The guitar riffs are appropriately fuzzy but a tad messy; the harmonies are well-placed but imperfect. Stoltz is a vintage enthusiast, but he's no copycat, and To Dreamers' best quality is his ability to reinterpret those sounds for an audience weaned on lo-fi albums.

Chock-full of brusque rhymes that, even with occasional respite with the odd slow jam, become mind-numbing over the course of its hour-long duration, Scarlet is a fascinating follow-up to Planet Her.

Another Eternity remains true to what makes Purity Ring special by refining it, and proves that they can challenge themselves and deliver their most accessible work yet.

Hard to imagine Green Day or Rancid having anything this interesting up their sleeve 27 years down the line from their first recording.

Builds considerable muscle to the skeletal frailty of intricate guitar work while commendably maintaining all which was good of their debut.

And while the album is still more focused and a much-needed improvement over 2002's Round Room and their finest since Billy Breathes, Undermind is essentially the sound of four musicians growing tired of the limits they've imposed on one another after decades of albums and touring.

This is the third album in a row where she's thrown a curve ball, confounding expectations by delivering a record that's wilder, stronger, and better than the last.

At its strongest, with songs like the archly titled 'Regal Regalia' and 'Papering Fix,' the band kicks up a huge sounding storm while still providing space for the almost preternaturally clean singing boring through the mix--not as an artificially high volume element, more like serenity in the midst of a storm.

Old Money is so far-reaching, it will likely piss off some of his fans while making others nearly swoon with its unwieldy rockist excesses. As for winning new fans to his cause? You bet.

There's a confidence about the performances on the album that make Go! Pop! Bang! a debut full of enthusiasm and promise that will hopefully ring in the beginning of a bright new talent.

Though front-loaded with its most energetic and moving songs, Our House on the Hill is an intriguing statement from a band shedding their better-known affiliations for a whole new ideal.

Their furious lyrics and chunky guitar lines are standard moshing and stage-diving material, but fans will be satisfied nonetheless.

Still Life is a captivating album of intense personal reflection, and marks a significant amount of artistic growth.

Ornate but polished throughout, Field of Love ultimately delivers pop music for those who are bored with pop music.

Every track seems to hint at a grander version than what was delivered, but the loose ends and modest scale are alluring, since they appear to offer an insight into how this fiercely imaginative, quietly fearless singer/songwriter challenges herself.

This stretch of songs is the liveliest collection Travis has cut since the '90s, and it's heartening to hear them reconnect with some of the wilder aspects that informed their earliest records.

Oberhofer has imagination to spare, but Time Capsules II would benefit from reeling in a bit -- most of the songs are at least three and a half minutes long but finished saying what they needed to before reaching that time point, and as welcome as xylophone is on an indie pop record, hearing it on what feels like every song is a bit much.

The washy blend of acoustic dirges, blown-out guitar tones, and lonely psychedelic character sketches solidify into an increasingly accessible sound from this once ungrounded act, without losing any of the group's character or inspiration.

The biggest constant here is the technical proficiency and complementary blending of the band's lead singers. The pair--who are notably also the album's sole songwriters--make a visual show of this, wearing matching clothes and hairstyles in performance. That quality ultimately overcomes any shifts in style, and also makes them hard to ignore.

Despite a few upbeat moments that stick out like a thumb that isn't sore, songs like Grizzly Bear and Victoria Legrand's "Slow Life," Editors' "No Sound But the Wind," and Bon Iver and St. Vincent's lovely, truly odd "Roslyn" are morose enough for die-hard Twilight fans and stylish enough to please the most discerning music snobs.

Despite this unevenness, at its best Ride Your Heart captures Bleached's carefree, slightly scuzzy California cool-girl charm.

Berlin was a work of tremendous ambition that didn't quite live up to its own high standards, and this live recording seems to trade a roughly equal number of new flaws for those of the original album, but this performance sounds like a legitimate attempt by Reed to revisit his past without being shackled to it, and on that level it's a brave and compelling experiment that (often) works.

Fans of early Islands albums may feel Ski Mask to be a little on the morose side, but anyone who's ever had a heartbreak can appreciate what Thorburn is going through and admire how tunefully and truthfully he's dealing with it.

While The Air Conditioned Nightmare represents growth for Doldrums, the caustic and sometimes overwhelming directions the album goes in are more difficult to unravel than the often blissful landscapes laid out in earlier songs. That said, deeper digging reveals Woodhead taking hold of the confusion, conflict, and ugliness of the record and sculpting it into something compelling in a voice all his own.

By stretching out, the Foo Fighters not only have expanded their sound, but they've found the core of why their music works, so they now have better songs and deliver them more effectively.

This is one of those records that will leave listeners still scratching their heads and smiling (at the same time) after repeat listens for years to come.

The nostalgia-heavy lyrical bent of some songs can read either sweet or cringe-worthy, depending on your birth date and sensitivity to sentiment.

It's certainly pleasant either as nostalgia or as high-end lifestyle music.