The biggest stars here are indisputably Sara and Sean, winsome singers and master musicians on guitar and violin, respectively, and curators to beat the band. After 20 years bringing folks into their extended family, maybe these former kid prodigies have earned the right to be called mom and dad.

Yorke has wrested control of his restlessness and made his messed-up dream state both richly provocative and proactive while maintaining its desolation.

With nary a weak track, Sparkle Hard finds Malkmus hitting a new peak nearly 30 years into his career.

The topical shifts can be as jarring as the sonic variance, but through her conviction, adaptability, and deft vibes control, Whack makes it all cohesive while sustaining the energy of her best releases. .... With the release of the stellar “World Wide Whack,” all theoretical outcomes can recede into the glory of the real thing.

“Thanks for the Dance” isn’t really so much a last will and testament, then, as a hell of a heaven-bound balance sheet.

“Seven Psalms” is unlike any other Simon album in almost too many ways to list.

Adam Lambert has made “Velvet” a testament to finding his way, personally and professionally, in what is his most accomplished solo work to date.

It’s not trying to be anything but a portrait of an angelic singer, an anthemic songwriter and an impressive interpreter now, and in the moment, without a shred of pretense.

This fancy reissue presents a nicely remastered version of the original album, along with an album’s worth of rather forgettable outtakes, the requisite giant book and poster reproductions, and — best of all — an absolutely spectacular 1973 concert that has long been available on bootleg but here is remastered and re-whatever’ed so beautifully that it’s practically worth the price of the package on its own.

Even titans like Cash and Scruggs found themselves thrown a little off balance by the proposition of recording with the unpredictable and ever-gnomic Dylan, and “Travelin’ Thru” may be the best proof of the challenge.

She brings a different style and approach to nearly every song, veering from brassy wail to folky prim (“October Sky”), from Adele-sized power (“Love Came Down”) to breathy sultriness (“Distance”). ... Anyone with functioning ears can hear this album and know what an exceptional talent is at work.

Musical advancement makes “Sling” the breakthrough that it is. ... “Sling” finds this young artist taking an unexpected but welcome turn into a new style, one that leaves the possibilities of her next chapter wide open.

There’s no question whose album this is, and like so many female superstars, Grande is tragically underrated as a musician. She’s not only a virtuoso singer but a skilled vocal arranger and producer whose multitracked backing voices are like songs on their own, embellishing and responding to her lead like a troupe of attuned dancers.

The Nashville-based disc is not just more focused on a style and a subset of artists but leans toward the more expressly singer-songwriter-type material John was recording in the early ’70s, under the influence of his roots-loving collaborator.

A quarter century after the French quartet Phoenix formed, it hardly seems likely that they’d make the most fresh-sounding album since the one that lit up the alt-rock charts in 2009, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” — but they’ve done it with “Alpha Zulu.” ... They’ve optimized and maximized their template in a way that seems effortless.

While some of the diversity obviously comes from her tasteful selection of collaborators, including Wilma Archer (Jessie Ware, Nilufer Yanya), Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Sampha) and Paul White (Danny Brown, Charli XCX), there’s never any questions whose unique vision is behind this innovative, unusual and inviting album.

What this tight team does is turn “Circles” into an intimate daytime affair — a micro-boogie wonderland — as opposed to the midnight pool party of “Swimming.”

Her producer, Joyce, who’s famous for working with Eric Church, knows something about country music outsiders, and together they’ve made a collection that never tries to squeeze into any radio-friendly box, all the better to be a fit and a find for life’s own jukebox, as cultivated listeners happen across it. Here’s a quarter: Brandy Clark definitely cares.

“Cruel Country” captures a band wholly secure in its status; it does a handful of things very well, and does those things repeatedly, with few deviations.

“Harry’s House” is a bit more intimate and less stadium-sized than its predecessor. Lyrically, it’s heavier and more serious in places. ... He’s built himself an enviable solo career that “Harry’s House” goes a long way toward furthering.

The album is on the elegant side, to be sure, but it’s elegance with a distinct pulse, as the Imposters lean into soulful swing and Costello avoids the outright belting that you either loved or didn’t in the ’90s to do the most nuanced cooing and yelping of his career. ... A great cake of an album that doesn’t really sound that much like any of the 30 before it.

This album takes you under the piano, so to speak, witnessing genius casually at work.

Without regret, Tucker takes the intuitive songwriting of these younger collaborators and proudly inhabits their biographical approximation of her nine lives with earnestness and ease.

