Fornever is one of those rare, late-career triumphs. There are no weak tracks and it’s entertaining throughout; every bit as much as Murs’ best early outings.

The timing could be much better, but the songs aren’t bad at all, with most of the material taking its cues from Jason Mraz, Ben Harper, and other folk-pop heavyweights.

Skins is the product of an older and wiser trio than Buffalo Tom were in their salad days, but it's unmistakably the same band, and if their attack and their concerns have changed a bit with the passage of time, that's a reflection of their innate honesty as much as anything else; they simply are who they are, and on Skins that means they're a gifted and grown-up rock & roll band.

The result is easily her best record yet: a soundtrack equally comforting during a lazy weekend afternoon or a hard Monday morning.

The combination of his [Mac McNeilly] careful, aggressive-when-needed playing and the core duo's performances makes this four-song collection a wonderful surprise.

The glinting "Glue" and well-titled "Snap" excepted, they [the nine remaining tracks, all instrumentals] lack the muscle of Chung's earlier releases, but they're more evocative--detailed enough to withstand numerous plays whenever comforting, if downcast and unobtrusive, abstract hip-hop is sought.

Cyclops Reap may be the best place for newcomers to start, but anyone who's been along for the ride since the beginning will be thrilled to hear Presley's (slight) progression.

Ultimately, the golden age of dream pop and shoegaze lasted roughly ten years, a blink in the eye when it comes to pop music. However, for Swim Deep with Where in the Heaven Are We, it’s almost like it never ended.

Less of a preview of things to come than a few extra songs, Tally All the Things That You Broke still offers enjoyable evidence of what makes Parquet Courts unique and exciting.

It is a seamless blend of Finn's longstanding popcraft and latter-day adventure, and it satisfies on both counts.

Dalle sounds comfortable, confident, and liberated on Diploid Love, and she gives listeners a more complete portrait of her artistry along the way.

Artistically, three is the charm for Big Sean as Dark Sky Paradise is much more expansive than previous efforts, sometimes grinding with executive producer Kanye West's love of the dark, and other times bouncing with the snark, swagger, and style that propelled this Detroit rapper to the top.

While Book of Travelers may be a less-immediate collection than some of his previous work, its contemplative nature is worth investing a significant amount of time in.

It might not quite hit the heights on a consistent level like Writer's Block or have the emotional power of Living Thing, but Darker Days proves that the band are back on the right track.

Andy Partridge, Rivers Cuomo, and Peter Buck & Scott McCaughey all deliver new songs--and it has the same feel, blurring the lines between the past and present so thoroughly that it no longer matters to discover where they're separated. Schlesinger's presence is also a tell that Christmas Party leans into power pop. ... [Micky Dolenz's] having a great time, as is everybody else making the record, and it's hard for the listener at home not to smile too.

Sell Sole II finds DeJ Loaf in full capacity of her powers with an album that's consistent and controlled and doesn't relax for a second. While more songs default to her specific brand of pressurized beats and melodic hooks than brash, energetic anthems, DeJ's aloof confidence comes through even in the album's quietest moments.

Sonically adventurous and rich with experimentation, Petrichor offers plenty to admire, even if the songwriting sometimes takes a backseat to the production.

The result exists in a middle ground between the band's artful indie rock and a contemporary classical suite. If you like Dirty Projectors, chances are you'll enjoy Song of the Earth, but this music lacks the immediacy and insistent pulse of the band's best work.

Sadly, this time out, the band have put aside the wonderfully corny synthesizers they used on the last record in favor of a 100-percent organic approach that fits their bearded poets of the mountain image.

Fall Out Boy have taken great efforts to incorporate whatever was happening on the charts, an inclination that isn't quite as necessary in the great digital disassociation of the 2010s, yet this inclination does give American Beauty/American Psycho a bit of a kinetic kick. It also gives it a slight air of desperation.

While the fury he displayed on Total Decay is sometimes missed, by the time "sdnE tI" brings the album full circle (or is that full zero?), it reveals Zeros as some of the Soft Moon's most fully realized and satisfying music.

Archie Bronson Outfit might be testing their limits by taking so many stylistic risks on Coconut, but it all works surprisingly well for them; they never sound like they are pushing for the mainstream or losing their sense of individuality.

