A Giant Dog aren't necessarily offering anything that hasn't been done before, but Pile is definitely a fun listen with enough bright spots and kinetic energy to sustain it.

Material is the black celebration that Depeche Mode foresaw, sparkling party music for the downcast masses.

If getting a live, rough demo energy was the goal, then the Heavy have succeeded. While the album never sounds lo-fi, the production nonetheless has the taut, confrontational energy of a basement punk show or old-school juke-joint performance.

This is a record that attempts to unfold but remains grounded within its own humble limitations.

Beauty Already Beautiful is bold, soul-baring proof that Spookyland knows the best rock & roll is all about unexpected contrasts; even when they nod to decades' worth of rock history, they sound vital, never lazy.

In some ways, this feels like the album Susanna's career has been building toward; her music has always united the heart and mind, and she does so with striking creativity on Triangle.

It Kindly Stopped for Me is no easy listen, and its mostly mumbled outpourings don't leap out of the speakers, but it is intensely honest, which is something we don't hear often enough.

The heavy-hitting social commentary of "America" is an example of Royce in the spotlight and exceeding expectations.

For Beans' nightmarish spoken narrative, Pritchard makes like a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with intensifying patterns of organ filigrees and electronics that blip and swarm.

Honey nonetheless comes across as an attention-grabbing experiment more than it does a third proper full-length.

She and Greenspan refract techno-pop in their own way while binding additional forms of electronic post-disco that cross four decades, from boogie to juke.

Even if it isn't as dynamic as its predecessor, at the very least Ullages reflects that Eagulls can do more than rant.

It's all spirited and lively. At their best, the wide-eyed folk-soul moments tend to evoke a contemporized version of fellow Englishwoman Linda Lewis.

On the whole, Absolute Loser is dominated by an energetic wistfulness and sweet melodicism that characterize most of Johnson's work, whatever his instrument palette. While that should please fans, the solidly crafted song set also offers as good an entry point as any for potential admirers.

With three albums under his belt, Vance has settled into a nice groove, and on The Wild Swan, he's pulled off a neat trick. He dons some familiar hats, but never loses himself beneath the brim.

The Machine Stops sounds like Hawkwind--a diluted version of what they sounded like at their peak, to be sure, but still Hawkwind, as eccentric and individual as ever.

She's smart to keep things light and positive--it's a deliberately youthful sound in an era that yearns for maturity--but by working the same territory so carefully, the seams in her construction are difficult to ignore.

Some stretches of the album may be a little too sleepy and subdued, with songs bleeding together in a hypnotic haze. Nonetheless, refreshingly void of aggression or any deliberate tension, Cloud Nine comforts with its positivity and charm.

Concrete Confessional can be borderline silly in its saltiness, but it's the best kind of comfort food, even if it breaks your jaw.

Whether consumed by itself or paired with its quieter sibling, Taste excites in a way that Islands have not elicited prior to this release, offering a body-moving experience to balance their typically quirky indie rock tendencies.

Again produced by vocalist Nick Thorburn and bassist Evan Gordon, the album nods to Islands' past but remains firmly planted in the time of its release, not only in production quality but also in focus. The hooks dig in deeper and the melodies hit harder, maturing their sound.

With Paradise, White Lung have ultimately crafted an album of hooky, infectious songs that still retain all the rage and D.I.Y. punk creativity of their previous work.

Another Splash of Colour is a perfect jumping-off point that covers most of the important players--sadly, no Dukes of Stratosphear tracks were available--and does a great job capturing and defining an almost forgotten scene with the care it deserves.

Established fans will be glad to know that Down in Heaven still carries the torch of garage rock, and anyone who misses the free-spirited, clattering style of those influences has a generous 13 new tracks to enjoy.

Everything at Once is their liveliest and most lighthearted effort to date, a celebration of both their legacy and their maturity.

It may be an intentional shift, but the soulful resonance of 2012's The End of That has given way to an artful experimentalism that, while musically impressive, doesn't make as big an impact. Still, it's an ambitious near miss from a very good band that has proven it can be both cerebral and heartfelt.

Compared to the self-titled debut and Overgrown, this a more graceful and denser purging, one that can soundtrack some intense wallowing or, at a low volume, throb and murmur unobtrusively in the background.

Stewarding them into their next phase is producer Joe Reinhart (Joyce Manor, Hop Along) whose outside influence helped streamline their powerful sound into a surprisingly cohesive album, given the album's unusual sequence.