To be clear, these are not professional recordings; they’re loose versions of the songs sung into a cheap recorder, and consist of Reed on lead vocals, acoustic guitar and harmonica while Cale sings harmony (lead on one song) and occasionally bangs on things; there are bum notes, laughter and mistakes. But in the Velvets canon, their historical significance is vast.

It's easy to imagine a track like ["I'll Be Lovin’ You"] ending up in the hands of any number of hit-hunting younger singers, but impossible to imagine anyone else investing it with Lambert's precise calibration of wistfulness and swagger. And that goes for the rest of the album too. ... She's never sounded more perfectly at home.

Wisely, at just a half hour in length, the album doesn’t outstay its welcome, and although not every song is great, the vibe carries through from end to end — and once it’s over there’s no way you’re not playing it again.

The good news is, a lot of the until-now-unheard tracks from “Sour” are even better than the three tracks that have already been out there. ... You’ve got to admire her commitment to keeping with the title emotion and not having even a single romantically un-spurned song, for variety or anything else. It’s some grand lemonade. ... Ridiculously good.

Even in the album’s most vulnerable moments, maybe especially in those moments, Shires is proving what a tough character she really is, exploring territory that singer-songwriters a little less sure of themselves would fear to tread. ... If there’s any danger in letting both power and unguardedness fill her sails, well, she can take that like a catamaran.

“It’s Almost Dry” is no break from form. While sonically much more cohesive than its chaotic predecessor, Pusha fails to push himself into new territories, making the entire album feel safe, rather than an attempt at growth. ... Still, musically, there are several outstanding moments that show off both Kanye West’s and Pharrell Williams’ production prowess.

“Pick Me Up Off the Floor” is a cohesive journey reflecting both tragically and sweetly on the amorphous cloud of heartache that lingers in these moments of pain, offering a hand to help us out of the fog.

There’s not much in the way of pure country, as you might still have expected from the band’s origins. They’re more interested in getting their Darlene on--although you do get a bit of slow rockabilly in “Santa Wants to Take You for a Ride,” an entry in the hallowed tradition of dirty Christmas songs.

The Royal Albert Hall show captures the band at the absolute peak of its powers. ... 52 years after the fact you can see, more than ever, what all the fuss was about.

Watching the arc of Mitski’s career, you might expect bombast, but “Laurel Hell” instead highlights the singular insistence of self that made Mitski into the hero she became, even if it comes in the form of honest mid-tempo melancholy.

“Never Will,” is not a letdown. ... It’s McBryde as the driver that makes this the second straight country album of the year contender in a row he’s produced (coming off Brandy Clark’s very different, more stylized effort).

“A Written Testimony” offers ample proof that none of us ever overestimated his talent, but the man behind the curtain remains as mysterious as ever. It’s nice to see that some things haven’t changed.

With material this timeless, it’s no wonder Tillman has wide enough appeal to co-headline the Hollywood Bowl: Classic-rock oldsters and the Pitchfork generation can both hold him up as a gold standard. An album this good is its own happy ending.

There’s a lot of Erykah Badu and a lot of early ‘70s Stevie Wonder in her singing and grooves, and while it generally moves in a in an unhurried, low-key pace, Sol shows she can open up and (almost) belt when she’s so inclined.

Clarity might be the best-constructed collection of R&B-inflected pop music by a female European singer since Robyn’s “Robyn Is Here” in 1995. ... On a musical level, most of it works, but it’s missing the element of surprise.

Far more fleshed-out than the EPs (none of the songs from which are repeated here), it seems all but inevitable that Parks will be one of the breakthrough artists of 2021. So what makes her and this album so special? In a word, intimacy. ... None of the above would work without the album’s brilliantly restrained production and arrangements, nearly all by her longtime collaborator Luca Buccellati: The music flawlessly frames her voice and lyrics and never intrudes.

With “Crawler,” they’re breaking breaking rank, changing up their style without redefining it — what might come next is wide open.

Her strongest effort to date with the new mixtape, “Bubblegum.” Her distinctively wispy voice and sinewy grooves have created a trademark sound — somewhere between Charli XCX and Pink Pantheress — that’s pop without being cheesy and dance-based without sacrificing melody or shunning melancholy.

With all its moments of distortion and attitude, tempered by sheer loveliness, and rude and emotional songs about night terrors and daydreams, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? feels like a rock ‘n’ roll album, even if there’s virtually nothing on it that sounds like rock music.

“How I’m Feeling Now” is very much a continuation of the innovative futurist-pop her discography has followed over the past five years. ... It also shows this deeply talented and creatively restless artist pushing the boundaries of her music practically in real time (which one can do almost literally via her Instagram and Zoom sessions), and giving tantalizing hints of what might come next.

