Even on the merely good ones, there’s always the sense of someone living in Clark’s lyrics, making decisions about how to transform those feelings into melodies and rhymes.

Sometimes the writing on The Answer Is Always Yes is more generic than you’d expect from Lahey. .... But Lahey’s gift for imagery shines on songs like the hazy acoustic trip “The Sky Is Melting,” a rowdy story of misadventure: She spars with a deadbeat pal while high on melted weed gummies, trading conspiracy theories and belting out corny yacht rock before vomiting into a ravine.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me captures the messy, confusing headspace that precedes future growth.

The music is abrasive, but in its most shocking moments, the band allows beauty to shine through the grime and static.

I cannot remember an album that suffered from such an extreme case of risk-aversion, nor demonstrated so little faith in an artist’s potential, nor any notion that their fanbase might be willing to grow with them. If anything, it shrinks his already narrow proposition.

[Jarmusch] brings a rich history to the proceedings, experimenting with passerelle bridges, cigar box guitars, and radio static. Just as in his films, he spins strange yet strangely familiar stories from everyday stuff.

In Rubin—as much a guru as he is a producer—Kesha’s found a collaborator willing to indulge her spiritualist tangents. But neither the ideas nor the audio clips feel fully integrated into a broader theme of the album. Her ambivalence is more potent.

Romantiq doesn’t dispose of the past. It just situates old habits amid a more vibrant and fully realized present.

A decade later, RP Boo offers us Legacy Vol. 2, a sequel equally worthy of the title.

When he’s not over-intellectualizing his emotions, Caesar can be disarmingly raw. If only he didn’t write like a cyborg the rest of the time.

As a collective, the Impossible Truth maintains the spiritual minimalism of Tyler’s solo work while expanding the sound.

The album burns brightest on a pair of songs in which Marea recognizes the limits of his grace in the face of emotionally unavailable lovers.

There are moments when these elements come together beautifully, as with the nostalgic dreamscape that surrounds Lola Young’s soaring vocals on “Trying.” At other times, Fred again..’s songcraft struggles, and fails, to break through.

The Love Invention introduces “Alison Goldfrapp, house diva,” a pivot she doesn’t totally sell. ... The record’s best moments are its quietest.

Good Lies toes a fine and, yes, functional, balance. There’s beauty in all this precision too—like an Eames chair, a perfectly weighted spoon, or the cone of a 15-inch subwoofer pushing air out of the bass scoops.

Euphoric Recall falters when the band forgets that her voice is the main event. ... Braids may still be searching for a distinct identity. But what Euphoric Recall makes clear is that Standell-Preston knows her voice better than ever before.

Even if Live at Bush Hall wasn’t intended to be the next official entry in their canon, the accompanying soundtrack album certainly earns its right to be considered as such. Notwithstanding the occasional bit of stage banter that makes no sense without the film (“Happy prom night!”), Live at Bush Hall is as cohesive a statement as any other record in the band’s discography.

ATUM doesn’t necessarily suffer by comparison to past albums. Its highs are more modest. The ferocity is long gone. But in its own ponderous way, it is generous.

-, pronounced “subtract,” which responds to them much like its predecessor, 2021’s =, did to its themes of turning 30 and becoming a parent: with the usual beige palette, generic hooks, and vapid lyrics. The songs on - are almost uniformly dour, often slow, occasionally drumless.

An Inbuilt Fault becomes a faithful companion for anyone emerging from the trenches of an existential crisis—it’ll loom on the outer edge of your worst days.

The Rat Road offers no easy answers and—frankly—not all that much easy listening. But if you’re looking for a sometimes baffling yet often entertaining adventure, The Rat Road delivers.

With a more cohesive sound, some of the rhythmic quirks and time signature hops from their past output are smoothed out. On occasion, the music is so pristine that it’s easy to miss the evocative lyrics buried in the tightly wound grooves.

The pair’s songwriting is so inventive and electric that even the depths of the late capitalist abyss begin to offer pathways to freedom.

No matter how unambiguous the references, these don’t feel like imitations; they feel like Nathan Fake tracks.

Museum feels like a transitional statement—a small but powerful reflection on an era when everyone and everything ground to a halt. But at their best, these songs also offer hints of how Ákadóttir might start moving again.

It’s a discomfiting listen: In bearing witness to her agony, there’s a kind of transference of pain that occurs in her shredded screams—the sound of an artist stepping into her shadows in order to find her light.

