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Sometimes when a collection of songs doesn’t come easily, you can hear it in the final result: laboured, overthought, worked-to-death. But Basia Bulat’s fifth album avoids this fate. Despite needing to take a nine-month break from working on it, the Toronto-born, Montreal-based musician and sometimes U.S. Girls contributor (hear her on their new album Heavy Light) has given us 13 exuberant folk-pop songs delivered with clarity, colour and conviction.

Work on it started after touring 2016’s breakup album Good Advice, and in the face of some major life events: the death of her father, finding love, her eventual marriage last summer. She travelled to the Mojave Desert to again work with producer Jim James (My Morning Jacket), but by mid-2018, once back in Montreal, she found herself needing to step away from the project.

She faced the songs again last spring, did some mixing and remixing, and it all came together. With major-key melodicism and tons of hummability, Are You In Love? is big and bold thanks to its production choices and uninhibited vocal performances. She really gives it – while maintaining her trademark elegance – on the girl-groupesque title track, the powerful Homesick and super-catchy pop song Your Girl.

But it’s also often a quiet record with weird textures and minimal arrangements, and these moments are even more effective than the aforementioned bigger ones. Take the autoharp-driven standout Fables (warning: it might make you burst into tears), the beautifully composed Pale Blue and the slowly building Electric Roses. Throughout, her lyrics are wise and vivid: “Stories fail you when you’re grown,” she sings on Fables. 

Bulat said that she struggled to balance keeping herself together and letting loose. That’s most audible on final song Love Is At The End Of The World, which starts with melancholy piano and her haunting vocals and ends in a cathartic screaming electric guitar. That ending is so exciting, you find yourself hoping there’s more “letting go” still to come.

Top track: Fables

Basia Bulat’s show at the Danforth Music Hall on April 30 has been postponed.

@nowtoronto

Rating: NNNN

Witch Prophet begins her sophomore LP with a question that feels more relevant than ever: “Where do we go from here when the whole world is falling through darkness and we cannot see the light?”

Ayo Leilani turns her focus to her family and draws inspiration from her Ethiopian/Eritrean heritage as well as mythology and biblical stories. Across the album’s 10 tracks – each named after a family member – Leilani, alongside co-producer Sun Sun and a host of contributing artists, carves out space to reflect on familiar history and to try and unravel the knotty feelings of love and pain that go hand-in-hand with this reflection.

DNA Activation works best as a unit. Each song has a similarly hazy soundscape that mixes R&B, hip-hop and jazz sounds while the voice of Leilani, who sings in English, Amharic and Tigrinya, surfs lightly above. But cohesion doesn’t mean uniformity: Tesfay is an assured, enlivening track thanks to a delicious pairing of a playful bassline and the confident wails of Karen Ng’s saxophone, a welcome addition on a few of the album’s tracks. Darshan and Etmet (the latter featuring Brandon Valdivia on flute) are downtempo hip-hop tracks made for late-night hangs with whoever you define as family.

On nearly every song, Leilani clings with purpose to a phrase and repeats it like a mantra or a reminder: “Oh my god” (Elsabet) or “Bow down to the queen” (Makda). On Ghideon, a song named after Leilani’s father, each repeated “cut down” feels like the swing of an axe as it chops off a limb of the family tree.

DNA Activation is a warmly hypnotic escape that arrives when we need it most. It also serves as a reminder that family can sustain you even when the world is falling through darkness.

Top track: Tesfay

@LStanely24

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To be constantly compared to your first project can be constricting. As The Weeknd inches towards the 10-year anniversary of his 2011 debut trilogy of mixtapes, even as he reaches the heights of pop stardom, it isn’t uncommon for purists to hold each new release up against his first.

On his fifth album, Scarborough native Abel Tesfaye couldn’t be further from his debut – and that’s okay. The hour-long LP often plays out like an experimental 80s fever dream, but it’s still anchored by The Weeknd’s broody sonic DNA. 

Tracks shift between glossy and gritty. Over tight production from frequent collaborator Illangelo and kingmaking pop architect Max Martin, The Weeknd sings of his own undoing. The album kicks off with an overdose on Alone Again as he sings “Check my pulse for a second time / I took too much, I don’t wanna die.” A starry synth starts the track before a stern, Stranger Things-sounding bassline comes in.

