Might Delete Later is a miscalculation at every level and may prove in time to be his version of Chance the Rapper’s The Big Day.

Hyperdrama will ultimately please fans who enjoyed their last two albums, but for anyone else hoping for a more adventurous LP that captures the succinct, edgy and grimy attitude of Cross, you’re going to be left disappointed. Justice’s fourth album caters to the radio-friendly masses, and frankly, they do a good job of it.

Appropriately, the music across In Lieu of Flowers is the fullest, boldest, and most confident-sounding of the side-project’s entire discography. But honestly, with a story this poignant, potent, and cathartic, the melodies almost become an afterthought. In Lieu of Flowers is the perfect conclusion to a story for the ages; come, gather around, and experience some of the best songwriting of a generation.

A Chaos of Flowers marks a productive new chapter in their trajectory, sure, but above all, it represents the very best of what Big|Brave have to offer: emotion in desolation, destruction in grace.

What sets the album apart from what they’ve churned out the past 18 years is its ability to channel exactly what has always made them great, while injecting a renewed sense of genuine musical creativity that finally sticks it to the tired notion that all they needed to do was play around with a new gimmick.

The Tortured Poets Department is too pulseless to inspire anything at all – and so when Swift does lay down the occasional track with colour in her cheeks, the results tend to tower over the rest of the album regardless of any visible issues they bear. Practically every one of the its greatest highlights is a glaring case-in-point for one or another of its recurrent flaws, yet transcends them through sheer pep and conviction.

The Tortured Poets Department is a complex album to even perceive because there is an oversaturation of surrounding context. If you whittle it straight down to what matters, however – the music and the lyrics – it’s an excellent record despite its tremendous length and monotonous tempo (discounting ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart' here, which is an absolute bop). There are beautiful instrumental accents and interesting production flourishes throughout, and Swift continues to illustrate lyrical growth even though it has always been her strong suit.

Overall, Dark Matter ended up as the most interesting and energized record since Backspacer. It seems pushing the band to work fast in the studio yields better results. Of course, most of the material here sounds familiar, but the members feel once more invested in it.

WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU has little to offer on basically any front. On the drama front, there are no haymakers or grand declarations. There are a few guests that stop by ala Mr. Rodgers style to give low-effort mumblings to the effect of “Drake Sucks,” but much of the project is devoid of anything compelling enough to hang your hat on.

It’s a nostalgic release full of wisdom, like hearing from an old friend, providing the kind of evening fireside soundtrack which hits just right in a particular mood. If nothing else, it’s a marvel how much emotion Knopfler, getting on in years, can still eke out of those guitar strings.

There are those moments, here and there, when patience isn’t quite rewarded. .... The package as a whole however, those moments when the Pit of Language returns intoned into the drone and choir of Tar & Feathers, those moments where all of the haunted brilliance of Neubauten are on full display again, that same soul that made the subterranean abscesses of the bloated, dying West its echo chamber and forced it to confront itself.

It’s a humble but heartfelt effort which manages to tap into a font of cosmic beauty, and a delightful gift brought to you from these aging rockers.

Sadly, the relative adventurousness of Girl of My Dreams has been traded in for trite stadium-pop fodder that doesn’t play into Fletcher’s core strengths as an artist.

When Only God Was Above Us isn’t shattering glass ceilings, it’s delivering some of the most beautiful but disquieting indie-rock in recent memory.

In its most proficient moments, Older is heartbreaking, raw, confessional, melodically ethereal, and outright fun in flashes. These moments definitely outnumber the record’s more unfocused offerings.

There’s glimmers of the old brilliance here and there of course. Exotic BOP may be a pale, miserable ghost of the glory days, but there’s life to be found in Angela, its funk line feeling like it's going to be the root of something that’s about to flourish, but whoops, there it goes into its weird low-effort basement style as Stas THEE Boss delivers a verse that’s passable enough, but which doesn’t do anything to dig the rest of the track from out of its own mire.

In the end, Interplay feels like something of an incoherent mess if looked at with a microscope, but zoom a bit further out and it maintains enough of a “vibe” to feel at least somewhat cohesive, while also being a fun listen which should be even more enjoyable as the sun comes out and the temperature climbs.

