This time, they go lighter on the samples and heavier on post-trip hop soundscapes and contemporary singers, making for recombinant pop that feels joyfully seamless and organic.

It’s the density of wit, ideas, and verbal invention that makes this one of the year’s defining hip-hop releases, whether Chance is rapping about God’s cell phone battery, racial politics, or merely unleashing thick clusters of rhymes.

Fucked Up's real appeal is simple: guitars, three of 'em, though it can seem like thirty.

A warm, evocative pop-soul-jazz album that comes straight from the heart.

Tell Tale Signs makes plain that Dylan knows the caprices of the world he lives in, now more than ever.

Singer Franklin James Fisher, whose multi-instrumentalist duties include everything from Rhodes to cello to sampling, is a perfect gospel shouter for our times, staring down darkness as he dances at the edge of our shared oblivion. The result is a genuinely new way to mangle the blues.

We relate because we root for her, because we listen with affection and identification. We’d all rather see her in a crown, running this nothing town. But the most striking thing about Happier Than Ever is that she’s refusing to coddle her audience, refusing to protect us from her darkest moments. It’s a high-risk move.

He's often thought of more as an instrumental virtuoso than a singer-songwriter, but here he excels at both.

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.

It’s hard not to wish for a few more moments like that on There Is No Other, where old-school songcraft takes precedence over the album’s bravely collaborative spirit. But Gidden’s new album, yet another fine entry in her outstanding current run, is ultimately the most distilled and sui generis display of the unique artistry that defines her still-blossoming career.

Ultimately, this is a set of odds and ends, inspired freestyles and funk jams; many are likely Butterfly outtakes, albeit none with the laser-focused resonance of "The Blacker The Berry" or "Alright." But there's brilliance in even Lamar's cast-offs, and an intimacy here that makes this more than just a gift for his ravenous fans.

Bejar stacks rainy-New York sax magic, sad-astronaut strings and hippie jazzbo grooving to make songs that are as wryly hilarious as they are weirdly affecting.

On his most legible album, he’s actively engaged in dismantling what it means for rappers to go in, and to evolve as artists. Without punchlines, hooks, eccentric beats, and flashy flows, he finds ways to astound and delight, avoiding gimmicks as well as grandstanding.

Seven years later, they've released a 94-minute follow-up that explores even wilder styles of mordantly nutso android bleat.

A buried-treasure mother lode. ... He's in peak lonesome-guy mode on the never-released failed-relationship chronicle "Give Me Strength." Another previously unheard song, "Hawaii," is a spooky mysterious-stranger ballad.

It's the best thing they've ever done, more than exceeding their usual quotient of fire guitars, killer choruses, and crafty rock-history updates. [Feb 2022, p.72]

Their third and best full-length.

A set that's seamlessly transporting, front to back.

Tickets to the show may be sold out until approximately forever, but this album is an excellent replacement.

Delivered from DeMent, whose voice has never sounded more curious and committed (listen to her phrasing in the last verse of “Warriors of Love”), these messages of spirit-rising and movement-building feel less like MSNBC screeds than warm invitations toward a righteous calling.

It's as inviting, immaculately produced, jokey and unsettled a record as any he has ever made.

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.

As on Weld, Way Down in the Rust Bucket showcases a reconvened band that sounds newly motivated after increasingly sluggish and creaky shows in the Eighties. They’re not yet the smooth-galloping machine they would become on the full-blown tour, though. What we’re hearing is the musicians feeling their way.

1998's Mermaid Avenue let the artists rewrite themselves, too: Billy Bragg, the British folkie agitator, turned goofier ("My Flying Saucer"), while Wilco turned rootsier ("California Stars).

It comes down to the songs, and these are the most intense he's ever written, one instant classic after another.

It's his best album since 1990's The Rhythm of the Saints, and it also sums up much of what makes Simon great.

Third is an unexpected yet totally impressive return.

Burke is the rare singer who makes songwriters sound wise beyond their words -- he finds ache lying dormant in unlikely places and manages to pinpoint, with GPS accuracy, the murky emotional terrain within the lyrics.