The result is a solid debut that immediately screams Abba, disco and “guilty pleasure” for the pre-ironic high school kids who don’t realize they can play football and still get crazy on the dance floor to their parents’ wedding soundtrack.

The Avalanche is, perhaps predictably, a middling reconstitution of its legitimate predecessor.

Bubblegum Graveyard is sophisticated when it needs to be sophisticated, funny when it wants to be funny, and its plodding beat lends itself perfectly to that excellent Osmonds guitar move where they bob their head upwards and tap their foot on each count.

Whether this record is a swan song or the beginning of a very late-career renaissance remains to be seen, but, like the band’s previous releases, Sanctions is perfect for the moment and likely to prove another timeless treasure for those perceptive few.

Kensington Heights isn’t drastically different from anything that’s come before, but it’s Constantines’ most consistent album so far, and a good starting point for anyone who hasn’t heard them and misses that old-time galvanizing, anthemic music.

Like Stephin Merritt, his East Coast cognate, Malkmus’ songwriting chops and eye for upper-middle-class detail are too-available excuses for music that is often unremarkable.

Is it a sleek and assured Euro-pop stylist or a morose, sardonic realist, messy and desperate and unsatisfied with the way things are? It is both, sometimes simultaneously. The mix of poise and scruffiness fluctuates continually. .... The point is that there’s plenty of lounge-y, jazzy pop here, but it’s most affecting when it twists slightly off true.

This is a fun summer record, and just as bitter and conflicted as any fun summer record could be. There is still an art to misanthropy, and Free Energy has it down to a science.

This Enon is leaner and more straight-forward--but also more one-dimensional.

The duo are clever producers. The album doesn't have the lopsided minimalism that's typical with the collage approach. Percussion is only as crisp as the leads and fills the spectrum evenly.

It goes through stretches of boredom. From a distance, the album seems concise and poppy. But up close, the heavy grazing of each song bursts its seams.

There’s a sense of stagery in this album, as there is in all JSBX discs....

This Mess Is a Place is considerably more grown up and pop-leaning than any of Tacocat’s previous albums, with lavishly massed vocals and bounce-y hooks, yet it retains an air of joyous subversion, sweet but spiky and smart.

Molina succeeds in creating a sound refreshingly unfamiliar and exotic.

It’s successful on pretty much every count for two main reasons: 1. It’s well-written and blearily produced; and 2. It's self-aware and not neurotic.

If anything, the album isn't obnoxious or overproduced, and those who are more forgiving of beauty-mongering landscape pop likely have a year-end list candidate. Those who are into Apparat's more adventurous work and collaborations, though, should pass.

Basically, if you hate one track, sorry boutcha. If you love any of them, though, you are going to love them all, unconditionally.

The result makes for a listening experience that's intense and potentially awkward, but one that also somehow rings true.

There are a few hollow trunk rattlers here.... At.Long.Last.A$AP is no fashion accessory, it’s practically a reinvention.

The initial pleasure of past Animal Collective albums is missing, but that may be the point. Panda Bear's grasp of the sublime makes this disc more than worth checking out.

Now that we've all gotten past the question of whether or not their latest album is the true reincarnation of Daydream Nation, it's nice to be able to just bask in the variegated textures and layers of sound.

Macaroni is an album that deserves to be heard.

If this is fusion cooking, they've balanced the spices well enough to come up with a dish that tastes mighty good.

Re-invented and fully assured, Pattern is Movement is a band that can do what it wants. One can’t argue with Pattern is Movement’s results.

This is the best live album I’ve heard in some time, intense enough to hold your attention through its massive two-hour length, inventive enough to add something to what you think you know about these songs.

Pretty much everything else in Meluch’s body of work can fit somewhere between this LP and Sonnet, but surprisingly these two disparate poles are unified as the best work of his career.

Sunwatchers II is an enjoyable listen, and its energy and good intentions are admirable; it’s clear that Sunwatchers take the spiritual and political implications of musical ecstasy seriously.

Joachim Nordwall, Daniel Fagge Fagerström and Henrik Rylander are enough of a quorum and enough in sync with one another to make a defining closing statement.