Fade is approaching a late career masterwork, their strongest top to bottom effort since their mid-'90s peak.

The thing that lifts The Great Destroyer just above an album like Trust is that it is more spirited: there’s a hint of revival here.

The ubiquity of the Weeknd has saturated their latest mixtape, and ultimately Echoes of Silence struggles under that ubiquity.

This album sinks in, each listen dry rubbing the quiescent hums and lulls into the brain like a dream half remembered.

Fun and fresh enough on the first couple listens, it remains to be seen whether Vampire Weekend can find long-term favour with the listeners and critics so taken with them at present.

If only you didn’t spoil these tender moments that seem to make my heart want to burst out my chest by goofing around all the time.

For all its maximalist glory, DISCO is remarkably nuanced, minor elements seamlessly shifting in and out of frame behind the compositions’ vibrant foregrounds.

Turns out that OK Cowboy is a good deal like the better house sets you’ll hear at a take-your-pick hot-house European club: pretty exhilarating, though once you’re licking the dry salt off your partner’s cheek you realize that only parts of it are truly inspiring, though all of it was pretty hottt.

A surprising record and a mess of contradictions--an okay band making a great record, classic rock songcraft made contemporary through sheer force of will, a quiet and loud album simultaneously, dancing along the lo-fi/hi-fi binary, a fucking record about Appalachia made by dudes from Portland!--that thrillingly, thinly, radiantly congeals.

Though it's fun, pretty, well-constructed, and hits the buttons, those very facets are in danger, in the absence of Cox's beautiful vulnerability, of becoming what this sound is all about.

It makes for a remarkable debut full-length-just don't expect to see any of it scoring some slow-motion spinning or pastel unicorns when those Pure Moods commercials make their inevitable comeback.

Anyone expecting the nocturnal looping he usually cooks up is in for a shock-Passed Me By is a jagged little tangent designed to make that warehouse seem spookier.

Despite its more fractured stylistic elements -- shoegaze smashing headlong into folk pop -- Writer’s Block emerges as one of the most complete and satisfying records of this year.

King of Jeans, for the most part, delivers compact, devastating blows--the tautest, in fact, that the band has ever dealt.

This is undoubtedly the way the songs should be heard, and the set certainly doesn't feel cheap or rushed.

Although these judgments point toward Slave Ambient being among the top records the summer of 2011 has to offer, the record's off-axis dichotomy, now favoring studio-assembled mellowness, steals enough of the bite and traction from these songs to keep it merely a contender.

Removing the formulae and sensual stimuli from the Party leaves little that’s substantive or innovative. Even the most cursory of examinations would show the group to be an “it” band and not much else. However, Bloc Party’s absurdly good at being an “it” on Silent Alarm.

Little of the album fails to impress in its striking melodic strength or its lyrical intelligence---which shouldn’t surprise Eitzel’s long-time fans. But the album does have one recurring flaw: overextension of its ideas.

Everything's Getting Older proving that, despite his wrinkles and back ache, Moffat's never going to shave his head/convert to Buddhism, and is still the scowling, contemptuous, but eloquent philanderer he was when he was tearing up the '90s--except now, he's a little more comfortable, and attacks using serene piano accompaniments.

The nearly impossible thematic scope attempted and deftly handled here is a tribute to Will Sheff's dexterity and range as a songwriter (if not a vocalist), and the band's chops for being able to keep pace.

The most intense moments in Past Life Martyred Saints are evocative enough to drag you back through your own most overblown emotional crises, but when the buzz fades, you are plopped back into the halcyon present, strangely empty.

It’s wild music, and it’s wildly musical, and, yeah, it’s probably the most wonderfully raw production Springsteen’s talent has ever been channeled through.

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.

Tonally and lyrically somewhere between L. Cohen, Aidan Moffett and David Berman, Berringer's cynical, world-worn love-letters and resigned croon work perfectly with the band's rock steady rhythm-section.