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.

Over the course of 6 Feet's 52 minutes, the sound loses some of its essential mystery. Marshall still has a blood-freezing voice, someone to pay attention to, but 6 Feet Beneath the Moon doesn't feel like his Big Statement, not yet.

Though Shigeto has absorbed a host of positive qualities from his fellow beatmakers, he seems caught, between a more purposeful, narrative form of music (like that of Four Tet, and the calmer compositions of Flying Lotus) and the abstruse, diffuse form that’s endorsed by the Leaving Records camp.

Rather than shroud themselves in mystery, Belle and Sebastian would rather blow their own cover and, for all its inherent inconsistencies, The Third Eye Centre provides a clear view of how a band that once made music fit for a library is now more liable to get kicked out of one.

On Warm Blanket, May revisits many of the same themes that he did just over a year ago, only with fuller orchestrations, and a partial explanation for his love of the mundane.

Era showcases all the work Disappears have done cutting and splicing and regathering their sound together to regain their identity. It’s still lurking in the shadows, but finally, it's there.

Barnes’ work is less concerned with trends or scenes than experiences and memories that everyone has had, regardless of what music they’ve listened to before. On that count, Engravings is a broad success.

It’s the kind of record for the times when you’re lost in thought about someone you might’ve known for a little while, wondering where they are and if they ever think about you.

While Right Words achieves a baseline level of quality or at least competency with the exception of “Goodbye Friends and Lovers” and "Love Illumination", they lack the conviction to take most of their lesser ideas to the realm of being unpleasant rather than kinda boring.

Aerotropolis' 180 pop move--as comfortable and assured in its own niche as it is--is so abrupt that it almost feels like an innovative rulebreaker hitting the reset button and starting a completely new, much more familiar persona from scratch.

Ultimately, Necrocracy is one more in a long line of killer albums, and thanks to its dynamic range, clever riffs, and newfound melodic focus, is likely to ensnare the youth of today the same way its spiritual predecessor lured in the young heshers of old.

There are enough explosive moments to suggest that DIANA have another gear to explore.

The new record basks in Endless Flowers' sunny afterglow, but the songs here are brasher, nervier, and a lot more fun.

You sense feelings of longing and unease all over Nepenthe, which makes it a less blissful place to spend time than her previous album. But that also makes it a much more cathartic listen, and perhaps a more rewarding one.

Amid last year’s dual hubbubs about their newly sharpened rock songs and their subsequent crash, Live at Maida Vale preserves the memory of the pugnacious, strapping quartet at the center of it all.

When he’s at his best, you feel like you’re getting a well-selected sample from the endless trove of sounds and ideas blubbing inside his brain.

The delicately chained unison of the guitar and vocal melodies makes for a standout passage in a record that feels fresher and sharper than we've heard from Veirs in awhile, and perhaps serves as the dark flipside of children's record Tumble Bee.

Though Trap Lord's vision is refracted through split personalities--for better or for worse--A$AP Ferg still sounds like a star in the making.

Albums recorded over ample stretches of time often don't hold together well, and Tonight is no exception.... Although one of the strengths of this album is that it's clearly coming straight out of a void, oblivious to anything else around it, there's also a childlike wonder coupled with a decent understanding of the gruesome side of life.

Occasionally a hint of shoegaze filigree or kosmische bliss gets drawn into the swirl, but it’s not enough.

If space-rock as a whole is a role-playing game, one in which its players imagine having front-row seats for the heat-death of the universe, then Deep Trip is the one of most advanced vehicles yet designed to take them there.

It's his most focused album, with every song's tone easily flowing into the next, and it's also one of his best.

The most satisfying songs on I'm Rich are the ones that adapt a bit to the fact that all six members, logistically speaking, cannot be present to scream every note in your face as you listen.

This is the album that might’ve better earned the title Everything in Between, as the songs are composed of scraps, MacGyver tricks achieved with contact mics, bass guitars, and doctored amps. Occasionally, the effort manifests in notable progress.

The inability to define Porcelain Raft contributed to the initial intrigue, but with his second LP in two years, Remiddi has cemented his sound; Permanent Signal is more or less more of the same, a mutual fatigue passed on from Porcelain Raft to the listener.

With Doris, Odd Future’s Odysseus is finally back and chasing the ghosts out of his head.

If you have absolutely nowhere to go in the near future, Bitchitronics will make an excellent travel companion.

The record's uncompromising hard luck street narratives are dispensed with a preternaturally sharp eye for detail that dabs Gates’ economic writing with a shock of much-needed color.

Though it draws upon the distant past, Julia Holter's made a timeless people-watching soundtrack: an acutely felt ode to the mysteries of a million passersby, all the stars of their own silent musicals.

Flourish is a purposefully alien and repetitive album, and at the outset, it works.... But in the second half, the iterance becomes tedious; footholds are few amidst the long stretches of vast electronic tundra and the Perish side B can feel like a sheer drop towards revelatory closer “In Kind".

We Knew It Was rarely evinces the same boldness, proffering instead a steady procession of jangle-fuzz jingles that yield moments of brain-massaging beauty (the gleaming outros of “Song From a Short-Lived TV Series” and “What Gets Me By”, in particular) but little of Surf City’s more combustible qualities

Danilova has taken these compositions about as far as they can go, and still there remains something intriguing about Zola Jesus, not just for her ghostly enigma or art world appeal but now for what really comes next.

Between the spirited music and Hütz's delivery, you're not likely to walk away from Pura Vida feeling uninspired. But if you want to really hear what Gogol Bordello is saying on Pura Vida, a little history with the band is going to go a long way.

Thoughtful, quiet moments like that ["What Can We Do," "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo," and "Your Theme"] work but, this being Superchunk, the uptempo tracks still hit hardest.

The dynamic between the wobbly production and the sturdy songwriting defines Moon Tides, though I wouldn’t say it causes any tension. Conflict is clearly something avoided within the tenets of Pure Bathing Culture. But it does result in a listening experience that causes more ambivalence than it probably should.

This is a charity album, released to aid the Isle of Wight Youth Trust, and as such it's a commendable venture. Still, its placing in the New Order discography is hardly likely to be significant, especially as the Live at the London Troxy album from 2011 already documented this incarnation of the group in a live setting.

When you start to pay attention to its manifold subtleties, you’ll likely only lean in closer, noticing even more details within an album that suggests they never end.

Unlike the other reunited groups of their generation, Medicine doesn’t sound nostalgic at all, and in fact they sound more contemporary than the majority of young guitar bands playing right now.

Move Way, dBridge's new EP and his first for the evergreen R&S label, puts a strong focus on his efforts to maintain the structural integrity and rhythmic impact of drum and bass while pushing its forms outward from the template-driven repetition he's spent his post-Bad Company career trying to counterbalance.

The songs don’t really go anywhere, but they don’t need to--it’s the psychic tone that matters, not any sort of hooks, and the blissful state they produce comes from simply enjoying them in the moment.