Jackman. takes creative risks in social commentary that often pay off.

It’s dirty, smudged music, bitter with the terroir of suffering.

The vibe is luminous pastels, elegant sway, adult-contemporary electro, and an uncombed, unselfconscious attitude that circles right back around to being cool, and Avalon Emerson’s got it.

Careful listening reveals that the album’s welcoming facade is an invitation into a tantalizingly complex world, like a perfectly manicured hedge maze guiding you through concentric pathways.

Overall, That! Feels Good! stays focused on a mission that never feels like a chore. In its relatively brief 40-minute runtime, Ware takes her task extremely seriously, but she’s unencumbered by its immensity; actually, it seems to unleash her.

The whole is stronger than the sum of its parts.

The chaos comes on the very next track, “Grease in Your Hair,” one of a couple songs that performs the National’s old sleight of hand: working the anxiety around until they pull an anthem out of thin air. As a way to address one of the primary tensions in their catalog—writing songs about dissatisfaction in spite of great conventional success—it’s a great bit. But as Frankenstein moves from wrestling to reckoning, the swells are tamer.

Abrams’ music moves through time gracefully, adjusting to the demands of when and where it is performed, and who’s involved. The awe that his music channels lies in its grasp of mutability, tracking subtle changes in repeating patterns—whether from moment to moment or year to year.

Hardcore will never sound or feel as satisfying on record as it does coming from a stage, and experienced from within the pit, enveloped in the release of sweaty rage and other explosive emotional detritus. But the songs have to come from somewhere, and So Unknown, which bottles that rage and passion with a bit of funk, is a decent place to start.

Full of tactile details and poetic turns of phrase, the songs on Safe to Run have the feel of road-trip musings, as though she were recording stray thoughts from an all-day drive.

Her lyrics often read like prose on the page, but she finds ways to bend them into melodic shapes it’s difficult to imagine anyone else finding.

Her voice has a warmth and a quaver that can wring pathos from even the most conversational lines, and the production by Brad Cook (Hurray for the Riff Raff, The War on Drugs) furnishes her with warm, lived-in atmospheres. Every track has something to sink into, like the pinging, playful background vocals throughout “Pick,” or the airy, breathy coda of “2+2.”

Although the tone can get a little one-note, this personal and cultural lineage deepens the poignancy of Fuse, in which Thorn and Watt broadly consider what we lose and hold on to over the course of a lifetime.

At the very least, it sounds terrific. With imaginative production from Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn and accompaniment from a sterling cast of (largely) North Carolina ringers. ... But across the 42 minutes of Henry St., Matsson rarely responds to them in kind. To put it plainly, the writing is just bad, as though it were some slapdash afterthought to the strong instrumentals already in place.

With these outtakes, Olsen zooms out and reveals some of the rockier steps along her journey toward self-discovery.

Requiem for Jazz is a complex record, requiring sustained attention and careful thought. Though it lacks the fiery rage and visceral immediacy of 2020’s LIVE, its nuanced critique of jazz’s role in Black history is an important and necessary continuation of the conversation that Bland began over six decades ago.

Mythologies sounds like the work of an artist stepping out of his comfort zone in search of personal creative fulfillment. It might be equally rewarding for the listener if only any of these pieces were as memorable as Daft Punk’s songs.

For all of her self-flagellation, Teitelbaum is far more potent when she’s pissed off.

Whereas the distorted tones smeared over 2017’s Pleasure could make it seem as if she were squaring off against her guitar and microphone, Multitudes mostly sounds as cozy as a winter sweater that’s three sizes too big.

72 Seasons, at a marathon 77 minutes long, delivers everything you could possibly want from a Metallica album in 2023, and so much more on top of that. Too much more. Like Hardwired, its predecessor—the same length, incidentally—72 Seasons is both a thrill and a slog.

Compared to the careful sprawl of triple-LP Sr3mm, which artfully unwound the brothers’ divergent styles and production tastes while avoiding lulls, this outing can feel formulaic and less adventurous at times.

Perhaps the point is more about feeling good than seeming interesting, and at least the piano equivalent of cowboy chords makes sense in the Americana context. Any given moment sounds wonderful, though not much lingers beyond a deep sense of calm.

No Highs ultimately works as an example of what ambient music can be, rather than a suggestion of where it might go.

