Despite having a satisfying arc that gently bends through it, there are a few moments where Space Project doesn’t solidify as a whole.

If The Way and Color is not all the way there yet you can hear it as a promising document of a formative period.

The most compelling section of “Anomaly” is the first, one that Kotche realized electronically instead of with the quartet.

Taken as a whole, the album is exactly the sort of hastily tossed-off, forgettable project that legacy acts will sometimes tack onto can't-miss releases such as this. It's a shame they did.

Even if they don't quite hit the heights of the A-Trak-name-checked influence of Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique (how could they, let alone anyone?), they've created a hedonistic, piston-pumping album that bears as much relation to the urban hustle-and-bustle as it does to festival crowds' surging, ecstatic mindsets, a love letter to NYC that sounds good just about anywhere you're likely to hear it.

Home, Like NoPlace Is There is emotionally relentless, but a relentlessly catchy record as well.

Although most tracks on Try Me are taut and concise, they’re built around churning, sprawling riffs that feel far larger than the songs that contain them.

If anything, the elucidating peek behind the curtain that Bangs’ documentary provides makes the album feel like an even more singular, remarkable achievement.

Ratking's greatest success is confidently offering a sound that feels untethered from expectations and bristles with the exhilarating energy of trying something new.

Mayfield has insisted for years that love is treacherous and obliterating, and on Make My Head Sing... her guitar enacts that romantic violence. It provides an intriguing counterpart to her vocals, turning her inner monologues into something like an argument.

The trouble with World of Joy isn’t that it’s bad, but that it seems perfectly content to stop short at “pretty good.”

Chet Faker's first full-length album proves that the artist is eager to explore new frontiers.

Do to the Beast may not always sound like an Afghan Whigs album, but it operates like one, scavenging the darker corners of pop history to create something personal, vital, and urgent.

“Breakthrough”, “masterpiece”, “bold leap”--those aren’t words that really seem applicable to With Light and With Love, or Woods for that matter, but they’re allowing themselves to be extremely likable for a larger crowd.

At heart, this is an enthusiastic debut that can’t quite live up to its own billing, but at least it shows two veterans who have bravely embraced the neophyte’s challenge of figuring out their sound.

Part of Brewis’ duty in Field Music was to keep them from veering over the edge into too busy AOR prog, and he uses that same keen ear to keep Old Fears from becoming too cute or kitsch with the tweed-funk.

Golden Retriever has carved a niche that’s not strictly indebted to post-Berlin School ambient or to the more organic work of new age composers but rather snags details from both aesthetics.

Battle doesn’t have Jemina Pearl’s charisma, and Tweens aren't as adept or distinct as BYOP in terms of their P.O.V.

Convertibles ends up a low-stakes affair without being a low-quality one.

Despite the lyrical clunkers and ill-advised production choices, The Future’s Void has the feel of a real statement, of an artist trying for something new even if she doesn’t always get there.

Fireworks hit home with anyone who feels like they’re operating without a net, so for those who have already gotten their pop-punk vaccination, Oh, Common Life is a necessary booster shot.

There are flutes and poetry readings, floods of noise and wisps of bass clarinet. Still, such an astounding lineup only serves to reinforce the disappointment of the flat and oftentimes gangly Field.

The execution of I Shall Die Here is so full-blooded, so committed to forcing your head underwater to the point of blackout, that it's hard not to view this as a singular piece, out there on its own, in a place most people wouldn't want to go anywhere near.

The Skull Defekts make fine music on their own, but they sound more alluring and entrancing when their wagon is hitched to Higgs.

Most of it dips into detached terrain; the manic piano runs of “World Three” are rendered without drums, and the layered buildup on “Dissolver” is executed in such a precise manner that it’s positively suffocating in its rigidity.

Tremors is actually kinda intriguing in a “canary in the coalmine” sort of way.

There are times when you know exactly where you want to go and this is the music to take you there.

The band has sharpened their focus on their most recent records, but in doing so has placed a spotlight on their songwriting and performance. It’s a shame that NOW + 4EVA can’t withstand this greater level of scrutiny.

The overall strength of Under Color of Official Right doesn't come from its big words, Detroit cred, or works-cited page; it's from lyrics that, while fraught with symbolism, feel emotionally resonant and, sometimes, viscerally unpleasant.

E S T A R A is almost hypnotic in its tendency to make each individual track blur itself into an indistinct piece of a loosely memorable whole, one with little impression actually retained even if it jumps from mood to mood.

Despite its scattered high points, though, it's hard not to think of Wasted Years as little more than the third most exciting OFF! record.

Enter works best when it's not begging for an ENT.

Void Worship takes what was essential about Misery Wizard and compacts it while expanding Pilgrim’s overall scope--a fitting progression for a pair of genre loyalists.

The dilution of purist fidelity makes Here Be Monsters one of Langford’s least focused albums in recent memory, but it also ends up as one of his richest.

Doom Abuse is most enjoyable when its superficial slapstick is at its most pronounced, which is most of the time.

