Boy King lends further weight to the view that Wild Beasts are one of the best bands operating in Britain today, and it’s not shy in doing so.

It does have some darker moments, but this is a record that is fun, invigorating and ultimately very catchy.

Challenging and proudly disjointed, Innocence Reaches showcases a deranged songwriter whose fickle character knows no bounds.

Continually tedious and far too long for its own good, 25 25 is a almost hour-long endurance test that refuses to let itself out of the duo’s own heads.

Flood Network as a whole is spellbinding even when it’s faintly outlandish, marked with a fraught identity that shrouds her creative audacity.

It’s a good comeback for De La Soul, and there’s plenty to really enjoy here, but there are too many occasions where tracks loiter for too long, not outstaying their welcome as such, just not doing a great deal with it.

Sometimes, Kath will try to replicate the past with a house-oriented number like Frail, where Francis tries her best to replicate Glass’s contagious shrieking but without the same stage presence. In spite of this, Amnesty (I) isn’t afraid of glossing over its faults in hopes of trying out new things.

The creative zeal McCombs displays on Mangy Love, and his willingness to take some chances, even if low stakes, engages both the heart and the mind.

What makes My Woman great isn't the new synths or the rockier tone. It's Olsen herself, filling these songs with the love, desire, anguish and acceptance that comes from her perspective as a woman.

While the production on this album brings a multifaceted sonic support system into the picture, its own repetitive nature, along with that of Rashad’s lyricism, lead to exhaustive monotony.

The direction they took this time around is more scattershot than usual, amplified with generosity, but hopefully these new ideas will guide them to a more focused and inventive pursuit.

Despite his grander statements falling flat and a mid album slump, Trick sees Jamie T at his absolute best.

For every low point there’s the unquestionable standouts.

Whether Glory will have the same commercial and cultural impact remains to be seen, but for now, Britney fans can rejoice: part of her is indeed back.

Whether it’s a one-off project or a fleeting affair for all parties involved remains to be seen, though for the time being, the band’s gift for impromptu creativity has served them well.

The production on this album is bearable and more or less gets the job done, but is mostly composed of bothersome loops. This leaves the bulk of the work to the emcees. And quite frankly, some show up, and some most certainly do not.

Wildflower is simply a joy, an euphonious hour-long journey that exists in some wonderfully naive and blissful alternate universe. It’s an aural paradise you’ll never want to leave.

It’s a collection of unsightly surveillances expressed in a magnificent manner, and the work of a man more than capable of out-creating himself.

Summer 08 is good work from Mount, and an album with its fair share of corking tracks.

Blank Face is occasionally too indulgent for his own good, as he also follows trap and net-soul trends in awkward fashion, but the amount of genuine, larger-than-life parables continue to expose an artist who still wrestles with his hard-knock past.

With Runaway, MSTRKRFT find a balance between the antagonistic incursion and electro-funk wizardry, but asides from that standout, the record as a whole is a jarring affair.

theyesandeye is charming, and even throws in a cover of The xx’s Angels, but is lacking the dimension required to make it anything more than a polite and pleasant affair.

There are times when their elementary to songwriting can make them look as if they’re stuck in their teenage angst, which is expected considering their genuinely fun play on nostalgia is quite detrimental to their brand. But the tunes do stack up, and when it’s delivered with this much conviction, that’s reason enough to rekindle that loyal, longstanding friendship with their most ardent fans.

BBNG have always been fluent and sonically articulate, but enlisting the talents of suitable vocalists to thicken their smokescreen strengthens their suit.

There's no denying the adroit songwriting that’s on display here (they are veterans, after all), as they continue to chug along with low-stakes, yet engaging releases that cement their place as living rock royalty who’ve never gotten their due.

Spend The Night With... offers some impressive diversity without sounding tossed off or smashed together, and for all of the sloppiness it's a surprisingly cohesive album.

For All We Know is an extremely accomplished debut from a supremely talented artist.

Gorguts are no strangers to ambition, always pushing themselves to find beauty in the darkest, most sinister tales of our checkered evolution. What’s most surprising, though, is that we finally get to witness a cast of players who can actually give the ever-shifting Gorguts name the treatment that it deserves.

