On Endless Flowers they wisely embrace that amorous but no less powerful approach to indie pop originally deployed by charismatic acts such as the Modern Lovers and Different Class-era Pulp. Pleasingly, it's a guise that fits them as perfectly as their sunglasses.

Get Your Heart On! is every bit as tuneful as the group's debut.

With Novak's world-class sneer resting on top, this is a good set of bad vibes, and rock & roll malcontents should put this album on their want lists pronto.

Traveler reveals that with its four brand-new songs and revisioned versions of live staples, Anastasio's creative force is healthy and his taste is, as ever, impeccable.

A confident, delightfully quirky, and endlessly inventive band having fun and delivering a kind of lightly experimental sunshine pop for the 21st century, complete with huge choruses, xylophones and trinkets, maverick rhythms, and a charming, fun spirit of adventure.

It's the songs that give Sunday Morning Record its lasting power, and its strength in the wake of so much upheaval speaks to the gifts of Jurdi and Quist as songwriters and frontmen.

That's a lot of songs about life and death, but The Blues Is Alive and Well has a lot of songs in general--a full 15, lasting well over an hour. This excessive length means there's a lot of room for levity, too.

By giving equal time to headbanging and heartbreak, they've made an immensely satisfying album that's among their finest.

Alone will stand as an idiosyncratic gem in his catalog, showcasing him at his eccentric best.

Healy's yearning, earthy croon is well intact here, and although he doesn't try to upstage his main band's act, longtime Travis fans and anybody in the mood for heartfelt, smartly crafted folk-pop should find much to enjoy on Wreckorder.

Stuck trying to re-create the daring excitement, Handsome Boy Modeling School turn in an album that's half as interesting as their debut, and half as interesting as their guest list.

The band prove just as adept at these more subdued and sad songs as they do at the uptempo rockers and the blending of the two styles and tones makes for a fascinating record. It's certainly more complicated, both musically and emotionally, and shows the band growing in interesting ways.

U2 deliver smooth, polished performances that are handsome and, yes, intimate but not especially compelling. It's stylish background music that sounds a bit like it was designed to be heard in chain coffeehouses during the late 2000s.

These largely acoustic songs, occasionally embellished with electronics and other effects, are geared for a quiet evening spent alone. Subtle, touching albums like this should be made more often, preferably by Selway and his associates here.

Maybe broken into a series of singles or a couple of EPs it would have been more palatable, but in this form it's just too samey and underwhelming to make much of an impression

While the experiment with a more edgy, rock-oriented sound worked well for the British duo, singer/songwriters Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian are obviously most at home with their comfortable brand of melodic folk-inflected pop, and that is the sound that makes up most of the tracks on Outbursts.

The album traces a journey through personal hell to salvation, which is not all that different from the story told in other religious music.

Among scads of other bands that specialized in hectoring vocals, droning basslines, battering drums, and scraping guitars, In Camera weren't all that distinctive, but they created quite a racket.

This stuff is pure musical and lyrical inspiration.

Ultimately, it's hard not to feel that this album is little more than a blatant attempt to ape the Postal Service's Give Up.

At a time when labelmates (and, in the minds of the UK music press, rivals) the Coral are seemingly at a bit of a musical crossroads, the Zutons have made the album that delivers on their early promise.

Moments of band interplay showcase their collective ear for the nervously romantic-sounding post-punk that's helped inspire the group's sound.

Whatever Bishop Allen's intention, there is a sort of miasma hovering over Lights Out that supports the "sad party album" claim, adhering these clever pop songs together but deflating some of their energy in the process. It's an odd effect making for a pleasurable yet confusing listen.

Nearly everything else here is loving, sincere, and worthy of hearing by fans of the Beach Boys or Broadway.

Both dreamy and earthy, complex and immediate, and challenging and soothing.... The Sleepy Strange is the band's most cohesive work to date, yet it keeps all of the spontaneous beauty of their previous releases.

A simple, straight-ahead match of excellent MC with great producers.

Orbital is either uninspired or saving up for something better next time.

Like a latter-day Digital Underground, Black Eyed Peas know how to get a party track moving.

Like all the other installments in the series, this one makes a nice addition to a hardcore supporter’s collection.

Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen has flashes of brilliance and moments where they're still figuring out what to do, but overall, it shows them growing into something new as gracefully as they can.

Like good goth, this is painful and exclusive, full of moody anthems and baritone melodies that won't cut through the static until the fifth listen or so.

The Metallica Blacklist is fantastic for cherry-picking tracks from your favorite artists or listening in on the more outlandish interpretations of metal classics, but taken as a whole, it's daunting to the point of making even the highlights difficult to appreciate.

An album that's going to have the purists sighing with relief and have new converts checking out their back catalog for more.

Spinnerette also feels a bit overcooked at times, possibly because of the long time it took to make. At its best, however, Spinnerette shows what Dalle can do outside of the Distillers' context, and suggests that maturity and life after punk rock can actually be fun.

