Equally bold, vulnerable, concise, and expansive, Too Bright dazzles.

Cheek to Cheek is a record where the music and even the songs take a backseat to the personalities.

The craft Zoot Woman bring to Star Climbing'a best moments continues to set them apart from the ever-growing number of similarly minded acts.

Lady Antebellum always have been a pop band so this concentrated gloss doesn't feel inappropriate.

Oldham’s intentions behind re-recording these relatively recent songs are puzzling, but the curious nature of the album is just another chapter of the mysterious, and in this case highly enjoyable saga of Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

It's in Mended With Gold's second half that the band feels the most engaged.

For as much as Way refers to other acts, this is a thoroughly original work, a vibrant reflection of all his artistic obsessions.

Time to Die is not Dopethrone; you only get one of those. But its well-tread riffology is enough of a back to basics approach that it should bring alienated purists back into the EW fold.

It seems like he missed an opportunity here to really put his well-earned gravitas into a genre that would be ripe for it. That the rather mundane and conservative A New Testament is the end result of his country explorations is a bit of a shame.

On their 2014 record, Feel Something, the History of Apple Pie do a fine job of delivering a second album that has much of the same sterling properties as their debut, while giving their guitar noise with sugar-sweet melodies some tweaks here and there, just enough to serve as a progression instead of an unwanted stylistic leap into mediocrity.

This music is taut and soulful, but also a document of one woman baring her spirit and mind to the world, which has always been the case with her best music, and if this isn't a masterpiece, it's as pure, straightforward, and compelling as anything she's done since Essence.

It's a welcome return for Car that shows how fun and powerful his music is when it's focused and direct.

Somehow at once entertaining, comforting, and challenging, Lily-O sees Amidon again pushing his distinctive perspectives through songs that belong to everybody.

Electric Youth's debut is a well-constructed, carefully thought-out debut that belies its long gestation process and will make people who fell in love with them thanks to the Drive soundtrack very happy in a melancholy kind of way.

If the songs on PlectrumElectrum don't stick the way those on Art Official Age do, it's nevertheless a quiet thrill to hear Prince spar with worthy partners, as he does throughout this record.

If the album doesn't offer any startling surprises along the lines of the furious "Black Sweat"--there's not much abandon here--there's joy in hearing Prince embrace his lyrical eccentricities as he accessorizes his smooth jams and coiled, clean funk with such oddities as laser blasts and spoken introductions from what appear to be British nurses.

While it's nice to see Rowe explore more, all the stylistic gymnastics leave Madman feeling, at times, a bit disjointed. Despite this, the album is easily the singer's most accessible and eclectic record to date.

It's a record where the sum is greater than the individual parts.

Some of the songs could have been fronted by anybody. Hudson occasionally sounds disconnected from the material, but the singer, as powerful as ever, still leaves her indelible mark on everything.

This is something better: a record designed to carry on the tradition of smooth, fizzy bubblegum into the new millennium and, against all odds, it succeeds mightily.

Offering works as a live culmination of Coltrane's musical journey, a homecoming and spiritual communion with the deep, creative forces that drove him right until the end of his life and, based on the music here, one can only assume beyond.

This double-disc live album, recorded during a 18-month-long tour in 2013 and 2014, reveals a clearer and more in-focus look at what Clark offers than Blak and Blu does.

These songs may be about ambivalence, but Park grows more confident with each release.

He's wound up making records that are the new millennial equivalent of classic soft rock, records informed by the trends of the day but which place emphasis on melody and craft, which is why they resonate: they come on smooth and easy but have the foundation to last.

Add to the mix boundary-pushing production and what might be his most developed set of tunes so far and the album immediately shuffles to the higher tiers of an already stellar body of work.

All but the most stuck-in-the-'90s shoegaze fans will see that Sway is an album that would measure up to almost any album made by the first wave of shoegazers. And by the current wave of revivalists, grave robbers, and crafty thieves as well.

That penchant for edgy refinement, along with frontman Joe Newman's impossibly fluid voice, remains the band's most effective weapon, but it's hard to pinpoint where and when that magic occurs, as it's so effortlessly woven into the group's sound.

Low on frenetics, Syro is anchored by rotund and agile basslines that zip and glide, and it's decked in accents and melodies that are lively even at their most distressed.