The Machine Stops sounds like Hawkwind--a diluted version of what they sounded like at their peak, to be sure, but still Hawkwind, as eccentric and individual as ever.

She's smart to keep things light and positive--it's a deliberately youthful sound in an era that yearns for maturity--but by working the same territory so carefully, the seams in her construction are difficult to ignore.

Some stretches of the album may be a little too sleepy and subdued, with songs bleeding together in a hypnotic haze. Nonetheless, refreshingly void of aggression or any deliberate tension, Cloud Nine comforts with its positivity and charm.

Concrete Confessional can be borderline silly in its saltiness, but it's the best kind of comfort food, even if it breaks your jaw.

Whether consumed by itself or paired with its quieter sibling, Taste excites in a way that Islands have not elicited prior to this release, offering a body-moving experience to balance their typically quirky indie rock tendencies.

Again produced by vocalist Nick Thorburn and bassist Evan Gordon, the album nods to Islands' past but remains firmly planted in the time of its release, not only in production quality but also in focus. The hooks dig in deeper and the melodies hit harder, maturing their sound.

With Paradise, White Lung have ultimately crafted an album of hooky, infectious songs that still retain all the rage and D.I.Y. punk creativity of their previous work.

Another Splash of Colour is a perfect jumping-off point that covers most of the important players--sadly, no Dukes of Stratosphear tracks were available--and does a great job capturing and defining an almost forgotten scene with the care it deserves.

Established fans will be glad to know that Down in Heaven still carries the torch of garage rock, and anyone who misses the free-spirited, clattering style of those influences has a generous 13 new tracks to enjoy.

Everything at Once is their liveliest and most lighthearted effort to date, a celebration of both their legacy and their maturity.

It may be an intentional shift, but the soulful resonance of 2012's The End of That has given way to an artful experimentalism that, while musically impressive, doesn't make as big an impact. Still, it's an ambitious near miss from a very good band that has proven it can be both cerebral and heartfelt.

Compared to the self-titled debut and Overgrown, this a more graceful and denser purging, one that can soundtrack some intense wallowing or, at a low volume, throb and murmur unobtrusively in the background.

Stewarding them into their next phase is producer Joe Reinhart (Joyce Manor, Hop Along) whose outside influence helped streamline their powerful sound into a surprisingly cohesive album, given the album's unusual sequence.

It's as if this is a needy mixtape, but that minor complaint aside, Free Will finds Freeway's great mix of cold and clever on the upswing, and packaged in a near perfect blend of old and new beats.

It's not easy to grasp at first, but it reveals van Dinther as a restless creative spirit, and seems to only hint at the directions his artistic career could take in the future.

Radiohead is recognizably the same band that made that pioneering piece of electronica-rock but they're older and wiser on A Moon Shaped Pool, deciding not to push at the borders of their sound but rather settle into the territory they've marked as their own. This may not result in a radical shift in sound but rather a welcome change in tone: for the first time Radiohead feels comfortable in their own skin.

Eventually, people will get tired of the same old song if it's sung too often. On Views, Drake is starting to sound a little weary of it himself.

Nothing had every element in place to make Guilty of Everything very close to brilliant, a modern shoegaze/noise rock classic; on Tired of Tomorrow, they seem to have lost their way and have made something quite standard issue and disappointing.

Testarossa is a perfect road trip album, albeit one that's best put to use when the listener takes the road less traveled.

Strange Country is a mysteriously and profoundly pleasing piece of work.

As If Apart maintains a laid-back, weekend-afternoon feel, but it never seems too lazy, as Cohen is clearly adept at crafting pleasant yet sophisticated songs.

An intentionally fragmented portrait of change, Will's cracks show the growth in Barwick's music, and its pieces are facets that allow different aspects of her talent to shine.

Combined with beats seemingly tailored for each voice, the album could have resembled a disorderly production showcase, yet Celestin applies his experience as a deeply knowledgeable selector to stitch it all together with few obvious seams. He excels most at bold modern boogie with spring-loaded drums, zip-and-glide basslines, and radiant keyboards.

Anohni's targets deserve all the fury she unleashes upon them, but that doesn't make this any easier to engage with, even if you agree with what Anohni has to say.

As with the first volume of Electronica, the second is commendable for its scope and its attempt to bridge several generations of electronic music, but as a listening experience, it requires a fair amount of cherry-picking.

If there's a knock against Take Me to the Alley, it's that it feels a bit long. Editing out two or three tunes would have heightened its impact. That Porter doesn't break new ground here isn't a big deal; he doesn't need to.

Close to the Noise Floor: Formative UK Electronica 1975-1984 collects four discs of the alternately thrilling, grim, silly, and just plain bizarre stuff.

On a track-by-track level, Detour has a few stumbles--the biggest is "Night Life," and that's due to the gravelly growl of Willie Nelson, not Lauper--and if it's taken as a collection of performances and not a coherent record, it's fun.