Maturing past their screamo years was a necessary endeavor, but on Wait for Love, PBTT feel a bit stuck in phase two.

Silver Dollar Moment is a stunning debut, and if it doesn't quite reinvent the wheel the way that The Stone Roses did, it does have a uniquely sweet spirit and lighthearted beauty all its own.

Onion is mature and contemplative compared to Shannon & the Clams' earlier efforts, but it's music that comes from a place of celebration and love, and these songs will make you dance and sing along--and that's what this band has always done best.

Sometimes, Luke LaLonde's yawp pierces through this stylish murk, as if he's impatient with these mannered arrangements, but this tension also provides a perhaps necessary counterpoint to Born Ruffians' newfound earnestness; it adds color and dimension, keeping the songs from seeming po-faced and giving Uncle, Duke & the Chief just enough jolt to be unpredictable.

By the Way I Forgive You is a different beast than its predecessor, a record with more texture, shade, and ambiguity: it is clearly the work of a maturing artist and it's all the richer for it.

While See You Around recalls work Watkins, O'Donovan, and Jarosz have done before, none have made an album quite as exquisitely shaded as this.

The stark and brutally frank "I Don't Want Children" impresses with its sonic intimacy, as does the mercurial "Sundog," one of a few selections that utilizes the sounds of the remote location's flora and fauna--wind through the trees, birds chirping, and dogs barking in the distance--lending the proceedings a bucolic, almost Terrence Malick-ian vibe, and adding even more mystery to what is truly a singular piece of work.

Sprawling and complex as In a Poem Unlimited's structures and styles are, it's U.S. Girls' most immediate collection to date, in terms of both sound and message.

One for the Ghost shows that Astor's creative rebirth wasn't a fluke, and it's good that he's making albums on a regular basis once again.

It is desperate, important, and powerful music and it might just be the best album they've ever made.

While it may be inspired by Sandy's fallout, Landfall's reach runs to a sea of loss, chaos, and confusion. It's an elemental mystery of quietly epic proportions made exceptional through clarity of thought and feeling.

Produced by Mark Crew (Bastille, Rationale) and Catherine Marks (the Killers, Wolf Alice), the album features much of what has endeared the Liverpool trio to fans; especially vocalist/guitarist Matthew Murphy's literate, tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, which remains firmly intact.

While longtime fans may want to replace their original LPs with these quality pressings, this set is well worth the investment for anyone interested in guitar players, blues, and British folk.

An album typified by serene, earth-loving optimism, even when romantic heartache is in play.

All this feverish digital desperation makes the already clamorous M A N I A feel positively cacophonic: it may only be 39 minutes but it's one long ride.

A set that is less scattered stylistically--dominated by tropical house and trap stylings--yet less consistent quality-wise.

His gentle pleadings and luring lines evoke lightheadedness, and at times lack enunciation, like he was just wheeled out of oral surgery and had his water laced with an aphrodisiac.

It is rich and gorgeous, elegant because of its exacting nature, an aesthetic that suits the film to a T.

Perhaps Carrabba still writes lyrics in broad terms, but this willingness to sculpt his sounds on the softer side indicates that he's discovered a way to sustain this allegedly adolescent music well into his adulthood.

With its mix of intriguing sounds and occasionally underwhelming songwriting, Always Ascending feels more like a first effort than the band's actual debut did. As it stands, it's a somewhat shaky but promising start for the revamped Franz Ferdinand.

Fallon unapologetically mines bygone eras for inspiration, but he does so with the care of an archaeologist on the biggest dig of his life.

The masterful way Wasser balances challenging moments like these with more familiar fare makes Damned Devotion one of the most complete, and daring, portraits of her artistry.

For an album whose lyrics often feel despondent, this record feels like a gracefully administered tonic.

Heartache is likely the most mined substance in all of pop music, but Williams applies such panache to the material that it's hard not to get wrapped up in all of the delicious melodrama.

Twin Fantasy leaves no doubt that Toledo is a strikingly gifted and thoughtful songwriter who also has a firm grasp of how to make his material work in the studio, and isn't afraid to think on a grand scale.

Since this is a series of five-song EPs, Human Problems isn't paced like an LP, which is a benefit. Perhaps there are moments that drift, such as the mellow bachelor pad neo-instrumental "Everything Is Now," but they're designed that way, offering color and texture to music that already had a surplus of both.

Keyboardist Cleo Sample and singer/songwriter Kendra Foster are among the variable cast that joins that trio, so the set unsurprisingly has the densely layered, spaced-out, and fiery qualities of D'Angelo's Black Messiah.

Necessity might be the mother of invention, and their lack of training certainly gives their music a wonderfully eccentric slant, but that's just as likely due to their restless imaginations as it is circumstance.