Victorious is premium Wolfmother in places, and pretty much abominable in others.

The Catastrophist is an odd record--an album that was probably more interesting to perform than to listen to.

Operator is a very good debut, impressively original without becoming too inaccessible, and the debut single that dropped three years ago sounds as fresh and as authentic as it ever did.

Songs distort from their structures, allowing for a gelatinous cortege that serves to distinguish the album with flair and maintain a fetching edginess throughout.

Trust ends with Chapman pleading his object of affection to have some faith in him, though it could also be a message to his listeners: setting aside his lackadaisical manner, Chapman really does want you to care about what he thinks.

Ultimate Care II doesn’t inspire one to peer closer into the musicality of everyday life; instead, you’ll constantly look at the time, wishing it’d sped up so you can move on with anything else.

The potential is there for this to be very good, but the fact that it’s so comprehensively safeguarded limits it hugely.

As more challenging and artful pieces like The Morning is Waiting prove, the Brewises’ love for intricate harmonies will always go hand in hand with slick pop hooks.

In their dramatic interplay they find their lust for perversion and compulsion, as if exploring the infinite degrees of their relationship with the same piquant allure of Gainsbourg and Birkin (albeit less warm and more interpersonally brittle).

Hiperasia is an incoherent mess, sure, but a fun one, too, splattering all kinds of disparate, colorful sounds in the hopes that some of it will stick.

While a lack of editing and consistency may keep neo from being better than promising, the energized rush of holding the void and hyper-melodic the sickness deliver two of the album’s best moments, the latter being the most successful synthesis of So Pitted’s want of strange and aggro.

The talent, confident and imagination on display throughout this album makes it a must-listen, a chance to let your mind wander and to lose yourself in an incredible plangency of strings.

It’s not quite inspiration, or an emotional center. You leave this record thinking about how complex and refined it is, or maybe about how much Jack Tatum has grown as a songwriter. But at the end of the day, the album doesn’t embed itself into your daily life in the way Nocturne or Gemini did.

There’s reason to believe that the kind of soppy, mellow pop they write just doesn’t have a place in our current times, that it reeks of starry-eyed nostalgia. But as every generation has a Seth and Summer romance for younger audiences to scrutinize and fawn over with episodic foresight, there will always be a platform for heart-on-sleeve songs to track the high and lows of a teen soap opera.

Music for Listening to Music to isn’t just a background pleasantry; instead, it may very well be the one that could move Goodman into the foreground of her career.

While every song here makes note of the relationship at the center of School of Seven Bells, this is not a downbeat album. Instead, it's a record that showcases everything the band is about.

Remove the four or so songs that never seem to do more than bubble happily in an unambitious realm of chanted hooks and rehearsed quirkiness, and the result is an album fit for anyone with the slightest predisposition for fun.

All in all, Painting With feels just far too interpolated, and even familiar, to truly grasp, though through its failures it manages to somehow bring them one step closer to achieving those awe-inspiring moments of yore.

Hilton tries to be many things, oftentimes all at once, though sometimes it works.

Conrad’s strategic intentions get the best of him, swerving between unmemorable mid-tempo cuts and stodgy piano playing with the occasional flashes of unfulfilled brilliance.

Human Ceremony is an instinctive record, with the band more than happy to act on an impulse. The enthusiasm of the band is infectious, always remaining grounded but delightfully exploring their own infinite limitations.

Skilled Mechanics is an intelligent, pertinent piece of work that shows just how fresh the ideas of Thaws remain.

Every track is a potential hit, and Sia’s use of pure pop hooks, coupled with an astounding control over her rampant voice, makes this a very good record.

Pop. 1280 are still concerned with the dark underbelly of the human experience, though the sneakily measured Paradise proves that even the most degenerate souls deserve some sanguine aggression, too.

All in all, Curve of the Earth comes across a little on the self-indulgent side, and although most bands evolve and move on from past successes, over-complicating things can lead to that band losing their sense of character and identity.

Suicide Songs juggles anguish and optimism in equal measure, somehow mournful and triumphant in search for some kind of personal salvation.

From referencing Harold Shipman in a song title to taking a moral high ground to the view of secluding yourself with drugs, Songs for Our Mothers presents an insignificant manifesto.

All in all, the result of Chairlift dabbling in the mainstream pop archetype is the duo’s best and most cohesive album to date.

The problem with Hymns is that it chugs along with a series of stilted niceties that lack any kind of rhythm or emotion.

Daughter seem trapped within the confines of their influences.

His boyish sensibilities alongside his weary, romantic croon does grate, and especially so considering he’s taking a musical approach that automatically puts him in a more vulnerable place. But in trying to find his groove back, Maine’s insular stiffness fails to provide any plausible authenticity.

Vile Child is a debut LP that is rife with a resounding honesty and an airtight dexterity.

Smith doesn’t make any compromises to make things any more agreeable--in fact, the album’s bloated runtime and cogent lyrical content makes it a somewhat weary listen that rewards more when taken in short, sporadic sessions.

While these tracks may not have made the cut, some strong melodies and ideas make this release worth the listen.

