Her confessionalism hits harder with the muscle of her band behind her words.

Let The Blind never pitches badly or throws up a truly terrible track to mack on and leaves me with the potentially duff argument that this record is really good at what it does, but what it does so exactingly reaches for breadthlessness that its under-ambition ends up under-cutting what made the songs pleasant and amenable in the first place.

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

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

Listening to Yuck is kind of like having a conversation with someone who agrees with everything you say. Pleasant at first, it eventually and quickly feels useless.

Embryonic works so staggeringly well because it's so unafraid to place itself in the lineage of unapologetically over-the-top rock album.

2 seems to merely scratch the surface of what DeMarco can do; a record of what-ifs and wishes, 2 is only a partial glimpse of a guy we know too little about.

Pretty but not boring, eclectic but not overindulgent, Cyrk is the work of an artist still messing with all the possibilities in front of her.

Infinite Love is a prickly, antiseptic listen. Surprising and interesting, to be sure, but hostile to expectations and ultimately as unsentimental about itself as it would be of any cultural artifact.

Smartly, Microcastle stops short of alienating, an adjective more than a few scribes have lobbed at "Cryptograms."

What makes Ghost succeed so magnificently... is how the directness, the openness of the lyrics in general, is so beautifully matched to the damaged music, which is itself rife with symbolism and meaning.

What they've done is only pretty good; it's clear what they can potentially do is far more amazing.

It's easily one of the strongest efforts of 2012 thus far.

Half of the fun with Dumile has always been the unexpected, ridiculous sampling and the storyline he develops around it. MMâ?¦Food seems unable to capture this element. Doom manages to drop a few great songs, but as an album, MMâ?¦Food falls flat.

Penance Soiree is everything dirty and vile about rock music.

Hissing Fauna might be Barnes’ finest work yet, an opus built entirely of sugar.

Where he used be be so proficient at letting us hear the sound of his sad, sad heart, the directionless elliptical clutter that defines The Age of Adz just sounds to me like he's manufacturing an idea of what a sad heart might sound like. What's worse, it sounds self-indulgent.

On the surface, Replica's focus on the measured emergence of harmony seems to capture a bit of the modern struggle to find some sense amidst a constant bombardment of careless repetitions, to uncover a beautiful pattern in the digital noise of the everyday.

Hair is more of a juicy stew than a straight-up throwback record.

In short, this is not only more like it--this is possibly Deerhoof’s best album, lingering nostalgia issues with Reveille aside.

The Shining is not a masterpiece, obviously, and nobody ought claim it as such, but it does show the producer striking out in a moderately novel direction and finding consistently satisfying results.

The White Stripes, at the same moment they claim to have finally overcome your entanglements, have provided you the ammunition of a hit-or-miss album.

The Crying Light may prove to be too precarious to hold up on its own in the future, but for now Antony & the Johnsons have provided a perfect gateway to their music.

What could come off as a gimmick, however, instead plays like a focused foray into day-glo disco.

Once the shock of the new dissipates, what’s left is an impeccably assembled record worth indulging with the vigor that any of Lindstrom’s Christabelle-less work deserves.

Those who felt like maybe they were starting to get Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? only to be left out by Unicorns’ sudden dissolution should be reassured that Return to the Sea is a more rooted and confident effort.

Musically, Mirror Traffic flows lazily, songs streaming into one other. Like an engrossing 3 AM conversation lasting until daylight, it's too immersive to give notice to the passage of time, but once it's over it's difficult to recall in detail, some heady dream.

What you should go to Destroy Rock and Roll for is highly enjoyable, competent, reasonably inventive, energetic techno.