That's ultimately what Stoltz brings to the table with Double Exposure--moments of pop greatness, but also overlong tracks and too-generic delivery.

Pusha’s released a fair amount of music since joining Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music army three years ago, but My Name Is My Name is really the first release that delivers on the excitement initially engendered by the pairing.

Drown Out has plenty of sublime moments, but as each of them has little do with any other it ends up sounding less like an album and more like a grab bag of hurried ideas, the best of which will eventually be experienced somewhere far more immediate.

While the vocal tracks are well-realized, this is the first album RJ's made in a long time that actually feels like it's satisfied to say most of what it has to say in instrumental form.

This is a bedtime record, in both the complementary and dismissive senses of the word: it invites you to relax and soothes like a warm cup of tea, but can cross the line into powerfully soporific territory.

Savage sends each line out to the back of the club every time, all underneath sugary post-punk revival guitar lines courtesy of Savage and his longtime associate Austin Brown.

Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.

There's a proficiency at work on Feel Good that's undeniably impressive--it's an album full of musicians who can play and they approach this stuff with an endearing alacrity and a willingness to let Syd do more this time around that will pay dividends on future records. She's still got room to improve where lyrics are concerned.

It feels like a stopgap. Harper explores no new territory, sonically or thematically, on the disc’s seven songs; if anything, it’s a stately retreat into the 72-year-old’s well-trod sound.

The question for the producer going forward is whether any of these strong, statement instrumentals are more restricted by or benefit from collaborative effort. Because sometimes he's better off dancing on his own.

What makes Siberia so great is that it thoroughly succeeds on both counts--proving once again that, for Polvo, all those years out of the game are to be measured not in inspiration lost, but wisdom gained.

The prismatic, black-lit aura of their fascinating, endlessly explorable debut Psychic doesn’t try to stop anyone from making that connection and if you spot Jaar’s stated influences of Can and Richie Hawtin, that’s fine too: rarely has a record held such appeal for the high-minded while welcoming the simply high-minded.

Where these songs once demanded a whole lot of Northwestern indie-boom attention with their coy appraisals (both inward and outward), in today's context they tend to melt backwards, into the songs we already know.

Within these songs is the struggle in realizing that self-esteem comes more from estimable acts than outside validation. Is Survived By should receive plenty praise anyway, but Touché Amoré lead by example.

Quasi are more turbulent in spirit, especially here on Mole City, a wayward, asymmetrical double album that sees them returning to the two-piece format after a period with Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme.

R Plus Seven doesn’t have quite the disembodied weirdness of Replica, but it’s no less accomplished, another intriguing chapter from an artist whose work remains alive with possibility.

The tracks vary greatly in span, but beyond that there’s not as much of a dynamic as on prior Jesu full-lengths.

It's the humblest and most powerful wish I've heard on a record all year.

These tracks all feel like they were written by a very precocious teenager, and that’s a big part of their charm.

The most interesting ideas aren’t developed into anything more than ear-pricking novelty, which used to be almost all they did.

This is all-out openness and clarity, which, for better or for worse, is just a little more grown-up.

Cupid's Head is a dark, exquisitely detailed album that rewards patience and further cements the Field's reputation as one of modern electronic music's most satisfying auteurs.

Despite the overcooked jumble of your typical oft-delayed all-star concept record, it really does fall together as pure music. Just stop paying too much attention to Del's lyrics.

It's the intricate musical subtleties Stewart weaves through them that blow your hair back.

While Yuck made listeners nostalgic for the first Clinton term, Glow & Behold will just make you wish it was 2011 again.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 is not only superfluous, it actually erases some of the gains made by its predecessor as it plays into the worst trappings of self-indulgence.

Fuzz consistently run the risk of noodling for a bit too long or pushing one idea a little too far. It's tricky to balance loud and quiet, and Fuzz are still finding their footing.

Without outside direction, however, Dr. Dog quickly go back to their old ways. Afrobeat specialists Antibalas provide the horns on B-Room, but their talents are wasted on songs like "Long Way Down", the beginning of which sounds like the Wayne's World dissolve tuned to a baritone sax.

Days Are Gone's is so polished that Haim could easily be seen as clinical and lifeless, but their lighthearted attitude complements their recording rigor.

Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy.

Those first three albums have always been easy to put on and enjoy, and now we have a fourth to go with them.

Dramatic and driving, it never quite escapes the upper atmosphere, though thick loopy synth shapes provide an ample climax, showing how this band can go bigger without forsaking its cloistered center.

Ghost Wave get comfy in simplicity, tone, and tempo, and maintain that true course for the rest of the record. There’s a great, mid-60s Stones energy that runs underneath Ages that keeps the whole thing hearty and on its heels. But Paul’s faux-lysergic lyricism peppered throughout is never as focused as something like the Stones' “19th Nervous Breakdown”, even though he matches that jaunty cadence often.