For as much ground as he covers on It's Album Time, the music feels effortless, gliding from Henry Mancini-esque detective jazz to bouncy, Stevie Wonder funk like breeze blowing through the waffle weave of a leisure suit. Conventional wisdom bears out: The looser the grip, the tighter the hold.

Remember Me keeps its mood light and its stakes low, and in the process delivers a much needed breezy counterpoint to all the knotty, fatalistic shit coming out of HBK’s downstate peers that’s every bit as true to Cali as the gangsters and the thinkers.

Even though it’s filled with stark admissions, Baby is ultimately an unflinchingly hopeful record that sees an already talented artist finding finding new ways to grow.

Angel serves as a balm in another era defined by mass pessimism and doubt.

While “Dishes in the Sink” and its companion ballad “Hardly Hanging On” tell a genuinely affecting story of squalor and depression. Despite these peaks, Sisyphus is more fun to ponder than it is to listen to.

Range Of Light is the first album that defines Carey apart from his bandmates and contemporaries, as his developed, earnest, Midwestern glow bursts through the album's cracks.

The album is straightforward, but often so much so that it can seem as if there’s nothing below the surface.

The Rite should elicit gasps, not cock eyebrows—the latter of which is the most extreme reaction the Bad Plus manage to provoke.

Four albums in, it's becoming pretty clear that the genre in which Manchester Orchestra resides has more untapped potential than the band itself.

For all its internal contradictions, Salad Days is no more or less than a great album in a tradition of no-big-deal great albums.

Inner Fire's biggest problem is a sporadic lack of energy.

What he lacks is a presence that feels definitely Bart Davenport, and after a while, it begins to feel like an album full of someone else’s songs--or, rather, anyone else’s songs. His best moments are breezy and autumnal.

The appeal of the Miles at the Fillmore material is obvious: This is an amazing band and they rip, but they never leave traditional ideas of rhythm and melody behind.

Once again, though, Baldi is simply unwilling or unable to stop writing hook-filled songs, rendering Here and Nowhere Else even more tense and thrillingly conflicted than its predecessor.

There are triumphs here, but they're modest; there is, after all, little fanfare to be found in just getting up and on with it day in and day out. Consequently, Teeth Dreams--even more than the flavorless Heaven Is Whenever--occasionally feels like the first Hold Steady record that's just going through the motions.

Most of these songs suffer from a lack of motion or a mere inability to edit the excess away from that motion.

Out Among the Stars is a boon for fans of country music history as well as those who just can’t get enough Cash. More importantly, it highlights a missing link between the often disparate eras of a long and complicated career.

Konstellaatio fills a lot of room, then, with very little range. But what’s there is excellent and, for Vainio, a striking and surprising contribution to a scene that’s watched him work for at least two decades.

Dissed and Dismissed ends just before it starts to feel formulaic.

Her work on Boy should be sufficient to satisfy her longtime followers and perhaps draw some new onlookers into the fold.

YG and DJ Mustard have been dress rehearsing for nationwide stardom all along, but My Krazy Life is ratchet music’s Technicolor reveal.

Witch is a solid record throughout, but it is one of those records that feels like a collection of songs--good songs!--rather than an actu

Even though Owls serve as a touchstone in 2014, there's still little that quite sounds like Two.

Singles is risky, but the strength of the songwriting carries it over.

Dreams, with its ability to shuffle through genres while maintaining a cohesive sound, should please though who were looking for a little more ambition.

As enjoyable as it can be, Mess is a centrist record from a band without a lot of centrist strengths and appreciating it can feel like a symbolic gesture.

Fake Train and New Plastic Ideas hold important places in the history of 90s music, not to mention those of punk and indie as a whole. And they set the tone for unimagined Unwound greatness to come (which will be chronicled in subsequent volumes of the box-set series). But those two albums, and the tracks that accompany them on Rat Conspiracy, transcend time, place, attitude, and even the sprawling continuum of influence.

A meticulous assemblage of sequencers and synthesizers, drum machines and aleatoric percussion, small beeps and tectonic booms, Light Divide refracts and then reorders moody electronic music, creating more of a mirage than a mere collage.

This a pop album, produced like pop and structured to grant instant gratification. And yet, this presentation throws the flaws of Tokyo Police Club’s dullest songs into sharp relief.

Impressive as it can be in small doses, Waterfall as a whole plows ahead like a WWI-era tank, heavy and lumbering and powerful but pretty much limited to a single direction.

The progression from early singles to first album isn’t nearly the same arc as it was just 10 years ago, but it’s still weird that the first full-length showcase for Skrillex as self-contained album artist feels more like a transitional record than a debut that plays to his strengths.

When moments like the funereal horn lines on “Vostok” break into the open after several tracks of frigid drones, the contrast is absolutely heart-rending. But these transcendent moments are few, and No. 2 could still use a little more of that drama.

Mas Ysa was definitely the biggest suprise about Deerhunter's surprise show, and the strong follow-through of Worth should land his prospective first LP high on most-anticipated shortlists.

