The album is the sort of ridiculous over-commitment to a style that is appealing and fun to hear, even if it's not great.

Flood is a musical and lyrical leap forward that delivers a multitude of rewards. That it ends in Donnelly’s strongest composition to date makes for literal icing on the cake.

Taken as a whole, Castle Talk is leaps and bounds ahead of any other Screaming Females album. Take the album track by track, however, and you'll notice the very few tracks that just fall flat on their face.

Combining 60s girl pop and 70s garage pop with the lo-fi mist that, admittedly, shares common ground with bands like Wavves, Vivian Girls and No Age, Dum Dum Girls come up with a very relevant and heartwarming throwback.

It’s impressive in small doses, but as Culture progresses you get a strong sense of deja vu, where each track upends the next with a petty familiarity that is just frustratingly repetitive.

While it would be remiss to question an artist’s chosen working methods, perhaps if Elizabeth hadn’t been quite so fiercely independent in its recording, and had had to compete with the usual unwanted distractions of the outside world, then Dancing might not have been just an impressively accomplished album, but a more striking, perhaps even outright essential one.

As Marshall proves time and time again, you don’t need original compositions to express how you’re feeling; Covers exudes confidence and hints at a new-found peace. It’s a delightful listen.

All but doing away with the wry humor of the group's earlier work, Hot Chip's lyrics on One Life Stand focus on affection and romance in a way that says, “We’ve settled down.” However, the stylistic decisions betray the fact that they are still searching for their center.

A record that is rich, varied and a little crackers as well, Lovers will certainly stand as one of the best debut albums of the year.

A group of veteran musicians who are committed to their craft, carrying themselves with stylish grace one crushing ballad at a time.

Glass Boys is a more than worthy accomplishment from a band that has been too busy playing by their own rules and constantly rewriting what it means to be punk to care about others expectations.

At present, their light out-of-the-box exploits feel more like comfort food, but there's no denying that once they develop their experimental ways they'll move out of stagnancy.

Like those early EPs, Gloss Drop relies more heavily on complex rhythms and wonky melodies to get its point across.

Of the twelve tracks on show, the first eight are endlessly listenable and demonstrate the fact that when on form, Morrissey sure knows how to write a tune.

Preoccupations is a strong follow-up to an excellent debut record. It showcases a band that is evolving and finding new ways to stretch out their sound.

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.

Ultimately Conatus makes for a very sensuous, luxurious forty minutes, but it's minor flaws like these that prevent it from hitting quite as hard as it could have done, and from being the unqualified success that Stridulum II was.

While another concise and accomplished release from an immensely talented rapper, it fails to really deliver the one thing Kanye's always excelled at: beauty.

From the album's onset, you're treated to both the abrasive and the profane.

An exceptionally fierce indie pop record.

Side-by-side with an "original" release, especially 2002's Control, a bit of life just seems to be missing in this resurrection.

Like Grouper before her, she’s wonderful at exploring those liminal spaces, washing over and subtly overwhelming you.

Strawberry Jam, 2007’s strongest album so far.

If you’ve yearned for a band that takes that dramatic indie-rock template but injects a bit of post-rock drama into it, then boy, have you ever come to the right place.

Although Trev gives Stuart Murdoch's songs a freshness and clarity that is entirely complimentary, the decision to unleash a flurry of TV melodrama string arrangements or flashy showbiz brass on half the songs leads to results that range from tolerable over-egging at best and annoying inanity at worst.

As it stands, Yo La Tengo has created a solid gold collection of nine tracks.

Across Head Cage’s 12 tracks (yes, 12, not 25), Pig Destroyer focus not on being the fastest, loudest, craziest band on Earth, but on simply doing it better. They still do all of the aforementioned better than anyone else (Dark Train, Trap Door Man), but more often than not, they take that intensity and lock it into steadier groves, shifting moods and hookier riffs.

Chaz Bundick and Toro Y Moi have with Underneath The Pine taken a step back from the Chillwave label, and a very positive step forward.