AM was so heart-wrenchingly excellent that it looms over the Sheffield rockers and their fans, but unlike 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, The Car seems like its true predecessor.

It’s the fuzzy sound of a band unconcerned with the past, ignoring their legacy and responding to a new, darker reality.

For all the broken romances on The Loneliest Time, it’s an uplifting experience.

Her tenth album returns to the dazzling synth-pop of albums like '1989' and 'Reputation,' with lyrics caught between a love story and a revenge plot.

Crybaby is a wild ride, with Tegan and Sara’s voices twinning and uncoupling on songs that vibrate with feeling while having the kind of lightness that comes with wrapping up larger-than-life sentiments in glittering pop gems.

Shaw tries to sing here and there (notably on “Driver’s Story”) but Dry Cleaning’s words and music seem to work best together when they’re working independently of each other. The band’s peers in the sing-speak/post-punk group Wet Leg do a better job overall of conjuring joy from the marriage of poetry and music but what Dry Cleaning do feels unique.

Most of the time, Baby is in prime form here — technical enough to earn his hip-hop cred, and stylistic enough to keep the uncommon kids from feeling like he’s common. When he’s at his best, it’s best to let him gobble you whole.

Only Built for Infinity Links find Quavo and Takeoff more than capable of conjuring the old Migos magic by themselves. It’s a patchy collection that seems to go on a bit too long despite a 59-minute running time.

Dirt Femme isn’t Tove Lo’s magnum opus but in revealing a more vulnerable side and digging deeper into her ethos, she excels at not losing what has made her such a standout in a saturated genre over the years.

At 75 minutes is even longer than its predecessor, is essentially “Unlimited Love II.” it’s a bit of a stop-gap, but also a nice coda.

With Being Funny In A Foreign Language, they reassert themselves at the forefront of 2020s pop-rock, fusing together the textures and musical ideas of soft-rock hits from three decades ago with modern sensibilities in a way that sounds instantly familiar, yet distinctively of-the-moment.

Radically openhearted and stunning new album. The album feels like a series of warm embraces: of Andrews’ past musical selves, of her past mistakes and misfortunes, and of her bright, beautifully uncertain present and future.

Across 12 tracks that all clock in under three minutes or so in length, Charlie is an expertly-crafted collection of earworms that stay in your head longer than any viral photo or TikTok clip. On his terrific, cohesive third studio album, the man with the perfect pitch proves he’s got the perfect formula for a great pop record too.

Willow's musical ambition has always been there, but here it's matched by larger-than-life rock that borrows from multiple eras, smashing those influences into something new.

With age/sex/location, Lennox has delivered her best work to date, one that mostly leaps past her patchy but inspired Shea Butter Baby debut in quality.

$oul $old $eparately is solid work made by an established character.

The minimalist, glassy music, combined with her depiction of her younger companion’s spirited imagination, makes for an ending that manages to contain enough optimism to inspire O, Zinner, and Chase to keep their collective spirit smoldering, even against the 21st century’s brutal headwinds.

In short, it’s Björk at her absolute Björkiest.

Rod Wave’s brush with legal danger gives Beautiful Mind’s its structure as well as a sense that he’s charting new territory, and not just the themes of success and alienation that fueled past hits like Ghetto Gospel and Pray 4 Love. Some listeners might be wary of this chastened figure who nevertheless doggedly sticks to the “trenches” and complains on “Better,” “I thought it’d be smiles on they faces, tears coming out they eyes, hearing congratulations/But they make it no better.”

The Hardest Part is the result of her stepping away and figuring out who she is — and the songs she wrote during that time sound appealing even as they’re digging into knotty, complex emotions.

They’re a truly great pop group—and Born Pink is the great pop album they were born to make.

Otherworldly music-box twinkles on the mournful “Only Child,” a gentle midtempo strut rising as the Monica Martin duet “Go in Light” nears self-acceptance — illuminate the close-to-the-bone lyrics while also placing Mumford’s voice in musical contexts that differ from his namesake band’s output. Those subtle differences are just enough to underscore the personal voyage (self-titled) takes.

It seems the isolation of lockdown made her bolder about looking inside herself. The most exciting thing about Hold the Girl is that you can’t even guess where Sawayama might go next.

Words & Music improves the sound on Reed’s original tape (available to hear, with many others, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, home to the Reed Archives), and evidently takes some liberty with song order.

Their third and most arresting record since their reformation.

Yungblud is a whirlwind listen, fusing together building blocks of various rock subgenres—mostly Britpop’s hip-shaking carnality and emo’s on-the-brink wails—then spit-shining them a bit before adding confessional lyrics.

Listening to Khaled’s albums is like searching for blessings amidst the chaff, and the signal-to-noise ratio is generally low. But God Did isn’t as torturously bad as, say, 2019’s Father of Asahd.

Swift came out of the gate sounding bright-eyed but remarkably seasoned. [December 5, 2012]