Starting the album at a thematic low point leaves room for build-up. The crescendo comes midway through the album, following a four-song suite produced by Illangelo and Metro Boomin, beginning with the autobiographical Snowchild and ending with Faith. Each track is laden with eerie, pulsating R&B beats – a familiar sound for The Weeknd. 

The album’s final act puts Tesfaye’s versatility on full display. Driven by a strong, synthy bassline, Save Your Tears sounds like something that a character in an 80s movie would angry dance to. That’s when the era’s sonic signatures take over: there’s a synthy keyboard vamp following Blinding Light’s neon chorus, a jazzy saxophone solo on In Your Eyes, a never-looking-back breakup track with a nostalgically autotuned outro in Save Your Tears.

The album closes with Until I Bleed Out, in which Tesfaye narrates a bad trip. “I’m so paralyzed / I can’t explain why I’m terrified / I don’t even wanna get high no more.”

As the name suggests, After Hours is nocturnal, but never sleepy. The first half of the album is laced with songs that can be classified as formulaic Weeknd tracks: downtempo, 808-heavy tracks with breezy, but forceful falsetto overtop. The second is more of a continuation of Tesfaye’s Grammy-winning pop transcendence, Starboy, fusing The Weeknd’s signature smoothness with a heavy dose of synth-pop. Blinding Lights is After Hours’ most on-the-nose retro reference. It literally sounds like it could be an A-ha cover. But in sequence it sounds like a natural evolution. 

Tesfaye is unrelenting in his forward trajectory by shifting his sound with each new project, but he’s grounded in the youthful, drug-friendly narrative and moody sound that drew his core fans to him in the first place. Where Starboy saw him cutting off his signature locs, After Hours presents a new cinematic character who wears a red suit, a perfectly coiffed ‘fro and a perpetually bloody nose. He essentially looks like every East African dad did in the 80s, tying together the album’s influences.

The Weeknd described the album to Apple Music saying “You can find love, fear, friends, enemies, violence, dancing, sex, demons, angels, loneliness, and togetherness all in the After Hours of the night.” More vivid descriptions came from the Safdie Brothers, who directed Tesfaye in his debut film performance in Uncut Gems: “self-quarantined R&B.”

No one could have predicted the current state of the world when After Hours was first announced, but it’s a well-timed escape.

Top Track: Snowchild

@sumikoaw

In 2018, BTS’s Suga was asked if he thought of K-pop as a genre. 

“I think a better approach would be ‘integrated content’,” he replied.

The South Korean rapper and producer suggested a reframing of the art form that’s also a country’s billion-dollar soft power: “K-pop includes the music, the clothes, the make-up, the choreography. All of these elements amalgamate together in a visual and auditory package.”

The same could be said for the pop idol group’s latest album, Map Of The Soul: 7.

For a seven-member boy band that has actively mythologized their seven-year career trajectory through obsessive online documentation, there’s more to consider than just an album. It’s more of an unboxing. There are music videos, concept photos, dance rehearsals, live-streams, artist merch, brand collaborations, talk show appearances. Like Taylor Swift’s Swifties, BTS ARMY are autodidact scholars doing close readings of hybrid performances and artifacts. 

Take the album’s lead single, ON. Co-produced by long-time BTS collaborators Michel “Lindgren” Schulz and Pdogg, the track reboots the band’s 2013 hit N.O, a scathing trap-tinged critique of the South Korean school system. The propulsive energy is still there, augmented by marching band snares and horns. Lyrically, it tosses references to being in Seoul, New York City or Paris. This isn’t school anymore – it’s the world stage.

But the song’s impact is felt most keenly in its multiple iterations: the Manchurian dystopian setting of its official music video, the earlier Kinetic Manifesto Visual (basically another form of music video), its dance rehearsal and the subsequent late-night performances – you might have seen them on Jimmy Fallon earlier this week shutting down NYC’s Grand Central station. You can’t help but be taken by the precision and sharpness of the choreography and protestor-like bodily gestures. It’s like watching a musical.

Map Of The Soul: 7 is truly a flex. It’s refreshingly ebullient and accessible, manifesting endless genre-blurring permutations of art-pop. Many of the tracks are subunit efforts – smaller idol groups that might break off from the larger original group – which gives a chance to spotlight each member’s varied tastes. It’s a savvy move for a band that, despite their record-breaking popularity, is still “introducing itself” to new audiences. (Not to mention: the first part of this album is essentially a selection of tracks from their 2019 EP.)

