If anyone expected a drift into sentimentality, her writing’s just gotten bolder, with arrangements that stretch the definition of “Americana” to the point of meaninglessness (Shires won the “Best Emerging Artist” trophy at last years Americana Music Awards).

Standouts include the springy “Lives” (a celebration of Armenian genocide survivors that’s a solid Song of the Summer candidate), the scatological “Angry Guru,” the moody “Talkin’ Shit” (one of many songs with drug references) and the disco-thrash closer “Assimilate.” If it had Serj Tankian and the other System members on it, Dictator could be the album so many have wanted.

The tone is music darker, the textures are much more defined, the beats are often quite huge, but the melodies/instruments/moods are familiar to anyone who listens to music on the periphery of nostalgia: vaporwave, Actress, Lee Gamble, etc.

The LP is a heartfelt statement of resilience and determination that finds the singer refocusing his feel-good anthems towards heavier and heartier material. The only question is whether or not Chesney’s latest marks a reactive glimpse of inspiration or an entirely new way forward.

Hive Mind, the group’s 4th LP, is its most polished, full of tranquil, yearning Quiet Storm and light-footed, live-band funk.

Vacillating between synthetic noise and vulnerable vocals, Lotic turns dance music textures into abstract expressionism--the results are sometimes protest, sometimes singer-songwriter statement, sometimes sheer dystopia, but usually fascinating.

The more visceral appeal of Coming Apart--most notably Gordon’s vocals--is lost somewhat in this pivot to patient squall and ugly voids (the 10-minute “Change My Brain” sounds like she’s crooning to an industrial fan), but the duo are still exceptional at manipulating scuzz.

The first (of hopefully more) efforts from Gilmore and Alvin is, indeed, a love letter to their theoretically distinct musical upbringings that ultimately celebrates just how many deep musical roots the two singers ultimately share.

Many of the tempos sprint along in the 160-180 bpm range, and slightly off-kilter rhythms are used to disorienting effect. A dance music mutator takes one step closer to chaos.

For Lamp Lit Prose, Longstreth melds both strategies in a flood of ideas and magnificent vocal arrangements. The results are by turns dazzling and exhausting. Partly it’s is an issue of balance.

On just seven songs that run a little over an hour, Deafheaven have finally achieved what they’ve been striving towards for the better part of a decade: true post-metal fusion.

Gunn himself has a sharp, high-pitched voice and breaks verses down into micro-fragments; he’s not as lyrically deft as some of his thug rap peers, but he’s punchy and effective.

Turning footwork into murmuring bass music, a genre pioneer finds a fascinating new atmosphere.

Either Side A or Side B would function better as an album than Scorpion in its current form. Taken separately, each is a fully-functioning statement, concise and muscular, executing clear, differing visions: Side A the sharp-tongued, South-indebted rap album, while Side B is the narcotized bed for the first Drake project in years to prize singing over rapping.

Ultimately it’s the spirit of adventure that runs through the entire enterprise that makes the diversity feel perfectly coherent, and timely. The future, after all, belongs to the young.

Cackling, croaking, and cracking up through vocal processors, he sounds like he’s having a blast. And you will too, even if you don’t remember any of it by morning--which also seems perfectly in the spirit of thin

Aside from a few twangy licks, Things Change is an unabashed rock & roll record--a snapshot of a band and its reinvigorated leader.

For the die-hards, the ones who have charted the Classic Quartet's every move, from the early glories of the Coltrane LP to the fiery outpourings heard on albums like Sun Ship from 1965, it's another small but crucial puzzle piece in the group's still-stunning evolution during its roughly three-year lifespan. For everyone else, it's an unvarnished, day-in-the-life portrait of an icon--and the three musical giants that helped him achieve that status--at work.

It gets a bit samey over the course of the record, but it’s effective, and the space around Welch’s mighty voice gives every nuance room to be heard.

The most visceral tune may be the agoraphobia slam of "Black Paint," but the most interesting development is album's closer "Disappointed," which sounds like the hocketing of Dirty Projectors interpreted by a hardcore band.

As diverse as the material here is, there's no sense that Lloyd is putting on different hats. Like his career as a whole, Vanished Gardens shows how the many currents of American music all flow into a single stream.

On Expectations, Rexha paints herself as a heroine trapped in an ivory tower of her own making. But her cat-scratching upper register suggests sensitivity more than vengeance.

Formally, it echoes the 2010 fan club giveaway The Fall: radically shortened guest list, written-on-the-road simplicity, songs named for locales (in this case red, blue and otherwise--"Kansas,” "Idaho,” "Magic City,” etc.) The songs are better, though, and they don't waste too much time on regionalism.

