An infinite megamix/medley of every Big Boi and Outkast song you could name (minus Andre’s verses), kept from total chaos by Big Boi and his drummer, twin pillars of dexterity and clarity. Performers, take note: A live drummer always ups your game.

Killer Mike was absent for this leg of the tour, sadly, and the other openers didn’t exactly compensate, but not for lack of trying, and they did suggest, collectively, the genre inclusiveness of Big Boi’s musical enterprise. But in the end he’s his own best representative.

The album of the year so far, alternately described as extravagant and esoteric, and sometimes both at once, but it’s not really either. I hear clear, clean ideas and broad appeal. And even if that’s not right, it’s still a bold semblance of a popular artifact. “Giorgio by Moroder” is one of many moments that fans of “Get Lucky” will supposedly not understand, but really it’s just an artist’s story that anyone with an interest in music will want to hear.

Fare Forward Voyagers 2: But know that you never really arrive, or exist in a perpetual state of arrival, whichever you prefer. And the music is super-beautiful (its beauty is like a superpower).

Lexicon Of Love 2: As thorough an index of relationship metaphors as has ever been compiled for a pop album. And the excellent, dramatic music is another layer of metaphor.

The first word sounds like “falling,” on excellent opener “Kill Kill Kill.” Club 8, a group with nothing left to prove, begin their latest album with the great Julee Cruise song of 2013, with dreaminess that accesses the logic of dreams, where sudden organ might overtake peace.

A lovely and surprisingly rewarding trip to clichésville, with so much sweetness and symmetry in the words that they read more like notebook pages than song-team calculations. She’s gotten some credit for her modern sensibilities, but some writers seem wary to take the argument too far and have even dared suggest that Musgraves might not mean anything gay on “Follow Your Arrow.” Funny, because she doesn’t hide her meaning, ever. When she sings that “the straight and narrow gets a little too straight,” she’s pretty clear in her choice of words, endorsing the human volley and, dare I suggest it, even a little bored by her own inherited trajectory. Even when the album’s more of a mainstream country trip than I’m used to, it’s abetted by the spirits of outsiders—Lucinda Williams (“Blowin’ Smoke” could be a slowed down “Can’t Let Go”); Aimee Mann (on “Step Off”); Laura Veirs (on “Dandelion”)—so that Musgraves is clearly capable of being only the songwriter she intends to be.

A better album than Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, in all honesty, this is where Phoenix push their sound into a slightly denser and more delirious space, and by so doing, unlock an amazing room and yield an endless supply of mysterious texture and melody. There aren’t any big hooks, really, but I keep going back and marveling at how many little units of sound have stuck in my brain.

Full review coming soon. And I’ll try not to waste it talking about how this is the most inaccurately described band of all time, but instead tend to the music at hand, which is still, upon most recent listen, a bit foggy and too-smart, like the musical equivalent of the food the big brains from Defending Your Life eat, tasteless to those who use a smaller percentage of their brains.

The giddiest rock song ever.

“The mic is a third rail.”
“Don’t sell me a dream, I don’t sleep.”

I was going to say that self-reflexive lyrics like Rakim’s work best when the music is really weird and particular (and Follow The Leader is the best weird music ever), but really, those lines are just awesome in any context.