The first seven songs play out like a 20-minute power hour, but the album loses a bit of steam after that.

Soma sits still, paralyzed by the weight of a sound that’s too big for this promising band to manage, at least for now.

The Dead C are lifers, then, who are too in control of their own sound to be detained by expectations--of their own music, of rock'n'roll, of their legacy at large. Armed Courage proves the longterm vitality of that sadly rare strategy.

As a double album, Scratch might have produced something like an elaborate mixtape with originals on one side of the Maxell and covers on the other. In execution, however, I’ll Scratch Yours plays like another artifact of the 90s, this one less fondly remembered.

Brass is certainly an easier record to wrap your mind around than Flux Outside. But, with one too many good-not-great melodies and that nagging sense that these guys are holding something back, it's also a whole lot less likely to get itself lodged in your skull.

Hell Bent, while elemental, sounds sincere and grounded but free--a self-assured debut of principled pop-punk that leaves room for growth.

Blouse found a balance between texture and melody: here was a band that clearly cared about atmosphere, but never at the expense of a solid, Top Gun soundtrack-worthy hook.

For now, on record, Chvrches know how go big on an intimate scale, to remind us of the stuff that keeps us living.

There's a strong sense of someone not reaching particularly hard to get beyond their influences, but even that takes on an appropriate hue as the album progresses.

Colonial Patterns is a fine album title, suggesting so much yet giving little away.

The new version is in fact more textured and nuanced, but not at the expense of the album's bone-dry, brutalizing crunch. Most of its touch-ups are tastefully unobtrusive and illuminating.

It might be subject to less scrutiny had it not followed Interstellar, but then again, it might not be subject to scrutiny at all, and simply filed away with any other competent and unexceptional dream-pop.

Yours Truly is a very safe record. Mostly written by two of R&B's most mawkish hawkers, Babyface and Harmony Samuels, it’s built on cliché and tradition, and written professionally to a fault.

Nothing Was the Same is Drake and 40's most audacious experiment yet in how far inward they can push their sound; a lot of the album sounds like a black hole of all 40's previous productions being sucked into the center. Song-to-song transitions, which have always been melty and blurry, are more notional than ever.

Like most records that lack a central stylistic thrust, Take Me to the Land of Hell often resembles a great collection of tracks instead of a coherent overall work.

While this record's sense of self and attention to detail deserve to be praised, a small shift in Lanza's positioning and prominence could be the change that takes her next project from good to great.

It’s an enjoyable and subtly diverse listen only if you give it your undivided attention.

The best that can be said of Defend Yourself is that it isn't embarrassing; they didn't lose the plot like the Pixies, and it's better than The Sebadoh simply because they got out of that L.A. studio and back to their roots. But it also doesn't add anything to the story or feel like it needs to exist.

Imitations may not alter Lanegan’s roundabout arc as a musical itinerant, but it’s a steady reminder of the breadth of his scope and the depth of his roots, not to mention his stature as one of the most potent voices of his generation.

Some of the songs are undercooked, or at least they begin to feel that way as the grooves stretch out past five minutes.

It's the stay-the-course dancefloor material that proves the most rewarding.

B.O.A.T.S. II is an album that feels happy just to exist, a rejection of the modern idea that album releases are serious events and all the tracks that sound like they were fun to make get relegated to bonus cuts or mixtapes.

This trio already functions like a well-oiled machine, and they've produced a stylish debut that demonstrates both their immense talent and impressive instincts.

Nature Noir is nothing if not a well-crafted, whip-smart record, but it leaves me yearning for the days when the Stilts would put passion into trying to find the pulse. Or better yet, yearning for the days when the pulse may actually have existed.

At its core, this is a record about accepting and even embracing the smallness of human life, and how difficult that can be, given our damnably innate sense of adventure, ambition, and restlessness.

It's all pleasant, but when it's over, the only truly memorable song is "Wave Forms."

In other words, it’s not MGMT vs. Oracular Spectacular; if anything’s holding MGMT back, it’s themselves.

After a while, Nobody--frenetic but faceless, too nonchalant for true nonconformity--starts to blur together.

B&C aren’t at that level [Foo Fighters, Deftones, Brand New or Thursday], but considering the leap they’ve made from their pedestrian debut Separation, The Things We Think We’re Missing serves notice that we shouldn't be surprised if they get there.

A broader palate is still under development, but Apar provides a path forward without forfeiting Delorean's effortless energy.

In a year where the likes of Kanye and Trent Reznor have reached deep into the dark circuitry of the Wax Trax back catalog to revive the corpse of industrial music, Factory Floor’s relentlessness suits the present moment.

