King Animal bucks the trend by being reasonably good. It is unquestionably a Soundgarden album, and far better than anyone had a right to expect.

Baffling production questions aside, In The Dark is still another solid entry into what's becoming a pretty spotless discography for a band with seemingly little aspirations to do anything but be a predictable answer to what a band called "the Whigs" would sound like.

Mostly, though, Flowers just feels like a breather album after the last two, a typical Joan of Arc album wholly trapped in the moment of creation.

This album is a textbook grower, not just because it demands repeated listens, but also because the pieces all start similarly and take their sweet time to reveal the individually entrancing things they are.

There's no doubt that I Bet on Sky is a very good record. But at this point, the second honeymoon is over, and there's a barely perceptible distance growing.

For all its flaws and excesses, Cruel Summer is an order of magnitude above the dreck of 808s and Heartbreak (2008), and if it doesn't outshine any of Ye's other solo works, I'd argue that it's a deeper and bolder album than last year's Watch the Throne.

That’s a comparison that could be made between Burner and Bip’s Blue Eyed in the Red Room (2005): similar, but a little better.

It sounds exactly like Eluvium, only with an organ and not a guitar, and with more overt classical aspirations than before.

So Living With Yourself is a lot like, well, living by yourself-comfortable, unchallenging, plenty of time to get introspective and think about things that once were.

We do get a consistent, theatrical dose of glamorous rockabilly out of Bobby Dee.

New Moon feels a little bit long; though only twelve songs, they are all pretty substantial (especially the eight-minute “Supermoon”), and things lag a little between “The Brass” and “I See No One.”

It’s an interesting, intermittently excellent album from a skilled group that could still use a little help in getting out of their own way.

The Beets’ simplicity was one of their strengths, but N.A.P. is the sound of Wauters realizing that in music, as in life, complexity brings richness, and often greater rewards.

While Lightning Bolt may fall somewhat shy of that goal ["the Best Album"], it is a more than solid effort to satisfy the legions of fanboys born between ’77 and ’84, and a convincing argument for their continued existence.

The saving grace of Uncanney Valley is its resolute tenderness, an emotion the band never coaxed out of their twenty-something gloom.

Familial's far from brilliant, but you-snotty brat of the Radiohead generation, lapping up the languor of both Wavves' bong-odored holidays and the admittedly strange sight of Matt Berninger's kid on his shoulders-would do well to turn the dial of your irony meter from "post-post" to "zero" for a half an hour or so.

RKives as a whole, hopeful and appreciative above all else, a way for the band and the fans to celebrate what they had one last time before returning to the present, to careers already well into the next phase.

A relatively safe debut where much of the takeaway is the salivating at Grande’s potential.

The result is light as a feather, with laid back songs that would be perfect played live during some lazy afternoon outdoor festival, sprawled on the grass and drinking a cold beer.

Surfing Strange is a tight and coherent little album whose greatest strength lies in its youthful energy and sense of the ups and downs of the early twenties--the lows of uncertainty and malaise, and the highs of excitement and anticipation.

If He Dies is not only the best iteration of Moumneh’s sound to date, it’s also the clearest showing of his motivations.

At its best, DJ Quik and Kurupt’s BlaQKout is a disarming and unexpected update of the West Coast sound made entirely and staggeringly relevant in a long post-Coast rap landscape.

Why There Are Mountains is plain pleasing indie rock--how it used to be, how it’s ceased to be since, at least in spirit.

It’s an earnest and worthy effort to prove that this band can matter without the PMRC stickering its album cover.

Foals are a tight band with hook-laden grooves. Not worth the hype, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Innings succeeds as a minor expansion and development of the band's essential sound, and it's a progression that makes clear sense.

Freedom Tower is a Blues Explosion record, no doubt, and in that sense it’s not for everyone.

In a technical sense it sounds, like everything Murphy produces, pristine.

It’s better than Nouns, better than the best songs on Weirdo Rippers (2007), and for once, I think, offers this cool idea that Randy and Dean’s next record might move away from the unilateral and slightly prudish use of noise as nothing but noise.

File The Rakes under "serviceable art pop."

It’s an entertaining record to hear, but at times a devastating one to listen to.

To revise a debut with only a slightly more effective result is nevertheless disappointing for all of their fans awaiting an album as moving as their live show.

Cursive aspires for greater things, and Kasher’s aims are marred by over-production, a Nickelback whoosh here, a digitized cascade there.

Majesty Shredding is an energetic return to form for Superchunk, and they've retained the sound that made them indie stars on records like No Pocky For Kitty (1991) and Foolish (1994).

There’s some talent behind these songs; there isn’t a single instrumental dud on The Chemistry of Common Life. But while the instrumentals leave room for some kind of epic lyrics from the right lyricist and singer, Abraham is neither of those things.

