Earle serves here as a trusted travel guide, offering a nuanced portrayal of a time and place (21st-century Appalachian mining) that likely feels a world away for the majority of his listeners.

High Off Life is Future at his most optimistic, as the man from Pluto decides to send out a positive message. But it’s still got the spaced-out melancholy that always fills his sound, as he clocks some serious demon hours in the late-night druggy strip-club haze of his soul.

It’s an engaging, sometimes muddled — as dispatches from such a place often are — but frequently brilliant collection that expands the horizons of the already dexterous approach to psychedelic soul Hakim showcased on his excellent 2017 debut, Green Twins.

Not his most satisfying concept, but he can do more in 72 seconds that most artists can in four minutes. [May 2020, p.89]

His most ambitious music yet on his fifth LP. ... These are age-old ideas, but they don’t feel that way when he’s singing them. It’s par for the course for an artist who specializes in embodying pop archetypes, and making them new again.

Can be madcap and zany, darkly hilarious, and just plain weird. [May 2020, p.89]

Isbell kicks up dust by looking backwards, and Reunions is at its best when he’s doing just that.

It both feels like a continuance of the band’s classic Eighties sound and it’s actually good.

Dream Hunting may not be traditionally lovely, but it lives and breathes. And that’s really all we can do these days.

At 15 tracks, Petals for Armor can occasionally feel redundant; two or three songs feel like retread territory that was better explored elsewhere, and there’s only so many metaphors you can create for flowers. Still, the album’s final third, while the most pop-oriented section, is also its most interesting. ... It’s the sound of an artist blooming into some the best music of her career.

Her best LP since 1998's landmark Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. [May 2020, p.89]

The project, a grab bag of new songs, leaks, and material previously teased on Instagram Live, is often bittersweet and deeply contemplative, even by Drake’s standards.

Even when Making a Door Less Open gets a little clunky, it remains compelling.

DaBaby’s greatest enemy on Blame It On Baby is his staggering prolific streak; the struggle to find something new means he’s fighting against his own current.

The organic, delightfully earnest tracks blend Miss Colombia‘s avant-Latin sonic palette with revered cross-generational traditions, forging a new world of musical borderlessness that Pimienta is glad to call home.

Combining crunchy nu-metal guitar riffs with a penchant for early-aughts R&B-pop production in the vein of Aaliyah and ‘NSync, Sawayama sounds like Britney Spears’ Blackout by way of Korn — and it inexplicably works.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters will not disappoint. Released with little warning nearly a decade after 2012’s The Idler Wheel…, the album sees the now-42-year-old songwriter proving that she’s still more than capable of telling off partners, detractors, and others who have done her wrong, all while picking apart the inner workings of her frantic mind. But what sets Bolt Cutters apart from its predecessors is that, for the first time, the scales tip more toward resilience than agony.

Much of Earth is laidback and peaceful, centered around the cerebral “Brasil” and “Olympik,” which clock in over eight minutes, tickling the brain with swirling synths and dreamy lines about love and perfection.

Their fourth record lacks the innocent fun of their first hits. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Where Strokes albums since 2006’s First Impressions of Earth have felt grudging and defensive in their theoretical approach to the band’s cultural and career position, this time out the mood is less constricted.

This charming man's bowshots at English society can get repetitive. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Even with a bruised heart, he's a charmer. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Sweet, solid collection about fatherhood and quitting cigarettes, sounding like the National. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Classic gestures are all over Southside, though Hunt thankfully has no interest in doing something so straightforward.

It Is What It Is, is just as daring in its musical reach, and its pairing of goofy and gutting [as 2017's Drunk].

McBryde’s second major-label release, Never Will, is just as daring and deep, sometimes deceptively so [as Girl Going Nowhere].

The music turns much darker Ghosts VI, which, by proxy, makes it the more interesting of the two. ... Unlike the first Ghosts collection, these albums feel like distinct artistic statements.

