What’s most striking about Halsey (in addition to to her stunningly supple vocals, mind you) is the sheer breadth of her sonic vision. As should be expected, hopeless fountain kingdom comes loaded with her love of epic electropop; a powerful example is “Heaven in Hiding,” a passion-drenched song lined with wheezing synths and bathed in woozy, ethereal atmosphere. But before the sprawling album’s conclusion listeners are exposed to R&B-kissed pop (“Alone”), soulful piano balladry (“Sorry”) and Goth-stained rock (“Angel on Fire”). Though a good deal of the album’s lyrical content meditates on insecurity and self-doubt, Halsey (not unlike Rihanna) ultimately comes off as an artist who knows exactly what she wants and how to achieve it. -- Justin Farrar
A soundtrack for the summer festival season has arrived. Playlist-ready for pool parties complete with inflatable swan and dragon pool toys and stocked ice chests, Major Lazer’s “Know No Better” is a joint release by Quavo, Travis $cott, and Camila Cabello. Highlights are the Baltimore club and reggaeton “Buscando Huelles,” the African beats of “Particula” (featuring Nasty C, Nigeria’s Ice Prince, and Jidenna). African, Cuban, and Central American influences bring a welcome global flavor to Major Lazer’s repertoire. – Sara Jayne Crow
Dua Lipa’s foray into pop music made waves much as iconic Brit singers before her—Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lily Allen—but this ingénue is surfing a tsunami wave distinctly her own. Dua Lipa is a London-based artist originally from Kosovo who managed to top British charts three times without a full-length album. Dua Lipa hangs together in cohesion, with the artist’s husky voice carrying songs as varied as “Homesick” (written by Chris Martin), the banging electro-tinged, surly-vocal pop “Blow Your Mind (Mwah),” and the slow-burning “Hotter Than Hell.” Throughout, excellent production is merely a backdrop for Dua Lipa’s raspy vocals. A star is born, rising from the depths of London’s dark underground to international fandom. – Sara Jayne Crow
Dave Grohl’s perennially acclaimed and consistently chart-scaling combo return from a couple-year hiatus with the first single from their ninth album, nearly five and a half minutes long. The jangle and pomp start out echoing Boston and especially U2, with hushed and gentle pop-rock vocals soon transposed against harsh extreme-metal snarling, the soft-and-loud and sleepy-and-wide-awake modes doing a tug-of-war around a chorus mantra hailing “another perfect light.” Momentum builds and recedes, eventually swinging back and forth like a pendulum do. --Chuck Eddy
Alt-J have always reveled in the fact that they embody a complex melange of styles (indie folk, ambient electronica, dance pop, rock ‘n’ roll) that can rarely be reconciled with one another. This certainly is the case with their third album, the endearingly idiosyncratic Relaxer. One minute, the Brits are entrancing listeners with a somber, strings-laced interpretation of the blues standard “House of the Rising Sun;” the next, they’re employing wiry, indie rock guitars and sci-fi synths to create the thoroughly post-modern slab of agit-pop “Hit Me Like That Snare.” In lesser hands, this kind of messy, wily plurality would become too unmanageable, but Alt-J are that rare band that thrive on chaos. It’s their muse, and they’re all the better for it. -- Justin Farrar
There’s a good deal of irony embedded in the title Last Young Renegade. After all, the album is All Time Low’s most mature-sounding to date. Gone is the cheeky, pop-punk bounce of their youth; they now spend their time at the halfway between hazy alt-rock and synth-based new wave (not unlike Paramore, actually). On top of all that, All Time Low sound like a veteran band that has experienced their fair share of ups and down. The darkness-cloaked ballad “Nightmares” tells the story of an adult haunted by a childhood marked by familial strife, while “Drugs & Candy,” powered by a busily shuffling dance groove, is a meditation on the destructive powers of love when it morphs into addiction. If All Time Low’s goal was to paint a complex picture of the trials and tribulations of growing up and growing old, they definitely succeeded. -- Justin Farrar
You have to give it to Roger Waters. He doesn’t release an album until he has something he really wants to say, even if it takes 25 years. His fifth album Is This the Life We Really Want? is his first studio album since 1992’s prophetic Amused To Death, a high-concept album that imagined a future where the human race is lulled into an intellectual stupor and inaction by watching too much television. On Is This the Life… he sets about to wake them again with 12 cautionary tales about the reckless leaders we have elected and the choices we have made. Superficially like Neil Young’s 2006 Living With War where a non-native gives up the hard truths about the state of the U.S., it’s not casually done like Young’s opus in a torrent of anger written and recorded over the space of two weeks, but it is a beautiful, well-considered collage seven years in the making, with news reports, spoken word, snippets of weather reports and mumbled voices, all like clues to a murder mystery. And maybe it is. Poetic and prophetic, Rogers may tell us the sky is falling, but we have enough time to prop it up again, if we do the right thing. --Jaan Uhelszki
On The Transition of Mali Music, the Christian R&B artist offers comfort and empathy to his listeners. He doesn’t shout his religion, but his songs clearly have a spiritual meaning. On “Dolla,” he addresses the specter of money in this “crazy, shady world,” and refuses to be guided by it. “Loved By You” is about Christian romance, or “you, Him, and I.” For “Contradiction,” he and guest Jhené Aiko sing that they’ll always seek out God’s grace, even if he seems to abandon them at times in their lives. Mali Music peppers the album with rapped verses, especially on “Gonna Be Alright,” as he exhorts us to use faith to survive our daily travails.--Mosi Reeves
