There's nothing overtly bad about Beacon; it shows that Two Door Cinema Club still have a remarkable knack for winsome melodies and harmonies set to kinetic beats. It just doesn't have the spark that Tourist History had, even if it's a more accomplished album overall.

Diluvia offers up a perfectly rendered snapshot of the cresting East Coast indie pop scene, conjuring up images of nomadic laptop studios, vintage bicycles, endless stacks of tattered Tor paperbacks, and heavily tattooed, non-smoking urbanites noshing on locally grown produce.

While it's a pleasant enough listen, the entire album falls short of the potential opulence hinted at by its best tracks.

When these sweet reinterpretations are combined with the straight-ahead rockers, Long Wave adds up to a blueprint in reverse for Lynne; by going to back to his beginnings, he winds up figuring out why he went in the direction he did.

Unfinished Business shows that six decades after her first recordings, that strategy [simplicity] still works, and she can still deliver the goods without a lot of needless fuss.

Shut Down the Streets is as accessible as it is rewarding, and as refreshingly idiosyncratic as it is revealing.

All We Love We Leave Behind, the group's eighth studio album, manages to summon that same level of intensity [as 2009's Axe to Fall] without the aid of a single mercenary.

For the majority of the other songs Lee Spielman runs the show, screeching street-sick lyrics about the crime-ridden area surrounding their Sacramento practice space.

The Toronto trio is just a ball of heavy genres, lumping together noise rock, post-punk, hardcore, no wave, or any style that might punish a pair of eardrums.

Twins is a bright moment in a nearly ceaseless evolution, and one of the most fluid and successfully ambitious in Ty Segall's catalog.

All in all, Here We Are is a promising debut, and Citizens! manage the impressive feat of borrowing from lots of different eras--'70s glam, '80s synth pop, '90s Brit-pop--without drowning in nostalgia.

The band's slick blend of classic new wave, tech-savvy dance rock, and mathy indie pop can be jarring upon first listen, but multiple spins reveal an impressively tight unit that understands the thin line between immaculately rendered electro-art pop cacophony and hook-friendly modern rock.

It might be Tussle's most subdued music to date, but it works equally well as a hypnotic wash of sound and as riveting close listening, especially late at night.

The Wallflowers don't abandon their identity as rock & roll classicists, they just now feel the freedom to mess around, and they've come up with one of their loosest, liveliest records that not-so-coincidentally is one of their best.

An ambitious work by an artist intent on developing her total sound, Halcyon finds Goulding poised at the edge of artistic and career possibilities.

Something that is notable throughout that's been a hallmark of the band's work is the attention to the drumming--for all that there's the flowing wash one might guess, there's also an actual sense of impact rather than simply skittering along.

As a collection of songs, and particularly as a "pop" record (inspirations for the group reportedly included Rye Rye and Whigfield, which seems far-fetched at best), Ultraísta feels a bit unfulfilled, but as a work of sound and atmosphere, it's captivating, predictably excellent work.

With songs this strong, it's an easy album to keep coming back to.

In 2012, the album is still an impressive achievement and cements the trio's place as the absolute best band of shoegaze revivalists operating.

Overall, the sound on Dead Silence isn't that different from the band's previous work, but is certainly some of the best work they've done.

The Vaccines have crafted a perfectly acceptable sophomore record that neither helps nor harms them, which is probably exactly what they wanted.

While the Intelligence may not sound quite as inspired here as they did on that album [2007's Deuteronomy], Everybody's Got It Easy But Me is still plenty of fun.

The whole album is pop on the one hand but pop of a self-consciously other kind, transformed from easy hooks and direct flow into an arch blend of past and present, something where 1981, 1993, 2001, and 2012 recombine and intertwine.

There are instances where the lyrical content edges too close to "artsy" teenage erotic poetry, but no song is without an attractive quality, whether it's a heavenly melody, a riveting rhythm, or a boggling production nuance.

On Fanatic, the Wilsons prove they can not only not re-create a sound they trademarked in the '70s, but can revision it creatively for the 21st century.

There's little that moves one to sing along here, unfortunately. The tempos are all slow, dramatic, and melancholy.

It showcases both sides of the trio's prowess: Rangda's ability to improvise dynamically and also to compose compelling, creating mysterious tunes that cross genres with ease and acumen.