If we got 10-12 solid tracks in the vein of “16 Carriages” or “II Most Wanted”, Cowboy Carter could have been a slam dunk. Unfortunately, the record stands as a bloated mess that doesn’t fully know what it wants to be.

Even if she is done splaying out the furthest boundaries of her sound, one can hardly complain that she's doubling down on the qualities she's always excelled at when she sounds as refreshed and refreshing as she does here.

Many of these tracks do just straight up bang on an instinctual level. But in those times that this does work, when this really gets down to being something that ignites the mind and the heart, it does so very much in spite of its intellectual and artistic veneer, and not because of it.

With Heaven :x: Hell, what Sum 41 has given us is a true grand finale, and it's one worth reveling in.

This is a good album for a band as deep into their career as Elbow, but it’s also worthwhile even without that qualifier. The band aren’t getting any younger, but they are getting wiser and, dare I say, more fun.

Back with a bang so refined it’s positively deafening, BLUE LIPS is an intriguing, befuddling, unique collection of songs that signals the start of a new era for ScHoolboy Q: the man who survived the CrasH.

Compared to its highly-praised predecessor, Bright Future might come up just short, brought down by its occasional unevenness in quality and weaker coherence as a full listen, but this latest album contains a multitude of Lenker’s finest work yet, while suggesting her reign at the top of indie-dom might be only just beginning. This is a triumphant work from an ascendant artist, and, oh yeah, also one of the finer folk albums of recent years.

Another stylistic pivot in the future could prevent Waxahatchee from settling into too predictable of a groove, but even if she stays the course, it's clear with Tigers Blood that she's discovered a sustainable winning formula.

It's a solid album by anyone's standards, and a real testament to Four Tet's unassuming mastery that he folds such a range of stylings together without any individual one going out of its way to announce itself as such (we'll forgive the geetar).

WORLD WIDE WHACK is just another example of how Tierra Whack is so good at carefully removing the barriers between vocal performances, genres, and even emotions that it always ends up looking like no trouble at all.

For as poor as Man of the Woods was, at least it was ambitious…unlike whatever this amorphous clump of hackneyed trends is.

The group tried something different here and it really works. Overall, ROCKMAKER stands as one of the group’s most cohesive LPs in a long time, automatically making it easier to follow through and digest.

While it certainly has a few weaker tracks, the core of the record is truly breathtaking to behold. It’s a moment of self-discovery and commitment to growth that eschews the lavish tendencies of Star-Crossed for something more personal, honest, and vulnerable.

His mastery of synths and the quality of his songwriting are apparent, but there also lies some regret that the album doesn't feature more vocals - Adigery's charisma and electricity sure helped Topical Dancer in that regard.

If Firepower was Judas Priest proving that they’ve still “got it”, Invincible Shield is them making sure no one else will steal their crown. Plenty of veteran classic metal acts are kicking around to this day, but none of them (not even Iron Maiden) still sound as vital, fresh, or vibrant as Judas Priest.

eternal sunshine, at 35 minutes, doesn’t leave much of an impression, its titular statement of pretty regard for memories lost and time regained ultimately registering not as a platform for yearning nor as a vehicle for regret nor as ironic joke nor social commentary but as the broadest possible thread of aesthetic inspiration for pretty regard for such immaterial concepts as memories, time, gain, loss. The songwriting is the main culprit

Norah Jones may be the same artist who sang “Don’t Know Why” on the beach 22 years ago, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t taken steps to advance or update her core sound. Visions is solid proof of this.

It's a shade overlong and overuse of certain choruses dampen the calculated effect of a few songs, but these flaws are barely noticeable when set against how gut-punch raw and earnest the writing is.

While the 80s are a well-trodden playground, Girl with No Face proves there are infinite ways to make old ideas new by contrasting them with the now.

Bleachers ends up being all the worst fears of Jack’s career path made manifest, as any semblance of uniqueness is sanded down in favor of Christmas Special-quality cameos to remind you just how strong his LinkedIn profile has grown.

Lots of artists aspire to create an album which matches the zeitgeist (easier said than done), but Mountainhead comes a lot closer than most. With its paranoid and sinister belly coalescing with the joke-y casualness of its exterior, this is yet another successful record from one of the quintessential bands of the internet age.