The songs are spacious with gentle buzzing, humming, and exhaling drones that slowly evolve, complementing often pretty piano music.

Glaspy doesn’t tear down so much expand and build upon the warm Seventies folk-rock of her wonderful 2016 debut Emotions + Math, incorporating drum loops and processed vocals into an effortless mix of swooping indie-pop (“Without Him”), industrial noise (“What’s the Point”) and Ben Folds-piano sing-alongs (“Vicious”).

Future Nostalgia is a breathtakingly fun, cohesive and ambitious attempt to find a place for disco in 2020. Incredibly, Lipa is successful: the upbeat album that she decided to release a week earlier than planned is the perfect balm for a stressful time.

Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana (or I Do Whatever I Want) convenes a family reunion of his favorite rappers and reggaetoneros to produce a genre-promiscuous work of reggaeton a la marquesina: a more street-savvy form of reggaeton once deemed so risqué that it was criminalized and relegated to garage parties across Puerto Rico throughout the Nineties.

There’s a new richness to Crutchfield’s voice that smooths out the emotional extremities.

After Hours certainly has its share of pity-partying. But there’s also a vulnerability that goes beyond the usual too-beautiful-for-the-world sulking. ... After Hours is one of the smoothest cocoons he’s spun.

There’s surprisingly little filler on these thirteen songs, barring a few missteps like “Bragger,” which lands in an uninteresting netherworld between country and pop. More interesting is when Ballerini explores the social dynamics of that same netherworld.

Spanning 10 pigment-themed tracks, Colores is a sophisticated show of Balvin’s sonic palette.

Lee’s sound design—the rush of Uzi getting sucked into a portal, the hum of the spaceship engine, the unsettling, pulsating rumble coming from the great beyond—co-exists seamlessly with the album’s production. It creates narrative tension and helps create a broader cosmic context for his sex marathons and shopping sprees, for the great eccentric force with which he raps and sings.

Gigaton is a testament to how Pearl Jam’s own deeply held dissatisfaction still burns brighter than ever.

Suga might sound like a moodier big sister to Tina Snow or Hot Girl Meg. But as the new songs show, Megan at her most vulnerable is still tough as a tank.

Rose's ace narrative writing occasionally takes a back seat to her neon keyboards and dance beats, but when she stumbles upon a fine groove, it's irresistible. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Mostly acoustic folk set, indebted to faves like Fairport Convention and Bert Jansch, and full of fireside beauty. [Mar 2020, p.91]

As great as their Nineties high points, a hazy, globalist British rock that's loose and optimistically eclectic. [Mar 2020, p.87]

Settles on muscular, tasteful adult pop that's often autobiographical. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Leans on her singer-songwriter side. [Mar 2020, p.91]

My Turn succeeds as a showcase of Lil Baby’s talent, but it still feels flat on due to its excessive length, the fact that every song is almost exactly three minutes, and the way it recycles 808 patterns and harmonic structures.

The effortlessness with which the Secret Sisters articulate their musical ambitions places Saturn Return among recent country-roots gems from songwriters like Jason Isbell and Pistol Annies. If working through their struggles has been a strange process, the wait was more than worth it.

Color Theory could have been a true indie-rock stunner if more of its songs hit with the same individually distinct charge as the ones on her debut. Still, Allison’s nostalgic sadness suggests a bright musical future.

Unfortunately, the music doesn’t do the lyrics any favors, a real surprise coming from an artists whose earlier LPs established her as one of indie-pop’s sharpest melodists.

Unlike the band’s recent Faith and Grace collection, which crams the Stax material onto a one-disc compilation, Come Go With Me offers the first-ever complete portrait of the group’s most dynamic, and in some ways, most turbulent, period.

Map of the Soul: 7 is their most smashing album yet, showing off their mastery of different pop styles from rap bangers to slow-dance ballads to post-Swedish electro-disco to prog-style philosophizing.