Like the group’s best work, its amorphous and vaguely defined nature makes it something you can explore again and again and still find something you hadn’t noticed.

Almost indisputably their best, a collection of deeply resonant songs based in Oldham’s folk-leaning melodies and often-bizarre lyrics embellished with gorgeous guitar arrangements that range from rock to country, and even some of dashes of Malian music. ... One of the year’s best so far.

For those of us who love both power pop and musical theater, though, and haven’t been as much enamored of their previous emo, this is Panic!’s best album. The paradox is that this may be one-man-band Urie’s hardest-rocking collection, as well as his most stagy.

The new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness.

At nine tracks and 35 minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome, or stay in one place for very long. Duterte’s low-key delivery can obscure just how much is going on beneath the surface — “Anak Ko” is both a triumph of understatement and an understated triumph.

By enlisting pop wunderkind Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton as their first-ever outside producer, Parquet Courts has opened up its musical palette even more than most recent effort, 2016’s ballad-laden “Human Performance.” In fact, “Wide Awake!” may be the most woke punk-rock record since the heyday of the Clash, and it starts off with a very appropriate soccer-style chant.

While by no means a perfect album, Rammstein’s first since 2009’s “Liebe ist für alle da” is a scintillating and sensual (if not awkwardly sexual) reminder of the meat-and-steel-pounded power of industrial music at its catchiest, fleshiest and most inventive.

While a little less grace and a little more grit could have benefitted their second pairing, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ “Raise the Roof” is nice and rough in all the right places.

He’s elusive even in the midst of taking on a new musical persona that seems high-concept. But it’s that combination of intriguing opacity and occasional open-heartedness — and his twin inclinations between deep philosophizing and deadpan comedy — that give “Chloë” the oddball breadth to be one of the best albums of the year.

Extraordinary . ... A defining work from an exciting new star … even if it’s landing in a world very different from the one in which it was created.

[Lead vocalist George Clarke has] changed up his style so dramatically for the band’s fifth studio album that it actually sounds like they have a different singer. While “Infinite Granite” is unmistakably Deafheaven and continues their progression as one of the most innovative and powerful rock acts of the past 20 years, it’s a big change. ... A year into their second decade, Deafheaven have launched an entirely new chapter — they can go absolutely anywhere from here.

It continues the group’s evolution with a powerful, more seasoned take on their earlier sounds.

Rather than impose an excess of ear candy (although it’s welcome on the few occasions in which it comes), Antonoff knew what he had on his hands here: an album in which each new incendiary lyrical moment seems to top the last, before grievance gives way to beautiful grief. Candor, take them away.

Taut and primal, “MOTS: 7” is a kind of self-referential homage. ... Each get solo turns to shine here, their collective work is what stands out.

An album that could soundtrack an afternoon picnic or be used as fodder for a doctorate thesis on songwriting. It’s a beautifully realized cipher in an age of unsatisfying answers.

.Paak manages to both evolve and remind us why we’ve always loved him in the first place.

“Alphabetland” remains true to the rough sound of those early albums, but pulls the elements together even tighter.

Healy has smartly introduced a measure of restraint, but it wouldn’t be a 1975 album without his idiosyncratic discursions; these songs, sturdy melodic creations at their core, are all the better for it.

Bitter-Sweet is as inventive and mod as anything in his catalog.

Mostly, though, “Help Us” is a simple, effective return to form for fans of White who continue to hold out hope that a new White Stripes album may one day arrive. That prayer isn’t likely to pay dividends, but with the Raconteurs’ latest offering, listeners can at least take solace in the best consolation prize possible. More importantly, this album is timely proof that White may actually be at his best when he’s constrained by the framework of collaboration.

A good amount of the record adds up to a concept album about a successful musician trying to balance the demands and rewards of the road with home and family life. That’s not exactly unexplored territory on a rock (or blues or soul) record, but it does feel like Clark is honestly grappling with some internal issues here, in a variety of musical styles and subgenres that all go down easy.

100 Gecs pack more ideas into 23 minutes than most artists who release 70+-minute-long albums. With “10,000 Gecs,” the duo has reached a “South Park” level of brilliant absurdity.

The duet with Williams, “Castles Crumbling,” is particularly pungent, as a lament that just about could have been an outtake from the more recent “Folklore” or “Evermore” instead of an album that came out a full decade before those. As for the FOB-aided track, it’s the farthest thing from a Swift classic. But — having been written, like the rest of these tracks, when the artist was 18 or 19 — the number does hark back to an era when girls (and Fall Out Boys) could just wanna have fun.