A bit more focus on expanding the sound, might have created a more encompassing atmosphere at least. So, if you want a handful of new Ministry tunes to head bang to, you can find them here. If not, maybe next time.

The Pineapple Thief remain stuck in a rut, delivering more or less the same record as before. Maybe going metal or full prog will yield better results in the future. Unfortunately, It Leads to This turned out only marginally better than the previous LP. They can do better, so a more drastic change of direction might be helpful next time.

We’ve come to expect more than inoffensive, lukewarm indie-pop from these guys. MGMT should save that for the thousands of other indie bands out there that all sound exactly like this, and go back to the stupidly fun and unpredictably bizarre music that most of us fell in love with.

Grandaddy’s latest feels slightly remote but wholeheartedly nostalgic, the synthesis of deeply personal loneliness and some kind of cosmic greater meaning, and all three of my theories seem perfectly suitable. Weary but still imbued with plenty of heart, Blu Wav is all you can ask for as the return of Jason Lytle’s long-running indie project.

Daniel delivers the twofold triumphs of, first, delivering satisfactorily upon the band’s original talent for hooks and vibe, and second, demonstrating enough variety to suggest that Real Estate doesn’t intend to forever languish in their comfort zone to diminishing returns. I’ll take it.

IDLES wanted TANGK to be their Kid A, but they ended up delivering their Tranquility Base Hotel Casino.

They sound and act unlike many of their contemporaries, and seem preoccupied with carefully carving out a unique space in the modern indie scene to inhabit. It’s a fun space, regardless of how you may get there - and I’m glad to be here.

It’s a triumphant rebirth, pulsating and healing dark energy that feels inspiring and genuine.

What Do We Do Now is a smörgåsbord of everything we have come to expect from a J Mascis project, and while a multitude of listeners may find themselves clamoring for fresher ideas or a deviation from his tried-and-true formula, it is borderline impossible to listen to the indie rock legend’s latest output and deny that they got what they came for.

Blue Raspberry sees some extremely slight but thoughtful experimentation from Kirby. A playfulness that, on the one hand, gives greater depth to Kirby's music—or otherwise make that depth more obvious to the shallow listener—but also, on the other, reemphasises to you—to me—just how good, how delicate, how thoughtful a songwriter Kirby really is at her core.

Sadness Sets Me Free is a truly consistent affair, one of the most pleasant Gruff presented us to date.

If A Light for Attracting Attention felt like a perhaps unnecessary but strong redux of a Radiohead album (A Moon Shaped Pool, specifically), then Wall of Eyes feels like an album Radiohead never made here on Earth, even if they could’ve conceivably done so in an alternate dimension. That’s progress.

Dark Rainbow is the sound they’ve been chasing for five years now, and while it’s not perfect, and lacks the raw edge their earlier works were so good at, it’s definitely a sound I can get onboard with.

Somehow heavier but feeling lighter than they have in years, meeting your gaze not with a self-deprecating shrug but a grimace and a snarl, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a perfect sendoff to one of pop-punk's finest drummers and a victory lap for one of the genre's best acts.

If Ummon felt like floating adrift in space while cosmic rays fried your soul, Ilion is the transition to a plane of existence beyond the cosmos. Ilion doesn’t exist in this universe anymore, and neither do you.

A return-to-punk that simultaneously honours Green Day's history of arena-friendly alternative rockers, full of adrenaline and feeling. A mere four years after the execrable Father of All Motherfuckers, it may qualify as a minor miracle.

It’s hard not to feel like there could be a little more to Big Sigh, a little more to Hackman. Regardless, there is a lot to be found in this excellent album if you allow it some time, give it some space and, while it may not be as easy as it seems, embrace its familiarity.

Letter to Self is undoubtedly a pretty good option to start off this new chapter, and for Sprints it may be even the beginning of something truly special.

The only merit to be found on this soulless revisionism is the production, which is at least serviceable. Outside of that, this is, to the surprise of no one, inferior to the original in every conceivable way.

The result is a record that’s more cinematic, darker, louder, heavier and harder than anything we’ve heard from them before today, and frankly, I’m here for it.

