's the presence of guitarist Marc Ribot, maybe it's the arrangements, or maybe it's Dylan's vocal register and choice of themes, but the vibe often recalls a more laid-back Tom Waits or Joe Henry. That's not bad company to keep, though Dylan's delivery lacks any edge or emotional undertow that make the lyrics speak more pointedly than Ribot's stinging guitar.

Whenever Future starts to glide along too airily, the Robinsons can be trusted to use their on-off harmonies to give their best songs a spark that helps them rise above as merely sounding pretty.

Out in the suburbs, the Cymbals Eat Guitars boys had plenty of room to stretch their legs and creative muscles, but it would have done some good for them to have been reigned back in, even if a little.

Like any good evening out, the fun level varies, and at times it gets a little too blurry for good measure.

While Kasabian has proven its ability to construct impressive, tightly-wound songs that succeed on their own terms as genre exercises of sorts, they haven't been able to blend those disparate elements together into something they can truly call their own.

While the jams on this seven-track EP aren’t as extravagant as the winners on Dominae, you get the feeling that this is merely Episode 2 of a continuing project.

The album does not aim to recreate arrangements from a half-century prior; the emphasis is on radical reinterpretation, and that mission succeeds.

It’s not her discography’s lowest point, but it is her first misstep. When Charli achieves the perfect confluence of what she loves about pop music, and what we love about her music, it soars, creating some of her finest material to date. But when that balance is not achieved, the songs can feel generic or reductive.

Maybe Names of North End Women will center a conversation about how listenable avant-garde and experimental music can be. If nothing else, it’s a compilation of eight strange, impeccably made songs with limitless authority on sound.

The first half of Yolk in the Fur [has] a cohesive and cinematic feel. ... The second half of Yolk isn’t as strong, but it still holds interesting developments.

For all her bratty star power, Charli XCX’s purest magic lies in the intimate--not the irreverent.

It shred and stomps ably, but it doesn’t feel special. Instead, it roars by for a half-hour and then it’s gone, and whatever thrills it delivers dissipate quickly.

It’s when the band has something more to say than “Let’s All Go to the Bar” that the poetry becomes worth anything at all.

By mining such masters as John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke and Solomon Burke, he negates any risk that the material might lapse. ... Besides, these are hardly rote performances. His stutter and scat on “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” gives the song a distinct new twist. Likewise, his playing on sax and harp is as assured as always, adding to his credence and conviction. The backing band, including his current foil Joey DeFrancesco, is polished and professional, giving Morrison room to play with his phrasing and weave his way through the melodies.

Second Line brings few changes, especially lyrically, but Richard largely makes up for her retreading with some of her sharpest hooks to date.

Their new self-titled album sounds more like the Avett of old than the previous two. .... The singing falters only when the group attempts to weave broad political grievances with the real threads of the music: love, family and faith.

On Close to the Glass, the results are more fractured and schizophrenic than ever.

As The Love Language, Stuart McLamb strengths have always been his knack for production and penchant for heartache—mixing and matching genres for his grand, indie-pop arrangements. An album of reflection, Baby Grand is no different, with McLamb using a breakup and a move west as the jumping off points for his latest offering of songs.

'Cause I Sez So is true to the album's title--cocky, purposefully cretinous and rude as hell.

Even as Soul is Heavy struggles to balance the earthy and the abstract, Nneka's vocals prevent the album from curdling into run-of-the-mill radio r&b.

Using machined rhythm tracks, there is the distance of EDM on Venus--something not so blood and guts. Yet, in the detachment, a certain honesty arises.

It’s the pleasant sameness of it that makes me both excited to hear a new Sea & Cake release and a little disappointed that, considering the work that its membership does outside this fold, there’s not more there.

With How The West Was Won, Perrett proves that he’s got plenty of rock and roll left to make, a lot of courage left to make it.

The new LP is a touch less bombastic than its predecessor, but its freedom and euphoria arrive via beats not all that different from Kay’s past tunes. Given both the emotional growth that often accompanies coming out—and the three-plus-year wait for something new from Kay—this minor amount of perceptible change feels a bit underwhelming. But the similar shuffle delineating the majority of these tracks is never anything less than catchy.

Like most Banhart albums, Mala is often easier to admire fondly than truly love, particularly when the maestro leans closest to his freak-folk roots.

As you might expect from a band that once bordered on power pop, Love Is Yours strikes most powerfully when Mulitz and Baker explore faster, more jubilant sounds.

While not entirely experimental, Ad Infinitum explores darker and more mysterious territory than Telekinesis has in the past, a fitting direction for this more mechanical journey.

It is a strange alchemy afoot in their presentation; their affinities for pedestrian rock-lite can either be regarded as dismissable trash, or the most intensely gratifying thing you’ve ever heard, depending on which side of the bed you woke up on the day you hear it.

The mood can be a lot to endure for the course of one album, especially in comparison to the lighter, looser touch that Chapman took on his ‘70s albums like Millstone Grit and Rainmaker. But the music that he and Gunn (with some assistance from B.J. Cole and Sarah Smout) designed has an openness and a ramble that befits these songs. It would be dishonest to try and slather these tunes with effects and or electronic intrusions.

