Countless rappers claim to have transcended the game. Kendrick Lamar actually does. There’s the sense his ambitions on DAMN. are even larger, reaching toward something more universal, fateful even spiritual in its reach to find the link tying all contradictions together.

Unless you’re only listening for Bejar, Whiteout Conditions should not only satisfy but also open your mind to just how versatile the New Pornographers can be.

No doubt some of the album feels overly sanctimonious. ... And yet Tillman’s prophetic songwriting makes Pure Comedy one of the first--and best--post-Trump albums in what’s sure to be a long line over the next four years.

Sincerely, Future Pollution still sounds distinctly like Timber Timbre, and stands up easily against their other albums.

This is unabashedly a pop album, full of big melodies and simple metaphors, that adds just a bit of analog fuzz to her usually pristine sound.

You can hear allusions Dylan has made to some of these lyrics in his own work over the last few decades, which makes the collection all the more revelatory. And he sings as gorgeously and clearly as he possibly can, as if it’s more important to him than ever that we feel his love.

A Crow Looked At Me is an unsettling, awkward listen and it might (probably will) make you cry. It’s also a tribute to an amazing 13-year love story (the penultimate song Soria Moria encompasses Elverum’s childhood longing, how he met Castrée and their instant connection) and may turn out to be one of the strongest albums of the year.

The album’s clean production (courtesy of producer Youth) and comfortable mood (nicely summed up by the song Mood Rider) is somewhat surprising and a tad disappointing. However, they don’t sound aloof, either. The mirror JAMC are holding up to the mainstream nowadays is less distorted, but still fully engaged in sharp and timeless songcraft.

His more abstract, mellow songs don’t work as well, too often sounding like buildups to a big drop that never comes rather than completed tracks. But Greene has filled out Feel Infinite with just enough bangers to keep the momentum from lagging too much.

He allows the various sounds, guest features and flavours of the production, which he and his crew adopted from all over the world, to steal the show.

NAV’s songcraft is sharp, but the lack of dynamics ultimately makes this debut feel one-note.

If you can deal with the frequent ridiculousness of the songs, Wild Cat is a fun listen. The production is raw enough to approximate their live sound, and more than a few choruses will get stuck in your head. If you’re looking for much more than that, you’re listening to the wrong band.

Over lush, sprawling production, Longstreth meticulously crafts a starkly honest account of a fall from grace and a rise back into it that embraces growth and forgiveness.

Though there’s some absolutely gorgeous production that recalls the lush sound and synthscapes of 80s rock, the songwriting is weighed down by clichés.

As its cover and length (the usual eight songs) suggest, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life is unquestionably a Japandroids album. Some may yearn for more of Celebration Rock’s high voltage, but by changing gears they’ve added more depth and variation to those shout-along choruses we love so much.

His latest, Love in Beats, is his most seamless collision yet. That harmony is thanks to the unified vision that comes with having two producers on the project: Omar and his brother Scratch Professor.

Satellite feels very much like a transitional record in which Kid Koala is exploring new terrain. Not all of his tangents are successful, but his enthusiasm for stretching beyond his turntablist roots is refreshing.

The xx have always been concise pop songwriters, but now they seem interested in approaching the gates of pop nirvana.

This album is full of bangers and achieves what so many hip-hop heads, old and new, are longing for: music with a message, loud and clear.

Her flow is kaleidoscopic and hearing her turn phrases with Jamaican reggae artist Chronixx on LMPD or trade verses with fellow Londoners Chip and Ghetts on King Of Hearts is an imaginative escape in itself.

On Immortal, he tackles paranoia and police brutality in ways that are both heartbreaking and bluntly nihilistic, while Foldin Clothes is a blissful and unapologetic diversion into domesticity ("I never thought I'd see the day I'm drinking almond milk"). Elsewhere, his earnestness comes off as unwieldy in moments that precariously sit on the cusp of sleepy sentimentality.

The burst of primal aggression is welcome (especially in today's political climate), but this EP is too meandering and amorphous to hit as hard as the band’s best stuff.

It isn’t until album closer Spring Fever that you get a sense of how much further the band could’ve pushed the experimentalism.

Now and then you get a glimpse of ideas that could’ve made the album more powerful if they’d been further explored. ... But the songs are so spiritless and phoned-in that those moments are too little, too late.

A bunch of tunes seem built for radio (So What, Error), ballad Sorrow is overly dreary, and Skin Me borrows way too much from Nirvana. But the strength, emotion and new directions make this album a winner.

At 18 tracks, Starboy delivers some pop gems, but its last third falters with a string of schmaltzy ballads eventually rescued by the Daft Punk-assisted closer, an enjoyable bit of retro lite-funk that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Random Access Memories.

A triumphantly outspoken, brash blast of incisive songs informed by inequality, displacement, joy, loss, humour, working, time’s passage, wit and sick production.

The dizzying array of styles and themes always entertain, and D.R.A.M.’s confidence as both a singer and rapper allows him to pull these threads together.