The album feels wonderfully grounded as such, and is ideally placed as an ambassador for the open-heartedness, peace, and healing that are as key to new age as its otherworldly mystique.

It’s a bunch of sad songs which make you feel good to be alive. Can’t go wrong with that.

Though occasionally wallowing, there’s a self-assuredness here, a comfort in one’s skin, that’s refreshing, and relieving, given how close to the edge this ship has teetered over the years. As entertainment via soundwaves, it occasionally sags-lags-drags, but for a thoughtful tome on patient self-betterment, you couldn’t ask for much more.

All told, this is an album which will almost certainly be enjoyable if you like kinda hazy, kinda ethereal, kinda catchy indie/alt thingamajigs, but it’s also an album desperately lacking the hint of an edge which would give the total product further potency. Even so, it’s a solid comeback from another crew of aging shoegazers, just don’t set your expectations too high.

It's hard to be overly harsh on the band for getting too hung up on a good thing, even if there's a missing something holding Cartwheel back from knockout excellence. Get your twelve-year-old into it; be your own twelve-year-old to it; ravage yourself on caffeine with it.

Picture Perfect's silver lining comes in that it is, at the end of the day, a perfectly serviceable pop record replete with euphoric headrushes and the occasional tenacious earworm ("Impossible").

Poppy seems to be restrained here – as if something is holding her back from embracing her typically wild and unconventional whims. Next time, I hope she grabs that sword and cuts herself free of whatever led to this.

Some tracks make notable improvements – a subtle lift on "This Love"'s gorgeous arrangement boosts one of Swift's most forgettable ballads to a late tracklist highlight, while the new version of "Clean" emphasises producer Imogen Heap's vocal offerings so resplendently that it's a crime she doesn't receive a feature credit – yet others are misplaced in their adjustments.

The result is something to be proud of, establishing Omori as a welcome presence in the ambient landscape.

Spike Field does an impressive job of reflecting upon Maria BC’s recent musical endeavors while also advancing their sound.

The sheer joy of hearing the guitarist back and fully committed to blink, giving his all to the style of music that was his first love, is more than worth the price of admission here. Kicked off by the "Always"-nodding synthpop "Blink Wave", Hoppus takes the reins for a more experimental back half where the album really comes to life.

This isn’t an album to convert the naysayers, but for the already initiated, prepare yourself to once more sing with your heroes, 33 rounds per minute.

Every line tends to ring out with a sense of unparalleled, down-to-earth beauty. It's melancholic and often mournful, but thanks to Hansard's ability to spin even the most daunting situations as an opportunity to rise to the challenge, his music has also never sounded this full of both life and meaning.

For the average Goat acolyte, I would say that Medicine successfully takes the band forward, with balanced experimentation and enough psychedelia to make you have an outer body experience while you do the dishes.

Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist along with Mike and Vince Staples (on occasion) make an album that is like sap. it leaks, percolates into gaps: the gap between consciousness and subconscious, night/day, joie de vive/joie de ***-it-all (i don't know the french term for this feeling).

I doubt anyone will be in a hurry to file this as either the weakest or the strongest Blonde Redhead record, but it might just be the most traditionally pleasant experience they've put their name to.

Its strongest moments don’t quite stand with the best that The Menzingers discography has to offer, but they’re well worth a listener’s time and showcase the group’s inherent songwriting prowess. What’s sad is to see a band now nearly 20 years into the career suddenly desiring to be entirely different, independent of the type of music they are writing and releasing.

All in all, these more "experimental" tracks had some very pleasant surprises, with "Golden" including sax leads and Clementine singing in a whispery register that falls outside of her usual belting.

It’s another worthy addition to a burgeoning discography. It’s a wonderful feeling when an old favorite is still in a groove and pumping out quality music after so many years.

This bare regurgitation of conflicting sounds is what hurts The Above the most, presenting as a (not so) greatest hits compilation from purgatory. It feels cobbled together, without care for global coherence nor the refined execution of any one sound, instead counting on the excitement of variety and disjunction to make up for its less considered, less interesting content.

Sticking to the slowlane and sanding down jagged edges has done wonders, giving VOID much more space to breathe, its dripping atmosphere thereby safeguarded, and preserved yet further by excellent pacing and pristine production.

