Ultimately, while 7/27 isn't quite as loose or as fun as one might hope, Fifth Harmony prove they can balance youthful swagger with grown-up sophistication.

Slightly disjointed and lopsided, Myths 002 is nevertheless a fun, worthwhile venture.

It's Talbot's most intimate collection of songs yet; even if The Western Lands was more overtly ambitious, this may be the best gateway into Gravenhurst's world--and it was well worth the wait.

What pushes these songs past mere worship involves cunning collisions of robust rhythm, caressing noise, and heavenly melody, with each element equally crucial. Good shoegaze/dream-pop bands mastered one of them; the most exceptional of the heap, like this group, had all three down.

While Erasure certainly didn't need the "return to form" album at this point in their career, they nailed it and brought better songwriting along for the ride.

The bottom line is that The Horseshoe Curve becomes--perhaps unintentionally--one of the finest moments of Anastasio's post-Phish solo career. This one is absolutely essential not only for his fans, but for anyone interested in any of the above musics. A must.

While some of Stars' best songs appear on this record, others are performed with such an overstated bravado that it renders them too sour to digest.

James Shaw and James Ford are still enforcing limitations on their sound, and while they may be smoothing out a few of the rough patches that would make a more interesting record, their sophomore follow-up is a worthy heir to the original.

While the record may just seem like a pleasant diversion for two friends glad to have a chance to hang out and make music, it turns out to be fun for everyone else as well.

This Is the Computers sounds good enough on the one hand, but on the other, it's a bit of an on-off effort by the band, initially an example of sudden moments almost working more than the songs.

While Potter's melodies and hooks are solid on The Lion the Beast the Beat, some of her lyric choices are still a bit clunky. However, she and the Nocturnals compensate with passion, execution, and smart production choices and arrangements.

Formed via a craigslist ad, the band's internal anonymity is hardly relative with regard to its cohesiveness, as each track on the brainy yet intuitive Dark Eyes sounds like the sum of its parts, but there is enough space between those parts to suggest a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid any sort of showboating.

Joyland is smart, entertaining stuff with lots of great guitar work and atmosphere to spare.

With We Fall, Haynie puts all of his eclectic skills and stylistic tastes together, showcasing his studio prowess and compositional talent, as well as his knack for bringing disparate talents together to create new and serendipitously effective songs.

This possible soundtrack takes a more abstract route while offering the same love and reverence, and it's also an almost-solo album from Lauryn Hill, the driving force behind six of the album's 16 tracks.

Ultimately, it's the unexpectedly appealing combination of Goulding's distinctive voice and the melismatic R&B bent of the songs on Delirium that makes for such an ecstatic listen.

Despite these two tracks ["Psy-Fi/Fantasy" and "Forever Jung"] and the presence of electronics, 1984 is memorable for its folky, Scout Finch-like recollections that mix the playful, unfortunate, and innocent.

While this mix of vulnerability, anxiety, and resentment can feel uneven, Folds' melodies are engaging as ever, and he finds balance again on highlights like "Moments" (featuring Tall Heights) and the pandemic-isolation-themed "Winslow Gardens."

With Garden, Zero 7 have created what could be the ultimate summer evening record: warm pop hooks, lush instrumentation, unobtrusive electronica elements, and '60s-style harmonies that all come together into superb, wonderfully descriptive songs.

Make Do With What You Got sounds like an overly anxious attempt to re-create the sound of vintage R&B sides that gets the surfaces right but never quite captures the heart and soul of the music.

Ultimately, U&I's brashness is more intriguing than confounding, with a freshness that reaffirms Leila as a thoughtful and challenging producer.

Last time around, the bandmembers referred to that aspect of their sound as "post-classic rock," though in interviews for La La Land, they declared it "barbecue rock" instead. Whatever you call it, that predilection for juicy hooks is a major part of what keeps this mercurial bunch solidly grounded.

With Fever Dream, Of Monsters and Men took a chance and rediscovered their creativity, embarking in a colorful and bold direction without sacrificing their heart and soul in the process.