A deeply passionate, impossibly noisy twee record.

Jacuzzi Boys is a collection of well-recorded, well-constructed, boring songs.

Their spit-polished full-length is a throwback to the sort of CD-era pop rock album everyone remembers buying at least once: The one with the re-recorded single surrounded mostly by less-developed, vaguely similar stuff.

The real irony of Nobody Knows is that it makes him sound like a more fully realized artist, but a more conservative one, too.

Diehard fans of Goldfrapp will no doubt find something to love here, but for the rest of us, it’s a thin record that doesn’t do much to prop up its skeletal frame.

This music wasn’t just written or recorded without any regard to the quality of the Pixies legacy, it was done so without regard to songwriting quality at all.

This new album's skinny-jeaned funk, Arctic Monkeys have stayed close to the spirit of their debut's title while minimizing its excess at the same time.

So while softer and more empathetic the band isn’t quite tamed yet; On Oni Pond is a Man Man album through and through, delivering an occasionally bizarre and fantastical look at the very real human condition.

Taken as a whole, The Electric Lady is a convincing argument for the virtues of micromanagement, but some of the most powerful, tender moments come from acknowledging limits.

Count Coming Apart as another fascinating step in that journey, and Body/Head’s musical path as one that she and Nace will hopefully follow for a long time.

It’s an adventurous, impressive display of instrumental can-do, a music nerd’s romp through high-fidelity magic that’s only occasionally hampered by insipid writing.

It's remarkable that an album with so much fast, dynamic percussion still has such a lugubrious pace, which makes all the sharp details drift by in an indistinct mass.

The album falters in spots because of the disparity of its urges. Age Against the Machine seems to want to ease Cee-Lo back into the Goodie Mob’s world while not-so-gently tugging them into his.

In total, Stitches is exactly the sort of Americana record that can act as antidote for what’s happening in the genre right now.

Kiss Land sounds every bit as isolated and singular as Tesfaye feels.

This is a genuinely sincere, silly, joyous record that seems difficult to actually look down at. What it sometimes lacks in heavy groove and get-down raunch it makes up for in sheer enthusiasm and unpredictability.

They feel like the pieces that stuck to the wall when he threw everything at it.

There's a propulsive quality to much of the beat-oriented Pain, but there remains a relative sense of privacy.

Rado might be derivative, but at least there’s an admirable consistency to his prodigious output.

This is the sound of musicians confident in their legacy and what they can do with it.

Somehow, The Worse Things Get is Case’s tightest record and also her strangest. With its off-kilter arrangements and eccentric turns of phrase, it’s a world unto itself.

All songs on Repave begin quietly and almost none stay that way for long, so when those crescendos hit, you’re supposed to envision waves crashing on cold, barren outcroppings, white mist spraying as seabirds take majestic flight.

Surrounded is polished and persuasive enough that everyone should give it a try.

Its fusion of Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones paisley pop and Spectorian pomp pushes Khan and the Shrines beyond their usual JBs jones, but the album’s title speaks to a burgeoning social consciousness.

On Forever, Holograms take lofty themes and personal trials and make them a communal experience.

John Wizards is, to paraphrase the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss' opinion on animals, "good to think with." But that won't make people want to listen to it. What will is its hip diversity, sunny disposition, and the fact that Withers never asks more of his audience than he's willing to give: A man of contract, he puts his clients first.

Perhaps when performed live these songs will accrue the desperation and dynamism their studio versions lack, but for now The Silver Gymnasium too often makes the act of remembering sound like a consequence-free undertaking, as though certain horrors are too far in the past to do us much harm in the present.

For every circuit-overloading workout like “Copy of A” and “Disappointed”, there are a number of tracks where Reznor reverts to the teeth-gnashing angst of old without the pig-marching blitzkriegs to back it up, applying undue pressure on the the songs’ brittle structures.

At 45 minutes it's shorter than Penance Soiree, but lacks its concision and punch, at times wading a little too deeply into the indulgent waters of burdened, discordant blooze.

Instead of reclaiming the past, they've pooled their resources to create a new present.

Truth is, it usually works the other way; next to this rich, peculiar music, Nicolaus' reticence to reveal too much leaves Golden Suits' story feeling a little unfinished.

It sounds quite good, another weird and sloppy record from a guy who released a lot of them. And hearing it again with all the fantastic music that surrounded it, music that further cements Dylan’s Bootleg Series as one of the most important archival projects in modern pop history, it remains a beguiling artifact.

His vision of how to build bridges between his own music and the music others is already his own, and Mon Pays puts it on brilliant display.

As a box set, Higher really does reinforce how creatively rich a band Sly & the Family Stone were, while making it seem almost unbelievable that their peak only lasted seven years and seven albums.