That these intimations of progress come slowly for Webster is part of the album’s relatable charm.

2093 takes enough daring leaps out of typical Yeat territory to warrant repeat listens, but Yeat’s ambition ends up being the album’s undoing. At 78 minutes, 2093 ends up feeling monotonous, even as Yeat’s exploration into new sounds and cadences yields occasionally interesting results.

Mannequin Pussy’s lyrical prowess is on full display with I Got Heaven.

But if Life On Earth still felt intent on defining itself in part by what it was not, The Past is Still Alive achieves something even braver: Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record.

Where a song like “Dimeback” felt like dream pop backwash, the 12 tracks here draw endless comparisons. In “Rylee & I” alone he evokes the mangled production of Bon Iver’s 22, A Million; the gauzy seduction of Jai Paul’s demos; the attention to space in Arthur Russell’s World of Echo; and the everyman sensitivity of John Mayer. That Mk.gee can bring to mind such varied artists is a testament to his ingenuity.

There’s a great depth of sound throughout, no doubt thanks to Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich who co-produced and mixed Tangk, and it allows the heavenly moments to feel even bigger.

Their closing chorus, “Womanhood is not an easy walk/And we cannot keep subjecting them to oppression,” highlights the sense of purpose that governs the entire album. It’s that spirit and the Amazones’ powerful performances that makes Musow Danse one of the great pan-African consciousness LPs in modern history.

Vultures is a serviceable record. The production, in typical post-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy fashion, is sparse. While it won’t be confused for a masterpiece, it shows that West is still good at being a producer. He puts Ty Dolla Sign in position to sound as bubbly as he’s been since the Obama era.

The star’s sprawling, twenty-song LP is nostalgic and familiar as Usher leans into the past without making it feel stale.

What Now is another side of Brittany Howard that makes each of her previous departures feel like a baby step by comparison.

Much like “Nothing Matters,” songs like “Caesar on a TV Screen” and “Burn Alive” start like hung-over reveries before vaulting into trampoline pop, wrapping up with crashing crescendos. Over the course of an album, that approach veers towards formula. But there’s no denying the way their blowsy, unrestrained songs knock you upside and down and leave you with a dizzying high.

The Smile are back with Wall of Eyes, a lavishly gorgeous second LP. No one is going to convene a Deep Listening Consortium to unpack its meaning, and that’s part of the appeal. This music drifts, and we drift with it.

In a less capable artist’s hands, American Dream could come off like industry hackwork. One gets the sense that 21 remains on top of his game even if he’s not quite pushing himself.

It’s Armstrong’s alternating earnestness and sarcasm, combined with some typically hummable tunes, that make Saviors something of a return to form for the trio, which drifted a little too far into pop territory on 2020’s Father of All Motherfuckers.

Across the album, Uchis is bolder and more forthright than on past releases. So often, she’s played the languid cool girl, but she breaks out of her shell again and again this time out. She dives deeper into new sounds, and she flourishes the entire way.

Attempts to balance the expectations attached to naming itself after its groundbreaking 2010 predecessor with Minaj’s spirit of constant reinvention and confrontational persona. .... Pink Friday 2 is a long album, and it’s going to get longer. .... Also manages to remain true to her brightly hued essence.

The record is an earworm that channels the spirit of Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” so deeply that you’d assume the fellow Canadian pop star’s name would be listed in the credits. .... She sounds as if she’s most comfortable veering into the fast lane.

New Blue Sun is not the best ambient record you can hear in 2023. .... However, New Blue Sun will probably be the only ambient record many people do hear in 2023, and it’s great that such a lively, sumptuous album gets the gig.

Quaranta shows that Brown has lost none of his musical acuity. Like post-punk icons Hüsker Du in the 80s, Brown knows how to assemble a compelling project, leaving fans to argue which one is the prettiest of the bunch.

Dolly’s warmth, up-for-anything spirit, and common touch bring almost everything she does endearingly down to earth, and at 77, she’s able to hold her own and work well with every heavy hitter who rolls through. .... The new material struggles to get noticed amid all of the classic-rock fireworks. It also might’ve been nice if more songs had been culled from her own story.

At times, Stapleton’s latest feels like a more mature, seasoned sequel to his multi-platinum 2015 debut Traveller

If PinkPantheress often seems adrift in apprehension and loneliness, she inhabits the LP’s different purgatorial states with the same confidence that made her early releases so appealing

By the fourth line — "Being this young is art" — it's obvious, the track ["Slut!"] is a stunner. .... The chorus [of "Say Don’t Go"] ("Why'd you have to lead me on? Why'd you have to twist the knife?") hits so tragically hard that it was destined to be screamed by stadiums full of fans at future Eras shows. "Suburban Legends" is a euphoric, dizzying rush to the head, with Antonoff's production making it sound like the soundtrack to the world's most addictive arcade game.

As always, Blink-182 are at their best when they are channeling punk-rock energy and wailing tongue-in-cheek couplets against choppy guitars and Barker’s driving rhythms. The action-packed “Turpentine” hits the mark and uses the band’s immature humor to unpack One More Time’s darker themes.

In tracing the way Mitchell’s songs mutated from bare-boned recordings to fully realized tracks with more musicians than she’d ever used before, Archives Volume 3 finally allows us to hear those steps along the way. That evolution is most apparent in the making of Court and Spark, an album that was both a beautifully crafted piece of adult pop on par with Steely Dan‘s work and a warm, intimate, emotionally conflicted meditation on love and relationships.

Throughout the LP, he seems to ask: Who is with him and who is against him? Who truly knows him and who pretends to? Who’s a real fan versus a fake fan? This comes at a cost, making the album a bit thematically repetitive and lacking some of the political depth of past projects. But it is an unflinching look into the celebrity psyche, and Bad Bunny keeps it ruthlessly honest.

Multi-layered and deeply personal, Something is Sivan’s most adventurous album in more ways than one. Musically, the singer stretches out to explore new instrumentation — and ornamentation. .... Lyrically, Sivan manages to be earnest and self-aware, without descending into bitterness or self-loathing.

As a representative of a modern production-by-committee rap album in 2023, Set It Off achieves a modest goal of being erratic yet diverting.