This is a record that sounds like it could be performed in living rooms, in department store foyers, on mall stages, at any moment, anywhere. The songwriting stands strong enough that the context of the music matters less and less, and the instrumentation becomes secondary to the tonal and lyrical moves--chamber music for the microdosing set.

Remind Me Tomorrow turns on thoughts of growing older and reflecting on the past, resulting in some of Van Etten’s most mature lyrics to date. Most bittersweet is “Seventeen,” which applies radiant clarity to the hazy, faded production aesthetic of a band like the War on Drugs. Even when swamped in overproduction, Van Etten’s performances are uniformly the best of her career, and Congleton for once gives her the perfect amount of space.

For such crackling peaks, there are also times where it seems Blake has found himself at the forefront of a heady new genre, trap-schmaltz. ... Despite those shortcomings, Assume Form stands as Blake’s most coherent statement to date. The Spartan singer-songwriter tropes of his debut, the half-baked collabs of Overgrown, and the overlong The Colour in Anything fall away to reveal a more dynamic Blake.

Though A Brief Inquiry is just as dizzying and disorienting as 2016’s heroically omnivorous i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, the 1975 take themselves a little more seriously now.

The album reasserts his status as a uniquely fascinating rapper. On Some Rap Songs, he’s making the most adventurous and exciting music of his career so far.

If you come to this collection strictly as a fan of one particular period, you may have to work to appreciate the others. An Artist’s Legacy is certainly comprehensive, but it fails to highlight any common threads that might help us navigate Cornell’s long and varied career.

On Caution, she is still doing it better than most of her students, and sounds more comfortable than she has in quite a while.

All signs pointed to Shiny and Oh So Bright (full title: Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.) as an authoritative step back on track.

On Delta, the scope of Mumford & Sons’ ambition is far wider than their abilities as songwriters. The result is an hour-long slog with only a few brief realizations of their old potential before the next crescendo hits.

That it reads like it came from NAO’s diary points to her greatest achievement on Saturn: every song can shine as a standalone track, but they sound even better together.

Honey, sparkling yet subtly realized and constantly in motion, follows Robyn from the precipice of heartbreak into the club and onto the beach, and eventually toward something resembling redemption.

By setting its course in the equal and opposite direction of Life Without Sound, it becomes its evil twin, a still-incomplete picture of Cloud Nothings. ... Yet Last Building Burning feels like a triumphant return because there isn’t as much pressure on it to do or say anything beyond its purely utilitarian aims. It slaps, shreds, and whips ass in whatever way you see fit.

Dose attempts to go everywhere and do everything. Opener “None of Your Business Man” is classic Abraham ascendancy (and the perfect anthem to quit your job to). “Torch to Light” introduces the double LP’s first moment of psychedelia, a new-ish venture for the band that’s sprinkled throughout. Mascis’s contribution on “Came Down Wrong” is, unsurprisingly, fuzzy, lackadaisical indie rock. “Dose Your Dreams” is disco. “Two I’s Closed” is a Beatles ballad. “The One I Want Will Come for Me” recalls shoegaze-y Cure.

The problem bedeviling the first new Chic album since 1992’s Chic-ism is one of definition: What does Chic mean in 2018? To Rodgers and his collaborators, it means a Daft Punk album whose processed vocals and acoustic elements collide to abrasive effect; it means a tighter Maroon 5 album. Yet Adam & the Levines are nowhere in sight, nor indeed any major star with the exception of Craig David, Elton John, and Lady Gaga, the latter intoning the lyrics of an unwise remake of 1979’s “I Want Your Love” as if she were Minnie Mouse imitating Grace Jones.

If the lyrics are getting all the attention on Digital Garbage, it’s only because the music is exactly what you’d expect. Mudhoney’s sound hasn’t changed much since the early ‘90s. ... Mudhoney are comfortable with themselves to a fault.

What we have is an album that’s mostly pretty good. It’s certainly an improvement over Tha Carter IV--likely his least memorable album ever--but it’s also not a record that is going to reignite a second peak from Wayne, if that was the hope.

A lot of Chris--and a lot of the coverage around it, to be fair--can seem reductive on first glance. But Letissier is one of the most nuanced songwriters working, and an inventive arranger.

Noname leaves little to no room for filler on Room 25, conveying a wide breadth of compelling ideas within 35 minutes. ... Though it can require attention to detail for her words to sink in, she gives off a feeling of effortless and whimsical grace as she speaks from a place of stark honesty over live instrumentation. A complete one-of-one act who continues to grow in real time outside of the limelight, Noname makes a subtle yet strong statement for women providing alternatives to one-dimensional rap archetypes.

>>> succeeds about half the time, but too often the band sounds conflicted between marching forward as the old Beak> and committing to a new direction.

Apart from its near-voyeuristic intimacy, Piano & A Microphone is most interesting when one imagines what this session meant to Prince at the time.

None of Collapse’s derailments are permanent, and this one only lasts a few seconds before the music puts itself back on track. If the EP leaves you wanting anything, it’s more malfunction, more frenzy, more extended deviations from the Aphex Twin playbook.

His skill is still intact, but his music lacks its former inspiration, and he only digs a deeper hole for himself by taking aim at the youth.

Hynes impeccably orchestrates his jazzy art-funk, resulting in the best sounding music of his solo career.

Be the Cowboy largely dispenses with the distortion of Mitski’s guitar-oriented recent work, getting all the fuzz out with intro track “Geyser.” What’s left are short and thwarted pop songs. (Only two are longer than three minutes.)

It is the best distillation yet of his tortured hustler mystique.

Except for standouts “Barbie Dreams,” “Good Form,” and “Chun-Li,” Queen is full of songs that Nicki has more or less done previously and in better ways. It’s not that Nicki has become a worse rapper (“Lara been Croft” jokes aside) or that the production is bad, it’s that everything here is only adequate--nothing pops, no chances are taken, and there isn’t any notable magic in these records.

It is his most fully realized album, but also the one that most strikingly situates Scott as secondary to his collaborators. ... For all the interesting things that can be found on Astroworld, it is still way too long and can sound so uniform that it loses your attention.

The tropes in YG’s songs are West Coast traditional (women, realness, threats, repeat) but there’s a combination of veteran savvy and lane mastering that refreshes the more expected moments.