Across age/sex/location, Lennox refreshes classic R&B stylings for a contemporary audience, sounding at ease with herself as she offers up her sexiest and most assured music to date.

At its heart, this music might be all about structure, but it’s also about listening to patterns evolve, celebrating the journey that leads wherever the music wants to go.

With her 10th album, Fossora, she is grounded back on earth, searching for hope in death, mushrooms, and matriarchy, and finding it in bass clarinet and gabber beats.

On The Hum Goes on Forever, the Wonder Years deliver the shredded vocals and taut palm-muted guitars that made them Warped Tour heroes without sacrificing the depth and nuance in Campbell’s writing.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs spend some of Cool It Down’s sharpest moments citing and deconstructing their influences with refreshing candor. ... But every now and then, her reliable lyrical workhorse hits a brick wall.

Left to his own devices, Nav sometimes strays back towards raps without substance, coasting on pristine beat selection and Auto-Tune that lull the listener into easy-listening mode.

The skits poking fun at impatient fans and his quips about song leaks don’t fully conceal that Forever is JID’s attempt to be a hip-hop ringmaster playing every role in the circus. Even so, his expanded ambition is impressive.

The glimmers of a brighter future that dot Beautiful Mind—or, failing that, newer bits of pain and suffering inspired by the slog of fame—are its best moments, pushing Rod Wave just a little bit closer to peace.

In These Times is more elegant, and more ambitious.

Inviting guests into the fold is a huge step for a longtime solo artist who has previously distanced himself from the world; alongside his sharper songwriting and unrestrained performances, it’s a sign that he’s ready to welcome others into his healing process. By opening up the pit, he’s opening his heart, too.

Anderson finds flashes of beauty even when she seems to be casting about for something to say; were she a less graceful guitarist, this stretch might derail Still, Here’s momentum entirely.

Weather Alive is a testament to her conviction, an eerily physical experience with the power to make believers of the rest of us.

Lane’s most compelling songs come out of her acknowledgements of imperfection and her impertinence toward the status quo.

At more than three hours long, Music for Animals is difficult to digest in its entirety; there’s a fine line between patient and dull. Frahm’s extended track lengths are presumably meant to foster immersion, but after a while, they come to seem indulgent.

As thematically complex as Moss can be, vulnerability sometimes gets lost. ... But even in the album’s less compelling moments, Hawke retains a delicate charm. She feels believable.

On his latest album, God Save the Animals, he wrings strange beauty from our non-human companions, grappling with innocence and its discontents through their saucer-eyed stares. God Save the Animals stands out for its moments of sharp lyrical simplicity.

Decide is a fun, off-kilter synth-pop album that proves Keery’s talent, but by its conclusion, a clearer picture of its maker fails to emerge.

The previous iteration of the band thrived at the border of brilliant and unhinged, and The Mars Volta is too conventional to be called their best work. But it is certainly their most honest: a sober tale written by survivors, the first uneasy step into unfamiliar territory.

The introductory duo of “I Don’t Know How I Survive” and “Roman Candles” position Asphalt Meadows as a clean break from the slick competence of Kintsugi and Thank You for Today. ... A record that mostly satisfies through course correction.

Tiptoeing around already familiar ideas, the album’s first half never finds new footing.

Most of the set’s first disc comprises recordings made during sessions for 1983’s Star People, my pick for Miles’ best comeback-era record. However, all the studio tracks presented here are previously unreleased, so fans have plenty of incentive to investigate. ... Disc three contains a July 1983 live show that occurred during a break in the Decoy sessions and is the highlight of the collection. ... The alternate mixes and full studio session versions on this set are solid, if not particularly revealing.

The album isn’t bold enough to commit in any one direction, offsetting whispery synth-pop with saccharine country ballads.

Mills’ production gives the recordings dimension and depth, inevitably tempering the pain at the heart of the songs.

Mura Masa is best when he sticks to the script and cranks up the heat.

Bitchin Bajas’ music is about keeping on, and Bajasicllators does that as well as anything in their discography.

Whitney’s music is starting to sound better than it is. A little more songwriting, and a bit more leeway for that old, bracing strangeness, would go a long way.

When the Wind Forgets Your Name shows that in generous spurts this band can still sound as driven and disarmingly sincere as they did a quarter century ago. If it’s a lesser Built to Spill album that’s because they all are now. But as their lesser albums go, it’s one of the better ones.

Nothing on Words and Music redefines or amplifies Reed’s legend. Instead, what we get is a photograph, stark and charming. For an artist known for cool and cruel observations, for cutting remarks and misdirections, these recordings show him completely free from guile. Lewis Reed, unguarded.