In sum, Attention Please, with Wata's haunting vocals at the fore, is the most unusual and easily approachable recording on Boris' shelf, if not its best.

The result is Georgia's most accessible album to date, although it does feel like some of the unique qualities of her earlier releases have been compromised.

Even if he doesn't quite have the vocal presence to fully inhabit this stage, his taste and melodic skills are suited for this bigger scale so My Old, Familiar Friend winds up as an effective showcase for his craftsmanship even if it never quite grabs ahold the way "Lapalco" did.

It'll doubtless put some smiles on some faces as it goes, but it neither reaches for more nor tries to be anything less. Perhaps it is enough, but does it have to be?

Oh No I Love You feels softer but it also is more adventurous and satisfying, the sound of a pop obsessive finally letting himself indulge in the weirder areas of his imagination.

The album just offers up a heaping pile of midtempo heaviness that harkens back to Metallica's middle years.

Hard Working Americans picked 11 cover tunes which deal with the hard truths of life among the working class, some recent compositions, and other, older songs that have remained relevant with the passage of time.

The cheekily-named Greatest Hits, Vol.1 is both a refreshing blast from the past and an ardent kick in the teeth.

Collingwood does a good job here of separating Look Park from his work with Adam Schlesinger in a way that will likely bring along a lot of existing fans, and with material strong enough to make it hard to pick standouts.

Detroit Stories is stuck in a confusing limbo somewhere between tribute to Detroit and another album of the kind of campy, theatrical, radio-geared hard rock Cooper has been turning in since Hey Stoopid. Never quite committing to either concept, Detroit Stories ends up feeling like a handful of solid covers of classic Detroit tunes with some Alice Cooper extras thrown in at random.

Conceptual conceits aside, these are some of the most memorable and rousing songs Corgan has delivered since 1993's Siamese Dream.

As good as the by-the-books ballads and rocking country are, the moments when the façade slips a bit make this worth hearing as an album and not a collection of singles.

Tighter than So Good and packed with just as many catchy tunes, Poster Girl is yet another big step forward for the artist, adding a dozen fresh anthems to her catalog and maintaining her position as one of Sweden's finest pop exports.

Music for Animals might seem daunting due to its length and starkness, but it's actually one of Frahm's most listenable albums, rewarding immersion and half-ignored background placement alike.

Slightly more upfront and extroverted than their early recordings, this album is still instantly recognizable, and fans who go back to their last Warp LP, Succour, might be surprised at how little has changed with Seefeel over 15 years.

[The] lack of zest in the production is forgivable because Taking the Long Way is otherwise a strong, confident affair.

There's a lot to admire in Here We Go Magic's dreamy, hazy melodies, and it's easy to get lost in the repetitive, minimalist guitar strumming that centers half of the tracks.

Breton sound more natural when they let their rock side dominate.

As with their other work, In Heaven is intriguing but not completely satisfying, but that intrigue is tantalizing enough to keep listeners guessing.

Here, Ledisi wails and belts with a kind of power previously untapped--in recorded form, at least--all the while maintaining remarkable finesse.

Most of Modern Love is almost meticulously inoffensive, shot through with a middle-of-the-road approach that rarely overswings or underwhelms.

All throughout Ripcord, the electronic elements are at the forefront and foundation, but it's to Urban's credit that this never feels desperate or pandering: it's a smooth, logical progression that makes his music feel sleek and mature.

Ultimately, Sides and in Between is an exercise in nostalgia, but there is a good-natured, homespun vibe at play throughout that helps to smooth out some of the more overtly retro trappings.

Make no mistake, this isn't the second coming of Purple Rain or Sign 'o' the Times or even Parade -- in other words, it's not a masterpiece, more like a more confident and consistent Diamonds and Pearls without the hip-hop fixation -- but it's a strong album, one that impresses on the first listen and gets better with repeated plays.

Though a couple of cuts fall short of the mark, and the set may have a few too many guests, Ske-Dat-De-Dat is a solid tribute to Armstrong. It does take chances and almost always pulls them off thanks to Dr. John's signature blend of musical imagination, wit, and savvy cool.

