This set of modestly scaled blues remakings of classics finds dignity in the downtrodden.

Some songs here are made with the pop songwriter-producer Jack Antonoff, but while they’re pensive and expand Abstract’s range, they don’t always suit his natural density, making the album less centered than his excellent 2016 release “American Boyfriend: A Suburban Love Story.”

Though the mood of Igor is generally consistent, its songs are irregularly shaped, united by Tyler’s by-now signature keyboards, which are warm but a little sweet, and dance gingerly. As Tyler has gotten older--he’s 28 now--he’s become more willing to engage with emotions.

A more engaged and vivid album than “Ye,” from last year, though nowhere as robust as “The Life of Pablo” from 2016, it is bare-bones and curiously effective, emotionally forceful and structurally scant.

On “Marigold,” Pinegrove is a more temperate band than it has been, and also a crisper and less complicated one, a musical direction it had already been moving in on its last album.

On “Changes,” he finally stakes his claim, honing a vocal approach that’s soothing, tender although maybe slightly tentative, a middle ground between comfort and reluctance. It is an effective album, and also a deliberately unflashy one — Bieber is consistent and confident, and also not drawing too much attention to himself.

As a whole, the strong but not particularly unruly “7” is less sure-footed than “Love Yourself: Tear,” the group’s last full-length, from 2018, and the first K-pop album to debut atop the Billboard album chart.

Early James is 26, but his music has much older underpinnings, glancing back to the 1970s, the 1960s and before.

It’s not the early, edgy Strokes, but what they’ve grown up into. Maybe the Strokes won’t make new friends with this album, but old friends can get closer.

A largely effective album-length odds-and-ends collection but not, you know, an album — may be more valuable as data than as songs.

The arrangements on “MTV Unplugged” are occasionally overstuffed with stately “Eleanor Rigby” strings, but I prefer them to much of the studio material, since they’re airy enough to allow the unvarnished snarl of Gallagher’s voice to come through loud and clear. ... The crowd, and the record, comes alive most when Gallagher indulges in some old Oasis classics.

Found sounds and out-of-context conversations are the band’s signatures. ... Sometimes it works (the sudden intrusion of bagpipes on “Persona Non Grata”); sometimes it’s all a bit too much and the songs feel excessively crowded. But many of the most powerful moments on this record are uncharacteristically straightforward.

The sonic details of “Evermore” are radiant and meticulous; the songwriting is poised and careful. It’s an album to respect. But with all its constructions and conceits, it also keeps a certain emotional distance.

Amid the dozens of songs on “Dangerous,” there’s ample room for variety. Wallen offers fingerpicking and soft-rock country with “Somebody’s Problem” and “7 Summers,” intricately layered Eagles-style country-rock with “More Surprised Than Me” and “Your Bartender,” a Southern-rock stomp with “Beer Don’t.” ... A stretch of songs during the album’s second half, with titles like “Rednecks, Red Letters, Red Dirt,” “Somethin’ Country” and “Whatcha Think of Country Now,” grow heavy-handed. But every so often, he allows for other possibilities.

At times, “Sling” sounds like Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic” had it been released on the D.I.Y. label K Records. ... “Sling” makes the case that her most direct vocal precursor is either Elliott Smith or Phil Elverum. ... There was always more depth to Clairo’s sadness and songcraft than could be conveyed by the three-minute synth-pop ditty that made her famous. It also demonstrates that her music is at its most lucid and effective when an extended hand — or paw — is drawing her back up to the surface.

During its slower stretches, “Happier Than Ever” languishes. ... The risks start to pay off, though, on the album’s strong closing stretch, beginning as the warping “NDA” segues into the brash posturing of “Therefore I Am,” one of several lukewarm singles that benefits from the surrounding context of the album. ... Eilish remains an inveterate rebel. “Happier Than Ever,” though, exposes both the strengths and the limitations of her preferred mode of subversion.

Every song on “Solar Power” pulls from a similar and finely curated aesthetic — early 2000s “CW”-theme-song pop; sun-drenched ’70s folk; just a pinch of Kabbalah-era Madonna — and rarely draws outside those lines, let alone picks up differently hued crayons. ... “Solar Power” stops just short of offering a full, varied range of expressions.

Even when Halsey returns to first-person through most of the album, their lyrics are less confessional, more general, as if they have stepped back from immediate conflicts.

The “Unlocked” songs sound like public performances, neat and armored and solidly 4/4, more locked than unlocked. The “Originals” hint at freer, messier, closer, unresolved feelings, daringly unguarded — and thoroughly, openly human.

“Hold the Girl” continues to mine deep material — “Imagining” addresses a mental health crisis; the opener, “Minor Feelings,” takes its title from a Cathy Park Hong essay collection — but the protruding eccentricities that once made Sawayama’s music so distinct often sound sanded down. ... There is, however, a bold and satisfyingly angry stretch across the middle of the album with some of its strongest material.

They’re sturdy songs, even as Sheeran sings about fragile emotions. ... Obviously, Sheeran doesn’t worry about verbal clichés — though in these songs, the sorrowful tone makes them sound more unguarded than banal.

The band’s founding rhythm section — Carter Beauford on drums and Stefan Lessard on bass — still keeps the songs nimble, no matter how burdened Matthews’s thoughts can become.