Plague Park is in many ways a darker, less inviting listen than his previous work.

Load Blown is damaged as a whole, even despite its overwhelming internal coherence that makes for few surprises along the way.

The best the band could do is take this folk stance and make it somehow relatable to the sort of listeners like those in Chicago, blessed as they are with one of the most storied and diverse stocks of bands in the country. What Of the Cathmawr Yards ends up instead is a cold catalogue of personal taste and increasingly diminishing scope.

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.

I'm elated to report that Zonoscope is a more than worthy successor to Colours, adhering to the tried and true follow-up formula of introducing just enough new wrinkles to their method to keep the proceedings from being a rehash, but containing plenty of the rapturous pop hooks that drew us to them in the first place.

Like a professor spewing a semi-clever lecture on civil rights and contemporary left politics where he’s pretty good at rhyming his facts but acts like rhyming is all the sinew that his presentation needs to connect the bones of his argument.

Phoenix has somehow managed to follow a universally acclaimed breakout record with one that not only avoids falling flat, but succeeds at creating and sustaining a subtly different atmosphere.

Panic Prevention is no classic, but a wonderful testament to intuition, which boisterously, and rightfully, posits Jamie T in that rare class of pioneering artist, one who has created a piece of work to stand with any of the other notable records released so far this year.

Given that the record is so nominally personal and probing, it’s telling that there is not one moment of transcendence, or relief, or acceptance, or melody, or substance.

Soft Will is the perfect summer record, hazy and ill-defined and hard to remember but oh-so-euphoric.

If there's any band that's completely earned the right to gracefully knock themselves off, it's R.E.M. It only took them fourteen years.

FaCE manages to be new, fresh and experimental while still retaining the listenability of much of Pollard’s seemingly never-ending canon.

For their first lengthy introduction, they seem to have lost some verve. It’s a frustrating representation of what a tightrope their sort of exorcism music is.

It’s Not Me It’s You is neither grating or annoying. It’s merely boring.

It suffers both in comparison to Black’s other solo material and on its own decidedly alt-country terms.

Even though it strictly operates in one gear, Last Secrets navigates all the richness the high road has to offer.

Reefer feels like a pleasant departure from that tired self-parody; tossed-off but in a good way.

Over time Napa Asylum reveals itself as remarkably cohesive and more than willing to cede points of entry every few tracks. Still an exhausting experience, sure, but one that's often thrilling, and well worth the effort it requires of us.

It's hungry, vicious synergy that the Detroit duo's got going here and one can only hope that it's something they can eventually translate into something longer than an EP, or at least something with more depth.

The lion’s share of these tracks throb with a purpose that was mostly absent from their last effort.

Reptilians is a batch of competent dance-pop-not as groundbreaking as fans have hoped, not as obnoxious as non-fans may've assumed-overcompensating for all the patience they've tested and the goodwill they squandered on their looping baby-steps back to the Starfucker moniker.

Folks, to my ultimate chagrin, this Divine Providence album wallows in such unencumbered, unmoving crap-it breaks my fucking heart.

This is what we’ve been waiting for; we always knew they could do it.

While their particular brand of retro goth garage is obviously built on an extremely derivative foundation of 60s garage, the Cramps, and the Damned, they're infinitely more interesting in practice than the majority of beige-rock being pushed by the UK music press.

The Sister is another fine record in Nadler's growing catalogue, yet one tied more to the well-trodden tropes (lyrically, stylistically) she's built her name on than we've grown accustomed.

He for sure knows enough that this sound lives and dies by its honesty, and that Childish Prodigy is just that, just an honest album, the best he could have made now, the best of its kind for a long long time. More please!

Although a respectable, yet fickle bid at club fodder, schmaltzy ballads, and trend riding one offs, something about it just doesn’t fit.

The Future Will Come is still a mostly solid as just about any full-length release on DFA, and if some of the best ideas die too soon or don’t go far enough, at least they appear at all.