Last Summer is a difficult album to describe because it's made up entirely of these kinds of small moments, gliding gracefully from memory to memory, place to place, like an inside joke stretched into a one-act play.

Despite its painfully obvious flaws, Distortion isn’t bad in the sense that it lacks gratifying melodies or does not possess a certain nostalgic charm.

White Denim remain unusually talented musicians for whom eclecticism is the rule, and expectation the harbinger of some totally bad vibes.

He uses his guitar and ghost-like warble to render the ephemeral as concrete as cantaloupe.

It's the sound of all the band's weapons unceremoniously blunted.

This record isn’t gonna kick you in the head the way that BoC’s last two outings have on occasion done. The break beats aren’t gonna blow you away and there’s nothing here that’ll really get your blood rushing. If you give it the time, though, Campfire reveals itself as an truly beautiful piece of work, better produced and with a tighter sense of melody than the Sandisons have shown in past.

S/T II is that moment cupped in one's hand and blown like dandelion specks at an especially delicious breeze-it is, simply and thankfully, a record by Akron/Family as plain and as forward as we should expect.

Everything is in complete control, which says a lot about their zen-like mastery of the garage rock cubbyhole, but for me half the fun was the audible battle happening right there in the mix: the sweet sound of instruments bucking around, splashing cold water into cold faces.

I’d reject the idea that this album is laid-back in favor of saying it’s too light-hearted.

It is maybe a bit surprising that it's so damned interesting to listen to, and that, along with everything else on The Something Rain, is a powerful testament to the skill of the musicians Staples has surrounded himself with.

The melodies are entrancing, made even more intriguing by their submergence within the reverb, together resulting in an album whose scope and sound are impossible to ignore.

II is a lovely little record, but many of its charms are scripted; even charming people get old when you are forced to spend too much time with them.

The lyrics and musicianship are of the quality to be expected from Hayden, but something’s a little... boring about Elk Lake Serenade.

Miguel De Pedro has instead delivered an oeuvre that plays like a stream-of-consciousness narrative of his growth, and of his many, many tangents, as a musician.

Garbus’s peculiarities are often quite charming--often, not always, because there’s only so much so-called cute we can be expected to tolerate, and though Bird-Brains remains on the side of acceptability, it flies dangerously close to the line (er, wire).

This being their (sort of) third album, HEALTH have ostensibly defined their formula and they seem content with that, tweaking without straying from their core of grating guitars, ghostly vocals, and the occasional synth.

Together they make the fat sound lean, make the mean brighten up and the past (i.e. Fatlip) feel a bit more relevant than it should.

Perhaps it took a grueling creative journey and a battle with self-doubt to get there, but the end result is a band that has retained its brash experimental flare while discovering its heart.

The problem lies in the fact that it’s extremely accomplished, but ultimately boring; there's just no emotional or musical development.

With Show Your Bones, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have proven themselves worthy of the hype, and, more importantly, the excitement caused by an undeniably fantastic record.

It's not perfect, but in the context of its subject matter one feels like its accidents are worth more than another album's successes.

What makes the record work is his acknowledgment that he's just one more voice in that cavalcade, one that neither tries to hide or overemphasize the influence of the other shouts that came before its own.

In the end, Hot Chip leave us frustrated, which makes sense since this is an album about frustration.

Even at its most seemingly ascetic, The Moon Rang Like a Bell is among the most generous, tender, radiant albums you’ll hear all year. It just wants your ears.

Another understated near-masterpiece from a band that doesn’t need to make a bang to make a deep impression.

The album is frontloaded with its best numbers, and they seem to descend in quality as the album progresses.

It has its flaws, and it certainly isn’t some great reinvention of krautrock, but Transparent Things is an incredibly likeable album.