Throughout Emotional Mugger’s 39-minute runtime, Segall is comfortably out of step, abandoning the pop refinement of Manipulator to creative self-sabotage with some of the more album’s more electrified moments, which, while highlights, don’t constitute the bulk of the album.

Adore Life, in particular, isn’t so much a maturation but a continuation for Savages.

Leave Me Alone is giddy with joy, cackling with sun-drenched vibes and that captivating youthful energy, and it’s impossible to listen to tracks like Easy, Chili Town and San Diego without leeching off it.

With Blackstar, Bowie disengages himself once again from popular opinion and scoffs at the idea of taking the righteous path, finding inspiration in what is immoral and contentious. But in doing so he also finds an artful niche that suits his sixty nine years of age.

The record’s lack of organization and resistance to stasis work against its accessibility. Those willing to mine such a dense work will be rewarded in a visceral sense, but may be left groping in the darkness for a specific, externally-fabricated meaning. Either way, the abstractness and wandering abandon of Mutant define not only the album, but Alejandro Ghersi’s approach to music.

PRODUCT is truly what you make of it - both highly addictive and somewhat unfinished, it leaves a good amount of open space for the listener to construct a set of vivid, imaginary images into something personal, even meaningful.

Garden of Delete does manage to disturb despite its more frivolous moments.

Jamie Woon has dropped a second LP every bit as captivating as his first, and it’s hard to find any faults with this piece of work. Sumptuously slick, and with the humidity of a tropical locale. Make sure you make time for Making Time.

Like all Newsom’s albums, it is full of beautiful music and lyrics that initially appear enigmatic but are in fact simply dense, but it’s the first one to embed within itself, on various levels, the necessity to continue mining its depths.

Beach Slang are well-aware that there are people out there who feel just as they do, and they reveal their allegiance through the power of a good ol’ rock song.

Are You Alone? only reveals itself more dependent upon the listeners’ own experiences, and since we’re dealing with heartbreak here, its potent message will never cease.

The Libertines have tried to recreate the feeling of their halcyon era but have lost their mojo during their extended hiatus, which means that most of the time, this record sounds like someone playing dialogue from outtakes of Steptoe And Son over a recording of an out-of-tune piano being pushed down an old flight of stairs.

The finale isn’t particularly grand, but Holding Hands With Jamie does much to harness the passion of "left of the dial" indie rock while paying attention to now, eschewing accessibility and melody for the sake of finding something aurally distinct.

The unpredictability factor will cause some to turn to something easier on the ear, but if you were to persevere with 1000 Days, it’s very likely that you would appreciate it.

La Di Da Di is full of very cool timbres and some incredible drumming, but its arrangements leave a lot to be desired.

There's a patchwork of pleasantness woven throughout.... By the time the closing tracks roll around, the album has fallen apart entirely. These instrumentals are complete afterthoughts and belong nowhere.

Half Free is both a revelation and a breakthrough, one that finds Remy elevating her songwriting panache while carrying a certain mysticism that seems grounded in both plausibility and commonality.

Lost Worker Bee makes for a lovely epilogue to this period of the band's existence, incorporating the best of their qualities while also diving into previously unexplored musical landscapes.

Sun Coming Down constantly engages and enthralls with an odd sense of humor, cementing Ought as one of the few contemporary post-punk acts that seamlessly merge frantic irreverence with feral intelligence.

B’lieve i’m goin down is further evidence of Vile’s conclusive authenticity, and his position as one of songwriting’s most understated commodities.

Good Sad Happy Bad ultimately comes across as frustratingly hollow, a hodgepodge of unvarnished ideas that don't amount to their true potential.

Delightfully off-key and inimitable in their vision, Illegals to Heaven is another peculiar leap forward for a band that only sees through a singular filter.

For a debut LP that relies so heavily on a sound that is considered by some as fossilized, this is a very good effort. Urth is meticulously intricate in its more labyrinthine moments, and categorically barbarous for the rest of it.

With the zeal of archivists and a yen for experimentation, they have found strength in giving tribute to their influences, reaffirming the role of interpretation in contemporary music.

Key Markets doesn't disappoint. Their commitment to their aesthetic and their ability to use it to say new things is unflagging.

It’s a surprise to see him employ such an economy of language, but Bejar can still command your attention with his sharp, romantic one-liners. He’s setting the scene by making a visceral impression with characters that feel alive, engulfed in their indecisiveness, driven with a theatrical imagination that’s as restless as it’s ever been.

Despite the weak ending, Wolfe brings a chaotic, engulfing sound that makes this one of her heaviest works yet.

Perhaps there’s not that one killer single that will turn her into an instant sensation, and those are bound to emerge, but what she’s cultivating with Georgia holds more value: that of creating an essential body of work that is unaware of any imperfection, coming from a mind that’s overflowing with a glut of ideas.

The downside is that both members of Team Beamwell are retreading well-worn paths that lead to nostalgic, rather than newfound, destinations.

She knows what it is to crave whiskey, to lust after men, to flout the petty hypocrisy of small-town country life and then cry and ask Jesus for forgiveness. This time she wove this narrative of Southern womanhood into The Blade and, by forgoing judgment and flaunting all its incoherent complexities, made it universal.