The album is a singles collection and as such, isn’t meant to have a cohesive liner structure. It’s also short, seven lean tracks with no filler, a reminder that Jones has enough talent and self-awareness—those two are rarely in concert with each other—to try her hand at multiple genres without stretching herself too thin. Some takes are better than others, but none of them are ever boring.

Mended With Gold works, pleases and doesn’t tire of itself in time. It is also painfully unaware of its faults, which is a shame when greatness stands so close and the songwriter can’t, or won’t, simply grab it.

Lead Lover Stuart McLamb has made a tremendous leap in terms of accessibility, scope and arrangement on Libraries

If you’re looking for experiments with song structure or eclectic instrumentation, this probably isn’t the album for you. If you want something you can crank up at backyard barbecues or in the car with the windows down, well, The Black Keys have two words for you, and they’re in the album title.

It’s the work of a singer and songwriter with nothing left to prove, which means that Crowell can simply enjoy himself.

Pond Scum has enough variety to be pleasing to longtime fans and covers enough ground to be a great introduction to the man’s work for newcomers.

With the power of their harmony and a few well-arranged standout tracks, Chief have managed to assemble a respectable record, and escape being written off as yet another batch of copycat folkies.

The stormy, steely drones and security-camera rhetoric can almost feel like he's compensating for something. But that doesn't stop it from being weirdly charming through its relentless sneer.

Though Boronia lacks the imagination to separate Hockey Dad from the knockoffs, the band knows how to have fun in their music, and they know how to do so well.

Yellow & Green casts off the shackles of expectation while simultaneously taking a measured step in the direction of accessibility.

The sophomore record sounds like a concept album about change: changing relationships, changing surroundings, changing perspectives and changing within oneself, often without even realizing it.

Three Dimensions Deep will doubtless make it onto many a Spotify playlist; the record boasts club-ready bops and chill bangers that can please almost any aural palate. When you dig beneath the surface, though, Mark imparts universal wisdom and gives listeners a much-needed moment to appreciate ourselves.

The result is the capstone building block of Rubin's iconic monument to Cash, a larger-than-life musician who remained poignantly, thrillingly human until the very end.

Michelle Branch is no poet, but Hopeless Romantic tells her story with enough variance to stay engaging.

While it hardly comes across as careless, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions flaunts a genre-averse attitude that allows his range to shine. The album draws a throughline between the aspects of Thornalley’s sound geared towards the warehouse and those better suited for festival crowds.

Eternally Even, while a solid album worth a spin, would have been well-served to have a little more urgency, or at least energy, to it.

It’s exciting to see an artist lean into their intuition and embrace their own creative influences—and that shines through on What Happened To The Beach? in a compelling way—but the album as a whole seems to be figuring itself out alongside its listeners.

Murs for President isn’t the most perfect campaign, but it’s more than worthy of being on the ballot.

There’s a pleasing weightlessness wending its way through The Soft Cavalry’s 12 tracks, alternately augmented and offset by Clarke’s lyrics, ranging from tender to grim to destructive. On paper, that reads as confusing; on the record, that stew of emotional expression coheres nicely, each ingredient blending with the others in Clarke’s dream pop base.

Ultimately then, the Mavericks are merely miming the qualities that elevated them to stardom early on, and for that, they can hardly be blamed.

Whether the solidity the band endeavored to create is evident amongst the aural planes of Thr!!!er is debatable. Either way, it’s a monster of a dance-punk record, and a fine addition to the !!! canon.

He rivets his limber flow to the beat and effortlessly produces the kind of good-natured braggadocio and gymnastic wordplay of his glory days.

Beat the Devil’s Tattoo finds a balance in grimy blues licks (“War Machine”), catchy hooks (“Bad Blood”) and some huge, slabs of rock (“Aya”).

She may not be the most compelling lyricist among her peers, and her melodies place her squarely in the middle of the pack, but when she’s at her best, her sparkly songs reach incredibly catchy heights and exude clarity about a confusing time in one’s life. With Fake It Flowers, she’s on the cusp of something great, and only time will tell which side she falls on.

Some bands’ slightness reveals enough details in the sketches to endlessly pore over, but knowing Crutchfield is capable of great songs and that few here rise to the occasion is frustrating.

With the aptly-named Drift, the band manage to find even more sounds to try, while still hitting the sonic touchstones of their most notable work.

The immediacy of the melodies--simpler and scrappier than she’s written in years--paired with the snarl of the arrangements, gives Pussycat a rumbling, cathartic honesty ideal for the anger of our times.

The rural, pure, gospel-meets-banjos-meets-trumpets sound of the record is irrevocably essential Helm, yet the soulful songsmith manages to avoid repetition in his new album.

While loss, pain and connection have always defined Sleater-Kinney’s work, Little Rope feels especially imbued with an emotional acuity and intensity, one that I don’t think they have captured this potently since “One More Hour.” For all of this, Path of Wellness did set the bar low, and Little Rope has some sloppy writing and one too many lackluster moments. .... Despite these shortcomings, Little Rope shows us that Sleater-Kinney are well worth sticking with.