Once again, Band of Skulls have proven that they have the chops and the moxie, but they still need more than a handful of memorable songs to seal the deal.

Lady For Sale bubbles over with these kinds of inspired genre-mashing moments made all of the more potent by Kirke's swaggering, palpable sense of fun.

Even if this isn’t some of Francis’ most striking work, it continues the more personal vein of songwriting he began exploring after the Pixies.

An amazing journey from the outer limits to street level with a wormhole in the middle, Back on the Planet is stellar.

Braver Than We Are may have its flaws--it's too staid and self-conscious, for one--but Steinman never found a better interpreter for his songs than Meat Loaf, and Meat Loaf never sounds more like himself than he does when singing Steinman, and that's why the album works.

Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin' breathes gravitas into the Kid Cudi discography, realigning his trajectory and hinting at hope, possibility, and, most importantly, recovery.

They've given up some of the whimsy and trippiness that marked their first two releases, but they've gained direction.

On his third album, Mars, joined primarily by old comrades Philip Lawrence, Brody Brown, and James Fauntleroy, sheds the reggae and new wave inspirations and goes all-out R&B. This is less an affected retro-soul pastiche--like, say, The Return of Bruno--than it is an amusing '80s-centric tribute to black radio.

It's often catchy and kinetic in the moment, yet it still feels like Franz Ferdinand has the potential to do more with their music than just slightly tweak and polish a sound they established several albums ago.

The Deep Field finds her alone but not lonely, still searching for something and finding beauty and even happiness, if not answers.

That penchant for edgy refinement, along with frontman Joe Newman's impossibly fluid voice, remains the band's most effective weapon, but it's hard to pinpoint where and when that magic occurs, as it's so effortlessly woven into the group's sound.

A fascinating if not entirely comprehensive set of oddball, largely homespun-sounding sonic emissions that feel a little half-baked, but still awfully tasty.

Moonlight is a step in the right direction, though, and it's nice to hear him stretch out creatively.

The restraint and love that the band show and the overall peacefulness of the music make for a lovely, warm summer day kind of album, perfect for daydreaming and pondering the timeless genius of Daniel Johnston.

Liddle has previously described their sound as "folky gospel music played by a post-punk band," and Shallow Bed's eclectic spiritual nature proves that isn't just hollow talk.

The most effective songs--the dragging slow jam "My Blood," the sweetly chiming ballad "Mediator," and the woozy and bittersweet title track--are the least cluttered, from the comparatively sparse production to the judicious lack of guest vocalists.

Better then to treat World Wide Funk less like an addition to an immense discography and more like a porta-party.

The Silver Cord was released in two different editions; one with the songs edited to around four minutes each, one where the songs stretch out over the ten minute mark. The extended versions don't add much to the overall effect of the album, merely giving the listener more time to wonder why the band chose to go down this route.

For an album that spans multiple styles and features a different guest vocalist on every song, Always Centered at Night is consistently passionate and spiritual.

Animal Collective completists will be able to zero in on what makes Geologist’s language of samples and deconstructed loops unique, but to the untrained ear, it might register mostly as broken music begging to be pieced back together.

Mockingbird Time is a simple but richly rewarding example of what the Jayhawks do better than anyone, and serves as a potent reminder that they're one of the finest American bands of their time.

The guitar riffs are appropriately fuzzy but a tad messy; the harmonies are well-placed but imperfect. Stoltz is a vintage enthusiast, but he's no copycat, and To Dreamers' best quality is his ability to reinterpret those sounds for an audience weaned on lo-fi albums.

Chock-full of brusque rhymes that, even with occasional respite with the odd slow jam, become mind-numbing over the course of its hour-long duration, Scarlet is a fascinating follow-up to Planet Her.

Another Eternity remains true to what makes Purity Ring special by refining it, and proves that they can challenge themselves and deliver their most accessible work yet.

Hard to imagine Green Day or Rancid having anything this interesting up their sleeve 27 years down the line from their first recording.

Builds considerable muscle to the skeletal frailty of intricate guitar work while commendably maintaining all which was good of their debut.

