On Crooked Doors, the music is given ample space to breath, giving it a progressive edge. All told, it's a huge leap forward for Royal Thunder.

White Men Are Black Men Too is a perfect storm of influences and talent that make for an unforgettable album.

Beyond a few flaws, Matt & Kim have put together a fun record, and in the pop game, that comes first.

No Pier Pressure throws out that decade and a half worth of good will by doing the exact opposite, stacking the record with guest stars like Nate Ruess and Kacey Musgraves and "updating" Wilson's compositions with heaps of undercooked stylistic diversions.

This record accomplishes what it sets out to do, engaging the listener with indisputably catchy moments, if a little inconsistently, throughout.

The album is a full hour long, and though most of the songs are captivating, a few tend to drag.

What For? is a little less varied than his past records, as the repetitive nature of the genre (particularly the lengthy jam outro of "Yeah Right") has a tendency to creep in, but it's an aspect that would have only hindered the record more had it been longer.

The Air Conditioned Nightmare feels like another uncompromising work from the intriguing Woodhead, and in its wide-spanning sound, offers something to both long-time fans and new ones.

Yet another highlight in a career overflowing with them.

More polished than 2012's Zeros, Deeper is fuller, fatter and puts more emphasis on its futuristic electronic elements than its nostalgic ones.

Joyner's poem-songs are worth lingering over. As it turns out, his idiosyncratic sandpaper tenor and low spacious guitar style are the perfect instruments through which to deliver them.

Ivy Tripp is not a record about being in love or and it's not a record about getting your heart broken; it's about the foggy, messy tangle of the feelings in between. And they've never sounded so good.

[The] few missteps evince the fact that Wale is finding himself again, treading through the high waters to realize his ambitions. And to that end, The Album About Nothing does more than enough.

Cosmic Troubles is not only stunning, but unexpectedly so--it's not often we get musical reinventions as sudden or dramatic as this that work so well.

Though radically different in execution, The Powers That B is a compelling look at the band's ability to work with sounds both minimal and monumental, while containing some of their most riveting lyrical and musical work in recent memory.

Tales From Wyoming stays safely in the established genre without trying to be groundbreaking, but simplicity and quirky immaturity are the bread and butter of pop punk, and there's enough to satisfy here.

Whitmore pulls off a wonderful feat with Radium Death, creating a record that reads like classic Whitmore, but sounds like something gloriously new.

This is a beautiful, concise blast that conveys this band's musical essence.

There's a thin line between owning up to the voracious hunger needed to reach a new level of fulfillment and being trapped by the desperation to regain a title that is no longer his. Ludaversal finds itself somewhere in between.

Hopefully "No One" is an indication of the long-hidden spunkiness that Sexsmith will finally reveal in full on his next effort. If that doesn't happen, and his follow up is as joyful as Carousel, fans will still be pleased by one fact: Ron Sexsmith's days of being pigeonholed as a sad sack are long gone.

By employing the occasional tapping lead or reverb-drenched tremolo section, the band add layers to each song, resulting in an overall sound that has enough variation to keep it from sounding tedious but maintains enough pop simplicity to keep it catchy and memorable.

This might not be their best work--that's still the cohesive, mind-altering Nootropics--but Escape From Evil finds Lower Dens continuing to push themselves into new sonic territory, the hallmark of any great band.

The Day is My Enemy is an embarrassing display that inevitably ends badly.

That Carrie & Lowell is so rivetingly lovely is no surprise; the difference is that instead of Christianity, the Chinese zodiac or American history, it's Stevens' own life and relationships that he mines here with his trademark deftness and nuance.

On Claustrophobia, Scuba has created an engrossing long-player that's surprisingly more mode-y than moody.

In honest and raw fashion, Earl Sweatshirt unmasks both sides of success.

The record's quieter moments give a welcome reprieve from the extended jamming, with "Right On Time," "Heart Full of Scars" and the slow-burning "Swamp Dog" giving the record some welcome balance.

A Go! Team album that works by evoking their past yet looking optimistic towards the future.