Half of rage is confronting the sorrow that births it and watching it metamorphize. Witnessing the chrysalis is With a Hammer’s most generous gift.

The smaller stakes of Stereo Mind Games feel healthier and rewarding; the music is still vulnerable, but anguish no longer consumes every moment.

As Hartzman’s lyrics delve deeper into a rich, suburban mundanity, her bandmates respond with their most dramatic and explosive performances.

A collection of laid-back grooves and sultry meditations on love, loss, and the human experience.

The full enjoyment of Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities requires some imagination of your own, a sort of listening past the vaporous surface of the music. Like teenage Holden at the radio, you may sense a magical world there, just beyond what you can hear.

1982 is their best album since 1986’s Force. ... Attractive in its distillation of received pleasures, 1982 functions as a history lesson about a fecund era, and, boy, they own the warts too.

Newman’s fastidious, occasionally fussy writing ensures a level of quality control as he tinkers around the margins, even if his bandmates never quite catch the spark.

In these early recordings, Elton’s passion and dedication pleads to be heard. Whether nitpicking intros almost to the point of nausea or infusing vitality into each syllable like a mad scientist, a young Elton is constantly straining towards vein-popping perfection.

Despite some murky production by Josh Kaufman of the Fruit Bats and Bonny Light Horseman, the Hold Steady turn these songs into weird, vivid snapshots.

Deerhoof are at both their most whimsical and most energetically approachable on Miracle-Level.

Dipping into her lower register, she stuns as a contralto. I found myself rewinding her runs on hymnal parts of “Heart on My Sleeve” and could’ve sworn I was levitating during the awe-inspiring bridge of “Pray It Away” and “Make It Look Easy.” ... The emotionally charged conversational interludes and narrative intros (“Do you ever wonder, like, who else is fucking your man?”) are out of place amid the redundant themes and mind-numbingly online songwriting.

Real intimacy is what you find on The Record, the melding of what’s yours and mine—a favorite Joan Didion quote, songs by Iron & Wine and the Cure, passages from Ecclesiastes—until what’s left is something greater than the sum.

The songwriting lives up to the production value, pleasant but lacking much purpose.

To paraphrase the great Roy Kent, real love should make you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning. 6LACK manages some sparks here and there, but the tingles fade fast.

Iyer and Ismaily’s hypnotic interplay leaves the listener unmoored in time and space. The grand sweep of Aftab’s voice is a galactic super-wind capable of carrying you off to wondrous new worlds. The force of their collaboration is so much greater than the sum of its simple parts that it borders on the mystical.

The move toward emotional exorcism on The Art of Forgetting is nearly as startling as Rose’s previous stylistic pivots. ... But individual songs, as carefully articulated as they are, tend to get swallowed up by the overarching psychological thrust of The Art of Forgetting: This is a mood piece capturing a specific frame of mind, even a particular era.

Brown meets JPEG’s tempos with alacrity, flashing a singsong flow on “Orange Juice Jones” and mirroring the jittery horn fanfare of “Burfict!” The short bursts don’t provide space for Brown to stretch his limbs, yet he remains a virtuoso in miniature.

Liturgy have always brought a proggy, sprawling ambition to their music, but rarely have all the pieces locked into place so elegantly. 93696 can be pulverizing, but it’s also gentle, and amid the brutality lie some of Hunt-Hendrix’s prettiest and most ornate songs yet.

He maintains the foggy tufts of reverb and sing-song melodies of his predecessors, but his lyrics trade unrequited crushes for more practical pining.

Chua creates landscapes out of the hollow spaces within her. Each track becomes its own kind of home, or at least a safe harbor.

They returned with a successor that takes what worked on their previous album and pushes further in every direction. False Lankum sprawls, dense with ideas.

Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd arrives as a sweeping, confounding work-in-process. It’s full of quiet ruminations and loud interruptions; of visible seams and unhemmed edges.

Memento Mori is not the hooded masterpiece of Music for the Masses or the hits cache of Violator. But it does signal that there are new ways yet for Gahan and Gore to at least approach their old magic.

Despite their comfortable distance from the industry machine they came up in, Aly & AJ still gravitate toward brightly-colored, big-hearted pop: an old-fashioned stance that dulls the shine of their new direction.