The record plays like an old mixtape: a few songs you dig, a few you forget, and two or three you can't stop playing, that you can't keep from becoming part of a night the pictures can't do justice, of a packed dance-floor, of a girl you didn't kiss, of a midnight drive.

The accompanying press release refers to the “spiritual geography of the album, which invokes the cyclical journey of water from the highest point in the Adirondack Mountains to the valley below and out to sea.” While Murr doesn’t quite maintain this premise--indeed, most of the offerings seem more intent on creating enticement courtesy of producer Jim James’ aural additives and Murr’s use of Mellotron, Omnichord, percussion, pocket piano and guitars—the sound is alluring all the same.

It’s a shame there are not enough songs where Pop’s talent can shine on its own. Only six of 19 tracks feature Pop Smoke solo, not including the intro, outro and “Dior,” which is a bonus track that also appears on all of his previous tapes. ... However, there are still many highs.

The EP’s lyrics likewise do little to distinguish these characters from one another, though clearly, little overlap exists between Bae’s glamorous blonde ‘do and Bonk’s, uh, clown-like makeup. Even if these aliases remain imperfectly distinguished from one another throughout the EP, Shygirl’s consistently puffed-up swagger manages to illuminate her nuanced but aggressive persona.

Weirdly enough, this might be Green's most immediately satisfying album as a pure soul singer; throughout, he explores the huskiest confines of his lower and middle register, instead of relying on his typical nasal fireworks.

In the end, TUNS holds up just as strongly to any of the member’s legendary bands, and they are making their own legend along the way.

For all its songwriterly craft, of Montreal's experiments make Paralytic Stalks one of the more compelling efforts in the band's long discography.

While it lacks the propulsive edge of, say, the Knife, Hukkelberg’s work has a definite orchestral sense, the hallmark of someone who has listened to her share of Cocteau Twins, which is never a bad thing.

To be sure, Planetarium is not perfect. That it hangs together as well as it does is a testament to the considerable talents of the people who created it.

Like with Foxy's previous efforts, The Church of Rock & Roll shines in its ballsy rejection of modern pop stereotypes, however, the new album slips in its contradictions.

There's Always Another Girl isn't perfect, but it is an awfully focused effort coming from an artist that is doing it for the right reasons.

It’s a beautiful blast of humanity on an album--a perplexing, fascinating, absorbing album--that often feels outside normal human grasp.

Taken as a whole, PlectrumElectrum is a fantastic rock and roll party record (although there are some more serious lyrical themes sprinkled throughout). But when you really pick apart some of the pieces, it becomes a little less interesting.

The 11 songs on Olympic Girls are all lush and bold (mostly) acoustic ballads, but each leaves you with an aftertaste all its own. The songs are charming ruminations on nature and humanity that, with their anti-chaotic energy and eerie sound effects, feel almost out-of-place in 2019.

Though it could use some tightening—it is a double-album, after all—there’s a joke for everyone, and a very funny one at that.

If Silver Landings isn’t a world-beating collection of songs, it’s a promising return for an artist who is rediscovering her voice, and what she can do with it.

Consider it, then, an ode to what listeners liked about Travis in the first place.

Until in Excess unfolds in chapters like a long tale and by the time the closing song “Alamogordo” finishes its nearly three-minute fade out, what’s left is a dreamy calm and sense of completion.

She has a versatile voice, an impressive self-awareness about how best to use it, and a sense of drama that makes her songs--and this album--resonate in unexpected ways.

With the solidified lineup comes a more realized sound, trading the previous record's dry, jangly pop with a lusher, more fluid presentation.

It’s this line between cheesy and unbelievably cool that Kravitz hops back and forth over throughout the album, never convincingly staying on one side. ... Worth the price of admission is “Low,” a funk-tinged easy-groover about keeping a relationship grounded. It’s sexy, it’s smooth, and it’s dance floor ready.

Overall La Costa Perdida goes down easy--maybe a little too easy.

The trio hasn’t quite put together an album of complete heart-stoppers just yet, but Blitz charts them in the right direction.

[Title track "Recover" is] so freakishly great, there’s no way Chvrches can follow it--at least not on this EP.

It’s an easy listen with difficult layers, and if Rose quickly secured her status as a top young voice in country music a few years ago, she’s now cemented her position as an important one.

Perhaps its only offending quality is that it's utterly inoffensive; it's likable and overwhelmingly pleasant.

If at any point you find yourself starting to lose interest, just wait; something good will be along soon to snap you back into head-bobbing bliss.

Only the cloyingly celebratory 'Unwind' ranks as an unmitigated misstep, with its embarrassingly trite synth trumpet hook fitting poorly with the darker hues of the rest of the album.

Despite its flaws, Vol. 2 is the second-best thing the Olds have done in a decade.

The majority of This Modern Glitch is an enjoyable--but not terribly memorable--collection of songs.

Heartworms is an understated and charming production of orchestral rock, surfy riffs cresting summery melodies and experimental streaks of reverb.

It’s not perfect. It’s not really revelatory. But the guy realized after two decades of making solid folk-pop albums that he ought to put the guitar down for a bit and try something new.