What always distinguished HEALTH was their ability to go off into a maelstrom of ominous disrepair, and losing sight of that leads its core sound to suffer regardless of whether they alter their approach.

The Monitor makes the listener feel unified with the band in their alienation. The Most Lamentable Tragedy presents an abstracted story as its emotional core, and it’s significantly harder to respond to that more distant lyrical perspective.

Wildheart impresses in parts, and Miguel’s vocals are a thing to behold. For the most part, however, it’s a record that struggles to fully hold your attention.

His synth work on this record is nothing short of remarkable, and his ability as a producer is further enhanced to a level at which he has no contemporaries. Parker is a once-in-a-generation talent, and this album is conclusive evidence of it.

Almost every track in Calling Out features a good sorting of conspicuous power chords provided by frontman Ezra Tenenbaum, a reminder that it’s not just about fidgeting with careful arpeggios.

Staples has so much to say in Summertime '06 that it’d be impossible to fully dissect in one listen, and his ingenious phrasing makes for a constantly amusing variety of vignettes. A record is only as good as the music that accompanies, though, and collaborative producer No I.D. delivers in spades and then some.

Aside from a few crunching riffs and a smattering of neat melodies, there’s very little to recommend within Drones.

Even if this record isn't perfect, it's clear that she will become an influential figure in high-brow electronic music.

Payola picks off right where their last one left off while completely ignoring that the past decade even happened, which sounds like a harder feat then it might appear.

Each track sounds as fresh and as punchy as the last, and it is instantly infectious.

It’s refreshing to see an EDM producer balancing his more hedonistic impulses with genuine artistic ambitions, especially when it’s done with such a consistent energy and purpose.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward. And I can think of no better reward than this album.

Multi-Love demonstrates that the band isn’t beholden to a singular, lo-fi aesthetic. And for now, that’s more than enough.

In Colour is one of the best albums of 2015 and one of the best dance albums in recent memory, simultaneously a moving homage to London rave culture and a realization of the potential of one of the most exciting and original minds in music today.

here’s not one tired moment, no obvious retreads to be heard. It’s a solid third act, making good on the promises of (many) tomorrows.

It’s not to say that English Graffiti is musically incompetent, though their impulse to borrow eighties nostalgia is more akin to that of perusing your relative’s baby boomer collection instead of following your cool uncle’s guidance.

It can sound almost laborious in its structural directness mixed with its lyrical opacity.

After isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly an album that sounds as strong and mysterious the first time and 10th time you listen to it.

It’s certainly one of the edgier twee recordings in recent years, almost an oxymoron in itself, one that falls short on its promise to channel its internal chaos with sprightly reminiscence.

The songwriting here isn’t just adding superficial layers to Matsson’s previous sound, it’s a step forward in style. So while that may make the album his most pleasing first listen, the dulling of the edges of his previous work keep it from being one of the more memorable.

The band begins to slog through the session--each song sounds like the sonic embodiment of utter indifference, only this time it’s accompanied by electric instruments.

Even with its faults, The Magic Whip is remarkably cohesive; not a single track is superfluous, flippant, or jarring.

While California Nights doesn’t offer a more sophisticated version of Best Coast so much as a blander one, the heightened ambition of the songwriting and production could be an important step forward for the band.

The album frequently descends into seemingly chaotic feedback and amp fuzz but the dirt is very much artfully, deliberately applied.

These are songs that mostly get to the heart of the matter with open-hearted directness, and in balancing the coarse with the refined there’s a clearer sense of what Scott wants to find even if she struggles to understand the conditions that affect her most deeply.

Kindred’s arrangements are a heap of disjointed sound fragments glued into a form that exists solely to support the glossy veneer.

II follows its predecessor’s footsteps to the T, acting less as an evolution and more as a sharp, acute continuation of what made that album such a force to be reckoned with.

Their idea of a party anthem may be quick to please, but their unpretentious honesty and just sheer enjoyment makes a lasting impression.

Her wordplay ducks and weaves among the braided guitar melodies and idiosyncratic rhythm section with a razor-sharp cutting edge, with varying levels of daintiness, allowing the dangerously catchy melodies and thicker-bodied hooks to amass into a fantastically fluid LP.

Look past the pastel surface-level familiarity of Escape From Evil and you’ll find that no matter what tool-kit a band is equipped with, superb songwriting and refined attention to detail and aesthetics always prevail.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is an incredible addition to Wilson's body of work. Drawing from the simple and the complicated, progressive and pop, light and darkness, it proves that no force can erase his talent and standing as one of the best and most underrated musicians of today.

Untethered Moon is truly the work of a veteran musician who continues to tweak the same kind of song with the adventurousness of a curious young man.

When he does adapt a more modern trap-orientated sound on the final two tracks it doesn’t really work, and this brings down the EP as an entire listen. Crown thrives when he stays close to his classic sound and the flourishes he adds, which today's stripped and skeletal approach to beatmaking actively avoid.

All in all, this isn't a bad direction to go after fifteen studio albums and countless other releases (600 songs!) into a career, as Darnielle again proves that his excessive specificity as a storyteller doesn't mean he can't tell us something about our own lives.