I Don’t Want You Anymore paws at ambiguity. The feelings are raw, and Creevy resists major-chord resolutions.

It’s got at least one song that instantly joins the ranks of his very best (“Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”) and plenty that draw direct lines to previous high-water marks, both thematically and musically.

Though Settings’ music sprawls, it feels minimalistic in practice, exploring just a couple of chords like Philip Glass and encouraging deeper listening like Pauline Oliveros.

The warmth emanating from the lyrics flows throughout Nothing Lasts Forever. Teenage Fanclub never quickens the pace or belabors the melodies, choosing to luxuriate in their twilight grooves.

The arrangements are lean and pared back, even as the lyrics erupt with florid descriptions that feel like direct entreaties to the senses.

The guests bring a welcome sense of contrast to Armand Hammer’s own styles. Moor Mother’s breathy enunciation floats through woods and Elucid’s more pronounced flows, while Pink Siifu’s monotone straddles the line between lethargic and loquacious.

Its genesis, development, and creation are extensively chronicled in Who’s Next | Life House, an 11-CD box set that beautifully communicates the spirit of the original project by opening up the vaults and inviting everybody inside.

The catchy country-pop rhythm of the title track, buoyed by a twangy electric guitar solo, wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place in between Clint Black and Dwight Yoakam on Country Music Television in the 1990s, but Childers frequently channels a vision of the genre that predates the video era.

Smith’s voice is assured and grounded: She reaches far less frequently for belting high notes and runs than she did on Lost & Found, instead sitting back comfortably.

Compared to the darkly mesmerizing dread of records past, here Lopatin practically kicks off his shoes and settles in for a comfy night on the couch, flipping channels through one distorted display after another. Without a clear framework tying it all together, Lopatin’s logic itself becomes the album’s defining quality.

Despite a few trite lyrics, there are many transcendent moments on Heaven. Sol is able to pivot between multiple emotional states—gratitude, calm, yearning—within the space of a single vocal run, like on album standout, “Heaven.”

What remains so great about Tim, and is emphasized over and over again on this new remix, is how Westerberg delivers each song as if it’s the last thing he’s ever going to do.

Isn’t It Now? also retains the band’s knack for defamiliarizing their influences, in the same way that Sung Tongs could make you feel like you were hearing a guy strumming an acoustic guitar for the first time in your life.

Though it goes a long way to reinstating Blonde Redhead’s singular mystique and impressionistic aura, Sit Down for Dinner is distinguished by an easygoing melodicism that, even in its darkest lyrical depths, makes it the warmest and most welcoming record in the band’s catalog.

The closing “The Enduring Spirit of Calamity” is the hard-won culmination of the band’s evolution, and the song that cements The Enduring Spirit as their best album yet. At 11 and a half minutes, it’s also the longest, most ambitious Tomb Mold song to date.

By now, Nation of Language are well-versed in the ways of “less is more.” On Strange Disciple, they’re also learning what it means to get bigger and better.

CHAI’s more explicitly political efforts unfold rather predictably, their messaging losing power as they paint in broad strokes. .... CHAI’s music resonates more when they get more personal, like on the sparkling album closer “Karaoke,” which conveys their tight-knit connection.

It’s the first Wilco album in years to activate, in fits and starts, the band’s long-dormant experimental gene; the first one in years where the songwriting feels as guided by the production as vice versa.

V is relentless in its intensity, but allow yourself to be swept into its icy, alien atmosphere you’ll be utterly awestruck.

An album that refuses to draw a neatly conclusive arc. Instead, Gentle Confrontation offers an invitation to bear witness to a process that’s human, hard to define, and close to the heart.

He has softened his electronic and industrial edges and folded in guitars laden with effects pedals; steeped in post-punk and even grunge, it frequently captures the energy of a band playing together in real time.

While Flying Wig does indeed ascend, it never quite lands on solid ground—which feels like the whole point.

Atlas derives its power from the tension between broad expanses of formlessness and sudden eruptions of destabilizing beauty. To me, this tender, elegiac album sounds like deathbed music—a flash of rapture while everything fades to black.

Palomo’s previous albums sounded like the ghosts of ’80s memories. On World of Hassle he offers some unforgettable nights of his own.

Scarlet should be a madhouse but instead it’s like a trip to the rap clinic waiting room.

There is a stubborn will to transcendence in these songs: a desire to leave the dissociative slough of the eternal middle. But the will-they-won’t-they friction between self-destruction and self-preservation generates its own kind of pleasure.

On Sorry I Haven’t Called, which was co-produced by Rostam, Tamko changes shape once more, resulting in bright and dewy electro-pop songs with more rhythmic dimension.

Even at its darkest, though, softscars is a blast, its turbo-charged riffs and sticky melodies all but begging you to crank the volume up to levels that will require future ENT visits. And there are plenty of purely fun moments here too.