An intense but often rewarding examination of sentimentality from one of youth culture’s leading miserabilists.

The album achieves something mischievously unguarded: a collection of blissful dance tunes constructed for embrace and abandon. Drake takes a leap further into uncharted realms than any of his peers, offering a refreshing sign of what’s to come.

The point of Sun’s Signature, of course, was for Fraser and Reece to challenge themselves, and with this EP, they’ve charted new territory without losing sight of Fraser’s pioneer past. Each song feels both familiar and new.

Strange’s undeniable talent and versatility have resulted in one of 2022’s most audacious albums, one that whirls through ideas while exploding preconceptions.

The three-CD set surveys their story so far, offers fascinating glimpses of roads not taken, and contains must-hear new music.

Isn't quite as transportingly charming as their past couple. [Jun 2022, p.74]

His storytelling chops are only getting sharper with age. [Jun 2022, p.74]

They're still great at delivery wry prettiness. [Jun 2022, p.74]

The best moments come when Post looks within for inspiration.

Versions of Modern Performance doesn’t just revive a certain sound; it revives the idea of mystery and tension in rock & roll.

The country-tinged beauty of this album is a revelation after the grand, gloomy orchestration she summoned for 2019’s All Mirrors and stripped away for 2020’s Whole New Mess, and a rewarding payoff for fans who’ve always known she had a record like this in her.

Despite its length and musical theme, Cruel Country doesn’t at first feel like a grand statement, but Tweedy has subtly laid out the ambitious concept of tying his classic American music to the classical theme of American social and political alienation (this, Uncle Tupelo fans, is where the record truly becomes roots music).

McRae’s debut doesn’t exactly make her stand out from the sea of algorithmic pop girls, but it definitely shows promise.

The album hits its strongest points when Morby opens himself up to reckless abandon, stripping himself of the introspective pretenses of soul-searching and instead embracing the unpredictable chaos of life and all its imperfection.

Kendrick has never been one for subtlety, and the vulnerability at the core of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers brings out moments of his reflexive overreach.

He’s pulled off the neat trick of making his music at once elegant and more refined but also warmer and more intimate — the polished-marble smoothness of Steely Dan with the generosity of an Al Green or Yo La Tengo record.

By and large, it lives up to the legend, or at least what anyone would have wanted it to be. The you-are-there ambience of what we’d already heard runs throughout the entire album, as does the same bravado and ferocity, whether the band is rolling out “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” for the hundredth time or a cover of bluesman Big Maceo’s “Worried Life Blues.”

A Light for Attracting Attention contains some of the songwriters’ most easily enjoyable music in years.

Dance Fever may be Welch’s most ecstatically extra work yet. [May 2022, p.75]

A concise and seamlessly flowing collection of insurrectionary rhymes and propulsive beats by one of rap’s most heralded duos.

Rather than feeding into speculation about the ever-expanding scale of the genre and what peak he’s out to conquer next, he chooses to lean back and have fun with a loose, leisurely set of 23 songs, his longest tracklist ever.

There are magical moments on Come Home the Kids Miss You to be found amidst a primal need to sex his female fans.

The svelte, 34-minute Dropout Boogie — which comes out the day before the 20th anniversary of their first album — keeps things similarly crunchy.

All told, the singer-songwriter’s latest is a testament to her dedication to songcraft and an impressive mid-career statement on restlessness, contentment and everything in between.

All of these gestures are deeply in earnest, and some of them even feel earned. But it’s hard not to hear We as the sound of a band hopefully setting things back in order, with better adventures to come.

As warm and soulful as ever. [May 2022, p.79]

Their most sonically surprising - full of brash lust and tender beauty. [May 2022, p.79]

I Never Liked You is no DS2, but it has a compositional sweep often absent from his work. Most importantly, it’s an album with layers that’s more engaging than recent fare such as 2019’s appealing yet boilerplate Future Hndrxx Presents: The Wizrd and Save Me EP; and 2020’s one-two punch of desultory hive-bait, High Off Life and Pluto x Baby Pluto, the latter with Lil Uzi Vert.