There's vitality peppered throughout here, offering enough hope to momentarily forget the despair, as melodies lift the listener briefly before crashing you back down. This mercurial nature makes Arms Around A Vision a beguiling listen, one that's strangely difficult to stop listening to.

On New Bermuda, Deafheaven's myriad ideas are expertly, logically organized across five tracks. It's more proof that it's hard to hyperbolize when it comes to praising Deafheaven, a band that's nearly peerless in its ability to craft fascinating, forward-thinking aggressive music.

[The] 14 tracks feel bloated--less so, though, if one treats Honeymoon as a concept album, a 66-minute Quaalude-and-wine dream musical that spans the history of Hollywood and 20th Century cinema.

While this project will likely infiltrate the Serato of many a nightclub DJ, there's little--outside the three or four cohesive, codeine-fuelled joints surprisingly carried mostly by Future--that reaches the potential of what What a Time to Be Alive could have been.

Though the triumph of 1000 Days is its fusion of light and dark, there are some moments that feel out of place: the murky noise on instrumental "Dovetail" is a bit harrowing against the gentle acoustics on the title track, while "Little Dream," a 38-second spurt of woozy punk, appears and disappears out of nowhere.

Dropping two or three songs would be enough to turn this very good record into a brilliant one.

Rub is fun for a few listens, but it's hard to really fall in love with.

Its tendency to slip into trance-like arrangements can make b'lieve feel a bit too sleepy at times, but moments pop up just in time to pull you back.

Granted, the guitar and sax rocker "Sed Knife" stands out for the wrong reasons — it's maybe a little too clean and straightforward given the context--but after years of flirting with the fringes, Half Free hits the art-pop bullseye.

It's a bold start to another chapter in TesseracT's existence, who will only benefit from having all the pieces back in their rightful place.

Just musical enough to swallow, and just raucous enough to rattle your bones, Girl Band's Holding Hands with Jamie represents all the harmful and healing qualities of noise. It won't be long until you're hooked.

Have You In My Wilderness finds Holter narrowing her focus a little. In doing so, she gets the best of both worlds, showing off her ability to write warm and breezy pop music while maintaining the complexity, and perplexity, that made her so intriguing to begin with.

With Mayberry's recent participation in the discussion of misogyny on social media and in music, it's easy to view these songs through the lens of feminism, but it's just one of the many compelling facets of Every Open Eye's overall scope.

At its best, Adams' version of 1989 is an adoring homage to Swift's overlooked talent as a storyteller, though there are also a few key moments that fall flat without the high-gloss bombast that the originals were treated to.

Pieces like "Salamander," "Myzel" and the live tracks "Moos" and "Fichte" don't sound like classic Pole as much as they feel like classic Pole.

The one flaw is that at times Frahm allows the songs to continue for too long, losing the flow of the album--particularly between tracks 9 through 11, but later as well--but that's a small concern. Otherwise, Frahm's Late Night Tales curation is a blissful, satisfying experience.

Die-hard Windhand fans won't be disappointed by Grief's Infernal Flower, and new fans mind find it serves nicely as a jumping off point to get more familiar with the group's material. Either way, it's an excellent addition to a record collection for doom fans everywhere.

Toeing a line both musically and lyrically between the darkness and the dance floor, Days Gone By is perhaps best enjoyed in the later hours, whether you're in your own head or out of it.

All A Man Should Do is the band's first album in three years and could do with more of the tenacity that has made them crowd favourites, and less of the self-pity.

Rawlings-Welch are so good and natural in their borrowing that Nashville Obsolete evokes familiar sepia-toned moods almost without ever sounding worn-out or dated, the only exception perhaps being "Short Haired Woman Blues," on which the tempo feels sluggish.

Panic Stations is an easy and enjoyable listen, with all of the energy and dynamism that fans have come to love and expect from Motion City Soundtrack.

So There, Ben Fold's collaborative LP with yMusic (a classical sextet from New York) is poppy, ambitious and bold. Yet despite clocking in at nearly an hour--including a 20-minute-long concerto for piano and orchestra with the Nashville Symphony--the new record feels scarce on songs.

Didn't He Ramble shimmers, saunters and charms; Hansard has never sounded so good.

Patient listening toward the end of Pagans is absolutely rewarded.

More nuanced and compelling than the Watts native's underrated debut, 2011's Follow Me Home, Jay Rock's zip code-titled effort should be copped for the first Black Hippy posse cut since 2012 alone.

Artificial Dance is an extended glance at one side of Leimer's oblique sonic outlook, one which is as wonderful as it is weird.

Lyrically, the album is poignant and clever, though it does occasionally falter, as on the grungy nu-metal number "Happy Song."

Not every song on the record lives up to the anthemic nature promised in the title, but there are certainly moments of triumphant redemption and plenty of nostalgic nods to fulfill fans' understandably high expectations.