The songwriting does suffer as a result of their walloping, impatient joy, but as Spielbergs prove, some instant gratification is always called for.

Some of the arrangements stick, and some of them don't, but it's always enjoyable to hear where his open-ended narratives take you.

The Menzingers established themselves as a group interested in moving forward—even if they wrote about those high school days. Hello Exile fails to follow through on that promise.

Sucker is a one-two punch of wit and grit, as irreverently bratty as the lollipop Charli holds on the cover yet never impersonal, perfunctory, or insincere.

By stripping everything back, it often ends up just being a distillation of their sound. The songs are familiar but frustratingly lack any colour or character.

Molina and Johnson proves to be inessential listening for fans of either artist, but should prove suitable listening for those of us who want a mild-mannered soundtrack to our lamentations of modern city life.

Expo 86 emphasizes the fact that novel beginnings are meant to prosper whilst winking at the past from time to time.

The album sounds familiar far too quickly. [But] when Interstellar hits, however, it hits hard.

Definitely mysterious, but the songs on this record are obvious when it comes to the Concretes’ influences.

Each track in its own right has nothing inherently wrong with it, but put eleven of them together and it’s all a little one-dimensional.

This album simply lacks the impact that Vanderslice's trademark sound usually packs in abundance. The bare bones of his usually excellent songwriting are there, but it's more constrained by the orchestration than set free.

Magazine manage to retrace where they left off, rediscover their intricacies and do an excellent job at defining themselves for, what one can only hope will be, new generations of listeners.

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

At his best, Walsch’s lyricism threads the line between clichés and anecdotal details with ease. There are exceptions to this, as Hesitation captures the curdling of a long-distance relationship superbly. It might be his best set of lyrics. It’s a disappointment that it’s situated between a handful of bored, washed-out emo tunes that hold I Won’t Care How You Remember Me down.

As it stands, Sunlight Echoes is a solid entry in the shoegaze canon, but its innate politeness prevents it from truly standing out in a packed field.

It is a meaningless shell of a record with few, if any, redeeming features.

These songs are all, for the most part, perfectly adequate, but we've heard better and stronger songs from Sadier before. It's not so much a sucker punch as a blunt disappointment from an artist who we know can do so much better.

Though it’s tough to get a sense of what exactly it is that’s causing all of this suffering, the details don’t seem so important in the end, as Drifters / Love Is the Devil is the sound of pure isolation and dread wrapped in one bleary, beautiful package.

It is a solid and dependable album, sure of its own purpose yet ready to complement those poignant moments when all that seems to be missing is a cue for the dramatic music to start.

Please Be Mine is a charming record that remains engaging and consistently pleasant, but you have to feel that there’s another gear in Molly Burch’s engine-room that could get the most out of her prodigious talent.

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.

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.

There may be nothing exactly wrong with Good Arrows as a record, and I’m sure that in a different time and situation it would be considered a respectable if shallow pop record.

With no track here surpassing the 3 1/2 minute mark, the band firmly anchors the key components of their sound with a tight, steady grip.

On their latest album, The New Abnormal, The Strokes have mirrored the career of Beck, offering a mimetic approximation of music they think people want, instead of music generated from their raw, inner demons or whatever fueled them on Is This It.

They work best when under the restraints of a three-minute pop song, resolute to achieving guitar resonance in a compact framework.

A lot has happened in 10 years, but DFA’s approach to making ferocious music certainly hasn’t.

Some good ol', serviceable rock ' roll always goes down easy, but with The Hold Steady, we know they're capable of so much more.