Sioux Falls' battles between disenchantment, sadness, joy, and rage are easily strong enough to support an album half this size, but at 16 tracks--with six of them over six minutes long--it's just too hard to stay invested.

Even when things get silly on We Can Do Anything, the silliness blows on by, headed toward a bit of revved-up folk or unexpected introspection, and those twists are what makes the album worth hearing.

On their debut album, they strike a balance between delicate, pastoral folk and heavy, loud space rock, with Meg Baird's fragile, wispy vocals sharing the stage with Noel von Harmonson and Charlie Saufley's crushing guitar solos.

Altogether, LNZNDRF do their post-punk revivalism very proficiently, from textures to musicianship, creating solid fodder for headphone meditations or basement gatherings of any size.

Freed of commercial expectations and paired with an empathetic band, Wynonna will sing anything she damn well pleases and she's wound up with a monster of an album.

Equally meticulous and mischievous, this is some of Matmos' most engaging work, especially for fans who are as fascinated by their process as their results.

Equally sensual and challenging, it's the work of a band capable of commitment as well as grand gestures.

Everybody plays the songs they love in the way they learned them, so the highlights fall along the spectrum of sensitivity to enthusiasm.

After Glow & Behold, the only thing Yuck seemed ready to do was break up and get day jobs; Stranger Things shows they weren't quite ready for that as it vaults them back into the noise pop/shoegaze conversation, where they seem poised to stay for a good long while.

As the title implies, it may take the 1975 a while to get to the point on I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, but when they do, the results are revelatory.

It's a resolutely lively and slightly dazed exploration of misshapen pop forms.

As of now, they've proven that they can wear the baggy tracksuits, but not that they necessarily deserve them.

Even if Quilt don't always find the answers they're looking for on Plaza, they've found some of their most confident and cohesive music.

Concerned at least as much with timbre as with rhythm, structure, or emotional tone--and none of these is neglected here--the composite is perpetually stimulating, exploiting repetition and expectation, both in time and texture. Album structure is carefully considered as well, with the drums vanishing for the final two tracks.

Fans of any of Mason's earlier projects will find something to love on what is easily the gifted popsmith's best solo effort to date.

Though 99 Cents is Santigold's most accessible work yet, it feels like the mainstream meeting White on her terms rather than vice versa, and the results are often irresistible.

Raitt's signature slide guitar is back out front; it shines throughout the recording. Her earthy singing voice, with just a hint of time's grain, is more disciplined and holds more emotional authority than ever before. It soars through a song collection balanced between rough, rowdy rockers and searing ballads.

The bookends are tracks that aim to be masterworks and fall just one step short, but everything in between is delightful, stunning, or both, making the album's title less than one-tenth apt, and Macklemore & Lewis both emo under-promisers and Grammy-worthy over-deliverers.

It's not quite Hunx and it's definitely not punk, but Seth Bogart is a blast.

As produced by her daughter and family friend, Lynn is in good, trusting hands who wish to present her at her best and, more or less, that's precisely what Full Circle offers.

It ends School of Seven Bells in moving form and suggests a new and vital start for Deheza.

Consistent in character and quality, WYWALDYAT is a rare debut, one that impacts second to second rather than by hook or groove.

Her quick turns of phrase and penchant for punctuating moments of self-doubt with colorful bits of impressionistic flair and left-field melodic rejoinders invoke names like Kate Bush, Nick Drake, and Sandy Denny, but the truth is, she's been perfecting her particular brand of moody, bucolic baroque pop for over two decades now, and with the marvelous In Search of Harperfield, that work has finally paid off.

The riffs are punchy, the drumming relentless, and nary a note is wasted, and it strikes that balance between artistry and economy that has always made Anthrax an elite metal force.

On Keep It Together, what they lose in intimacy with the amplified environment, they gain in musical maturity, which only seems fitting.

All of Summertime's charm is tied directly to its mellowness. Perhaps it would have been a more interesting record if it had a hint of adventure.

Eventually, the songs do sink in, but the reason to return to the album is its ability to conjure a specific feeling, whether it's the second the sun sets or the moment that paved highway gives way to backwoods dirt roads.

Grandfeathered shows them looking outward while successfully building upon their already impressive sound.