Heavy Heavy sweeps its listener along, churchlike, and conveys the feeling that resisting the urge will always feel worse than rising up and pushing the air from your lungs. And then, after a brief 10 tracks, it’s all over—as if the procession has marched on, out of earshot. But the invite is still there extended: It’s up to you whether to accept it or not.

New York City is less a reflection of the sanitized, hyper-gentrified New York of today than a reaction against it—sneering from the paint-peeling dive bars, flipping off the real-estate vultures, and summoning the snottiest ghosts of the city’s punk past.

Dancehall is a singles-driven genre, but Popcaan often shines in the album format, so it’s regrettable that many of these 17 songs feel so lackluster. For a genre rooted in joy and conviviality, the letdown is hard to ignore.

Those looking for Graham from Blur will find it in his laconic vocal turns and occasional guitar explosions, while Dougall’s dreamily dejected melodies will resonate with fans of her solo work. But The WAEVE has its own chemistry, an alchemic mixture of psych, punk, folk, tenderness, and dread, laced with dextrous saxophone tones and a few come-hither drops of terror.

Refining the sprawling sound of Souvenir, Portrait of a Dog is produced entirely by the Toronto group BADBADNOTGOOD, encasing Yano’s melancholy lyrics and tranquil guitar playing in a more casual environment and giving the album a meditative, inviting tone.

Twain’s team of co-writers and producers have past credits with Halsey, Justin Bieber, Pitbull, Fred again.., and Iggy Azalea, and too often the material they’ve assembled for Twain feels like third-tier scraps intended for other clients. Queen of Me’s bland and plasticine arrangements are a far cry from the energy and sizzle of hits like “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.”

Dead Meat’s sound may be a throwback, but it’s so tunefully crafted that it charms the way it did the first time around.

It speaks to Baird’s ever-expanding ethos that, after 20 years of eager, in-depth collaboration, she’s managed to sound more like herself than ever.

It’s all so easy to digest, so pitch-perfect, so safe. Let’s Start Here. clearly and badly wants to be hanging up on those dorm room walls with Currents and Blonde and IGOR.

Cyclamen’s ruminative moments work in tandem with its daydreamy instrumentation, a balancing act Graham extends to the album’s most transcendent songs.

On We Cater to Cowards, Oozing Wound have downsized to a smaller ride, but they’ve filled the tank with rocket fuel, and they’ve never sounded more comfortable behind the wheel.

On Every Acre, McEntire’s patient observations of the land provide her with a new footing: one full of possibility and promise. It’s in the commitment to stasis that McEntire finds the fortitude to begin anew.

Lewis’ singing is one of the few novelties on AudioLust & HigherLove. The rest is all breezy grooves and cabana jams, frictionless and blemish-free.

Disc One gives us the final studio album, remixed and scrubbed fresh so we can avail ourselves once more of its glorious shadows and submerge ourselves in its delicious mood. The remaining four discs—two of unreleased outtakes, one previously available, and a live set—repositions Time Out of Mind as a rebirth rather than a farewell.

On One Day, Fucked Up sound freer and more purely happy to be making music together than they have in years.

The album’s more pleasing songs, like “Charm You” and “Honey,” are campfire ditties with rich, inviting harmonies. These brief moments of levity suggest that, in the face of existential dread, maybe it is more rewarding to sing with the people you love than about them.

Pastiche is the entire point of Lobes. Maybe its period recreations provide some surface pleasures, but it’s not enough to erase the suspicion that We Are Scientists have turned into indie-rock journeymen, content to dabble in sounds and styles that have just fallen out of fashion.

Recent hit single aside, Smith has somehow never felt further from pop’s molten core. It’s still a pleasure to watch a singer who once consigned themselves to lovesick, gender-neutral ballads spread their wings.

Rejecting escapism and celebrating invention, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is equally compelling and uncompromising. The music and the feeling of being absorbed in it is its own reward.

There’s an album’s worth of tracks here that put Clavish head and shoulders above his peers, which only makes the other album’s worth of misfires more disappointing for their inclusion.

One of the most radical departures in Segall’s catalog and a significant breakthrough for the band, exposing and refining the complex mechanisms behind their murky sound.

His voice remains unmistakable, a walnut burl with cracks in the grain. The stentorian register that Cale used to wield with authority is absent. ... Cale’s here, once again and for now, still not making things easy on anyone.

RiotUSA, who’s produced most of Spice’s music since her 2021 debut, saves the lethargic midpoints with skittering tracks that sound like true collaborations as opposed to premade beats. In just six songs, the duo experiments with the past, present, and future of drill.

Evocative images recur throughout Time’s Arrow, which is full of flashing lights, water, and dreams that offer mesmerizing spaces for getting lost. ... Time’s Arrow’s consistency also works against it. The record’s more placid songs bleed together.

From the self-deprecating shrug of a title to its brief run time, the aesthetic details of Anyhow suggest a musical trifle. But the reality is a work of profound detail, fascinating musical textures, melodic twists, and stylistic ambiguity that is more diamond dust than pocket lint.

At 35 minutes, it’s more a sampler than a full set—essentially a bonus feature for one of the year’s finest rock albums. You already know that these three musicians have forged a thrilling chemistry amidst the chaos of the pandemic. That this live album exists indicates that they know it, too.

Though each track is named for where it was recorded, there’s not much to distinguish one stop from another, and though you could connect the locations into a journey, these tracks don’t form an arc but play as if stacked atop one another.

Plain’s solo music has always rooted itself in a sense of calm, but with Prize, she also offers up the understated beauty of observation.