It’s rare that a performer who’s inherently this capable of registering so much heart and soul can be such a cool cucumber when she wants to. Her lyrical and vocal reserve on so many of the tracks gives the moments of pure emotion that much more impact when they come.

It’s more free and fun than the original “Future Nostalgia” — which was free and fun to begin with — because it’s more diverse and much less serious, cruising by smoothly over the course of an over-too-fast hour or so, with a fluidity and seamlessness that is all the more remarkable considering the number of cooks in its kitchen.

While “Down in the Weeds” may be an apt reflection of the anxiety and fury many feel today, it doesn’t require that context to connect. Prior to their hiatus, Bright Eyes had never made music with an expiration date. With a tenth album now factored in, that streak remains intact.

Neither that track nor this album — all 85 minutes of it — is as catchy, rangy or amorphously composed yet tight as Tool’s raging smashes of the ’90s, such as “46 & 2” or “Sober.” [The group’s most ardent fans] wouldn’t stick around for “Fear Inoculum’s” nearly hour-and-a-half stretch, let alone have endured a 13-year wait for new music, if they weren’t expectant of having fresh changes and new dramas added to the vintage wine of the quartet’s heady mathematical intelligence.

At Stapleton’s best, sometimes you imagine you’re listening to a mythical “Gregg Allman Sings the Willie Nelson Songbook” album. There are plenty of these moments in his fourth release, “Starting Over.” He has Nelson’s tender touch, but his bluesy side is much louder; his is a part-acoustic, part-stinging approach in which Nelson’s Trigger meets B.B. King’s Lucille.

Despite all the high-profile guests, it’s actually on the soulfully inventive “Ball w/o You,” “Gun Smoke” and the sensual “Out for the Night”--which all feature 21 Savage on his own--that “i am > i was” is at its best and most dynamic.

The album’s strongest songs follow — the title track and “Wild at Heart” may have the best melodies, “Tulsa Jesus Freak” serves up her familiar white-trash-fabulous theme — but at around the midway mark it starts getting even more languid, like the wine or the meds are kicking in and… mmm… can’t we just sit here on the couch for a while longer? (To be fair, it may be the pandemic kicking in.) However, the slow tempos don’t detract from her always-vivid lyrics.

Although you won’t find an overlooked “Life on Mars?” or “The Man Who Sold the World” here, it’s still Bowie, challenging himself again after those years in the wilderness, with the familiar haunting refrains, the unusual chord changes, the verses in Cockney accent, the Syd Barrett and Ray Davies-esque melodies, and most of all his still-stunning voice. Nearly all of the albums here have at least glimpses of that greatness and a couple of killer songs or moments.

Though the album has its share of pleasingly ramshackle numbers, there are a good number of “real” songs here, ones you can imagine fitting in on “Flaming Pie” (which had a deluxe reissue this year) or “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.” But it’s some of the goofier or slightly more experimental tracks that, for a certain breed of fan anyway, make the ramshackle “III” even easier to love than the more formal “Egypt Station.”

It’s a real album, with an arc and continuity. Lost & Found is one of those rare records that’s adventurous but can also appeal to that aunt or sister-in-law or Grammy voter who finds a new artist they like every 15 years.

The 10 songs on this lovely and mostly subdued collection deal tend toward the most universal singer-songwriter themes: being glad your ex is an ex; wondering how to keep your current partner from becoming an ex; pondering whether love might survive the grave… and, of course, The Road.

As a whole, is Dawes, on the album where all the members finally get to let their freak-flag fly a little more, or as much on record as they have live. And an album that’s kinda about dystopianism kinda becomes a nice 46-minute tonic for it.

The group’s fourth full-length is a timely mediation on loneliness and fear, thankfully shot through with a hefty dose of the synth-fueled wizardry that’s come to define the best of what the Scottish trio has to offer.

If the sound had a home base, it would probably be the Northern English industrial city of Leeds, which not coincidentally is also home to several major universities and spawned such major acts in the genre as Gang of Four, the Mekons, Delta 5 and more. On “Angeltape,” the quartet Drahla has revived that sound with a striking level of authenticity.

In an era that’s become too reliant on guest features and scene-stealing cameos, here the delicately-honed collaborative approach seems to bypass any kowtowing to ego. There’s an at-ease alchemy at work. That all stems from Albarn, who doesn’t crop up when he isn’t needed.

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.

Swirling dreary beats with even more overcast thoughts, Dark Times is a lucid snapshot of melancholy. It lives up to its name. It’s dark out, but Vince presents a meticulous portrait of someone with just enough reason to wait for sunrise.

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.”