An album to savor, then, or forget.

The Breeders’ there/not there qualities are such that unacquainted listeners will imagine what the band sounds like and they’d be right. Expedient and necessary, All Nerve is what we need now, next week, in 2023.

Though firmly planted on the dancefloor, Record is for sunshine and joy the way 2008 masterpiece Out of the Woods was for moody rain and 2010 chamber-pop charmer Love and Its Opposite for snug wood paneling. But for all its color and vim, it’s also a brave, grave survey--emotionally if not always factually autobiographical--of Thorn’s relationship to London, her family, and her own heart.

Less deadpan and more florid than its predecessor, Now Only is heartrending in new, different ways. Sonically, the record doesn’t stray far from Mount Eerie’s elemental standard operating procedures, where meandering, nylon-strung acoustic strum or heavy metal thunder underlie Elverum’s streams of consciousness.

There’s something more filigreed at work: a thoughtfulness about the band’s mannered chaos as though they’ve come out on the far end of some mass realization.

It’s Georgia Maq’s raw-edged vocals you’ll remember, and the consistency of the musical canvas opens space for her to work. Her lyrics articulate human entanglements with a lack of sentimentality that belies how much she cares, and like Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, she has a gift for evoking shame hand-in-hand with fury.

In dealing with the inevitable change that loss engenders, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat and Dan Deacon have crafted a memorable and eclectic record.

Utopia contains several solid entries into Byrne’s pop songwriting canon, but few revelations. Whimsical and surprisingly optimistic, it finds him following several different impulses at once.

Though Will Yip has already spawned a modern alt-rock empire from the modest Philly suburb of Conshohocken, Time & Space is the album that’s been waiting for him all his life.

At times, that there’s as much “subversive” pop music as there is music that is supposedly being subverted, not all of it as deep as advertised. Poem, thankfully, is far more thoughtful about it than most.

For all the deft, varied professionalism on display here, Lamar’s omnipresence on Black Panther: The Album might be its most compelling feature.

Despite the resourcefulness of Kronos’ contributions, though, Anderson is Landfall’s most crucial actor and its saving grace; the humility, naturalism, and humor of her recitations justify the scale of the project.

The way What a Time to Be Alive zooms by, there are songs you might blink and miss if McCaughan weren’t writing some of the most sharply worded lyrics of his career.

Despite such surface gloss, it’s clear Franz Ferdinand are still finding their creative footing without McCarthy. The taut arrangements present on previous albums can occasionally give way to moody repetition (“The Academy Award”) or sluggish tempos (“Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow”), robbing the record of immediacy. This is a small quibble, however.

Greenwood’s previous PTA scores provided feral atmosphere first and foremost, or in Inherent Vice’s case, a convex take on classic Hollywood film noir incidental music. Phantom Thread’s score, on the other hand, feels like another main character or storytelling voice in the film. Greenwood’s abilities have never served one of Anderson’s films better, or proved so integral to its power.

Besides restoring the muscle lacking on the emaciated An Object, the opening trio on Snares presents No Age as everything they’ve been (gritty, propulsive, atmospheric, a motorcycle taking on a sandstorm head-on) and the immediately accessible rawk band they’ve never been.

The new album’s particular saving grace is its self-loathing streak, the sense that scales have fallen from eyes and that Stay Gold’s nebulous disaffection has soured to regret.

You’ll discover plenty of laconic beauty wherever you drop into The House, and it glimmers with the songful club music that made its predecessor great for getting ready to go out. But a profusion of digital-pastoral vocal settings makes it unlikely to displace Pool from constant shuffle rotation.

In lesser hands, all this weight could feel leaden. But Miguel remains a craftsman, and leisure gets its due.

Utopia is full-on music-theater unlike anything Björk has yet attempted, and the rare tenth album by such an established artist to genuinely surprise with unforced and meaningful reinvention.

Rest’s intimacy contrasts Gainsbourg’s personal reticence, and softens a storytelling void that might doom a lesser stylist.

Thanks to its polyrhythms and rich instrumental textures, The Animal Spirits is as likely to appeal to fans of experimental rock music (especially electro-tribal searchers like Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Fuck Buttons, or Dan Deacon) as it is to those who regularly spend evenings at the club.

Never has she sounded freer than she does here, a self-styled villain biting the forbidden fruit of gossip and letting its juices run down her neck.

Plunge feel vibrant and more alive. There are crucial moments on the album where Dreijer slows things down a bit to let everything sink in. Even on the quieter moments, however, the mood of the album is deeply human.

The final result is a balm to soothe well-trodden emotional frequencies.

Each song is immaculately crafted and sequenced, yet with this many ballads, they blur: a play continually in its eleventh hour.

ken, Bejar’s sparest album in terms of lyrical density and length in some time, is an aggressive, well-chiseled shift.

Lotta Sea Lice is strange, occasionally awkward, and easy to love. Like a good buddy movie, it’s a little sentimental, and possessed of a deeper wisdom than its goofy premise initially lets on.