Of Monkees & Men is above all a Scott McCaughey album. Even the most playful songs are deeply personal, leaving no doubt about how much the Monkees meant to him in 1966 as well as 2015.

Exodus of Venus is an achievement both redemptive and transformative.

Yes, the references are abundant--in an homage, they're supposed to be. Wobble employs them with a curator's taste; his skill as a bandleader creates space for disparate tongues to communicate before evolving into a different musical language--his own. Everything Is NoThing is a monster.

In its own claustrophobic, expansive, debauched, and sardonic way, 25 25 proves that less truly is more for Factory Floor.

On the whole, it's an engaging debut with memorable tunes that should be tried on by fans of any of the above-mentioned bands or melodic descendants of post-punk and Brit-pop.

The elements that are new here play out like a means to an end for a songwriter with a tale to tell, one chock-full of raw emotions. The songs stand just fine on their own, too, out of context.

Brettin tries a lot harder to sound weird on Skiptracing than he did on Timeline, and the result is a more vivid album.

Well over a decade after the release of Eluvium's brilliant 2003 debut, Lambent Material, Cooper continues to sound inspired and inventive.

As it is, it's a bit of a confused mess that needs some serious editing.

Katy Goodman and Greta Morgan have made an album that's often beautiful and marvelously crafted with Take It, It's Yours, but past the surfaces, it's often hard to tell what it means and why they made it in the first place.

Motion Graphics is a highly intriguing album of warped bitstream pop.

This offers more of the detailed scenes only Ocean can script, as well as some stray sly quotables. Ultimately, it's a smartly ordered patchwork of mostly secondary material.

An undoubtedly reactive work, this is undiluted and progressive nonetheless.

On Stay Gold, Walker falls into the latter camp, but if these songs lack a certain spontaneity, the craft is strong and Walker seems so eager to sound like a rock star that you just might mistake him for the real thing.

It's a welcome return, as is Glory as a whole: it feels as fun and frivolous as her earliest music while retaining the freshness of her best mature work.

The talent and vision of these artists makes this a surprisingly powerful and impressive work, and is a testament to the fact both the Mekons and Robbie Fulks need to record more often. When they do, the results are never ordinary, and neither disappoints.

Those who don't process the lyrics will be missing a lauded part of the McCombs experience, Mangy Love, arguably more than ever, works as a musical expression alone, mixing the sometimes caustic lyrics and roguish indie touches with an overriding smooth '70s veneer. For those who take it all in, the album engages both the intellectual and aural pleasure centers.

The whole album is pretty good, sometimes even really good. The Parrots may not be doing anything new or even close to it, but they give the corpse of garage rock a good kicking and that's a pretty cool.

While Andrews may lack the late singer/songwriter's [Jeff Buckley's] angelic pipes, he shares his knack for making the darkness in all of us feel both hopeless and sexy.

Anything But Words is a stellar and truly collaborative endeavor between two creative energies, the result of an organic songwriting process that is anything but thrown together.

Lots of people are making music like this in 2016, but very few are making it this impressively.

It's not uncommon for these songs to bloom into something celebratory during their second half, such as on the rippling, shimmering "Wandering Still." Between Waves is easily the strongest, most inspired Album Leaf release in at least a decade.

Slow Club's metamorphosis feels organic and, more importantly, embraced: this is their record, and the sound you're hearing is Slow Club overcoming their struggles.

Somewhere Else should make a point of giving Real a listen--at her best, she's quite simply as good and as brave a singer and songwriter as anyone working today, and Real finds her at the top of her game.

Alternating between bro country that's just past its sell-by date, summertime party tunes so breezy they get silly, and a heavy dose of southern rock, the Cadillac Three demonstrate versatility but they also seem scattered, as if they're scrambling for an audience.

[Jocie Adams'] musical eclecticism gives Arc Iris a leg up as they vanquish trendiness in favor of free-flowing exploration.

Similarly, the loping "Occupational Hazard" and the militaristically epic "Dionysus" have a kinetic flow that is, as with all of Furnaces, both literate and cinematic.

As per usual, it's Hannigan's otherworldly voice that provides the anchor, effortlessly shifting from smoky lows to crystalline highs like a precision sports car on a twisty mountain test drive.