While not without its songwriting inconsistencies, The Enduring Spirit has the supreme merit of forging ahead and exploring new prog(ish) territory, unafraid to take risks or sow distrust and confusion among the more conservative fanbase.

Occasionally, it becomes exhausting, making it hard to finish listening V in one go. Nevertheless, when it clicks, it definitely sparks joy.

Ctrl is a Facebook-photo album of opinions and behaviours that probably shouldn’t be broadcasted online. It’s also an assembly of tracks that prevail as mantras of self-affirmation, and it balances the two sides of its character with an awareness that feels like an accident, though it's welcomed all the same. But even if we disregard what it all means, these tracks are still jams, tunes, or any other blasé term people attach to music that you can throw away your dignity to.

Angel Face deserves some credit for possessing a small handful of excellent singles, but outside of those, this album falters almost uniformly. I can see what Stephen Sanchez was going for conceptually and aesthetically – and admittedly, I even fell for it based off the strength of the singles. However, the additional eight songs add no value at best and more often than not kill whatever buzz that was generated by the likes of "Only Girl", "Evangeline", "Be More", and "Until I Found You".

The band (and mix) sounds healthy and reinvigorated, the tracklist covers a fair range of sounds, and at the end of the day, it's still every inch a Baroness album.

The record showcases their most cohesive and potentially most versatile stylistic palette to date. Returning fans will find the likes of “softscars”, “ghosts” and “bloodbunny” full of familiar glitchy flourishes, and “inferno” within a stone’s throw of Serotonin II’s understated reveries, but there’s a much more ‘physical’ presence to the music here.

This record is definitely a step in the right direction and has some of their most refined and exciting tunes to date. It doesn’t dethrone shutdown.exe, but its ambitions and consistency make it an excellent entry, with fans sure to lap it up.

Nas sounds as energized as ever in his current era and he’s dealing some serious bars across the 15 tracks composing Magic 3. At the same time, it sounds as if the Hit-Boy partnership is finally losing steam--something evident in a record that is stretched thin (cough 15 tracks) and inconsistent, capable of reaching commendable heights and consequently worrying depths.

Laugh Track makes several welcome adjustments to their present-day formula, but it’s hardly a wholesale reorientation – and make no mistake, the National are still very much in need of one.

There’s no other band out there that can write such hopeless lyrics while also managing to make me feel so alive.

Following the explosive opening, there are a fair few standout tracks and moments in the likes of "Chasing the Drum" and "Tioga Pass", but the stylings and influences begin to blur together into something of an easy-listening haze, the sequencing becomes a bit stop-start, and momentum flags.

End is better than passable - I’ve heard far worse even in its genre. But, as things are, this record feels redundant. Explosions in the Sky, at this stage of their careers, need to give us a whole lot more in order to really deliver. Maybe that’s not fair, but let me tell ya somethin’, kid: life ain’t always fair.

The good-not-great quality of much of The Land… is at once its strong and weak point, enhancing the highlights but exposing concrete shortcomings. Simultaneously, this album is a highly productive move for Mitski, opening up a wide array of new possibilities for future endeavours.

If you’re the type of music fan who loves every facet of their music to be vacant of genuine emotion, creativity and expression, this album will satiate your cravings, you hungry listener.

On SOUR she was a budding superstar; on GUTS, her sound has fully bloomed.

Bird Machine impresses both as an unexpectedly resurrected album with that classic Sparklehorse feel, and as a distinct entity which sees the project move in a comparatively polished and refined direction. Even without the mournful context of its release, it’s one of the best indie albums of the year.

everything is alive feels practically self-contained, like a Slowdive record blissfully unaware it is a Slowdive record, most likely for the better. Simultaneously, the fact that everything is alive could have been a very different album is hard to dismiss. The songs that contain explicit traces of this minimal electronic framework are easily the strongest cuts and, most importantly, feel like a productive midway point between “Slowdive Slowdiving” and whatever Pygmalion worshippers keep hoping for.

Perfect Saviors probably could have been the quote best rock album ever. It should have been bigger. It should have been better. It could have been everything.

Appaloosa Bones demonstrates that Gregory Alan Isakov remains standing as an essential voice in the folk scene.