A collection of bratty rocker-chick anthems and soul-searching ballads that could slot into the soundtrack of any classic high school flick, from 10 Things I Hate About You to this year’s ludicrous queer sex comedy Bottoms.

The results make for an inspired evolution of his sound, with Blake occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror as he moves in a new direction.

Even the love songs feel lonelier, the landscape more unforgiving. A good Slowdive song has always felt like two lovers huddling together for warmth. But on everything is alive, the forces conspiring against the star-crossed lovers feel more menacing and specific.

trip9love…??? is tender as a bruise, the kind of bruise you press down on now and again, just to confirm that it still hurts—and to take secret pleasure in the ache.

Journey is a carefully curated sampling of Garson’s talents as a composer, arranger, synthesist, and sound designer. It adds to his mystique as a channeler of otherworldly frequencies, a grinning virtuoso tapping into the beyond one patch cable at a time.

He went big on HELLMODE by going smaller. It’s the prettiest album he’s ever made, but it still gets you riled up. That level-up is most audible in HELLMODE’s punk-rock tracks, which offer a dialed-in but not dialed-back tone.

The smarts and spritz of Dupuis’ writing, and the way her mates fuss up the arrangements, make Rabbit Rabbit one of those albums whose complications provide as much pleasure as hooks-hooks-hooks.

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.

Hozier calls the album’s sound “eclectic,” but disjointed is more apt.

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.

Barring a few notable exceptions, World Music Radio is so beholden to its premise—so enfeebled by Batiste’s insistence on universality—that it offers up few opportunities to get to know Batiste himself: his stories, his struggles, his euphoric victories and devastating losses. That absence leaves the record feeling hollow, like a pretty house where no one lives.

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.

Deliverance might work best as something else entirely, perhaps as a beat tape filled with reference vocals for the sort of stadium-status UK indie stars that know how to squeeze the maximum amount of drama out of the minimum amount of wordplay.

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.