Centres has the ability to both mollify and unnerve, and to think that most of it was assembled through sensitive means speaks volumes of Craig’s greater ambitions.

Rather than taking many risks, The King of Whys polishes the most successful aspects of past Owen albums, making it one of the strongest albums in Kinsella’s vast discography; the home truths may not make it an enjoyable listen, but it’s definitely worthwhile.

While there are highlights, the album often feels very safe.

Youth Authority is a testament to the resilience of their energy, even as the band headbangs towards middle age. It's an energy that manifests itself sometimes in cringey nostalgia, other times in uninspired sentimentalism, but mostly it's anthemic and endearing.

Most of Ambulance tends to cast a shadow on their most riotous tendencies, but there are still surprises to be found; the more sanguine Blair Dagger almost sounds out of place with its salacious tremolo strains, though it also highlights the band at their most playfully engaged.

Curiously, Omni could welcome some balance into their arrangements; they’ve already figured out a way to structure their lopsided ideas, which is a crucial element that most aspiring experimental bands with a pop slant struggle with in the first place. And that’s something that cannot be taught.

With The Bride, Khan has created a sublime tale of sorrow and recovery, of accepting loss and working through pain to become a stronger person. Likewise, Khan has taken her interest in similar journeys from earlier albums and used them to make her most consistently captivating work thus far.

Glaspy’s voice itself is eccentric and susceptible to emotional metamorphosis, and some of the album’s strongest moments are when her voice is abrasive in its frustration or contrition: for example the first words spat from the chorus of You and I, or the frantic bursts of urgency amongst the affable stream of the title track. Sometimes, the formula for good guitar music is a simple one.

The more you listen to this record, the more it impresses you, even if their name is downright awful.

At 50 minutes, there is the overriding feeling that the album outstays its welcome, with the blueprint lacking the dynamism for it to maintain its focus.

Patience is a record that never really takes off, but is a perfectly polished take on their thoroughly original sound.

It’s mesmerizing background music that doesn’t pass judgment if you let it take a secondary role in your daily life.

The lyrical themes in the album about living a quiet domestic life are aptly mature, but also a tad empty and lack much insight, literal to the point that you’d assume main songwriter Ben Bridwell was peering through a window during sessions to write about anything he could find.

Fading Lines does leave much to be desired in its implementation, though, but there are multiple hints here that suggest that this is only the beginning for de Graaf.

Despite its moments of lucid release, Minor Victories mostly likes to loom in the shadows with hardly any form at all.

Mitski’s boldness is hugely impressive, and couple that with the fact the record is so expertly mixed and edited, she has produced one of the year’s more complete LPs.

With Ha, Ha, He., they have refined that formula [of the self-titled debut] further, sharpening up the edges of their sound and ultimately delivering a superb record.

All in all, this is another first-rate effort from one of the most deviant voices in hardcore.

It’s not always the most memorable listen, though through its free-flowing divagations we finally begin to feel more empathy for an artist who’s too perceptive to hide behind his taut guitar accents.

She misses the mark slightly, and though her take on sweeping and haunting art-pop isn't always the most distinct--especially when compared to some of her like minded peers--it is in the end a truer and more consistent statement of her abilities, and one that also offers a lot more promise.

Mvula has written a hypnotic record that provides a congenial embrace, but it also isn’t afraid to take bold action. A new star is most definitely born.

As strong as the hooks and melodies are in British Home Movies, it’s her artful narratives and evocative choruses that really stick, enveloped in micro stories of traveling along paths that are paved with memories.

Yak haven’t reinvented the wheel, but their work is invigorating in its own right.

From the saucy R’n’B of Tide and Chandelier, the frenetic Choking on Your Spit to the gorgeous, laid-bare swoon of Keep Me, Get Gone is an expertly accomplished piece of work from a band still fledgling in their career.

Stephan Babcock is a determined performer, and his bandmates are suitable harmonizers, but even at a tight 30-minutes the album’s lack of strong melodic direction quickly turns tiresome with its stilted, colorless sonic onslaught.