Fluff-heavy, Fast Cars snitches on the upcoming full-length: Blockhead better be back on beats, because Bavitz is moving in a sparse, faux-spacey direction that sounds bored compared to his busy work on Bazooka Tooth, Labor Days, and Daylight. But since there’s always going to be two or three songs on any Aesop release that deserve your Jukie-Board sig file, and especially since the The Living Human Curiosity Sideshow finally allows the listener to figure out what the lyrics to those great songs are, this one is just barely worth your lunch money as well.

Every song, for better or worse, is constructed with its own identity in mind, and if nothing else, Mondanile commits to each and every one of these attempts at distinction.

It’s a fun and somewhat liberating thing to listen to, a horribly frustrating thing to try writing about.

An Object scales back the ambitious and ostensibly ambient sound of Everything in Between (2010), but it remains gloomily meditative.

It's an accomplished, knowing work that only seems to have its head in the corner.

Monomania is the sound of a healthy and aware group of musicians who have experimented with artifice and ultimately moved beyond it.

Hypermagic Mountain absolutely trounces nearly every other act in its general stylistic area. Regrettably, however, the duo’s fourth album lacks the formal and emotional peaks and valleys that encourage listening and re-listening to albums in other less hectic and punishing genres.

Enough Thunder certainly offers up enough for any Blake fan to both love and hate--and at the end of the day still be entirely unsure of exactly what to hope for.

The record is a virtuosic display of talent (I don’t even know what sounds I’m hearing on the chorus of “Juliann Wilding”) but it comes across both too eager to impress and too self-satisfied to edit.

On Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile introduces his voice as an element into his solo music, and in turn takes one step forward and two steps back; though his songs are perfectly adequate, the reference points and production are easier than on any previous Ducktails release, and they suffer for it.

It bears all the signs of an artistic statement, stretching for meaning even as it reconstitutes and tears at the corners of its component definitions. It is both complete and incomplete; logical and wayward; good and, yeah, bad.

Where the record works best are its bookends -- the places where it most sounds like Cat Power.

Though at times deeply affecting, Voyageur is not the great statement of a record one might hope for after a four-year absence.

It’s good, and I don’t mean just because it reminds me of Mass Effect‘s soundtrack but on the terms of a record: it ingratiates and ebbs and even exasperates, at a stretch, before rewarding in the end.

Some of the more irregular numbers scream “demo” between their whisperings--think very early Arab Strap, midi beats in place of the crass Scottish semen puns--but overall it’s a solid little barometer, one or two cues offering insight into Casiotone’s current organic direction.

I’m Going Away is a good record, it just doesn’t really sound like the Fiery Furnaces. Though for some, I’m sure, that’ll be very welcome news indeed.

On this, their debut, they’ve shown us they can pull downtrodden bents as good as anyone. But I’m being serious, serious rock band: on your next record I want to hear something more Pope-like.

The monolithic nature of the album feels necessary, but like any sustained chord, every other song tends to have less interesting undertones.

These are good songs, catchy enough to claim a place in your head while grounded by enough passion to put them close to your heart. It’s just that the Long Winters have proven themselves capable of even better than that.

Some Loud Thunder is a mixed bag of spectacular material and hodge-podge studio doodles.

The Blueprint's vaunted resuscitation of sample-based boom-bap rap production is replaced here by big corny synth wipes, a sometimes-fascinating corollary to Jay’s corporate sense of purpose.

Here we’re given a respite from Bon Iver’s heavy crises while still loving on Bon Iver; here, Volcano Choir is inevitably weightless--a pretty happy band with a pretty happy album.

It’s unquestionable that Shine contains more than a few of the most embarrassing recorded moments of Anastasio’s career... More often than not however, Shine serves as a fine reminder that Anastasio is a pro who’s been doing the rock thing far too long to release a crap product.

While it never outshines the alt-country canon that precedes it, The Brag & Cuss is a welcome addition to the genre, an album that understands its influences and rarely oversteps the boundaries they’ve set.

It's a broken diorama, exceedingly imperfect, and as moving for what it isn't as for what it is.

Robin Pecknold's well-chronicled bout with writer's block and three years later, Helplessness Blues has arrived, and the good news is that it unquestionably sounds like a Fleet Foxes record-which is to say: warm and exquisitely pretty.

Substantive lyrics aren’t part of Pip Brown’s forte but, then again, they’re totally unnecessary in the genre to which she peddles.

Lucky Shiner is a good argument for the album as a conceptual whole, and for a musical environment a bit slower than the singles-based landscape that birthed Gold Panda as an entity to be reckoned with.

So it’s possible that the songs on Wait For Me will end up in the same coffeehouses and car commercials and other small, sterile environments as those on Play, but Hall’s drawing inwards as hard as he can, to the great benefit of his compositions, and Wait For Me is unabashedly majestic.

