The Window’s great gambit is to lean into them anyway, and it pays off spectacularly, heightening the thrills without sacrificing the amiability. What a pleasure it is hearing this charming little band show off.

The chemistry between Earl and Alchemist comes from how naturally their styles blend together, as if VOIR DIRE is some kind of prophecy being fulfilled by the universe. It’s a record that was meant to be: simple, elegant, and always true.

Burna Boy has more than established himself; I Told Them is an adventurous promise that he won’t become complacent.

It is a joy to hear, and a reminder that the struggle for a better world is a beautiful and worthwhile endeavor, despite the many powerful voices that work daily to convince us otherwise. branch fought the good fight until the very end.

The best songs will be welcome additions to their live repertoire; it’s already riveting to watch them play these songs at full dual drummer power. But the threads that bind these songs are loose and inconsistent.

Even if you get the sense her best work still lies ahead, it’s refreshing to see an emerging star earn their concept album.

Despite the occasional misstep, Mystery School overall succeeds in enhancing the most spellbinding aspects of Cabral’s music: her winding, changeable voice and unpredictable melodic left turns.

Perfect Saviors excels in a more conventional sport of measure, expanding the physical capabilities of radio rock just a few degrees beyond the previously acceptable standard.

Everyone Else Is a Stranger is all that an old fan could want. The four songs are long, expressive strings of supple lines and curves, twisting like silvery roller-coaster tracks.

It’s an album that feels less like a roving party than a backyard BBQ, and the music seems designed to fade pleasingly into its surroundings. Such an anodyne approach has its appeal yet it’s strange that a record from a singer/songwriter as ambitious as M.C. Taylor equates optimism with simplicity.

Listening to him navigate those raw emotions while staying the diamond-encrusted course makes for some of his messiest and most mature music yet.

For anyone who enjoys a thoughtful singer-songwriter record with adept, minimalist instrumental backing and a powerhouse vocalist, Echo the Diamond is a worthy listen.

Haunted Mountain is his fullest and most structured album. He and his band amble through these songs with… well, not more purpose or focus, which are anathema to getting lost. But listen to the coda of “Didn’t Know You Then,” which stretches out before losing its way.

Where career-spanning setlists from most veteran bands will inevitably succumb to wild variances in tone if not quality, Live in Brooklyn 2011 dissolves three decades into a holistic 17-track noise opera that enshrines Sonic Youth’s greatest attributes and contradictions.

She’s often ventured from the shores of American folk to touch the waters of blues, soul, and gospel, but this time the shifting itself seems to be the point as Giddens stretches her reach further. Even so, You’re the One never coalesces with the clear vision or poignancy of her previous work.

Chrome Dreams carries a dream logic that's bewitching in a way the individual moments simply aren’t, a testament to how a good album sequence can almost be a magic trick.

Even as life interferes, you can imagine the album as a flight of whiskey: subtle variations on one recipe, pure fun to consume, liable to intensify one’s desire to punch cops. Very occasionally, the production is countryfied to achieve a spaghetti western vibe, or larded with Halloween pedal effects.

Connection is the first time that Ceramic Dog has made dissent sound like just a collection of recordings, instead of a prickly, teeming world of its own.

Oldham long sounded like he had wisdom to share, and he sometimes did. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You overflows with it.

The one slight drag of Sundial: In contrast to Noname constantly barring out, her hooks sound a little weak, as on “Hold Me Down,” where her plain melodies are backed by the type of full-throated choir that sounded better on Chance’s Coloring Book. The features, however, are explosive.

End of World is hellishly inconsistent, its mid section adrift in ’80s funk-rock sheen, like INXS being harassed by an angry wasp. But when it works, End of World, more than any other recent PiL album, offers the winning combination of instrumental oddity and vocal drama.

On Eyeroll, Ziúr crafts warmer yet more extreme textures, responding to the composed poems and vocal improvisations of a handful of guests. Ziúr’s collaborators are a fierce and versatile cohort.

Central City is a distillation of Freedia’s pump-up talents and endless charm.

Ooh Rap I Ya plays it entirely too safe, feeling less like a biting subversion of nostalgia than a straight-up “remember when.” This could have been saved by meatier hooks, a more realized emotional arc, or production choices that didn’t feel as if they were well and fully covered by Neon Indian and Washed Out over a decade ago.

If They Live in My Head lacks the woozy danceability of vintage Tetras, it doesn’t skimp on the political bite.

When, on “The Same Again,” she sings, “Move slow when you speak, so you really get to say what you’re meaning,” sounding as if her face is scrunched into a grimace, she turns a fairly oblique phrase into a razor-sharp barb. These moments, although far between, suggest that A New Reality Mind could have been a more dynamic record if it had zeroed in on Kenney’s intentional, suggestive performances.

For the first time in a while, it sounds like they’re listening to what’s happening in clubland and asking themselves not what they can poach for the charts, but what they can bring to the table.

The complexity of the music helps to make up for the comparatively placid lyrics, but Mackey’s writing is most interesting when she zooms in on domestic bliss.