But for as impeccable as X&Y is -- and, make no mistake, it's a good record, crisp, professional, and assured, a sonically satisfying sequel to A Rush of Blood to the Head -- it does reveal that Martin's solipsism is a dead-end, diminishing the stature of the band.

It's even bleaker, more industrial and decayed, than 2012's R.I.P. There are more moments of forward motion here than on that previous album. They're all captivating on some level.

They prove that rock & roll as urgent, trashy, and fiery as the Stooges' first three albums, Back in Black, and Appetite for Destruction can actually be thoughtful articles of democracy and righteous rebellion.

So many bands confuse being laid-back with being comatose that it's good to hear a band who give their richly layered tunes some heart and soul.

It's a weird blend of power-driven grunge and melancholy: a fever dream that sweats out weary sadcore as it primitively pounds out acid rock drudge.

Backed by a solid country-rock band (including two guitarists who claim co-writing credits on more than half the songs), her new sound is perhaps more indebted to Nashville than the West Coast's folk scene, but it sounds its best in the neutral territory between both camps, neither subscribing to nor rebelling against any single genre.

The pleasant sheen of these song shines just enough to distract us from how deceptively scattered an affair the album truly is.

This band hasn't sounded this enjoyable since the mid-'90s, and if it isn't a full-scale return to form, it shows they aren't a spent force.

Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! paints an exciting picture of Panic! At the Disco's genre-bending career trajectory to come.

Despite self-imposed strategic boundaries, The Rest Is Scenery is a remarkably free and unfettered album. Most artists couldn't conceive of such a thing, let alone pull it off; Youngs does it in spades.

The set's predominantly reflective mood and nuanced composites of jazz, soul, and hip-hop make it sound like an extension of Glasper's Black Radio Recovered, Everything's Beautiful, and reinterpretation of Kendrick Lamar's "I'm Dying of Thirst" as much as the trio's meetings on Black America Again.

There's still plenty of mileage left on their sound, and as long as they keep making records as sweet, cozy, and melodically engaging as Truth or Consequences, Yumi Zouma can keep going for quite a while with minimal depreciation.

Noctourniquet highlights the more intellectual, esoteric sound the band has championed over the years, but even though the album soars creatively, it feels emotionally restrained.

Idlewild is certainly a spectacle, and an occasionally entertaining and enlightening one at that, but it translates into an elaborate diversion when compared to what this duo has done in the past.

This album works both as music that can take you over and take you up on a cloud of pop, and as mood-enhancing tunes that can fill up the empty room with happy ambience. Either way, it's an enjoyable, sometimes beautiful, album, one that Vetiver have been working toward since they began.

Three consecutive Timbaland productions, including one suited for a black college marching band and another that effectively pulls the romantically co-dependent heartstrings, enhance the album rather than make it more scattered.

Eno may be trading on his earlier developments in ambience, but Small Craft on a Milk Sea is a good and proper balance of curiosity and expression.

For the most part, Kimbra's invention is a marvel to behold, as her enchanting and swooping jazz-pop tones glide across a veritable feast of sounds

There are no outright clunkers in the mix, but a light trim would have further distilled the power of this excellent sophomore release.

"Black Holes and Revelations" may be a more commercial record, but The Resistance is Muse's most realized effort to date.

While their artistic risk-taking is commendable, unfortunately the same can't always be said for the results: Black Cherry sounds unbalanced, swinging between delicate, deceptively icy ballads and heavier, dance-inspired numbers without finding much of a happy medium between them.

At times, WWPJ do give into their dour side too much, and while there's no denying that their dynamic shifts and all-or-nothing climaxes pack a punch, songs such as 'This Is My House, This Is My Home' and 'It's Thunder and It's Lightning' get repetitive. Fortunately, as These Four Walls unfolds, WWPJ show that they can do more than just anthemic angst.

The only hint of intrigue comes 40-odd minutes into the record, when Youth takes up his mighty bass for "Chicago Dub," which briefly changes the pace for the better.

Throughout the album, he finds ways to expand on the intimacy he hinted at on The Inner Mansions, delivering one of Teen Daze's best balances of atmosphere and songwriting in the process.

It may be a side project but Dwyer really put all his formidable talents into Cold Hot Plumbs.

It may not be as riveting or intense, but it still has the unmistakable Burial sound and it's still unpredictable, so it's still well worth the listener's time.

