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.