Everything Now could stand to be more disciplined, though its looseness is also a reminder of how Arcade Fire leaped past its indie-rock peers by being an honest-to-goodness hot, swinging combo, feeding off each other and the crowd. Building off those chops and that adulation, Win Butler and his mates developed a sound as ornate, ceremonial, and transcendent as a church service.

Don’t let the lightness of Mellow Waves fool you; its pleasures are substantive and lingering.

While Del Rey’s voice remains firmly at the forefront, the spare arrangements encourage listeners to fill in their own emotional blanks for once.

On the whole, Villains isn’t Homme’s strongest collection of songwriting. That said, it’s the first Queens Of The Stone Age album where the sounds behind it are consistently strong enough to carry the load.

Taken all together, Warmth is an enveloping listen, whether you’re the type to get up and move to music, or just sit and overthink it.

Invitation is strong enough as a whole to breeze past those weaker moments. Filthy Friends’ debut provides exactly what their lineage promises, and when it comes to supergroups, that amounts to coming out ahead.

If Mountain Moves occasionally feels disconnected, it’s because the theme upon which it hinges--injustice--is, sadly, still as broadly defined as it gets. Fortunately, that disconnectedness makes for a bright, lively listen.

It’s uniformly pleasurable, occasionally stirring listening, and Campos and Maker have excellent taste.

On Expect The Best, Widowspeak returns to the looseness of its earlier output but drops even more of its guard, and the band’s ever-present nostalgia becomes a deeper autobiographical commentary on the passage of time and expectations.

As a whole, Try Not To Freak Out is a joyful blast, a John Hughes soundtrack on steroids that never loses its sunny disposition.

For all the noticeable gains Deer Tick has made in its songwriting in recent years, Vol. 2 offers sufficient proof that it hasn’t lost its raw nerve.

Not since acclaimed debut Diadem Of 12 Stars has Wolves In The Throne Room rocked this hard and steady; in its sustained racket, it approximates one of the band’s live shows, which tend to be all blistering blitzkrieg all the time, drone passages withheld.

It doesn’t hurt that every song given the Luna treatment--mellow, reverb-y guitars, Dean Wareham’s winning deadpan vocals--pretty much becomes a Luna song.

It gets its message across in surprisingly approachable prog-funk hooks, the kind that might convince even lapsed fans and skeptics to give them a second chance.

There’s plenty to unpack lyrically, too, which makes it ideal for a headphones listen. You know, not unlike Blue or Court And Spark.

There’s another EP in here that’s every bit as good as Hallucinogen, but as an album, Take Me Apart remains more proof of Kelela’s talent and still-unrealized potential.

Colors is solid--Beck doesn’t make bad records, whatever mode he’s in--and it flirts with greatness, but he’s at his best when he decides to either get loose or get serious, less so when he drives straight down the

It’s a lovefest in the best way, and a worthy addition to both of their catalogs.

This record is a grower whose off-putting quirks--like the swampy electronic muck that surrounds Bejar on “Saw You At The Hospital” or the discordant droning foundation of “A Light Travels Down The Catwalk”--give way and blend with all the gloss underneath them into yet another strange, frequently gorgeous album.

Even at that short running time, Losing’s 12 songs start to blur together toward the end, but the album’s many charms keep that from becoming a liability.

There are moments on III where the band stumbles--“Witness” ebbs just a hair too close to The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”--but by and large, Makthaverskan has never been sharper than it is in the present moment.

The tough, chest-beating first disc gives way to a second disc that’s just a little too fond of syrupy interludes. But as with his other releases, K.R.I.T.’s signature sincerity reigns supreme.

While 2015’s Free TC felt designed to impress, a little too encyclopedic and earnest for its own good, Beach House 3 takes its concept literally, soundtracking a hypothetical bender in a paradise where the comedown never arrives.

Revelations thrives in that dissonance between its lo-fi production and Shamir’s striking falsetto, with tracks like “Her Story” impressively melding Motown and grunge influences.

The sparkling, writerly synth-pop of 1989 has been jettisoned almost entirely, replaced by thudding trap beats, Vegas EDM, melancholy Drive-wave synthesizers, and splashes of Miami bass. More often than not, it works.

Instead of your lonely, romantic proxy, he’s your surly, sometimes cool uncle who’s set in his ways but still capable of surprises. Low In High School has a few of those, most effectively on the mid-album epic “I Bury The Living.”

If All I Was Was Black is suffused with contemporary political resonance, married to Staples’ timelessly transcendent gospel-meets-bluesy-folk. That push-pull between sorrowful analysis of the current state of the country and hope for the future is its defining quality, and it works--mostly.