It's well-recorded, well-written, and teeming with both force and emotional depth.

Daughters of Everything is rock‘n’roll rendered on Etch A Sketch: imperfect and monochromatic to be sure, but infectiously playful, and liable to spin off into any direction at any moment. And, occasionally, you find yourself marveling at an accidental masterpiece.

They recorded in Nashville with the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney on seven of Underneath the Rainbow’s 12 tracks isn’t something to dismiss out of hand. But another producer is responsible for the album’s best songs.

Your Arsenal, unlike the previous year's Kill Uncle, sounded like the work of a real group--as indeed it was.... This edition comes with a slightly muddy but passable live DVD filmed at California's Shoreline Amphitheatre in October, 1991, four months or so after the concert that became the Live in Dallas video.

Vermont is a side project that sounds like one, a pastime for Plessow and Worgull, a minor curiosity for their fans.

Mirrors the Sky reflects a subtle yet effective refinement of her sound, as she tweaks these elements and influences to create music that is both familiar and idiosyncratic.

You get a good sense of just what kind of man Drew is on Darlings, reconciling monogamy with promiscuity, Broken Social Scene’s cheap-seats bombast with love-seat confidentiality.

To navigate successfully around a Kid Cudi album, then, is to get really good at squinting at the periphery.

This is a much leaner record that feels skillfully edited, with less use for indulgence and circular routes that don't lead anywhere.

The album is loaded with songs whose greatness is revealed slowly, where the simplest, most understated chord change can blow a track wide open and elevate it from simply pretty to absolutely devastating.

Even though the record is irresistible at times, it's also a feedback loop of nostalgia that's creaking as it turns.

It doesn’t feel corny or hyperbolic to call this record life-affirming, so perfectly does it capture the flashes of gratitude, self-knowledge, and inexplicable joy that often follow an experience of great pain.

The oily, immersive Joyland's very nearly the equal of its predecessor. But with so many similarities--and so little growth--between the two records, it's a little like spending another night at the same club: once you've gotten the lay of the land, the thrills are never quite so thrilling.

It’s telling that the Unsemble grip hardest when they’re hewing closely to their inspirations--as well as the bands from which they sprang.

Perhaps it’s deliberate that throughout The Take Off and Landing of Everything, hardly anything truly takes off. Instead the album dangles there, an effortlessly leaden exhibition of glum triumphalism--and an example of what makes Elbow, at its least potent, so subtly unsubtle.

It doesn't matter if Gibbs and Madlib were once considered artists playing to different audiences--united in their uncompromising, independent-as-fuck visions, they put together something hardcore hip-hop heads on both sides should feel.

If Rise of an Empire is meant to read like some kind of State of the Union address, it paints Young Money as a fractured team that’s lost its compass.

Yes, this music gets dull--it’s supposed to. I can’t imagine listening to it all the time for the same reasons I can’t imagine trying to cook an entire meal using only a garlic press. But in their limited pursuits Bohren captures a mood other music either struggles to or just doesn’t bother with: Not sadness (too acute), not angst, but a sumptuous, all-purpose melancholy.

Within its limits, the album is fairly diverse, though after so many records, the style might be wearing a bit thin.

It’s an album that humorously but honestly explores the tensions that arise in any long-term relationship, however in this case, the pressures--financial, political, or otherwise--seem to be coming more from without than within.

If you’ve been fascinated by any of Stallones’ work, Belomancie will get you stoked about not only what he’s done, but how much more he can do.

Many of Glow's songs are just-there, but a few manage to be engaging.

Kindly Bent to Free Us works as a sort of retroactive insult: It resurrects many of the misgivings people have always had about Cynic--the overindulgent vocals, for instance, or the ponderous new-age musings--and runs wild with them.

Doubled Exposure is a fun, chewy listen as it spins, but there’s also nothing too sticky about it.

Although it makes no apologies for the bits and pieces it takes from her contemporaries, No Mythologies to Follow doesn't work because it assembles the right ingredients in the right amount--it works because a likable persona is something you just can't teach.

It's a charming album from an artist with an obsessive/compulsive love for writing shambolic, vaguely psych-infused rock songs but it doesn’t, distinguish itself from any number of similar records from this sphere over the past few years.

Eagulls have synthesized their influences well, and have created an enjoyable rock record (they've been around since 2010, which may account for why so many of these songs sounds accomplished as they do); so while Eagulls is not exactly life-changing music, the songs stick with you, and sometimes that's enough.

If only the rest of the record caught on to that out-front force--the words on Love Letters might scan as more than lonely fridge-magnet poetry, the beats might feel like more than just placeholders, and the music could be something to dance to instead of just drift off to.

The stiffly prefabricated industrial-dance grooves that Laibach habitually fall back on don't quite cut it any more, and without a monolithic state to serve as the object of their satire, they're reduced to mocking political fatuity.

While nothing here qualifies as any kind of radical reinvention of the indie-rock wheel per se, the band manages to astutely put their own spin on it, seemingly figuring out their own sizable strengths in the process.