It's all piss and vinegar and posturing.

As with everything Guns N' Roses from the period, it's not so much all access as it is all excess. And that's exactly what you want from a reissue like this. It'll bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-knees.

Singing, rapping and spoken-word float through these tracks, as do soulful improvs from Adjuah, Glasper and others, but what lingers is the overall aura: a no-seams-showing blend of jazz, R&B and hip-hop, with a spontaneous "3 a.m. in the studio" feel.

Thanks to Taylor's new direction, K.T.S.E. ends up being the most fun of any of G.O.O.D. Music's recent releases, existing without the self-seriousness that weighed down the albums from Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Nas and West himself.

A sprawling, eclectic set that ranges from the slightly tepid to the truly transcendent.

Kiley Lotz has a voice like a bell, one that holds on to its strength and resonance even when she's singing of knotty emotions like those that dominate her second full-length as Petal.

While the album doesn’t muster the ambitious and intense highs of its two predecessors, it is one of the most satisfying event-albums in some time, and it feels like a labor of love.

Nasir is among the weakest Nas albums, but there’s nothing spectacular about its failure. It is, simply, the one thing Nas has avoided being all these years, through revolutionary highs and car-crash lows: dull.

His voice sounds gravelly--two decades of constant touring will do that--and substitutes tonal nuance for raw power, like a horn player blowing his lungs out.

That's not to say there aren't glorious passages on Head Over Heels. Listen to the long, climbing curve in the second round of backing vocals during the chorus of "Right Back Home to You;" the shimmering, too-brief melodic interlude in "Count Me Out," which is so rich it could serve as the basis for another song entirely; or the groove on "Slumming It," which is an impeccable riff on Chemise's "She Can't Love You." But these moments are fleeting, and there aren't enough of them to make you fall head over heels for this album.

Her first solo album shows that there are even more sides to this virtual-insanity innovator.

Her eighth album is a healthy mix of hit-chasing, theatrics and soon-to-be classic power ballads that emphasize her immense skills over half-baked conceptual themes.

Every amp tone on this album is just sweet enough, every jangling rhythm hits exactly where it should. Rolling Blackouts are playing an old game, but they're damned good at it.

As a songwriter, the former choirboy pulls melodic influence from traditional gospel music à la Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and others. A fan of Dvorak, Kirk Franklin, Brandy and Björk, the artist, born Josiah Wise, sings love songs that resemble hymns like "Cherubim," on which he lets loose a flood of emotions as helicopter drones compliment his distended vocals.

Though nowhere near as incisive, infectious or rewarding as their best work, Kids See Ghosts is still an important step forward into an era of big moods and short attention spans.

No Shame might sound placid on its surface, but a closer listen reveals that as her sonics have become more gentle, Allen's truth bombs have become even more explosive.

On her fourth LP, So Sad So Sexy, she embraces slickly produced pop with open arms, and she's lost some of her character.

Lush is best, though, when Jordan stretches out beyond coffeehouse indie-rock busking and embraces deeper Sonic Youth-style textures, on tunes like "Anytime" and "Deep Sea."

Mostly, though, he explores the mature, singer-songwriter side he's developed during recent work like 2012's Away From the World, getting quiet, contemplative, and unusually sweet on songs both lush ("Here On Out") and comparatively spare ("Black and Blue Bird").

Our Raw Heart is a gushing affirmation of self. ... The feel-good deathbed record of the summer.

The Future and the Past has a glossy, nostalgic sheen, but that only makes Prass' messages about getting past the world's current ills land harder.

Neko Case's clarion pipes remain the calling card, but on her 8th studio LP, between lyrics and vocal arrangements, they've never channeled more imagination or sense of purpose.

There's a maturity (and a lightness) to the music that's more sophisticated than the usual dreck that their radio competition pumps out.

The Life of Pablo was chaotic, insecure, yet often brilliant. Ye is more chaotic, less secure, with enough sporadic flashes of brilliance to make you hungry for much, much more. It could have been worse.

Sometimes the album verges on melodrama but he has a way of selling it where it never sounds like he's acting. It's not all R&B, but it is Maximum Daltrey.

What lifts God's Favorite Customer beyond homage is Tillman's slicing, free-associative candor as he examines the cost in sanity and constancy of his craft and touring life.

Vibras, Balvin's fifth studio LP, happens to be a pan-Latin masterstroke of its own, a set of primo Spanish-language pop with vibe deep enough to make it universal.

