Fourteen tracks may seem slight for someone with that kind of longevity and creative drive, but if it means we get a listenable, often times surprising collection as opposed to a bloated vault dump, then I'll take this over something more "complete" any day.

Musically, Silverman is his best effort since Messner.

Young's best record since at least Mirror Ball and probably Ragged Glory.

A few duds aside, the album succeeds as an ecstasy pop update on the Blood Brothers’ delirious chaos and nobody who purports to miss that band should ignore it.

It is during this fifteen-minute stretch that the album transcends its familiar, blokey, mad-for-it Mancunian template and, though you've heard all these tricks before, achieves something charming, familiar, fucking good-and this is the level on which Delphic needs to operate more often if they're going to wring a lasting impression from this sound.

Parc Avenue often strays too far into excess and departure for departure’s sake to enjoy the brand of a songwriter’s tour-de-force.... But as a fully realized and lovingly sculpted aesthetic, there may be few stronger full-length debuts waiting in this year’s wings.

The songs, sometimes overtly formalist and stylistically unadventurous, are invigorated by the enthusiasm and character of their delivery.

Down There, David Portner aka Tare's debut solo joint, is a further dot on the still-empty dotted line of Animal Collective's career, built on a span of eight or so albums through which these guys have willfully, lovingly defied expectations and definitions and even maybe their own individual talents.

Relistening, the porousness and vapidity of the material makes it pretty obvious that rapper Jeezy’s personality is one note, gruff and brash, forever and ever. But in the album’s waning moments, 'My President' erases any genuine qualms, sporting the record’s best Toomp impression.

This means that even though Get Awkward starts at a frenetic pace and pretty much keeps slapping you about the face for the next half hour--there’s hardly a song that goes above 2-minutes-30--it doesn’t feel like an assault.

The hooks don’t sink in quite as quickly as compared to prior Monkeys’ efforts, but there’s also a lot more going on, and the newfound emphasis on atmosphere prevents Humbug from having the Side-B blahs that were prevalent on "Favourite Worst Nightmare."

Heavy comes across more a shtick than Beginning Stages ever did.

Good songs, great times, and maybe it's a bit too long and short on variety but whatever. Plus, this record actually came out months ago and none of the songs have soured yet. That's something.

A Place to Bury Strangers is a record with excitement hardwired to its musical structure: the elements of these songs are so individually pleasing that, when the band shifts them against each other, the effect is a sense of constant cataclysmic upheaval. Each new variation is giddying.

We Are Young Money is like a microcosm of Wayne’s career: often frustrating, frequently brilliant, and thoroughly, lovably weird.

More than anything else, Channel Pressure is a triumph of studio craft and evidence that the group has as much potential as producers as they do as composers.

It’s not that Rated O isn’t a good album. At least half of it is one of the best albums of the year. It’s that Rated O is just good enough and in a straightforward enough way to make you miss the Oneida that was about joyous, staggering confusion.

While he may be fundamentally un-reconstructed, Pink’s clearly a more polished revisionist, more polished than he’s ever been, and while it may not be conventionally recorded, Before Today still feels punchily archetypal.

At this point, we can assume with a fair amount of certainty that they won't be throwing a diverse masterwork our way any time soon, and if the most we can ask for is a consistent run through low-tempo folk, Riot is probably as good as they're going to give us.

If there’s one major complaint to be made, it’s that Compass is simply overlong. These fourteen songs are proof that there is far more longevity in Lidell’s work, even if at over fifty minutes too many moments seem frivolous or forgettable compared to the striking highs.

Share the Joy represents growth for Vivian Girls, though they're not totally there yet.

Blues Funeral generally succeeds because Lanegan knows exactly what his audience wants and is willing to play to his strengths.

In Ear Park sounds so much like Grizzly Bear that it’s difficult to recognize, at first, that it does occasionally retain the bedroom DIY aesthetic for which Department of Eagles are known, especially in the sense of its canned percussion, and at the album’s best it keeps the music attempting the scope and lushness of Grizzly Bear.

The record's understandable missteps are minor in comparison to its joyful evocations, and though Lindstrøm seems to be attempting to approach new territory, he does it in considerate measures and comes away with something that still makes perfect sense.

For what it lacks in consistency, I Am A Bird Now gains in being, even at its most tedious of moments, an interesting and thematically compelling listen.

As seventeen-track records go, it's edible, and should qualify him for another wave of buzz when the Mercurys come round next year.

This doesn’t seem so much a pop internalization of Deerhoof’s unique talent as it is a kind of album-costume where they adorn the talents of other bands.

They may not yet have a strong enough aesthetic to make a great album, but they've made a unique, highly promising one that might soon create something which can bring Gonzalez's academics into the realm of something softer. In the way his best songs and covers were, and still could be.