Greenwood’s previous PTA scores provided feral atmosphere first and foremost, or in Inherent Vice’s case, a convex take on classic Hollywood film noir incidental music. Phantom Thread’s score, on the other hand, feels like another main character or storytelling voice in the film. Greenwood’s abilities have never served one of Anderson’s films better, or proved so integral to its power.

Besides restoring the muscle lacking on the emaciated An Object, the opening trio on Snares presents No Age as everything they’ve been (gritty, propulsive, atmospheric, a motorcycle taking on a sandstorm head-on) and the immediately accessible rawk band they’ve never been.

Only a third of the album works. Obscure, seemingly unfinished, and nattering, this is Tune-Yards’ weakest album to date at a moment when Garbus, distrusting her music’s ability to explain itself, doesn’t need the slings and arrows.

The new album’s particular saving grace is its self-loathing streak, the sense that scales have fallen from eyes and that Stay Gold’s nebulous disaffection has soured to regret.

M A N I A takes similar chances [as 2009's Folie a Deux] to more mixed results, as Stump belts out absurdly verbose lyrics over glossy, overstuffed tracks. But the album’s more experimental moments aren’t necessarily its strong suit. ... M A N I A hits its stride in the second half, with a pair of tracks that toy with religious imagery and waltz tempos, “Church” and “Heaven’s Gate.”

You’ll discover plenty of laconic beauty wherever you drop into The House, and it glimmers with the songful club music that made its predecessor great for getting ready to go out. But a profusion of digital-pastoral vocal settings makes it unlikely to displace Pool from constant shuffle rotation.

In lesser hands, all this weight could feel leaden. But Miguel remains a craftsman, and leisure gets its due.

The failures of his latest effort don’t simply center on that side step from audacity to reckoning. It’s in how that move has somehow left him struggling to write a listenable song.

Songs of Experience, clicks into place more boldly than Songs of Innocence did three years ago. Tempos are alert, riffs punchy, melodies sharp. ... It’s also too bad the album’s second half gets stuck in pensive midtempo mode and never recovers.

Utopia is full-on music-theater unlike anything Björk has yet attempted, and the rare tenth album by such an established artist to genuinely surprise with unforced and meaningful reinvention.

Rest’s intimacy contrasts Gainsbourg’s personal reticence, and softens a storytelling void that might doom a lesser stylist.

Thanks to its polyrhythms and rich instrumental textures, The Animal Spirits is as likely to appeal to fans of experimental rock music (especially electro-tribal searchers like Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Fuck Buttons, or Dan Deacon) as it is to those who regularly spend evenings at the club.

Never has she sounded freer than she does here, a self-styled villain biting the forbidden fruit of gossip and letting its juices run down her neck.

There are light nods to the times—single “Love So Soft” lightly updates Thankful’s Christina Aguilera-penned “Miss Independent” and Breakaway’s “Walk Away” with a half-time chorus, and tracks like “Didn’t I” and “Heat” recalls Adele’s collaborations with Max Martin. But the rest is stubbornly old-fashioned: sloughing off the flakiness of the millennial male while extolling the virtues of taking it slow and pushing for commitment.

Plunge feel vibrant and more alive. There are crucial moments on the album where Dreijer slows things down a bit to let everything sink in. Even on the quieter moments, however, the mood of the album is deeply human.

The final result is a balm to soothe well-trodden emotional frequencies.

It’s disappointing, then, that this impulse of creative energy has resulted in a record that feels flat and strained.

Each song is immaculately crafted and sequenced, yet with this many ballads, they blur: a play continually in its eleventh hour.

ken, Bejar’s sparest album in terms of lyrical density and length in some time, is an aggressive, well-chiseled shift.

Lotta Sea Lice is strange, occasionally awkward, and easy to love. Like a good buddy movie, it’s a little sentimental, and possessed of a deeper wisdom than its goofy premise initially lets on.

Clark has carved out a space as a guitar hero in an era where that sort of thing is supposed to be over. That is impressive, even if the theatrics occasionally wear me out, and begin to feel like preludes for a visually dynamic live show. I’m much more attracted to MASSEDUCTION’s humbler moments, when you can better imagine the songs without the heavy arrangements.

It’s largely a plainspoken, cohesive work, closer in spirit to single-minded efforts like Morning Phases, Modern Guilt, or even Sea Change. And really, that’s fine.

HEAVN is musically spry and spiritually hefty at 41 minutes, the questioning half of a nationally fraught Q&A that’s long deserved the answers, none of whom are currently running for president.

Like all of Four Tet’s work, New Energy can be viewed as an addition to this unlikely canon, whose practitioners share a desire to remove a listener from their surroundings and bring them someplace higher, no matter the means.

Kelela proudly stands within the genre’s tradition. For the most part, she avoids making any grandstanding romantic or political statements, but Take Me Apart finds its purpose within the subdued complexities.

The final result is an agreeable enough listen.

Remarkably, Bates captures outsized bombast while infusing the music with a genuine energy that verges on punk. Manson’s music hasn’t sounded this alive in years, which makes it so disappointing that he squanders a golden opportunity. ... Manson sounds increasingly out of touch and desperate to preserve a persona that he and his audience should have outgrown a long time ago.

Though energetic, their danceable chassis and sprawling melodies nevertheless feel weary, as if constantly grinding against some looming, countervailing force. It’s true that wearied, furtive anthems have always been Wolf Parade’s thing, but they feel especially right for these enervating times.