The slow moves of the partnered voices on the extended verse, rising up toward the cool intoning of the title on the final chorus as the melody lines get even more insistent and grand, and similar moments on the instrumental "Geodes," show that EAR PWR have a way with the epic that doesn't feel overbearing--not a bad spot to be in at all.

More often than not, Loyalty to Loyalty takes a disappointing stumble on it.

Ultimately, while Salute retains all of Little Mix's infectious, teen-friendly ingredients, it reveals a new recipe for fans whose palates have matured right along with the band.

The end result is a half-hour of good, giddy fun that leaves you with a slightly strange taste in your mouth, and that's probably just right.

The themes are vague enough that they could be applied to any number of relationships or situations, and far more captivating are the arrangements and dynamic shifts in orchestrations that make up the cyclical nature of the album.

A joyless experience.

The band sounds the most engaged on the early hardcore numbers like "Suicidal Maniac" (Suicidal Tendencies), "Thirsty and Miserable" (Black Flag), and "It's the Limit" (Cro-Mags), while nods to the metal gods such as "Ghosts of War" (Slayer) and "Escape" (Metallica) are blistering and volatile enough to warrant inclusion, but feel a little rote.

The 11 tunes kick off with a jump blues rendition of "Them There Eyes," a rock blues take on Ike & Tina Turner's "Nutbush City Limits"; punchy horns accentuate the Buddy Miles penned "Miss Lady," and they give a straightforward soul treatment to the Don Covay/Steve Cropper tune "See Saw" recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1968.

Dog Party may be music biz vets already, but this is their true coming-of-age moment and anyone interested in punky pop (or poppy punk if you prefer to look at it that way) should seek out Lost Control right away and stay tuned to see what the Giles sisters do in the future.

There is a whiff of condescension to some of the blue-collar anthems, the air is often haughty ("The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance")--but this is Sting's tightest collection of songs in ages, and they all play off each other, adding up to a cohesive whole that is surely one of his best latter-day records.

Birdy's second release is a testament to her confidence in her own songwriting talent, and of course, to the fragility and intensity of her pure, unblemished vocals.

While(1<2) is a very good, very restrained, and very inspired Deadmau5 effort.

There's a shared past that's evident in every moment of this debut, and that natural, relaxed camaraderie is the reason why No Fools, No Fun is such an appealing listen.

Songs from the Black Hole sure ain't a clampdown. This power trio is just too agitated and interesting for anything such.

Overall, Oh My My is another solid record from a group led by one of the best songwriters of a generation.

On the strictly drum'n'bass side, "Tribute" is a smooth, relaxing roller with some dusky late-night trumpet, and "Tribes" is a brassy, percussive workout which borders on clownstep. Besides all of these, there's several more radio-ready pop songs which use drum'n'bass to elevate the drama.

It's a record filled with good intentions but pitched squarely at the faithful converted.

Though the work seems part and parcel of the Nightwish aesthetic, on its own it may not appeal to all fans. That said, it does add depth and dimension to Human. :II: Nature. which is, with one exception, a consistently and deeply satisfying outing that was worth waiting for.

Ultimately, it's the singles that keep Angel Face interesting, an ironic twist, given that the period he fetishizes most certainly favored singles over LPs. So, in a sense, he has hit his mark squarely.

In comparison to the dry, raw production of Transatlanticism, Plans is warm and polished, the kind of album expected from a band obsessed with the sound of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.

Intriguing but muddled, Tyranny puts plenty of musical distance between Casablancas and the Strokes, but too often it lacks the clarity to be anything but challenging in the wrong ways.

It's every bit as focused and accomplished as anything in Lanois' catalog, and die-hard fans will be wanting more long after the disc winds down.

Bachmann's contributions play a back-seat role to those by Taylor and Fink, who sound as convincing after a seven-year break as they did during Azure Ray's heyday.

Anybody looking for a straight-up document of Young & the Promise of the Real may very well be disappointed--all those pesky critters keep getting in the way--but Earth is better because of its inspired madness: the weirdness isn't merely a reason to listen, but it elevates the album to the status of one of Young's genuinely inspired nutso albums.

This is a much better record than their debut--and that in itself is an impressive feat.

An uncharacteristically stripped-back, lo-fi production which perfectly suits the unsettling plot line of the Eastern Europe-based thriller.

This feeling of isolation envelops the bulk of Apparitions. It's a psychedelic, claustrophobic mush of layered synthesizers, organs, drum pads, and breezy voices reflecting against the walls of wide-open corridors; evocative of the unsettling feeling of being completely alone in a very big space, a la David Bowman or Sam Bell.

At over two hours long, it's easily one of Mark Kozelek's most ambitious undertakings yet--or one of the most self-indulgent, depending on the listener's perspective.

A smooth, delightful whole.

A minor but pleasantly unexpected surprise.

Lives is a collection of hopeful, almost wonderstruck looks at the human condition, delivered with enough tasteful and catchy hooks to make it one of the best albums in an already lengthy career from this seasoned indie troubadour.