The final track, “Mukazi,” arrives. It promises the grail, the holy truth behind the fanatical farce, and the reward for this brutal journey into the hellish depths of Mutinta’s psyche. ... It’s left ambiguous whether she can truly bring herself to say these affirmations, whether this is the triumph she has earned. It could be.

The contrast between his sound and substance has never been more striking, either. Backed on these 11 tracks by versatile Toronto band Bahamas, Paisley is cool above the country funk of “Say What You Like” and “Make It a Double,” collected over the spartan “Holy Roller” and “Rewrite History.”

The struggle of the wealthy and talented white rapper was never especially sympathetic. And on Ben, his trials are mostly internal, the enduring struggle of man to find meaning and leave a legacy. This Macklemore is likely the most honest version we’ve seen to date.

Nothing here is unforgettable or in danger of replacing its original. The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV’s Unplugged. At worst, Songs of Surrender is an overindulgence. At best, it’s a pleasant interlude.

What Fantasy is missing isn’t any one synth preset, or a cultural reference for the next season of Stranger Things to popularize. It just lacks urgency.

Absent the verve and pop of UMO’s previous work, V can feel remote and insular without the charm of being coy. There’s just enough shown here to leave you craving a more direct experience of the world Nielson is spinning.

Purely in sensory terms, it’s difficult to imagine many richer-sounding rock records being released this year. Tumor treats sounds so lovingly they sometimes resemble a director framing and lighting a beloved actor, and every sound on Praise enters the mix with near-visible entrance and exit cues.

10,000 gecs is something like astral projection, allowing you to ever-so-briefly shake off the constant doom scroll of life for a hot second of unencumbered fun.

Oh Me Oh My manages to be Holley’s most approachable and most ambitious album all at once.

Cookup soars when the players’ interpretations converge into new creations, and the source material becomes a portal to a new dimension. The vestiges of old melody may remain, but Gendel’s best reimaginings illuminate subtle resonances and hidden pleasures.

Gumbo, along with his entire body of work, is evidence that there’s still new ground to be tread and fresh sounds to explore within rap itself. The blend of spices might be Nudy’s own, but the flavor of Gumbo is unmistakably hip-hop.

This is an EP about dragging out the night’s short end, and making well-intentioned plans for life’s daylight hours. It’s party music for people beginning to feel the tug of seeing a full Sunday for the first time in a while.

Not the sundazed party record that was promised but an exploration of how it feels when the party’s over.

Even if you don’t track all the references, Sleaford Mods’ sense of fatigued resignation resonates. UK GRIM is their most varied album to date, but they don’t want to dull the shitstorm’s stench—they’re just here to blow off the steam.

“Denver” drags on for six relatively static minutes, while the limp synth pop of “Athens at Night” never quite matches the wooziness of its imagery. Fortunately, Milk for Flowers’ third act is its richest.

Radical Romantics is essentially a collection of notes on love. Love—whether sexy, overwhelming, or vengeful—links together the recurring motivations of the Fever Ray catalog: curiosity and exploration, family born and chosen, sexual freedom and pleasure.

Soul’d Out is the real deal: a portrait of a pop label at its imperial peak, presenting its unmediated vision of Blackness for a rapt audience.

Despite its long, solitary genesis, I Play My Bass Loud is anything but a lonely bedroom-pop album.

Ugly sounds like something far less interesting: the sort of generically angsty guitar music that only a ’90s major label executive could love.

The Songs of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach sounds like a heartfelt eulogy to an artist who helped pop fans find great beauty and even greater solace in all those lonely, uncertain moments.

You couldn’t say that WOW is about anything. Instead, it’s defined by its aesthetic cohesion, a beautiful sense of formal seriousness that holds court over the record’s surrealistic menagerie.

Thirty-six songs is too many. ... He seems to have lost a great deal of energy as a singer and performer, leading to a ton of uninspired retreads and some truly generic filler.

Red Moon in Venus luxuriates in the most sublime sounds of Uchis’ career. It’s a fantastical record, illustrating lush, lovesick vignettes and high-femme escapism without relinquishing control.

The dramatic crescendos and ostensibly cathartic payoffs of “Little Things” and “The Heart of It All” suggest profundity but mostly draw attention to its absence. Strip away the bombast and these are humble little songs. Humble treatment might suit them.

Though 7s is a step down in scale and inspiration from Cows on Hourglass Pond, the triumph of Time Skiffs means it’s hardly a worrying sign for his career.