Originality isn’t always the most important criterion in music like this. Familiar, nostalgic sounds can please just as much, as they do here.

Parochial pop somewhere between Supergrass and the Arctic Monkeys.

It's Cut Copy's most textured and rhythmically complex record, and also irresistible in its emotional simplicity.

This album is their least messy and most consistent, but it hasn't left singer/songwriter Mike Donovan's slacker charm behind.

Taking a tip from William Cooper’s conspiracy theory tracts, Nas deftly delivers attention-grabbing rhymes with a sickly slick flow yet offers little backup for his inflammatory insinuations in the way of persuasive substance.

Somehow, Ta-Dah feels like the Sisters covering themselves, and the glitter and gloss have worn off.

They’ve crafted an album that stands on familiar rock ground but isn’t at all stock.

Despite the flashy production values and singer Thomas Mars’s wispy croon, it ultimately feels as superficial as its subject matter.

It's frequently ridiculous and makes you a bit embarrassed for the folly and bravado of youth, but the guy has an uncanny knack for that perfectly evocative couplet and addictive hook, which is why his supporters are so vocal.

Smith Westerns have proven themselves adept chameleons and excel in their new style. It’s just tough not to miss the old one.

His singing, an acquired taste, could have been used more sparingly. Nevertheless, his odd chants keep the weirdness levels appropriately high, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

FitzGerald's only musical foils are guest vocalists, so the contrast between fragile sentiment and driving rhythms feels obsessively and perfectly realized. It's pretty standard stuff, but it works because the album is full of subtly affecting moments that viscerally lock in to a magic-hour state.

Collapse is a genuine return to form for the band, blowing away anything else they've done for more than a decade.

GBV fans should definitely check this one out – there's a lot to like.

This newest electronic funk vision feels like the album we’ve been waiting for.

Burton deserves some of the blame for the album's shortcomings as well, even if his creative engineering is the high point. He gives us some gorgeously layered textures and swirling atmospherics, but then backs those up with tepid and forgettable beats.

Like a lot of shoegaze, a uniform production and lots of layers mean the tracks have a tendency to lack distinction from one another. But this happens surprisingly rarely.

Tentacles’ more focused psych punk feels formulaic, underdeveloped and disappointing.

It’s slightly less menacing, yet without a discernible drop in power, which should go down well in the burbs without alienating their hipster metal following.

This is his first time as producer, and you could argue that he neutered the band's crunch to a degree. But it fits with the album's mature mood.

Yet something needs to be said for Allen’s ability to make cursing seem cute, and tunes about giving head sound charming.

Add in some politicking and dissociative trilling and Wild Water Kingdom is revisionist rap meant for fans who believe in Heems's neurotic, post-post-colonial, lapsed-academic POV.

Like his debut disc, Cole World, Born Sinner displays an astute understanding of the male-female dynamic--or at least his contributions to the demise of his relationships.

It's the lyrical shift that propels the album in a new direction that will be hard to appreciate amongst throngs of festival-goers. That's what the sugary hooks are for.

There’s not a lot to get excited about, but it’s a catchy enough confection that should work well in gadget commercials, which was likely the whole point.

Just when it starts to feel like the album is continuing in a high-powered vein, the Lips start sounding like they’re steering a chuckwagon.

Pond still appreciate the glue of a hummable pop hook and the intoxicating pyschedelia of headphone tricks, but the most satisfying way to hear Hobo Rocket is turning it up as loud as it’ll go.

Flux Outside flies by effortlessly and still leaves you with choruses you'll be singing to yourself long after the disc ends.