Too Beautiful to Work isn't focused enough to create an atmosphere that whole, and for all the virtue of its experimental tendencies, "Cold Canada" shows the record might have fared better if it wasn't so antsy.

Much of Love and other planets is too accessible to be denounced, and too melodically strong to be ignored.

Their latest, Castle Talk, isn't a staggering improvement on that front. It feels--and, in its middle section even more than on Power Move--not so much a cohesive, self-contained album as a collection of Screaming Females songs that will sound very good live.

The problem seems to be a not yet fully developed understanding of how to make their pop moments gel with the layered atmosphere they seem committed to.

Moments on Hera Ma Nono sound a little AOR for a label as experimental as Thrill Jockey, and one suspects that a tasteful re-branding is all that's keeping Extra Golden and their fascinating dance music from the heights of legitimacy currently enjoyed by much less challenging, much less "World" bands.

There was just so much I loved about Damien in Absence and so much that disappointed me.

Considering the extent to which they seem to follow whatever musical desires grip them at the time, rather than following an overarching path, it's not much of a disappointment to suggest they haven't quite graced the heights of their best work here

It's all very controlled, as any functional dance club record should be, and its quality extends past its single, as any decent-to-good dance club record should be.

The third Foals album doesn’t represent a huge leap forward from Total Life Forever’s formula so much as a refinement.

Pick out the antihero tracks and one or two missteps and you have every Beck album (no typo) crammed into one disc with more wit and charm and weird science and heartache than that dude’s cumulative catalogue.

It wavers back and forth between showcasing the band’s strengths and having fun in the moment, more like a live show than a unified statement.

An Argument with Myself seems like more of an attempt at an encapsulation of Lekman's talent--to use the smallest things as gateways into work more ponderous but still relatable, achingly pretty but still occasionally biting, adventurous but familiar--than a showcase of new directions.

With Our Heads is a lonely, long stretch of un-anchored time passing, the audible, honest-to-god equivalent of switching one's mind into Airplane Mode and eyeing the smooth, barely altered upper cloudscape for the duration of a flight.

No amount of production dross can obscure the fact that Clockwork Angels still constitutes the strongest collection of Rush songs since the mid-'90s.

The Eraser is not Radiohead good.

There’s no getting around it: this sentimental, electronically-hackneyed glitch-pop shit can be remarkably effective.

Perhaps its primary feat is that the music manages to sound fresher than anything industrial-tinged has a right to sound.

An entirely pleasant, listenable little soundtrack.

Enemy Mine is altogether more defined in its varying forms, food groups falling out a cornucopia rather than coming together like the stew that bubbled in the "Beast Moans" cauldron.

Though these variations are often enjoyable, particularly on an individual track level, taken as a whole they're just too slight, making Civilian difficult to fully engage with.

It’s largely half-baked in its execution.

It suffers less from a lack of competence than a general lack of inspiring tracks and the consistency of swiss cheese.

So Hot Chip have built a very admirable sound. What confuses the issue with Made in the Dark is that it presents so many glaring kinks that still need working out.

With the gentle, delicate soundscapes of Let Go mostly replaced by energetic guitar riffing, Nada Surf can only transcend the limitations of the '90s sound for so long.

This EP is thus a fine, if also slight, document that showcases the duo's serious potential-and hints, perhaps, at how it could be used to produce a more ambitious set of songs as he approaches his next album--more than it fulfills the promises of Pallett the almost solo performer/arranger.

If reduced to a single disc, Street's Disciple could well be one of the more exciting albums of the year. As is it's a solid, if not brilliant album from an artist we've come to not expect too much from.

Hey Hey is sharper than "D-Don’t," filled out and throbbing like soul should be, not burdened with the entropy of a smattered ramshackle collection all heart and no brains.

It makes for a workmanlike listen. For all the frills of doom and cadences of industry firing on all greasy pistons, the dynamics at hand are simple, rounded up summarily when the album presents its glaring contradictions as a matter of fact

Traditional folk-rock outings that reek of Workingman’s Dead (1970) and the musk of Jerry Garcia’s beard.

The terrible truth is that -- and maybe this is a matter of an album’s length, replayability, interesting tenure, obedience, whatever -- Gruff Rhys will always be as politely awesome as Gruff Rhys has always been, and that’s just not enough anymore.

It’s not a bad album, and Doom’s rapping is damn near unparalleled; but when you come right down to it, The Mouse & the Mask kinda feels like a throwaway.

If Drake had it his way, one imagines he would deliver this album via fan newsletter. He made this record for them-which is why his aesthetic so thoroughly encases this record like a cocoon made of syrup-and he'd rather any stone-throwers politely evaporate.

Thing is, though, that for every failure Graduation puts me through it has many a saving merit that only the nigh witless audacity of Kanye West could afford

Sift through Are the Dark Horse and the sounds of the Beach Boys or Orbison can certainly be found, but the band has yet to learn the clean, economical songwriting of their influences.