‘Lost Weekend’ by Phoebe Bridgers
★★★★
“Phoebe in mourning, or Phoebe madly in love?” asked Chris Willman in Variety. With Phoebe Bridgers’ first album in six years, listeners don’t have to choose, because the alt-rock darling and recent four-time Grammy winner gives us some of both, plus more. As she reflects on the 2023 death of her father, her breakup with actor Paul Mescal, and her current infatuation with comedian-musician Bo Burnham, Lost Weekend proves “alternately spooky, hilarious, mysterious, and sneakily moving.” And though this may go without saying about any record made by Bridgers in the wake of her breakout with the supergroup Boygenius, “it’s not to be missed.” Bridgers remains “one of the most compelling songwriters in music today,” said Angie Martoccio in Rolling Stone. She’s been listening to a lot of ambient music lately, and “you can hear how that,” along with Radiohead, “shaped Lost Weekend.” But she also throws in “Haunted,” a “country-tinged beauty,” as well as “Bobby,” a rocking tribute to Burnham that “basks in dizzying euphoria.” On Punisher, Bridgers’ last LP, numbness was a theme. Here, “she feels it all, encountering every spectrum of emotion.”
‘No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto’ by Karol G
★★★
“No Me Arrepiento is Karol G’s version of a concept album, one stitched together by heartbreak,” said Pedro Camacho in Consequence. The 35-year-old reggaeton star is exercising the power she has won by now drawing stadium-size crowds across the U.S. Why not ask Drake to sing in Spanish for the breezy “Ahí” or bring in Bruno Mars to duet in English on “Still”? And why not explore all the emotions stirred by a late 2025 breakup with fellow Colombian pop star Feid? “The lyrics are at times contradictory, shifting sharply between nostalgia and resentment from one song to another.” The music is a roller-coaster ride too, as La Bichota, as she calls herself, “moves effortlessly from stripped-back ballads to glossy R&B, atmospheric alt-pop, acoustic confessionals, and good old-fashioned perreo,” her signature reggaeton subgenre. Where last year’s Tropicoqueta “envisioned a Latina-led utopia as a tropic floral paradise,” said Andrea Flores in the Los Angeles Times, this album leans into sorrow and plays best when listened to alone. “So light up that candle, lock the doors, and bring the tissues if you have to. Just don’t be ashamed to feel all the feels.”
‘Blue Island’ by Ravyn Lenae
★★★
“Labels feel especially restrictive when applied to an artist like Ravyn Lenae,” said Cassidy Sollazzo in Paste. The 27-year-old Chicago native “has always treated both identity and genre as fluid, often shape-shifting between R&B, synth-wave dance pop, and self-baring folk.” A year after her bouncy single “Love Me Not” became a Top 10 hit and inspired online chatter that she wasn’t Black enough, she’s doubled down with her new album, “weaving between indie-rock angst and 1980s power ballads, with pit stops in psychedelic funk and trappy electronic abstractions.” She also happily lists the Cranberries alongside Santigold and Tracy Chapman as influences. “There’s palpable glee in the album’s sudden stylistic shifts,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The “sparkly alt-rock” of “In & Out” rubs up against “’90s R&B-infused” tracks like “Babygirl,” which features the rapper Doechii. “Potential” begins as a pretty, up-tempo pop ballad, then “unexpectedly erupts into a squall of guitar noise.” But Blue Island isn’t jarring, “partly because of the unifying power of Lenae’s lovely soprano” and also because the writing is “buffed to a state of pop perfection.”