With freight-train heavy riffs so indebted to Sabbath's Tony Iommi that he should get royalties, trippy lyrics about diverse subjects such as weed, ganja and pot, and endless groove for days on each of their songs, they've made an album that sounds exactly how Sleep should sound in 2018.

Although the new record doesn't exactly expound on their formula--tremulous rhythms paired with truly singable guitar leads--it does contain some memorable songs in "Palace of Lepers" and "The Chasm."

In many ways, Daytona replicates Jay-Z and No I.D.'s 2017 rap highlight 4:44: two older men who simply practice their craft, their legacies already secure.

"Deliverance" is spiky yet inviting, its lyrics poking at the hypocrisy of religion; "Never Say Die" builds its drama with swooning synths, with Mayberry's clipped "never-never-never" on the chorus providing an italicized exclamation point.

Mendes' strength is in romance, and more than ever before, this teenager seems like he not only believes the words he is singing, but he's actually lived through the emotions behind them.

Every song on Tomorrow's Daughter has a memorable vocal line, and Sweet's voice hasn't changed all too much over the years--it's still capable of sounding quixotically morose and satisfied at the same time, like he's enjoying all of life's letdowns.

Throughout it all, the members of BTS affect melodic sincerity, singing with intensity and melisma, rapping in tones that show their effort and strain, as if caring never went out of style.

Dirty Pictures (Part 2), like its predecessor, is a stand-alone triumph of missionary zeal.

Where his debut album that followed, Nine Track Mind, stumbled in its efforts to give him an identity in a sea of bright-eyed male pop stars, Voicenotes feels like a step, at the very least, in the right direction.

Modest masterpiece of an album.

Malkmus doesn't display his wry humor as much as usual on Sparkle Hard (though "Refute," a country duet with Kim Gordon, is a hilarious portrait of Portlandian romantic intrigue). But the album still manages to generate a unique empathy for the world and those enduring it around him.

With light-touch production by Danger Mouse, this is also the funkiest and sweetest Parquet Courts set yet, trading off some of their trademark guitar fireworks for danceable jams.

It's mood music (bad-mood music, to be exact) and, despite coming from a band called the Body, it's largely formless; much of the time the songs just seem to end.

Where Cobb's fine 2016 breakout Shine On Rainy Day cast him as singer-songwriting tale-teller, these songs are more from the gut.

The Prodigal Son, Cooder's first album in six years, serves both as an urgent commentary on our current dystopia and a satisfying window into the interpretive process of a musical mastermind.

These are big songs, full of wonder, and Beach House know it. Seven albums in, they're at the start of something new.

The meandering LP can't bear the weight of the man at the piano's indulgences.

Their music has grown lusher, their cadences more complex, making the leap to Sr3mm less of a stretch that it might seem. Where recent marathons like Migos' gratuitous Culture II felt more about streaming algorithms than art, Sr3mm rarely wears out its welcome.

It's no surprise, given how developed Guyville is for a debut, that Phair's playful arrangements and lyrical incision were there from the jump. Her voice expands from singsong to confident as she figures out just what it can do. ... Due to Phair's songwriting and enduring cultural salience (and Wood's production), the album has aged better than the work of her peers. Phair was initially derided for being too pop, but that's what gives Guyville both timelessness and grace.

It's expertly-crafted and likable, but rarely as gripping as its models.

It's a comfortable return for a band that didn't worry itself with fitting into a particular pop or rock moment back in the day, and still had enough in common to make meaningful, quality music.

A set that's seamlessly transporting, front to back.

Not everything works. "If It Feels Good, It Must Be" and "You Don’t Know" feel like fake Pharrell, which is some pretty thin plastic. But the closers--the skin-to-skin makeup sex ballad "Mrs." and the free-ranging autobiographical narrative "Georgia to Texas" (Bridges' second tribute to his mom in as many albums)--show how expansive and individual Bridges can be, even as he guns for the charts.

The 18 tracks of Beerbongs become an ouroboros of new-money narcissism: Post's obsession with flexing, partying, and banging groupies feeds a growing paranoia that the people around him only like him for exactly those attributes. And it is no small irony that the album's most convincing moments occur when he drops the cool rapper pretense and gets all lonesome cowboy.

In its own way, its as artful, ambitious, determined, joyous and inspiring, as Lemonade or To Pimp a Buttery. It's a sexy MF-ing masterpiece.

On Last Man Standing, Willie Nelson continues to turn his ninth decade into a classic country song full of remembrance, regret and resilience.

