Bartees Strange’s third album finds the Washington, D.C. singer-songwriter stretching his sonic limbs further than ever before—an achievement, to be sure, since Strange’s first two records (2020’s Live Forever and 2022’s critical breakthrough Farm to Table) cemented his ability to effortlessly hop between anthemic rock, dusky blues and rap cadences within just a few minutes. With a slightly darker sound befitting its namesake, Horror adds a few impressive guises to Strange’s genre menagerie: There’s the explicitly Fleetwood Mac-esque jangle of “Sober”, the melancholic trip-hop skitter of “Doomsday Buttercup” and the lucious house thump of “Lovers”, which might count as Strange’s starkest left turn to date. Across these 12 tracks, Strange also fine-tunes his winning formula of countrified balladry and propulsive riffs, both of which are given a big-ticket pop spit-shine courtesy of contributions from studio wizards Yves and Lawrence Rothman as well as the ever-ubiquitous Jack Antonoff. Don’t mistake big names for unnecessary flashiness, though: Horror retains the down-to-earth POV that’s made Strange an increasingly powerful presence in indie, even as his ambitions grow.