Thirst is stylistically ambitious and often quite successful for a debut album, but while the rest of the ingredients are there, Carter Sharp needs to get his vocals whipped into shape before Waves of Fury can be as nasty as they want to be.

Although Bloodlines takes its time to get under your skin, when it does, it sinks in deep.

The album is a generally successful experiment in low-end heaviness.

Calm is the sound of a band whose influences have continued to evolve right along with them and their fans.

Even when the bagpipes show up on "Welcome Tae Glasgae," Motorheart is all riffs and falsetto screams designed to forget reality and dream of crowds packed with headbanging, beer-soaked hedonists singing along to the same songs.

Just barely out of his twenties, he writes with the well-worn weariness of someone twice his age, but Isbell's youth nevertheless breathes energy into a formula that's been revisited by many Southern-born songwriters before.

This unforgiving return to form doesn't suffer from being over-thought and it's not even overwrought, but it is overstuffed at 14 tracks.

Paranoid Cocoon establishes its sound early, so anybody initially put off by all of the cloudy skies and soft, neo-psychedelic mountain melancholy will inevitably come away disappointed, but fans of James Yorkston, Richard Hawley, M. Ward, and mild hangovers will eat this up, and rightly so.

The album was composed by R&B's best songwriters of the late 2000s, Terius Nash (The-Dream) and Christopher Stewart (Tricky); they give each song the intelligent mid-tempo bump-and-grind they've made into a specialty.

Tomorrowland is the disruptive, chaotic, creative process of the artist revealed; it's full of frustration, anger, conviction, and excitement, all worn plainly on its tattered sleeve.

The record is at its best when it's close to an old-fashioned duet album.

Sexsmith doesn't do anything on Long Player Late Bloomer that he hasn't done before, but this time out, he's had the right help in the studio to make an album that will sound as good to casual observers as his dedicated fans, and that's what sets this apart: if you've ever wanted to introduce yourself to the work of one of the finest songwriters in North America, Long Player Late Bloomer is just the album to get.

It's this quality that makes the album not just an easy recommendation for listeners old and new, but one of their most fun, accessible, and solid albums since Factory Showroom.

The Empire Strikes First isn't a return to Bad Religion at its most vitriolic and unstoppable -- whether that could ever really happen is unclear, and probably unnecessary.

Ultimately, Everything You've Come to Expect plays like a west coast film noir fever dream, scored by Ennio Morricone, with Kane and Turner the doomed protagonists, chasing icy blondes and lollipop Lolitas down their own debauched Hitchcock-ian spiral.

So Jealous is the most satisfying album Tegan and Sara have yet made.

Reckon is a statement that hits hard (and close to home) if you'll give it a careful listen.

The 11 songs breeze by quickly, cultivating a mood so generous and warm that listening to the album feels like a friend smiling and waving from across the room at the first party of the summer.

Fans of cool, retro-minded indie pop will embrace integrating this set into their playlists for the warmer months and beyond.

They've made a lasting impression, and fans of indie pop looking for a band that isn't afraid to work to win them over should be forking over their hard-earned cash for Chorus as soon as possible.

This is the work of an artist eager to explore new paths, and if it isn't a complete success, I Aubade confirms Perkins is still a vital and imaginative artist with a singular vision.

Undeniably dark and haunting, Burn Slow succeeds in taking the listener far from the beaten path while living up to Liebing's artistic standards.

Its cover inscribed with "In loving memory of Nipsey Hussle," 4REAL 4REAL would be the most subdued YG album even without that stirring reflection.

Kind Heaven is every bit as ambitious an album as we've come to expect from Farrell, but it's more in line with the eclectic hard rock energy of his most popular work.

Well-crafted and well-executed throughout, A Dream Is U should appeal to fans of any of the aforementioned styles as well as to lovelorn romantics.

This skillful balance of consistency and surprises -- as well as the past, present, and future of dance, indie, and pop -- makes Inflorescent a more than welcome return.

In concept and execution, Thin Mind is Wolf Parade in their classic form, but with a force and a sense of purpose that makes them sound fresh and vital. Losing DeCaro seems to have goaded Krug, Boeckner, and Thompson into showing their fans they still have the goods, and it works on Thin Mind.

Out-of-State Plates is a ragged collection of hits and misses that will satisfy FOW completists, while being of intermittent interest to recent converts or general power pop fans.