That’s how you end up with the Latin flavour on Filter, a track featuring main singer Jimin, or the dark, futuristic R&B of Louder Than Bombs. There’s also the old-school swagger on Respect, which gives a chance for the rap line (specifically, Suga and RM, who are frequently credited as songwriters and producers on BTS tracks) to shine.

I’m especially fond of how BTS’s rap line effortlessly shifts between English and Korean wordplay, signalling the ways they constantly translate different words and also views. On Ugh!, an East Asian-like zither blows up into a skittering, twitching beat that slaps with bullet brap. Suga, RM and J-Hope trade rhymes blasting off on hate comments into a meditation on the necessity of anger, rage and personal responsibility. It’s an intriguing call and response, a shifting of conversational perspectives.

Empowering stadium-bound singalongs like Inner Child and We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal emphasize the band’s history with its fans and each other. You can’t help think how the subunit focuses align with an inevitable fractured near-future due to South Korea’s mandatory military enlistment. As more of its members hit their late 20s, BTS may become a six or even five-person unit.

With that in mind, the album is aligned with other self-reflective later-period boy band entries like NSYNC’s Celebrity or even One Direction’s Made In The A.M. Despite being held up as modern-day Dorian Grays, boy band members must eventually come to terms with their constructed pop identity, unveiling who “they really are” beyond being the mysterious one or the Maknae one.

How does Map Of The Soul: 7 contend with this likely end of an era? By serving pure bops on self-love. For BTS, the cascading of distributed content translates into authentic post-genre experimentation. 

Top track: ON

BTS play Rogers Centre on May 30 & 31. See listing.

@reeraw

Rating: NNNN

In his 20 years making music under various monikers, electronic musician Dan Snaith has continually established himself as an expert architect of soundscapes that are equally unfamiliar and warm. Suddenly is the first new Caribou album in six years, and it’s imbued with splendour and curiosity: an ongoing commitment to ushering us, gently, into his own idiosyncratic sonic world. After all this time, he’s still finding new ways to express it. 

Across the record’s 12 tracks, Snaith shows an uncanny ability to communicate emotion in tone, lyric and structure. The record’s title speaks to the universal experience of lifelong emotional whiplash: situations, relationships and identities all in constant, violent flux, changing on a dime and crashing against breakwalls.

Opener Sister is a mellow synthscape foregrounded by Snaith’s tender vocals: “Sister, I promise you I’m changing/You’ve heard broken promises, I know,” he sings, his voice barely more than a whisper. As the track hums to a close, the pitch shifts like a toy with dying batteries.

You And I begins with serene synths, soothing drums and Snaith’s plush, neon vocals. It careens into ocean-deep digital beats and vocal samples, then reverses back to its initial form. Sunny’s Time and New Jade lean into subdued hip-hop beats while Home delineates into wonderfully textured R&B, an entire universe brought to life via Snaith’s meticulous sampling.

Suddenly feels distinctly tactile, like each song has a shape and texture. It’s grounding enough that even when tracks U-turn and fold in on their melodic patterns, it feels safe, even sensible. Snaith allows himself the space to explore and develop these feelings, like on the five-minute slow-build rave-up Never Come Back and closer Cloud Song, which runs nearly seven minutes. “I’m broken, so tired of crying/Can’t seem to find my way to you,” he coos. But there’s no desperation the vocals are unwavering and assured, relaying a suggestion of certainty. 

Across Suddenly, Snaith surrenders to the current. If you do, too, you’ll find a rich and rewarding listening experience.

Top track: You And I 

Caribou plays the Danforth Music Hall on March 17, 18 and 19. See listing.

@lukeottenhof

Rating: NNN

Allie X has too many ideas.

After making some noise in Toronto under her real name Allie Hughes, she moved to Los Angeles in 2013 and reinvented herself as an arty, fashion-friendly glam-pop star. She put out CollXtion I & II and Super Sunset – all more cohesive in theme and sound than the roller coaster of Cape God.

There are some captivating songs on this album, which Allie recorded in Sweden with producer Oscar Görres. The Mitski-featuring Susie Save Your Love is sexy, synthy, Sheena Easton-meets-Prince R&B. But like many songs on the album, it comes with a doppelganger – in this case June Gloom, a glitchy throwback to that same 80s sound.  

