Computers and Blues

Mike Skinner’s decade-long recording career as The Streets—always envisioned, by him, as a boxset-like, finite body of work—comes to something like a close with this experimental, valedictory fifth album. But Computers and Blues doesn’t merely offer a victory lap revival of the geezer rap confessionals that Skinner made his name with. Or even, for that matter, the wholesale lump-in-throat emotion you might expect from a farewell (the glitchy, fatherhood-themed “Blip On a Screen” notwithstanding). Instead, what Skinner crafts is an unpredictable, living synthesis of all his previous styles; 14 maximalist tracks that barrel thrillingly from the aggro glam rock of “Going Through Hell” to the wistful, tower block romance of “Roof of Your Car”.