PERFECT. Iglooghost's Tidal Memory Exo is an incredible step forward for the Deconstructed Club genre. An emotionally evocative blend of Drill, Drum & Bass, and Grime are brilliantly splintered into shards and scraped across your brain guaranteed to leave deep grooves in your mind long after you listen.

GOOD. Unspectacular, but earnest and spirited Noise Pop / Slacker Rock can be found on twikipedia's for the rest of your life.

BAD. Gunna is too talented to have released this record. Inexcusably lazy, One of Wun is a painfully stagnant Trap record with nothing interesting to say sonically or lyrically.

GOOD. On Childish Gambino's' Neo-Soul record, Atavista, he finally finishes that god-forsaken 3.15.9.11 ass album he put out a couple of years back and it actually sounds good.

GOOD. Although it pales in comparison to the original, Chief Keef's Almighty So 2 is still an hour-long marathon of Trap bangers, replete with Sosa's trademark humor and frenetic energy.

GOOD. There are a handful of truly remarkable ideas scattered around You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To and great performances by the featured artists. However, there is a noticeable baseline of tired, tropish sounds and the lead vocalist's main singing voice feels underdeveloped in its emotive range.

FINE. The Lemon Twigs' A Dream Is All We Know is a well-executed throwback to the Sunshine/Jangle Pop era. That is all it is.

GOOD. Jessica Pratt's Here in the Pitch is a slow and contemplative Singer-Songwriter record. Pratt's Brill-Building-esque vocals blend well with the considerably more modern instrumentals and lyrical themes, showing considerable attention to detail.

VERY GOOD. WILLOW's newest effort, epathogen, is by far their greatest. Many tracks are brief to the point of feeling underdeveloped, but almost every track presents a strong vocal performance from WILLOW and a fascinating Jazz/Pop/Punk instrumental.

GOOD. Dua Lipa's Radical Optimism has a surprising depth to it for a generic Dance-Pop record, both sonically and lyrically. Still, many may miss out on what makes it special due to its notably less compelling first three tracks.

VERY GOOD. Fearless Movement is a very aptly titled Jazz Fusion record, as Kamasi Washington bravely dives into a myriad of styles and influences to create something that is both reflective and exciting, often simultaneously.

BAD. Girl in Red's sophomore effort is a deeply disappointing record. The upgrades to her production value are completely wasted, as the shiny new instrumentals are dreadfully plain and uninspired. The bitter-sweet yearning expressed through her original, far more stripped-back productions is completely absent. Lyricism has never been Ringheim's strong suit, but the atmosphere she created almost always carried the day. I'M DOING IT AGAIN BABY is an exercise in what happens when the atmosphere ... read more

VERY GOOD. Vampire Weekend's first effort in quite a while is a glorious return to the artistic bravery that made their debut such an influential record. While there are certainly a few misses and low points on the album, the band's bountiful variety of moods and influences combine beautifully into most of the tracks, making an excitingly modern Indie Rock record.

GOOD. While Beyoncé's new record is an overall success, the Country Pop fusion record struggles with consistency. While most of the tracks are listenable, there's a great gulf in quality between the best and worst tracks on the record. So much so that I'd probably never listen to it top to bottom again.

GOOD. While almost every track on the record is at least listenable and often enjoyable, the record has almost nothing thematically interesting or compelling about it, in either instrumentation or lyricism. +5 for the Kendrick Lamar feature alone; without the Drake diss the record would be forgotten in days.

POOR. Sophisti-Pop, more like Sophistry-Pop. All style and no substance. Like an album infected with vampirism, the blood and soul of artistry has been drained from its body, leaving only the walking corpse of a well-produced Indie Pop record.

GOOD. Kacey Musgrave's Deeper Well is aptly named, as the deceptively simple instrumentals heard at the beginning of the record give way to a pool of musical ideas that expands downward as you dive for the bottom. Musgrave's vocals and lyrical capabilities are rather plain but reliably strong.

VERY GOOD. Samlrc's record, A Lonely Sinner, is a beautiful collection of Post-Rock songs with a keen ear for ambience and track flow. The monotony of a typical Post-Rock record is avoided with varying instrumental choices that appear for only a track or two before being replaced by something new (yet just as compelling as the last). The ending run of string-dominated tracks exemplifies this perfectly.

FINE. While Kim Gordon's The Collective is a strongly experimental album, its first half displays little trace of fleshed-out or unique ideas besides the initial shock of the genre collision. The lackluster lyricism can't bear the load of the glacial delivery and undercooked beats. The best tracks on the record are those like Psychedelic Orgasm and Tree Hosue, where the vocals fade into the background and more detail is woven into the intrumentals.

GOOD. MIKE & Tony Seltzer's Pinball is a brief, entertaining, yet ultimately forgettable Abstract Hip-Hop record. Both of these artists are capable of much more, but, on its own, the record is undeniably a good listen.