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.

If you're looking for evidence of any major stylistic shift in Martin's approach on Filthy, it's better to settle for a solid reiteration of a lot of the stuff he was doing on his last album.

It's another excellent chapter in CFCF's story, a strong case for how much unexpected magic can be found in the ordinary and, more importantly, in CFCF's ever-mutating discography.

Rudimental are casting a wider musical net than their peers, which has the unintended effect of magnifying their flaws by comparison, making for a decent but ultimately second-tier effort in a crowded year for big-ticket dance-pop.

The range of Paracosm helps Greene present himself as more of a singer/songwriter than a producer, though the former part of that dynamic still lags.

Free Reign II is precisely the sort of risky, rejuvenating album Clinic needed at this point in their career, one that audaciously upends the perception that this band just releases the same album over and over.

It's not the music that sinks Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, it's those lyrics: well-intentioned, certainly, but as deep as the bowl on a one-hitter.

By default, Nextwave is less scattered and more consistent: It’s only five songs. But “Ratchet” indicates that Bloc Party could’ve gone way further off the grid if they gave themselves enough time.

Whichever end of her spectrum Lee swings toward--the harshly noisy or the hypnotically meditative--her sound always commands attention, making Ghil the biggest surprise in a career already full of them.

Practically nothing on the album feels strained, and even less seems compromised.

Given all the blood, jism, and other bodily secretions the dot Bug’s lyric sheet here, Pop. 1280 are still very much the sort of band that demand a post-listen shower--this time, though, you just won't need as much soap.

Hobo Rocket draws out the indulgence, more than happy to engage in dumb fun without bringing much to the party.

Mostly it's like coming across a public-access channel late at night, where it never feels like the people on screen are fully in control. It works because Copeland isn't too rigidly stuck to his aesthetic, instead setting up his stall and letting the chaos pour in.

Now that the veil has been lifted, there’s not much on Tides End worth the price of progress.

It's still questionable how this pretty, solemn music will work in the quirky context of Green's film, but it makes for a nice little album on its own.

Follow-up Swisher doesn’t abandon the beauty of the duo’s earlier work (“Andrew” and “Rei” could easily be lifted from last year’s album) but it uses it more judiciously. This shift makes Swisher less immediately captivating but somehow more involving than its predecessor, establishing the ultimate core of the duo’s aesthetic somewhere deeper and altogether more mysterious.

Aspiring guitarists might need the alternate tuning suggestions, but listeners won’t really need the anecdotes. Rather, Jones puts it all right there in the pieces, speaking volume about the challenges and triumphs of growing up and older without singing a word of the blues.

In the end, Lenses comes off like a proggy, synth pop album that wants to get treated like sound sculpture, but Soft Metals don't fully commit to either endeavor in spite of the record's handful of successes.

II is just about perfectly synchronized with the zeitgeist, and if it’s not a flawlessly executed record, it still seems capable of making the most out of its moment.

It's an uneven but captivating album that sounds like an artist still looking for his stride and trying to balance between two extremes.

While Chance is fond of joking, this album is no joke. As In Search plays out, it becomes increasingly clear that the record’s scatterbrained eclecticism and frantic energy is less a product of eccentricity-for-eccentricity’s sake than a manifestation of the very real anxieties fuelling this endeavor.

There's a weight here that could drag you down if you let it, but mostly this is a band searching for hope amid shattered dreams.

With that frustrating distance between Tiny Rebels' finely tuned sonics and Kelly's uncharacteristically indistinct lyrics, it's hard not to wonder what another week might've done.

Like every Pumpkins reissue, Aeroplane is stocked with extras; the difference here is that they’re jammed onto each single seemingly at random, rather than separated into bonus discs. As a result, the tasteful and accessible arrangement of the original is compromised, negating one of its best qualities.

On Around, Whirr don’t elevate themselves beyond the level of a listener; instead, they remain supplicant to their influences.

McLamb seems to be relishing the chance to get outside of his head, making music that is gorgeous and unashamedly fun.

For all its sprawl, The Argument maintains a brisk pace, with a White Album-inspired sense of irreverence that ensures Hart never gets stuck in place for long.

If Liam seems hamstrung as a rocker on BE, at least he’s showing more promise as a balladeer.

Revisiting All Hail West Texas over two decades into the Mountain Goats’ existence makes a central irony in their story all too clear: it’s not a lonely record anymore. A handful of these songs remain the most iconic in the Mountain Goats catalog.