And while the album is still more focused and a much-needed improvement over 2002's Round Room and their finest since Billy Breathes, Undermind is essentially the sound of four musicians growing tired of the limits they've imposed on one another after decades of albums and touring.

This is the third album in a row where she's thrown a curve ball, confounding expectations by delivering a record that's wilder, stronger, and better than the last.

At its strongest, with songs like the archly titled 'Regal Regalia' and 'Papering Fix,' the band kicks up a huge sounding storm while still providing space for the almost preternaturally clean singing boring through the mix--not as an artificially high volume element, more like serenity in the midst of a storm.

Old Money is so far-reaching, it will likely piss off some of his fans while making others nearly swoon with its unwieldy rockist excesses. As for winning new fans to his cause? You bet.

There's a confidence about the performances on the album that make Go! Pop! Bang! a debut full of enthusiasm and promise that will hopefully ring in the beginning of a bright new talent.

Though front-loaded with its most energetic and moving songs, Our House on the Hill is an intriguing statement from a band shedding their better-known affiliations for a whole new ideal.

Their furious lyrics and chunky guitar lines are standard moshing and stage-diving material, but fans will be satisfied nonetheless.

Still Life is a captivating album of intense personal reflection, and marks a significant amount of artistic growth.

Ornate but polished throughout, Field of Love ultimately delivers pop music for those who are bored with pop music.

Every track seems to hint at a grander version than what was delivered, but the loose ends and modest scale are alluring, since they appear to offer an insight into how this fiercely imaginative, quietly fearless singer/songwriter challenges herself.

This stretch of songs is the liveliest collection Travis has cut since the '90s, and it's heartening to hear them reconnect with some of the wilder aspects that informed their earliest records.

Oberhofer has imagination to spare, but Time Capsules II would benefit from reeling in a bit -- most of the songs are at least three and a half minutes long but finished saying what they needed to before reaching that time point, and as welcome as xylophone is on an indie pop record, hearing it on what feels like every song is a bit much.

The washy blend of acoustic dirges, blown-out guitar tones, and lonely psychedelic character sketches solidify into an increasingly accessible sound from this once ungrounded act, without losing any of the group's character or inspiration.

The biggest constant here is the technical proficiency and complementary blending of the band's lead singers. The pair--who are notably also the album's sole songwriters--make a visual show of this, wearing matching clothes and hairstyles in performance. That quality ultimately overcomes any shifts in style, and also makes them hard to ignore.

Despite a few upbeat moments that stick out like a thumb that isn't sore, songs like Grizzly Bear and Victoria Legrand's "Slow Life," Editors' "No Sound But the Wind," and Bon Iver and St. Vincent's lovely, truly odd "Roslyn" are morose enough for die-hard Twilight fans and stylish enough to please the most discerning music snobs.

Despite this unevenness, at its best Ride Your Heart captures Bleached's carefree, slightly scuzzy California cool-girl charm.

Berlin was a work of tremendous ambition that didn't quite live up to its own high standards, and this live recording seems to trade a roughly equal number of new flaws for those of the original album, but this performance sounds like a legitimate attempt by Reed to revisit his past without being shackled to it, and on that level it's a brave and compelling experiment that (often) works.

Fans of early Islands albums may feel Ski Mask to be a little on the morose side, but anyone who's ever had a heartbreak can appreciate what Thorburn is going through and admire how tunefully and truthfully he's dealing with it.

While The Air Conditioned Nightmare represents growth for Doldrums, the caustic and sometimes overwhelming directions the album goes in are more difficult to unravel than the often blissful landscapes laid out in earlier songs. That said, deeper digging reveals Woodhead taking hold of the confusion, conflict, and ugliness of the record and sculpting it into something compelling in a voice all his own.

By stretching out, the Foo Fighters not only have expanded their sound, but they've found the core of why their music works, so they now have better songs and deliver them more effectively.

This is one of those records that will leave listeners still scratching their heads and smiling (at the same time) after repeat listens for years to come.

The nostalgia-heavy lyrical bent of some songs can read either sweet or cringe-worthy, depending on your birth date and sensitivity to sentiment.