After the James Brown frenzy of its opening tracks and the less memorable Motown-inspired middle ground, the album changes course. This reprise of Jones’ established work ends and listeners get a peek at what would have come next: an odyssey of densely symphonic funk and soul.

Although Memory Of A Cut Off Head might benefit from some more garage-rock grit and aggression here and there, its manicured tranquility leaves a lasting impression.

What stands out about the first entry in Belle & Sebastian’s three-part EP series How To Solve Our Human Problems is how much it, like 2015’s Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, sounds like the work of an out-and-out band.

Like its predecessors, the album is hit or miss, but the batting average remains uncommonly high for a project like this.

It’s a very familiar take on Americana, full of heartbreak and yearning, but a damn reliable one.

“Lake Monsters” gives rocking sci-fi tribute to mysterious beasts that should please longtime fans, “The Bright Side” borrows from the ’60s British Invasion, and “Push Back The Hands” also turns sweetly nostalgic—though there’s no need for looking backward just yet, as the TMBG song machine is still operating at full force.

Overall, Microshift is the sound of a band pulling itself out of the abyss on the back of its most buoyant music yet.

It’s just Fallon and his microphone, crooning and crowing over these rhythm and blues-focused rave-ups, holding court over an old-school rock revival to match his restless mood.

While that poetry-journal melodrama grows a tad exhausting by album’s end, there are plenty of deliciously bitter pleasures here for anyone who similarly loves brooding in that blacked-out, candlelit bedroom of the mind.

Some tracks land in an odd middleground between the grandiosity Onion seemingly wants to achieve and the shambolic charm that made The Clams one of the most unique bands to come out of the Bay Area garage-rock scene. Luckily, that scrappy spirit lives on in the album’s many moments of glorious abandon.

Basic Behaviour’s greatest strength [is] rawness. On the other hand, the album’s dramatic shifts in tone can make it feel unfocused, and as a whole, it burns off quickly. Still, it leaves a hell of an impression.

Like all of his albums, it’s good but not great, a consummate professional continuing to perfect his craft.

Historian stumbles occasionally, with some songs taking a while to get up the hill, but it’s rewarding because it carries such weight and commands such attention.

The music is a hodgepodge of styles, techniques, and voices, but there’s a steady hand holding the needle, guided by a singular and seasoned vision--the curiosity and the enthusiasm that have long been his trademarks.

For the most part, the music backs up his mood. It’s faster, tougher, and more blood-boiling than usual, but it’s still malleable, growing to a furious peak on “Corporate Public Control Department” or slowing to a mournful groove on “African Dreams.”

The album (nominally a concept record about the “the death of whiteness”) has six long tracks that stretch over 42 minutes, and within them are evocative stretches of ominous early synth pop, noodling synth funk, and dreamy dance music in the vein of A.R. Kane. Barnes’ voice and coy, over-accentuated phrasing remain the band’s love-it-or-leave-it factor.

Boarding House Reach holds together as a complete piece. The songs complement each other, speaking to the restlessness and reluctance of an artist who’s spent the last decade or so successfully transforming himself into a brand.

It’s the the musical equivalent of eggs and toast at your favorite diner, perhaps not the group’s most distinctive release, but warm and nourishing nonetheless.

It may be derivative, but it’s never weak: SunflowerBean has channeled the most appealing elements of those past decades’ pop music and retained a sprightly, affectionate touch.

Whenever Gane brings in his laidback-funk guitar (“Phase Modulation Shuffle,” “Automatic Morning”), it instantly evokes Stereolab’s space-age bachelor-pad music, and suffers in the absence of Laetitia Sadier’s coos. Still, there’s enough variety here--the sparkling Terry Riley-esque cascades of “Solarised Sound” and “Phantom Melodies”; the analog Aphex Twin-isms of “Outerzone Jazs” and “Feed Me Magnetic Rain”--to make this a worthwhile spin through such thoroughly explored territory.

Some of her ditties don’t even top a minute, as in the appealing piano plinks of “Ur Up,” and some of her rhyme schemes can get a bit laborious.

E saves The Deconstruction from formula by turning his inner turmoil outward.

Resistance Is Futile, the band’s thirteenth studio album, distills the Manics’ pomp and melancholy into buoyant pop songs with biting electric guitars, sugary synths, and majestic strings.

While some of the headier experiments fail to rise above their inherent monotony, the results are usually singularly beautiful and beautifully dense.

