Phosphorescent’s Revelator is less melodically charged than Muchacho and C’est La Vie (or even parts of Here’s to Taking It Easy). Also, Houck’s vocals sometimes flounder in woozy, loungey, soft-pillow mixes. That said, Revelator is a transitional album for Houck, as he turns his attention more unwaveringly to interior dynamics, less preoccupied with the vagaries of the external world.

She is constantly connected, consciously or not, with more rooted folk forms, from Ghanaian Ewe drumming and dance to Haitian funereal brass bands. Her results sound like none of that, but somewhere, underneath the layers of beats and snippets of melody, she tosses off like corn husks, dwells fossils, and bones with stories to tell us.

For all of Weaver’s experimental spirit, there isn’t a vast distance between some of the new songs and the soulful pop of, say, Sade or Dido. Weaver has always been keen on strong melodies and layered harmony vocals, so when “Perfect Storm” delivers its New Wave analogue groove or “Romantic Worlds” evokes chilled-out dancefloors, the music sits in a dynamic middle ground between alternative and mainstream.

The Collective is hard to pin down, but that is part of what makes it so compelling.

Across its ten tracks and 47-minute runtime, Moran collaborates with herself, instead, using a Disklavier – a modified Synclavier similar to an updated player piano – to create poignant, evocative, soul-searching post-minimalist piano sketches.

Overall, Interplay is a record for fans of Ride—recommended on that basis. Newcomers to the group may want to dip their feet earlier in Ride’s catalogue, at least for starters.

Grande has produced some of her best work to date.

They’re solid songs with winning grace notes—”My Kind” opens on a 20-second orchestra-tuning cacophony before finally kicking into power chords, and “Hopeless” bursts into a furious if regrettably brief guitar solo before the final chorus. But they primarily work to show just how much better—both tighter and weirder—the rest of the album is.

Ultimately, like all their albums, especially 2017’s I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, Live Laugh Love is an exploration of the self. It is unadulterated self-expression in its purest form.

Something in the Room She Moves as a whole seems safe, like coffee table art. One can admire the contents yet not be absorbed by the material.

Audio Vertigo, Elbow’s tenth studio album, is both a return to form and a step into new musical territory. The sound familiar to long-term listeners remains prevalent, while elements of funk and Eurodisco creep into the grooves.

While Deeper Well can be listened to as a companion to Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves isn’t necessarily trying to recreate its magic formula. Instead, the singer has grown significantly as a musician and lyricist over the last six years.

It sounds like grim going, and in many ways, it is. It’s an endless litany of the eternal horribleness of modern living, set to a relentless onslaught of distorted guitars, corkscrewing bass, pummeling drums, and Korvette’s signature bark. It’d be almost unbearable if it weren’t so damned funny.

Without question, this is one of the better releases from Judas Priest in years, arguably since Angel of Retribution. Still, I can’t help but feel like when I saw the second trilogy of Star Wars movies. They looked great, had superior special effects work, the scale and scope were light years ahead, and the Jedi were far more powerful and gracious but missed the mark and failed to capture the essence, the ambiance, and the panache of the original trilogy.

The Mandrake Project is not the kind of record that is liable to attract new legions of followers. But for an artist this far into his career to still sound energized and committed, especially after the trouble he experienced before its inception, is a creative triumph worth applauding.

It is the sound of a group that have fully clicked and have fine-tuned their signature sound into another high point. The rage is more deeply felt, the self-examination is more bracing, the wins more hard-fought, and the songs are up to carrying the thematic weight through to cathartic highs.

Letter to Yu can be abrasive, like the buzzsaw lead on “Kowloon”, but mostly it gently persuades one to get in the groove. Something is inviting about the Chinese touches on Western dance floor beats. Bolis Pupul belongs to both worlds and invites one to appreciate the connections and juxtapositions between them.

Yes, it’s now the Robinsons’ show with backing musicians. And yes, the swing and inventiveness of the mighty Steve Gorman is missed, but as always, the songs are what matters most, and Happiness Bastards gives us ten good reasons to believe that rock and roll is still a long way from the graveyard.

Bleachers takes steps, stuttering though they may be, towards a more cohesive identity as a band. This record feels less bogged down than its predecessors by glaringly forced attempts at stadium-swelling pop hits better suited for collaborators like Swift.

Untame the Tiger will be irresistible for longtime fans, but hopefully, the recent acknowledgment of her guitar prowess will bring some new listeners to the fold.

Iyer places his full vision under the concept of “compassion”, but he leads to that point only by finding joy, excitement, and gratitude for the inspirations that have helped him see what he has to offer.

For an artist of such longevity to remain so vibrant is rare. Focus on Nature is a testament to how good songwriting and solid musicianship, in the right hands, never grow old.

Under the Sun is eight tracks and 40 minutes long, but every move Maya Shenfeld makes across it seems to happen on a galactic scale. It’s hardly in slow motion, but it requires us to suspend our understanding of time and speed and space and understand something much bigger.

Grounding these cosmic musings is the music itself. There is an effortless quality to Rooting for Love, with Sadier needing little more than her voice and a simple guitar riff to sketch a compelling pop hook.

Instead of breaking new ground or forging a new aspect of her persona, This Is Me…Now, through its title, capitalizes on what already exists.

The players’ energy and Lund’s vocals drive the songs forward. There’s a liveliness throughout the record that never goes away. The album may be dedicated to an “old man”, but the music has plenty of get-up-and-go.

The music is deceptively complex in its simplicity. The individual tracks always carry us to places we didn’t know we were heading.

Though Loss of Life is more reserved, on the whole, the conspicuously backloaded record culminates with a run of songs about sleep, love, and death so deeply felt that it doesn’t matter if MGMT are still joking on some level.