Take my recommendation and forget about the most deeply conceptual parts of this concept album--which just seems like a lot of work--and enjoy the many parts of Trench that don’t require a thirst for symbolic origin stories. There are plenty of these, like “Morph” and “My Blood,” which sport falsetto R&B hooks, somewhat in the tradition of the previous album’s best track, “Heavydirtysoul.”

By allowing their diligently designed blueprint to take a new, unexpected form, the National haven’t ceded the spotlight, only broadened it.

Ariana Grande’s fourth and most delightful album.

Listening to 7 is almost like spending time with a normally cheerful and sunny friend who’s angry at someone or something else: It’s a bit startling but not unpleasant or unwelcome, because it opens up another side to the person--and proves that they can still surprise you.

There’s a whiff of wistful nostalgia in seeing PinkPantheress veer away from micropop, but artists need to evolve and she’s exploring rather than conforming. “Heaven Knows” is a big chapter in what is hopefully a long story.

The Weeknd’s music has always been about contrasts, and here the beauty and the madness are more smoothly integrated than ever. “After Hours” is one of the most successful musicians of the past decade testing the balance between innovation and commerciality as much as anyone today.

It’s by far her most mature and diverse album and is a smart long-term move — but damned if Fish doesn’t sound most at home when she turns up her amp and wails.

It finds Gordon arriving as a solo artist, nearly 40 years after Sonic Youth released its first recordings, with one of the most challenging and intriguing albums of the year.

There are many fine songs on “Never Not Together.” ... But The Moment doesn’t come until track six, and it’s a doozy: Halfway through an oddly nursery-rhyme-like song that opens with children singing, the band eases into a majestic chord progression that suddenly erupts into a massive, glorious chorus that they’re smart enough to ride for the next three minutes, milking it with a guitar solo and an unusual B-section before ending on an inconclusive chord, as if pausing before going on forever. With more Moments like that, we’ll be writing about Nada Surf for another 24 years.

This album is a rich feast. Even if, to get the full gist of things, it does call for research and multitasking. ... As for the writing itself, there’s not an unfascinating moment on the album, whether she’s making characteristically quotable, glaringly bold declarations or leading attentive superfans into obscure rabbit holes.

Both artists’ high standards guarantee that the songs are musically and melodically on point.

It’s throwback-y in spades, but bears such a personal stamp in a world of cookie-cutter male competitors, that it still feels like Church is moving country forward.

If life was fair, these songs would be streaming out of the earbuds of every teenage girl (and hip boy who wants to belong).

Like all of the group’s recordings, the songs transcend the sound, and “Fuse” finds this veteran group as vital as ever.

Some will no doubt ponder why it takes a village to make a record that feels far more isolated than communal, but the overall effect of “i,i” is not that of a disaffected wall of sound. Neither is it meant to be Vernon’s “happy” record, though such reductive distinctions are rarely an accurate portrayal of an album’s true intent. Instead, it’s wild and fragmented, as nature intended.

“Charli” is the best of both worlds: It’s innovative and adventurous but not off-puttingly weird; it finds her fine-tuning her pop instincts without getting overly gushy. It’s one of the most intelligent and sophisticated pop albums of the past decade, a merging of Hollywood sheen and European experimentation that — musically, anyway — is on a par with classics of that genre like Robyn’s self-titled 2005 album, Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” and Swift’s “1989.”

It’s just about everything you’d hope that a collab between Halsey and Reznor/Ross would be… except long enough.

She’s made a forward stride with a story of indignation and despondence like little else we’ve heard in hip-hop.

This album may be a bold departure for the group, but in this moment, who can afford to be meek? Sleater-Kinney never has, and nine albums in, that fact continues to hold.

The oddly beautiful instrumental title track, which is a gentle, simple melody played on a keyboard that sounds like a combination of a computerized church organ and a ghostly merry-go-round — and perfectly evokes the digital spirituality of its title, and the contrasts of where James Blake the artist is at this point in his always-explorative musical career.

If you believe there can be such a thing as an instant country classic, “The Highwomen” is that. ... The all-star foursome has put together an album full of high comedy and high pathos, zingy group-sings and gut-wreching solo turns, wryness and rue, and harmony co-existing with this strange and nearly forgotten thing called twang.

On occasion, such symmetry and solace is overbearing and a little too perfect. ... Missteps such as these — especially on an album with nearly 20 songs — mean little when its main man has made yet another vocally and lyrically poignant, to say nothing of sonically immersive, step into the future of Afro-Fusion with “Love, Damini.”

“Blue Banisters” might lack the majesty of “Norman Fucking Rockwell” or the commercial sheen of “Born To Die,” but it offers a rare glimpse of an artist securing her legacy, one song at a time.

This Puscifer is something of a frowny-faced look at one man’s insistent need to keep score — with other men, with nature or with himself — while fist-pumping the air with ’80s-vintage new wave pop tones. And it all works out brilliantly, and Maynard-ly, even when you think it won’t. ... For all the majesty and mirth, the best songs on “Existential Reckoning” are its sparest, and those where Keenan drops an octave and maybe even some of the pretense.

It might seem over the top to say that “Gigaton” is Pearl Jam’s best or most fully realized album since ”Ten.” But to paraphrase “Pal Joey’s” rakish Frank Sinatra talking about a sexual dry spell, “29 years is a long time between drinks.” And “Gigaton” is one stiff, glorious weird and zealously melodic cocktail.

Ultimately, with “Loss of Life,” the group seems to feel more comfortable than ever in its own skin, unshackled to trends or preconceived notions about how some may feel they should sound.

From the Four Seasons through to One Direction, never has the pop construct of a “boyband” had as much to say, and as many offbeat ways of saying it, as does Brockhampton on “Roadrunner.”

“Mordechai” contains this unusual and alluring group’s best work yet.