Cardi B got here by rapping her face off, and on Invasion Of Privacy, she determines to stay here by doing it for--well, nine more tracks. So far, so good.

With few absolute standouts, it’s a consistent, engaging listen full of little surprises and ongoing discoveries.

It’s a sprawling and intentionally distancing record, but never less than fascinating.

The group hasn’t abandoned its post-punk, just refined it.

Clarke’s tendency to drift into the otherworldliness of his act’s namesake brings some much-needed grime to all that bubblegum.

Rausch picks up right where Narkopop left off. The new effort—pointedly intended to be listened to in a single sitting--finds a pulse early on that almost never ceases, with Voigt filtering in guitar plucks that hit like wind chimes.

The songs sound bigger and more layered, but the core of hook-laden, synth-based pop and Lauren Mayberry’s lilting vocals remains undisturbed.

It’s a prismatic album, reflecting its creator’s entire body of work--and also whatever you think about him going in.

Kids See Ghosts marks his true return only a year and a half after he checked himself into rehab to fight depression and suicidal ideation, and taking the time out to work on himself seems to have done him wonders. Cudi is, without qualification, the spiritual and artistic backbone of Kids See Ghosts, the source of its truest artistic risks and the instrument of its greatest triumphs.

Chromeo specializes in upbeat, retro-embracing synth-funk—but, unlike others in a similar vein, the Canadian duo exists in an area somewhere between a come-hither wink and a seduction parody. On Head Over Heels, the group strikes a perfect balance between these extremes. Credit for this goes to the roster of impressive special guests.

It doesn’t offer any particularly novel insights into the crushing, nearly unavoidable hellscape of the digital age, but instead fights valiantly against its grasp with Godzilla-size hooks, solos both vicious and dreamy, and lush production that encourages turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.

K.T.S.E. should’ve been a breakout moment for her, but it was rushed to release to hit West’s schedule, and as such feels undercooked and unfocused. Make no mistake: There’s great “polo Kanye” stuff here, from the make-up-and-make-out ride of “Gonna Love Me” to the fierce autobiography of “Rose In Harlem.” The atomic ballroom “WTP” feels beamed in from another dimension.

Overall, The Now Now would work better if it fully embraced its melancholy.

Musically, High As Hope isn’t too far off from the operatic orchestration of her earlier work, which is the most frustrating thing about it. It does give the music a little more space to breathe, however, and adds a percussive through-line of handclaps, foot stomps, and prominent double bass that builds on the melodramatic vibe fans love.

I’ll Tell You What! reflects his confidence in making every sound count, but its outlook is melancholy.

Some of Byen’s best moments are when he lets some of that permanent midnight in on his aural sunshine, like the horror-film chorus that suddenly joins in on the clavinet-funk of “Gata,” or the baroque piano of ominous closer “Natta.”

For all of Hive Mind’s merits, it still has a tendency to get lost in its own grooves and retread some of the same territory, particularly in its slower, more intimate cuts. But this is still a step forward for this young, talented crew, housing nothing but scintillating performances from Syd and, in the rare moments when the group cuts loose, some seriously intoxicating funk.

The 46-minute Devouring Radiant Light lets the band breathe. It sounds like they needed it--the record’s longest songs are its best.

Miller sounds great when he’s whining, croaking, stretching syllables like warm mozzarella. Swimming’s spare, dreamy production allows him to do a lot of that.

It pretty much all works, in the way that all of YG’s music works, anchored by superlative taste and a flow as versatile and reliable as T.I. in his prime.

Sometimes, it’s a bit too much polish, though, as in the glossy, horns-drenched kickoff, “Bound Ta Git Down.” Things thankfully get a little rowdier in the anthemic “Do You Love Texas?” complete with slide guitar and a “hell yeah” chorus, and a song succinctly titled “D.R.U.N.K.”

Like a wild party, the album gets looser and less coherent as it goes along. Still, fans should be pleased to hear that Marauder shifts the group’s focus while still remaining recognizably Interpol.

Appropriately, Bloom’s beauty and gifts reveal themselves gradually over time.

With much to toy with, Vernon and Dessner create an unhurried warmth that makes a song like “Forest Green” so moving and gives Big Red Machine the feeling of a soft rainbow light cast from a crystal in the sun.

It’s frontman Bryan Funck’s bilious self-reflection that rescues Magus from its occasionally oppressive, repetitive crunch—even if his own introspection, delivered in a swamp-thing rasp, is a little harder to decipher than Cobain’s ever was.