Lee’s music comes from a place that’s pure, completely at odds with his current urban environment, handled with loving precision; nevertheless, it also fails to resonate when he’s too wrapped up in his own insularity.

The album’s title suggests something close to perfection, and 99.9% isn’t too far from being the ideal electronic record.

In substituting the ferocity of their debut for positivity, Eagulls have constructed a very good record that is arguably better than their well-received debut.

The effect is stark, and intensely compelling. At 17 tracks long, this is a listen that plumbs substantial depths, but in Blake’s world, time ceases to be a constraint.

Weaves have written a good debut record that is unafraid to take chances, and to an extent, it signifies a band that will only get hungrier with time. There’s still in search mode, though, exceedingly pushing themselves to write clever pop songs that sometimes expose their calculated overconfidence.

There's plenty of material worth diving into on this album, but the results could have been much, much stronger.

It’s a buoyantly hopeful album where Hyde gives a final wave goodbye to his darkest days before moving on to greener pastures.

Despite not taking any drastic leaps, he’s once again delivered another wide-eyed, hypnotic set that finds a satisfactory compromise between quasi-ambient soundscapes and headphone-nodding grooves.

For all of the melancholy, it's far from a depressing experience; if anything, it's an oddly uplifting album, one that manages to find a great deal of beauty lurking just beneath the ugliness we sometimes find ourselves confronted by.

Holy Ghost just resonates because it’s so deeply felt and passionate--with hardly a wasted moment throughout its brisk 28 minutes--to such a degree that it’s easy to dismiss its songwriting flaws.

By taking various elements from not only their collective past, but also the work they've done separately, Radiohead has created something wholly new and utterly entrancing.

It’s the adequate album to write when you’re on a quest to become something, later to realize that you’ve no idea how to carry on fulfilling that need. It’s a transition that Toledo perfectly captures, one that he’s relieved to have outgrown.

White Hot Moon doesn’t really vary much from their last full-length Feast of Love, though it does showcase a still-promising band that’s one step closer to finding their true identity.

It leaves the impression that The Last Shadow Puppets are principally a conduit for Turner and Kane to demonstrate just how suave they are, and while it’s hard to find many faults with the record, it’s lacking an edge to make it a great one.

Willner continues to move into more exploratory territory, though in taking his music to a denser, more obtuse place, the divine simplicity that’s defined his entire body of work suffers.

Sleep Cycle represents, and unintentionally so, a creative rebirth that goes against Animal Collective’s increasingly evanescent creativity. It took long enough, but the investment was worth it.

The result is a convoluted but accessible record that is perhaps Wilkinson’s best to date.

At times, the irregular rhythmic contours they employ get woefully tiresome, especially in its rigidly monochromatic second half. But Autolux’s dogged pursuit in doing things their way, and without an hourglass by their side, is worthy of admiration.

Brilliant Sanity is occasionally brilliant, but it could greatly benefit if it let go some of its sanity.

There are areas, in the likes of Instrument, where the creeping grooves are compelling and the tension is perfectly poised, but time and time again these moments are lost amongst reverb bursts and toxic swells that go past the point of creating a metronomic cue to something sinister, and instead appear vexatious in their oppression.

Over time, Morby should outgrow his occasional Dylanesque vocal quirks and redundant baroque embellishments. Still, Singing Saw will be remembered as a breakthrough moment from an artist who’s now more comfortable articulating his own visual language.

If Anything was good, but this is the work of a band who are well on their way to establishing themselves as key cogs in their category.

If it were not for Katy's distinctive voice--which she gloriously wields with an Aguilera-like ferocity during the last forty seconds or so of each track--Honey would not survive its own sweetness. At certain moments, however, the energies between Katy and the producers mesh just right, resulting in alchemic varieties of urban pop that glow brighter after each listen.

Aside from dubstep-resembling "I Don’t Love You Anymore”, a breakup song that doesn’t really mesh within the political context of Hopelessness, there’s hardly any fault to find in Hegarty’s incredibly imaginative portrait of a world that’s in dire need of some reformation.