Some of the songs are elegiac, some are packed with comic-book laughs, but throughout the album he sings with a youthful vivacity that seems at odds with his 70-something years. His goofball songs are more lighthearted than ever, and his more serious songs sound even more thoughtful.

As a whole, the album is a surprising turn for an artist who built much of his legend on self-loathing, brooding, and yearning (both existentially and carnally).

Miss Anthropocene is no doubt a work of ambition, and Boucher’s aims at bringing further awareness to the climate crisis are noble. ... Yet what the album actually has to say about climate change is often lost under the admittedly beautiful, meticulously composed wreckage. By the album’s end, Boucher has abandoned the muddled villainous pretext in favor of her own utopian fantasies.

The 16 songs on Changes focus almost exclusively on the logistics of having sex when you are both hot, young, and working in fields that require a lot of time apart. The concept itself is kind of funny, but the execution is often unimaginative and cliché, especially given how earnestly Bieber delivers every line, no matter how ridiculous.

Honeymoon will be an immediate boon to fans of heart-on-sleeve indie bands like That Dog, Waxahatchee, Charli Bliss, and the Beths. Trifilio is a very good songwriter with a lovely, somewhat folk-toned voice, and Beach Bunny are all good musicians who’ve attained an impressive amount of musical know-how in their few years together.

In the end, what could be an album of well-earned indulgence ends up being as much about reaching outward than burrowing inward, rendering deep personal suffering with a humane light touch. And It’s Still Alright the heartening sound of music pulling him through his pain, and, hopefully, past it into something like solace.

Focus too deeply, and it feels less like a collection of songs and more like a showplace for his sonic finery. As mood music, though, it's a sweet trip. [Feb 2020, p.83]

A sophisticated, personal set. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Father of All… is a bountiful act of recovered rock memory, an effortlessly affirming argument that the first mosh pit or car radio contact high you get when you’re 13 years old can be enough to sustain you long into life. It’s a deep, deep thing, and, in a sense, a defiant and subtly political statement, too.

It’s hard for a band like STP to change and grow, especially after the losses of two iconic frontmen, so perhaps Perdida will function more like a steppingstone to something greater. But for now, they sound like half the band they used to be.

This box set is the type of treatment usually reserved for Beatles reissues, but because it’s Zappa The Hot Rats Sessions is a more delightfully quirky. It doesn’t contain everything, the way something like the Stooges’ 1999 box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, did, but because of the Zappa-esque details, it feels more comprehensive, for better or worse.

There are moments of pop bliss on the Petties' latest to rival their Eighties hits. [Feb 2020, p.85]

His wry lyrics ("You're looking good in spite of the light") add an uncanny whimsy. [Feb 2020, p.85]

A rewarding collection of expertly crafted, darkly emotive electro-folk rockers. [Feb 2020, p.85]

Can be folky or synth-y, full of tunes and lyrics that follow a strange logic toward rich epiphanies. [Feb 2020, p.85]

Funeral is wildly uneven, a landscape of pronounced highs and lows.

The Drive-By Truckers’ 12th record is less a creative high peak than a sturdy reminder of the band’s admirable persistence. And like every Truckers record, the plentiful moments of middle American reportage (“21st Century USA”) and fractured underdog beauty (“Armageddon’s Back in Town”) make The Unraveling, at the very least, another sturdy addition to the band’s almost peerless discography.

It’s fair to say Louis can break free as well. That doesn’t happen enough on Walls.

On the excellent High Road, she fuses all her passions together—the road she’s traveling in the title is a spiritual path, but it’s also “high” in the earthier sense.

It still sounds off-kilter enough to register as an album by the same people who made Pink Flag. It’s music that makes you want to dig deeper to decipher its intention.

Musically, he gestures towards the current hip-hop world a little more intentionally than his hermetic-sounding albums have tended to in the recent past. ... In a new lyrical wrinkle, Em steps into the role of political commentator and protest voice, with mixed results.

While it can often go dark, the vibe is empathic; Shake’s said the record was designed to comfort, and counter hate.