If the songwriting isn't strong enough to make listeners confuse this with a Back to Black follow-up, the productions and performances are up to her high caliber.

Ultimately too derivative to fully enjoy.

[It is] over-produced to within an inch of its artistic life, and lacks the quality songs and exquisite productions that the group had made a hallmark.

The Search is a potent reminder of why Farrar was and is one of the watershed artists of the alt-country movement.

Like most covers sets, this is a mixed bag, and it's for the hardcore Diamond fan more than those who admire Home Before Dark, 12 Songs, or his work from the '60s through the mid-'70s.

The boogie that was the trademark of his best-known work is almost entirely absent, and while Bolan's wordplay was often marvelous, many of these artists opt to treat them as grand philosophical statements, ignoring the wit that was so much of his lyrics. A few of the performers make this work, notably Lucinda Williams, who sounds beatific on "Life's a Gas," and Nick Cave, who somehow finds a mournful nostalgia in "Cosmic Dancer."

Even amidst dissonant notes or loopy time signatures, a catchy hook or two usually surfaced.

The album quickly stabilizes with satisfying, if mostly unexciting, material. Other than the lack of European dance-pop, the main difference between this set and Here I Am is the presence of Rowland's most revealing and powerful song, "Dirty Laundry."

Even after a decade away, Atari Teenage Riot are still equally angry and entertaining, and Is This Hyperreal? just may be one of their definitive statements.

Feel. Love. Thinking. Of. is a decent enough album as a whole that sometimes falters but features fine moments of brilliance when the Batke brothers filter out their cheesier influences.

High on Jackson Hill doesn't quite trump "Fables" the way that album outclassed its precursor, but it's hardly accurate to call this a disappointment.

Islands is by no means a bad record. It's pleasant but it's unnecessary, and in an era of so many bands and so many releases, that's just not good enough.

Names like Just Blaze, Lee Majors, Cardiak, and No Credit supply the beats for this more mature/still flashy release, all of it adding up to Wale's win number three.

Ceremony have a strong handle on this style [Ian Curtis'], and after nearly a decade together, these new clothes fit them quite well.

Flaws aside, IV is quite enjoyable--especially split over a couple of listens.

A Moment Apart is a further expansion of the ODESZA empire, and the duo's most ambitious, widescreen work yet.

This album isn't as brash or immediate as the band's earlier work, but its gradual move from alienation to connection and hope is just as bold as Silent Alarm, and possibly even more resonant.

A dazzling debut.

Those eight songs are noisy psychedelic pop at its best, however, on par with anything else treading a similar path.

Delta Machine, the band's 13th album, feeds off this negative energy and winds like a snake the whole time, slithering through a well-written (ten songs from Martin Gore with three coming from Gahan) and lusciously recorded set of serpentine siren songs.

It's the complementary nature of the bands' sentiments more than their sounds that makes Aureola successful.

2015's Find What You Love and Let It Kill You, is a return to the group's anthemic classic rock and '60s psych rock-influenced sound.

Ultimately, it's this guitar interplay that's the attribute of Pierced Arrow. Some of the songs stick out--particularly, Stills' two attempts at social commentary, "Virtual World" and "Mr. Policeman," both of which would've fit on a CSN LP -- but this is a record about instrumental interplay, not about songs.

Time Clocks slowly comes into focus after the short atmospheric instrumental "Pilgrimage" sets the stage for a moody, cinematic record.

As uneven as the album can be, it's never a simple rehash of Bloc Party's glory days. Adam Greenspan and Nick Launay's tight production gives Alpha Games a leaner attack than Silent Alarm, and while the moments of beauty that balance the band's outbursts are in shorter supply, they're all the sweeter when they appear.

Although the group's early period still packs in the most memorable moments, Night Light is a fine addition to their reliable late-era catalog that keeps it engaging, impeccably produced, and emotionally earnest.

They sound more focused than on any of their ten previous studio offerings. Certainly, what's here is not for everybody, but this jumpy, well-constructed little set may even get Phish fans excited.

The standout songs are great: the relentless bounce of "Did It First" with Central Cee is infectious in its fluidity, the sophomoric and slippery "Think U the Shit (Fart)" matches ridiculous lyrical brags with an undeniably funky instrumental, and "Gimme a Light" amps up a classic Sean Paul sample with a buzzing drill beat and Ice Spice's furious flow. The less substantial tracks blur together, even with help from other rap stars.

Overall, it's a darker and more uneven album than the debut, but notwithstanding a few oddities (three reprises, and Arrington de Dionyso's Gregorian throat singing, namely), it's a respectable follow-up.

Like Kid A's little brother, Manic Expressive pops and gurgles through spacey, multi-textured compositions.

Signals the welcome return of one of pop's finest groups.

The album simply powers its way through 16 tracks of seamlessly mixed high-velocity drum'n'bass.

The album's consistency easily outmatches even the highest watermarks of either predecessor.