It makes for something of a experimental jam session where its members are trying to perfect a unified sound alongside different lyrical approaches, which strike a fine balance between campy sci-fi imagery and silly, doom-laden metal tropes. And yet, once it’s fused all together it comes across as one big slab of raucous, careening psychedelia. King Gizzard are still grounded to their garage roots.

Gore is a listen as complex and engrossing as we’ve come to expect from Deftones, and they continue to be a band that matures organically, becoming more and more fluid in their own craft.

It tempers Frightened Rabbit’s invigorating merriment in an attempt to turn them into an inoffensive, poker-faced troupe.

The strongest songs come at the very end, where Harvey most effectively puts us in the setting she's describing and has the melodies to keep us there.

Varmints is a playfully delirious listen that constantly rewards with new ideas at every corner, one that sketches an idealized pop landscape without recognizing that it actually touches all of its requisite pleasure points.

From the thumping, industrial charge of I Exhale to the sublimely hypnotic techno of Low Burn, Underworld are in full form, giving meaning and substance to every single minute with hardly a wasted moment.

The hastiness and outlandishness of the swerving soundscapes are the album’s strengths and it’s weaknesses, simultaneously keeping a listener enticed and running them ragged. Such zeal keeps Krohn’s final destination on the horizon, just out of reach.

Kendrick Lamar’s talent is superficial in the extreme, plumbing his own creative depths with an unerring attention to detail. With untitled unmastered., he has found another way to sheathe people in his compelling vision.

Weiss is a smart, heartfelt performer whose stories rarely veer into overwrought territory, though the lukewarm acoustic fluff that occasionally lingers throughout Standards bogs down an otherwise affecting and perceptive listen.

The sound HÆLOS have refined is the perfect foil for truly spectacular things to happen, but with the exception of the album’s centerpiece, Oracle, Full Circle consistently gives the impression that the tools aren’t being used as efficiently as they could be.

If only she would’ve toned down the unnecessary sensual flourishes to cultivate more of what she does best: amiable, pleasant songs with outwardly simple, yet weighty underlying truths.

The whole of it is too calculated, even if they occasionally hit the mark with an obvious attention to craft which, to be fair, certainly counts for something.

While Hitch may kick off poorly, it more than makes up for it by back-ending the tracklist with some of the band's best work.

IV is impeccably produced, one that tailors even the finest details with a delicate brush; even when it disappoints it’s still a joy to listen to since every instrument is mixed to perfection.

Cut for cut, this is a triumph of melody and intelligence, with hooks that aren't cute and noise that doesn't dampen introspection, cosmic and prosaic at the same time. Parquet Courts have conquered rock 'n' roll's biggest hurdle: to move forward while staying true to themselves

There are additions to her guitar-pop foundation here, but they’re mostly limited to the occasional keyboard line or an anomaly like the dreamy synth outro of Outside with the Cuties. Met on its own terms, however, it’s a record that plays entirely to Kline’s strengths and confirms her as a worthy successor to the legacy of indie modesty.

The boys are in peak form in (Girl We Got A) Good Thing, a sauntering piano-led number that has this bubbling, dumb-is-more-fun David Lee Roth attitude about it that could possibly cause one to shed a single, happy tear in its rousing finish. The colorfully romantic Wind in Our Sail is also typically gleeful, detailing a cute meet alongside one of the band’s most memorable choruses since Pork and Beans.

Admittedly, iii flirts dangerously with its commercial sound, to the displeasure of fans used to Miike Snow’s earlier work. But there is no denying the creepy genius of Genghis Khan, the frenzied fun of For U (a collaboration with Charli XCX, no less), or the unapologetic bounce of The Heart of Me.

He’s on a full-on conversationalist binge on Sky, though it’ll demand your extra attention since the album’s turbulent production tends to obscure most of his learned reflections. In spite of this, it wouldn’t be a true Mould record if it didn’t hit you with that pummeling, noisy sheen.

The rest of the record, for all its flash, leaves us in some bland middle ground- lacking the impact and craft of great pop music, but too fleeting in its appeal to work as anything else.

That lack of restraint, of wanting to offer moments of merriment through straightforward movements, is not as revealing as it is expected, though Compassion is at its most gripping when it decides to go against the grain.