It's certainly pleasant either as nostalgia or as high-end lifestyle music.

The basic goal of Pumice to produce fuzzy, echo-heavy home recordings of pop hooks as such remains the same.

The incense smoke and blacklight posters might be a little too heavy-handed for some listeners, but the more experienced stoner rock connoisseurs will recognize that Golden Void is singing it like they're living it.

Thirst is stylistically ambitious and often quite successful for a debut album, but while the rest of the ingredients are there, Carter Sharp needs to get his vocals whipped into shape before Waves of Fury can be as nasty as they want to be.

Although Bloodlines takes its time to get under your skin, when it does, it sinks in deep.

The album is a generally successful experiment in low-end heaviness.

Calm is the sound of a band whose influences have continued to evolve right along with them and their fans.

Even when the bagpipes show up on "Welcome Tae Glasgae," Motorheart is all riffs and falsetto screams designed to forget reality and dream of crowds packed with headbanging, beer-soaked hedonists singing along to the same songs.

Just barely out of his twenties, he writes with the well-worn weariness of someone twice his age, but Isbell's youth nevertheless breathes energy into a formula that's been revisited by many Southern-born songwriters before.

This unforgiving return to form doesn't suffer from being over-thought and it's not even overwrought, but it is overstuffed at 14 tracks.

Paranoid Cocoon establishes its sound early, so anybody initially put off by all of the cloudy skies and soft, neo-psychedelic mountain melancholy will inevitably come away disappointed, but fans of James Yorkston, Richard Hawley, M. Ward, and mild hangovers will eat this up, and rightly so.

The album was composed by R&B's best songwriters of the late 2000s, Terius Nash (The-Dream) and Christopher Stewart (Tricky); they give each song the intelligent mid-tempo bump-and-grind they've made into a specialty.

Tomorrowland is the disruptive, chaotic, creative process of the artist revealed; it's full of frustration, anger, conviction, and excitement, all worn plainly on its tattered sleeve.

The record is at its best when it's close to an old-fashioned duet album.

Sexsmith doesn't do anything on Long Player Late Bloomer that he hasn't done before, but this time out, he's had the right help in the studio to make an album that will sound as good to casual observers as his dedicated fans, and that's what sets this apart: if you've ever wanted to introduce yourself to the work of one of the finest songwriters in North America, Long Player Late Bloomer is just the album to get.

It's this quality that makes the album not just an easy recommendation for listeners old and new, but one of their most fun, accessible, and solid albums since Factory Showroom.

The Empire Strikes First isn't a return to Bad Religion at its most vitriolic and unstoppable -- whether that could ever really happen is unclear, and probably unnecessary.

Ultimately, Everything You've Come to Expect plays like a west coast film noir fever dream, scored by Ennio Morricone, with Kane and Turner the doomed protagonists, chasing icy blondes and lollipop Lolitas down their own debauched Hitchcock-ian spiral.

So Jealous is the most satisfying album Tegan and Sara have yet made.

Reckon is a statement that hits hard (and close to home) if you'll give it a careful listen.

The 11 songs breeze by quickly, cultivating a mood so generous and warm that listening to the album feels like a friend smiling and waving from across the room at the first party of the summer.

Fans of cool, retro-minded indie pop will embrace integrating this set into their playlists for the warmer months and beyond.

They've made a lasting impression, and fans of indie pop looking for a band that isn't afraid to work to win them over should be forking over their hard-earned cash for Chorus as soon as possible.

This is the work of an artist eager to explore new paths, and if it isn't a complete success, I Aubade confirms Perkins is still a vital and imaginative artist with a singular vision.

Undeniably dark and haunting, Burn Slow succeeds in taking the listener far from the beaten path while living up to Liebing's artistic standards.

Its cover inscribed with "In loving memory of Nipsey Hussle," 4REAL 4REAL would be the most subdued YG album even without that stirring reflection.

Kind Heaven is every bit as ambitious an album as we've come to expect from Farrell, but it's more in line with the eclectic hard rock energy of his most popular work.