As it is, The Lion's Roar is a quality release, but due to the stand out tracks being placed at the front and the end, the middle section feels weaker than it is, making the overall impression of the album suffer.

Benny and the rest of Griselda are a force so reliable and prolific that they should be boring by now. But The Plugs I Met 2 suggests that we’re just getting to know them.

The whole EP feels weightless and aloft as if we have a clear view of the blinding blue gap between its heights and depths.

It's too bad it couldn't find release on a major, but still a victory. Yet, that doesn't make this album, as Saigon once declared it, the best record of the last 20 years. It makes it a good one.

Although it seems Jehnny Beth has decided to go solo to express more of her vulnerabilities, by the end of To Love is To Live it’s hard to say whether we actually feel any closer to her. However, it also shows her chameleonic abilities as a vocalist, as she’s working with different styles and productions yet still sounding urgent.

What an enormous room strikes as a means for Scott to prove to no one but herself that she can build her temple from scratch, embracing her inner non-conformist with steadfast spirit. Even within the sound of settling, Torres has plenty of charming things to say.

Brun has such control of her craft, and that is made brightly plain across these two albums [After The Great Storm & How Beauty Holds The Hand Of Sorrow]. Which one you prefer will likely depend on which genre or style you have deeper inclination for, but taken together, they’re both excellent representations of an artist honing her tested and true style while also venturing out into new waters, easily proving just how capable she is along the way.

No Taste basically checks all the boxes of what makes punk rock still a righteous, thrilling starting point for any young artist. It’s a record that frantically claws at the walls with concisely aimed fits of desperation, anger, scathing humor and gusto.

Where I was expecting a great album, I've instead encountered one that's merely very good.

The Ohio trio's fifth LP and first for Merge, sees Times New Viking maturing to an even cleaner sound, though never completely forfeiting the kill-yr-speakers aesthetic that made them standouts in the lo-fi community.

It's their breakthrough album and shows that with focus and confidence, the future could be pretty exciting for The Maccabees.

It possesses an innate ability to provide complex tapestries of sound and universal narratives of despair and triumph – though it is possible for audiences to get lost in the world they’ve captured without paying attention to the lyrics and still feel something ache within their chest.

God's Father is nearly two hours long, and it's actually good.

It’s the document of two beloved alt-metal worlds colliding to head-shuddering effect; a record of skull crushing intensity in places, with merciless riffs conjured up from the deepest abyss, which are counterpoised with quiet, ethereal dark-folk introspection – a mix that shouldn’t really work but absolutely does.

This is rager music, the fun and frantic rock anthems that the weirdos and the geeks who have grown into successful entrepreneurs and innovators can dance to while the quarterback from their high school bags their groceries.

It sounds like fun; precisely what the Odd Future discography has been lacking lately.

Gone are the old voices of the city, the tales of the Wu-Tang and the sense that there is real struggle or strife. Instead it's a heterogeneous mix of international talent devoted less to teaching lessons or passing down wisdom as it is to making twenty-somethings dance.

This album finishes right when it needs to. Any longer and there might be a genuine risk of someone having a hernia from all the physical carousing. As it is, we leave this magical island fully refreshed and filled with self satisfaction.

Shields is both well-mannered and demanding, subdued but always bubbling under the surface.

Throughout Showtunes, Wagner demonstrates that theatricality and showmanship can manifest in many different and sometimes subtle forms. He may not draw in many new fans from this one-act performance, but it’s still one of the band’s most intriguing and well-executed productions nonetheless.

This is them coming to grips with their heritage and their age, although it’s no swan song. But American Head does what its predecessors haven’t been able to do – it shows the Flaming Lips still know how to write thoughtful and sincere songs that also tap into the psychedelics their fans have come to expect.

While Peaking Lights came into this album lurking largely in the hazy fringes of the consciousness of music fans, with Lucifer they've made an album that more clearly demands the active attention of those who might happen upon it.

Without any stylistic or conceptual thread tying these songs together (other than the generic tag of lo-fi pop) this album leaves just a bit wanting. It's a great album, but it's kept from being one for the ages based on that disjointedness.

Mumps takes a little while to sink in in a different way to previous albums.

Be Up a Hello can be a lot to take in at times, a rambunctious and restless effort from a man comfortable in his ability to make the dancefloor obsolete. But there’s more here than simply speed and density – there are strange currents working their way through the songs, hints are something deeper and more relatable than its superficial excess might suggest.

Balancing stately pop ornamentation with more bombastically orchestrated moments, the album allows Meiburg to both indulge and scale back his dramaturgical impulses.

In Sickness & In Flames is one of The Front Bottoms’ most interesting records to date; it’s completely them – and obviously so – yet they change just enough to keep you guessing without alienation.

Yeah, some of the electronic and percussive flourishes might be a little tired in 2011, but Givers sell it with such wide-eyed abandon and indulgent wonder that it's hard not to give in to the cacophonous stew of bursting pop euphoria.