His thematic consistency can be hard to stomach, especially since his tracks are stripped down, with minimal melody and the spotlight focused on his harsh, truth-telling words. Such dogged persistence that makes K.O.D. a magnetizing albeit difficult listen.

The banter's remarkably jocular, Young shouting out Fifties superstar stripper Candy Barr and cracking wise like a tipsy hippie Henny Youngman ("Welcome to Miami Beach! I'd like to thank my managers for introducing me. … Ten years in the business, folks. I feel like Perry Como!") But the songs are dark as a moonless night.

With Sting's familiar bass sound driving most tracks, and Shaggy's production partner Sting International (no relation) providing bounce and clarity, 44/876 contains much of the sizzle of classic reggae or dancehall, though a little more substance would've been welcome too.

Vocally, Tinashe is probably more musically adept than half of the artists she emulates. But she won't truly carve out her own space until she figures out who she is.

Tree of Forgiveness is his first set of originals in over a decade. It's produced by Dave Cobb, and it's very good, frequently brilliant, with all the qualities that define Prine's music.

Invasion of Privacy flaunts so many different aspects of Cardi's game, it comes on like a greatest hits album, as undeniable as the excellent New Wave suit she rocks in the cover art.

The best moments on Revamp, featuring big names from pop, rock and R&B, are those least faithful to the originals. ... Less successful are efforts of John's glam-pop heirs, like Lady Gaga, who tries and fails to match the master's rococo ebullience.

It's a revelation. Tyros (Maren Morris) and legends (Dolly Parton) mine deep cuts to reveal in John's songs a very country strain of stoic melancholy. Miranda Lambert delivers a stormy "My Father's Gun"; Don Henley and Vince Gill wring pathos from the divorce lament "Sacrifice."

Their second LP is a gem of indie-rock-revivalism, making faux-naif surf licks and Mo Tucker drum beats seem new all over again.

Thundercat, Damon Albarn, Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, and a slew of Kendrick Lamar collaborators (Sounwave, Steve Lacy, Badbadnotgood) all make contributions, but the vibe is hers alone. ... Uchis is a woman on the verge, willing to share her vertiginous thrills and spills. Thank her later.

Just as Billy Bragg and Wilco helped reanimate and modernize the words of Woody Guthrie with their Mermaid Avenue albums 20 years ago, Forever Words is a moving, illuminating window into the grace, darkness, mercy and struggle that Johnny Cash spent his entire life documenting in song.

McBryde's got a big, vibrato-tinged alto, biker-chick style, and she wrote or co-wrote everything here, including "Dahlonega," with a sharp eye for piercing detail. She has a serious gift.

My Dear Melancholy, surprisingly provides the clearest, most engaging example yet of the Weeknd's angst. It's the sound of a man kneeling at love's altar still in search of an elusive healing.

Though Golden Hour might take time to relax into, the set is a fine lava-lamp soundtrack, and if "country" suggests engaging American musical traditions with respect and pioneer spirit, then this album is as country as it comes.

The tricks and miracles of Things Have Changed are manifold. Half of its 12 tracks restore life to songs that were dead-on-arrival on Dylan albums from 1979 to 1989; the rest reshapes more essential parts of the legend.

Virtue is the sound of honest confusion--messy, complicated and intriguing.

His music and his style are both impeccably tailored. Those perfect lines can be more admirable than breathtaking, though, and they're remarkably easy to glide right past.

Mostly White sounds like a scrappy, abstract-leaning '80s-style battle rhymer who probably didn't win a lot of battles. Elsewhere, experimental detours dead-end: "Everything You've Ever Learned" feels like aimless twaddle with newly-unboxed digital toys. But at its best, the spirit of freaky free-play is thrilling and refreshing, a worthy end unto itself.

The Decemberists do a very particular thing – darkly ornate, literary-minded, self-consciously verbose Anglophile prog-folk-rock--exceedingly well, so well that you can't blame 'em for wanting to do something else. They do just that on I'll Be Your Girl, at least in parts, the upshot being, well, a re-affirmation of that particular thing they do exceedingly well.

He aspires to be more than the face of so-called "mumble rap." Yet Lil Boat 2's best moments are when he reverts to the familiar.

Tantabara has a scruffy, econo, indie-rock vibe reminiscent of beautiful Brooklyn afrojazz punks Sunwatchers or Tel Aviv-born Brooklyn guitarist Yonatan Gat, who shreds aggressively on Tal's "Entente."

Tough but warm, Temet contains the handclaps, female vocal responders, and grain-mortar and goatskin tindé percussion of Tuareg music, but with gnarlier guitars and no ululating exclamations.