The album doesn’t possess the piercing introspection, precision or revelatory quality of Swimming, but of course, Miller wasn’t there to see it across the finish line. It serves as a fitting coda to his career.

Excellent. ... The singer doesn’t even come close to finding peace of mind in these songs. Still, she knows how to make it a thrilling quest.

His once-golden voice is gravelly and weathered, but the genius still flashes. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Like the Promise Ring gone country, and heartwarmingly so. [Jan 2020, p.84]

The risk-taking singer masterfully draws you into her romantic pleasures and anxieties. [Jan 2020, p.84]

An able soul shouter. ... At times suggesting an Allmans session at Hi Records. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Their third album can be a blast. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Their 10th album sounds as though they had been sitting on it since [1994]. [Jan 2020, p.84]

James Alex re-ups the Replacements' underdog thrash for a new generation, and he's so on point. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Rare is shockingly, and beautifully, upbeat.

here aren’t many behind-the-scenes outtakes, only a few demos and jams from around The Division Bell, including a stripped-down more dour-sounding “High Hopes.” ... The box set attempts to make up for this with odds and ends like interviews, standalone reels of the projections they cast on the circular screen, replica tour programs and a lyric book. The accouterments are all well considered and, like the concert films and albums, feel very “Pink Floyd” (it’s always nice to see the band’s trippy, Hipgnosis art printed well). But it only makes you want more

It’s a streamlined, party-ready, primary-colors take on the enduring concept of the rock & roll starman. It’s also as much as fun as anyone short of Bruno Mars is having with a band these days.

An album where she keeps finding ways to give her artistry a new edge.

The band may be only half the Who they were when they formed, but Who is worthy of the Who name.

None of the bonus songs are necessarily better than the ones that made the cut on 1999, but they show just how curious he was at the time, trying out new and different ideas, musical themes he would still be exploring in the decades that followed. ... As with the Purple Rain box set a couple years ago, this macro look at 1999 shows not just Prince’s genius but the breadth of his brilliance at the time.

It’s a band whose great talent has always been its aspirational one-world melodies, now sounding much more like the world.

For all of his vigor for partnership, is a solitary classicist, a singer-songwriter wrestling with the dynamics of desire and emotional commitment. Hyperspace is grounded in that realism.

Thanks for the Dance is a surprise, a sort of séance as shiva, a magnificent parting shot that’s also that exceptionally rare thing — a posthumous work as alive, challenging, and essential as anything issued in the artist’s lifetime.

It’s good to hear the grain of James’ voice minus its usual cloak of reverb; his writing’s passionate, and the orchestrations show smarts and wit.

Everybody’s Everything doesn’t offer a clearer picture of his emotional burden, but rather exists as a lasting reminder of the massive star he might have been.

The reissue may not be a treasure trove of unheard material, but the gems that echo the sounds of the American South are comforting and familiar. And that’s not a bad thing.

Consider Courage to be Dion’s version of Cher’s Believe: an album that arrived at exactly the right time and proved to a new generation that she’s worth revisiting and recognizing as a diva very capable of keeping up with the times.

Its first half is devoted to the biggest chunk of original instrumental music he’s released, and it comes with lovely, welcome surprises. ... Not every track hits hard, but the “Vocal Suite” still feels like a cohesive album, and its punchiest tracks take many involved to a level they haven’t reached in years.

Several releases later, Elverum is still meditating on grief and grace with poignancy on this hyper-literal album.

The sound’s kaleidoscopic.

A fresh listen to No Other, Clark’s lone Asylum album, reminds you both of its beauty and its occasional more frustrating aspects. The songs, which stretch out to as long as eight minutes, aren’t played as much as unfurled. ... Shorn of the choir that appears on many of its songs, the outtakes are vital for the way they allow us to zero in on Clark’s singing. It’s easy to forget how robust a vocalist Clark could be

Combs’ second full-length, then, sounds less like an album and more like a collection of singles that will be crowding country radio for the next two years.