The only downside is a sense of fussiness that suffuses some of the more heavily produced tracks, a slightly stultifying vibe that saps a bit of urgency and vitality from the songs, making them feel too precious, as though the music was hermetically sealed to prevent anything too loose or raw from breaking free. Still, it’s another set of engaging and mostly excellent songs from one of the U.K.’s most compelling rock trios, and well worth the time.

Forty-plus years into his career, the Modfather has once again ripped up his own playbook--and released a singular album.

Moon 2 plays more like a collection of standout tracks than the kind of album that needs to be taken in from beginning to end, but it’s effective all the same. Nearly every song could be slotted into a playlist at a club without screwing up the flow, and that’s an achievement in itself.

Piano & A Microphone 1983 verges on postmortem voyeurism, but it’s also a unique insight into the way a notoriously private artist’s creative impulses fired.

The group’s music is all over the place, often gloriously so. The temptation has always been to pick out best tracks from these records, and Iridescence has some clear standouts.

Like any fifth installment in a series, you’re going to need to care about those early entries to care about this one, and, at 90 minutes, it’s way more than anyone needs. But the highlights are so many--Mannie Fresh reunion “Start This Shit Off Right,” gonzo Kendrick collab “Mona Lisa,” the mixtape-style freakout of “Let It Fly,” heartbreaking coda “Let It All Work Out”--that you sort of give him a pass on the duds.

Aaarth is the band’s most off-kilter collection of anthems yet, working in tribal drumming, stuttering and overlapping vocal tracks, and some of the Middle Eastern influences Led Zeppelin famously tried on for size when feeling adventurous. Admirable though the experimentation can be, The Joy Formidable still hits its sweetest spot aiming for the nosebleeds.

Musically, the group’s sound is looser and more ferocious than some of its contemporaries, embracing atonal saxophone à la X-Ray Spex and swaggering scuzz-rock riffs along with the psychedelic guitar, sinister organ, and heavy, pounding drums you’d expect from a garage-rock revival band.

Even as Black Velvet occasionally fails to gel as a cohesive album--it is, after all, essentially a B-sides collection--it succeeds as a tribute to an authentic talent.

Thoughtful, strange, spiritual, immersive, rewarding upon repeated and thoughtful engagement.

Assume Form casts Blake’s prior albums in a new light, as does the once-secretive young maestro’s new openness about his life and his struggles. What sounded like someone trying to dive down into the inkiest depths of his soul turns out to have been someone trying to swim up out of them.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Cuz I Love You is its vulnerability.

Without the baggage of his political views--which is where the letter grade on this review comes from--California Son would be a worthy addition to a mostly stellar catalog, offering insight into a great singer and lyricist’s taste and breathing new life into mostly forgotten songs.

The record is as raw as a scraped knee and more furious than a woman scorned, a brick through the window of our reactionary era that draws inspiration from the equally pissed-off first wave of punk rock.

As a mood piece, Norman Fucking Rockwell does an admirable job preserving Del Rey’s mystique while moving her sound forward.

Overall, in spite of its goofy throwback artwork and the presence of Pharrell Williams, Hyperspace belongs on the shelf closest to Sea Change. There are more clunkers here than on that classic, but it feels similarly honest and world-weary.

Moore has finally grown into the adult voice that sounded so jarring in her teenaged hits like “Candy,” and her songwriting also reveals a sadder, wiser maturity. ... Silver Landings’ best moments arrive when Moore’s explorations veer from her own story to the more universally relatable.

This is the sound of a band working hard to evolve, and if the strain of incorporating such a large swath of musical experimentation occasionally shows, well, maybe that’s the cost of attempting new tricks at an advanced age. Never let it be said that the band embraced different sounds at the expense of its tried-and-true formulas, however. Part of what makes Gigaton fascinating is the way these sonic departures actually fuse in unexpected ways with some of the band’s traditional four-on-the-floor stompers.

If there’s a downside to the electricity in Williams’ veins on Good Souls Better Angels, it’s that the gentler material doesn’t have quite the same impact.

“Enigma” really is a fitting word for Gaga. Her choices can be puzzling, and not every song is a success, but that unpredictability is what makes her exciting and leaves us coming back for more. So maybe Gaga doesn’t know who she truly is yet. It’s still enjoyable to watch her figure it out.

A bloated and often beautiful portrait of political and emotional anxiety that longs for nothing more than to break away from the systems that brought us to this current moment.

Fortunately, midway through the record, McCartney III starts to soar. When he’s not pouring his heart out into silly love songs, McCartney fares best harnessing his seldom-seen inner rage, à la “Helter Skelter.”