Lupercalia's highly melodic but still resolutely exuberant nature indicates that Wolf's newfound positive outlook on life definitely seems to suit him.

Scope Neglect is a disorienting, sometimes deceptive work, but it's thrilling in the way it dismantles genre tropes.

The rest of the album is a little more stiff than it should have been, fault going to the antiseptic arrangements, rigid musicianship, and Johnson's wavering take on "Have Thine Own Way, Lord," which needs a lot more solemnity (or at least stability) to truly get its message across.

Prisoner remains one of the boldest statements of intent from a fledgling act this year, and while it will be a little too intense for some, it pinpoints the Jezabels as one of the bands to watch from Australia's thriving indie rock scene.

Burdon pours everything into this album, as if he realizes this is his last best shot to get the credit he's due. And, against all odds, he succeeds with this tough, flinty, proudly old-fashioned rock & roll album.

There are the purely lovely moments like "Midnight Glories" that help make Sumie a quietly compelling, inviting full-length introduction to an artist who can't help but bewitch listeners willing and able to embrace her stillness.

Dying Surfer Meets His Maker showcases All Them Witches in complete control of their songwriting, arranging, producing, and performing. Slow-burning albums that provide this much weight, creativity, surprise, and enduring pleasure are rare.

The Majestic Silver Strings is one of those rare "supergroup" projects that works--as much by its understatement as its savvy choice of material and excellent performances.

The changes are so minute and the record so unassuming and melody free that it is really hard to care about the band anymore.

A fantastic new album.

A good, professional rock record, one that sells their sound as if it was as the most commercial imaginable, resulting in one of their most consistent albums.

Not only does it hold the duo's most sleek and vicious material; it also proves that they can construct a bracing, compulsively digestible-in-whole album that presents the broad range of sounds and complementary sequencing that most great albums require.

Muse continue to make unrelenting hardcore art rock; Absolution is a tad cheesy, a bit too grandiose in its ambitions, bursting at the seams with too many ideas, and thus exactly what any Muse fan craves.

This is what Pavement would have sounded like if they became the equivalent of Sebadoh, cranking out a version of Slanted & Enchanted each year, turning out records that satisfy listeners that want Pavement without unpredictability, humor, diversity and, yes, mess - without SM Jenkins, that is.

Make no mistake: This is a country album, but it's closer to what the music might have become rather than to where it has sunk in its current doldrums.

Without a deft rap to go over these tracks, many of them merely drift over the listener.

Capo is scattered and scrappy, which for Jones is a comfortable landscape where oddball, sprawling, day-in-the-life numbers can sit next to stay-on-the-grind tracks, and Black Eyed Peas-parodies with no apologies required.

Unknown Rooms is spare, gorgeous, and haunting, offering surprises for her established fans and likely winning her new ones in the process.

While some songs are more interesting than others and some tend too close to blink-182 worship, Tickets to My Downfall succeeds more than it falters. While it would rank as a slightly above average album for any given pop-punk band, there's an added excitement in how risky this about-face is for a multi-platinum artist who could have easily turned in the same record he made last time.

Split between uptempo rockers like "Little Minx" and "Evil Blooms," powerful and hooky midtempo tracks like "Rimbaud Eyes," and streaked-eyeliner ballads like "Under These Hands," the record has a dynamic flow and balance of sounds and moods that previous albums haven't been able to accomplish.

Natural History [is] something of a stop-start effort rather than an unqualified success, but if Dope Body can keep playing around with elements like the grinding, crackling hook of "Out of My Mind," it'll be interesting to see what a third album can bring.

Third album Lifer continues that album’s gnarled tendencies, offering up blurry washes of ghastly rock that have more in common with '90s metal-leaning grunge acts than the sometimes artsy punk undercurrents that wander in and out of Dope Body's sound.

A super-confident and adventurous collection of songs, Disc-Overy is the sound of an artist completely on top of their game, which could finally help the distinctly British grime scene go worldwide.

Fans of the fuzzy, decadent and over-driven version of the Raveonettes can be happy that they have their band back; nastier, prettier and better than ever.

Washington Square Serenade ultimately sounds a bit less focused than its immediate predecessors.