The album is both challenging and rewarding. On songs like Fresh Laundry, Allie X’s vocals are often treated with high-gloss effects that steal the personality from her voice. It’s not until final track Learning In Public that you hear her unvarnished, which by then sounds jarring. It often feels like she’s doing too much with too much. There’s the mid-aughts beats, like on the bouncy, humming Devil I Know. There are springy whistles on Sarah Come Home, which is saved by its robust chorus. The summer anthem Super Duper Party People recalls her catchy, reggae-tinged 2017 song Lifted, but it’s flattened here.  

But then there are songs like the moody Regulars and its surprising high-pitched chorus, the seductive Rings A Bell and Love Me Wrong, a mournful Lana Del Rey-esque duet with Troye Sivan. Those songs have room to breathe without a million competing ideas vying for attention. 

Life Of The Party (despite its gimmicky hand claps) has an anxious subtext – was she the celebrated guest of the party… or its manipulated subject? (“I was the life of the party / they stripped me down like a Barbie,” she sings.) It segues perfectly into the evocative piano ballad Madame X, the bewildering party’s aftermath. 

“Everything I thought I wanted I changed my mind and I forgot it all,” she sings on Learning In Public. It sums up the implicit tenor of the album: an artist who went for all she thought glitters while realizing not all of it is gold.

Top track: Susie Save Your Love

Allie X plays the Phoenix Concert Theatre on April 2. See listing.

@ChakaVGrier

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In the long lead-up to her fifth album, Grimes declared on Instagram that Miss Anthropocene was a concept album anthropomorphizing the “goddess of climate change.”

Thematically, it’s less a rallying cry than a fantastical examination into the inevitable doomsday. About two-thirds through the album on My Name Is Dark, she sums it up: “So we party when the sun goes down imminent annihilation sounds so dope.”

Miss Anthropocene is darker and more cohesive than 2015’s Art Angels, which ricocheted from saccharine power pop to breezy country. But it still feels like a natural evolution for the Vancouver-born Claire Boucher, the self-taught producer, musician and perfectionist who has always been drawn to genre-bending and eschewing trends

On the downtempo Darkseid, named after the DC Comics super-villain, her airy vocals are paired with the jittery verses of frequent collaborator Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN (formerly Aristophanes). Inspired by the opioid epidemic and written the night Lil Peep died of an accidental overdose, Delete Forever showcases Boucher’s lucid voice as she sings “more lines on the mirror than a sonnet” over acoustic guitar and plucky banjo. (For those stunned by the inclusion of banjo on a Grimes song, go back and listen to the glittery California from Art Angels). Boucher’s ode to nu-metal We Appreciate Power – originally released as a single and now available on the deluxe version of the album – clangs like a Mad Max anthem as Boucher pledges allegiance to artificial intelligence and computers.

The standout My Name Is Dark feels like classic Grimes: punchy drum machine beats and otherworldly synths, feather-light vocals that morph into sinister screams, an errant guitar solo, a nod to the Smashing Pumpkins. (In our 2015 cover story, Boucher said she feels like “a way less popular Billy Corgan” because they’re both terrible at talking to journalists and both like playing with genre.)

Around the halfway mark of the nearly six-minute song, she coos “unfuck the world, you stupid girl.” It feels like an indictment of how the media and segments of the indie music scene have obsessed over every detail of Boucher’s life since the release of her breakthrough 2012 album, Visions, when she was catapulted from the Montreal’s DIY loft scene and into the offices of Roc Nation, the red staircase of the Met Gala and onto pages of gossip rags.

Unsurprisingly, the rollout of Miss Anthropocene has been rife with controversy: the press release sent to critics notes that Boucher is now “moving into the space of corporate surrealism” and that she’s recently had “experimental eye surgery only available to the upper class” – seemingly self-aware trolling referencing her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk. And then there are the billboards proclaiming Global Warming Is Good, as decreed from her post-human persona also called Miss Anthropocene. 

For nearly a decade, journalists and fans – yes, including myself – have been so preoccupied with Boucher’s personal life, her pop star potential or authenticity as an artist, that this narrative has overshadowed her actual music. But Boucher’s production prowess, beautifully complex and ambitious songwriting, is self-evident on Miss Anthropocene.

Top track: My Name Is Dark

@SamEdwardsTO