There's not much wrong with Body Music, but its constellation of contemporary electro-pop elements can sometimes feel too slick for its own good.

The Future Bible Heroes' first outing since 2002's uneven Eternal Youth does offer up slightly more catchy melodies and deadpan quotables than Love at the Bottom of the Sea.

While these songs can occasionally find that perfect balance of catchiness, sweetly familiar sentiments, and home-recorded charm, there a few too many lemons for this to be a record worthy of vibing out.

I Want You to Destroy Me is solid as far as debuts go, though it offers the all-too-common letdown of hearing music that’s superficially loud and aggressive, yet feels like it’s doing so little to actually stand out.

It's the sound of an artist uniquely in tune with his instrument, as Holden coaxes all manner of beastly noise out of his mighty modular synthesizer, trying to keep that sound organized and only sometimes succeeding.

While his prodigious talents as a rapper ensure you might enjoy Saaab Stories on a purely musical level, it’s unlikely you’ll feel better when it’s over.

Self-absolved from their roles as alien emissaries and newly loaded with personal responsibility, they seem entirely recharged now, a veteran outfit bailing on one mission to start a better and more approachable one.

While it's hard to fault a band for branching out beyond their established template, the tidy electronic textures of Fantasy don't begin to match the mysterious depths of Lightning Dust's best work.

Moving away from the more varied songcraft that speckled the record's earlier tracks, Jinx eventually resigns itself to a pillowy darkness that, while not unpleasant, feels safe and flat.

For all of Dum and Mad's unebbing intensity--it never gets overbearing, it retains a dynamism through Shah's magnetic voice--she makes you want to stay in the darkness with her.

The great leaps it takes sometimes feel less like an aesthetic choice and more like the work of someone figuring out where they want to go. It's a cut above most public attempts to undertake such a journey, if indeed that's what Collins is doing.

This is the rare album that reveals new depth within a catalog that already seemed so deep and ruminative while proclaiming rather unlimited possibilities for a band nearing the end of its first decade.

On Palms, the underlying parts fit together so smoothly that there's never any friction that could lead to a spark.

Scott already has his songwriting tools in place; once he finds his voice, look out.

Hunx's punk rock versatility has made Street Punk his most through-and-through entertaining full-length to date.

Destruction In Yr Soul isn't strikingly original, but it is heartfelt and comforting, and there is plenty of starlit sky here to stretch out beneath for those in search of it.

Electric isn't quite electrifying in the way that Very and Introspective and "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" are, but nearly every track has a moment or two that ignites seemingly long-gone enthusiasm.

On Tiden it's mostly pretty easy to pull apart tracks and figure out who did what, although there's never a feeling of two figures resting on their laurels.

The lyrics don't match the usually upbeat sound, and that disconnect helps make the band even more interesting.

In Chewed Corners Paradinas has put together an LP brimming with fresh ideas-- which, for an artist entering the third decade of his career, is no mean feat.

Power and Hung have made either the year's most introverted party album or the most expansive loner's album; either way, there are few albums this year that offer this much space to get lost in.

From start to finish, Dear Mark J. Mulcahy is a treat. In fact, it may be his best yet.

On Deceiver of the Gods, they are satisfied with plugging 10 new anecdotes into 10 songs they’ve made before and, unfortunately, will most likely make again.

It’s the sound of a rapper more than happy to maintain his narrow lane after being burned by the industry, one who's lost the ambition to leave his comfort zone, at least for the time being.

Alela Diane hasn’t upended the form, but that probably wasn’t her intent. What she needed was a port in a storm, and About Farewell is a very sturdy bulwark.

Slum Village has little to say lyrically.

Inconsistency or complexity? Depends on how much you believe in this music as sincere self-expression versus its status as smartly crafted, artist-as-listener-proxy pop.

Listeners who prefer their folk flashier or wrapped around memorable, poppy hooks might find Pratt's approach meandering or bland. But those with a more patient ear will find her a worthy and quietly distinct heir of Baier, Bunyan, and Dalton's homespun sound.

Based on Andy and His Grandmother, Kaufman comes off like an asshole, a hopelessly naive loser, a crazy person, a hothead, a hopelessly sweet grandma's boy, a sexually confused teenager, and a manipulative monster. In other words, he comes off like Andy Kaufman.

The Shabazz Palaces cut is easily the most interesting song here, and seems to be the one you might still be pulling out once in a while in another six months. Considering that the EP, with three versions of the same song in a row, isn’t really meant to be heard as a whole, getting one truly intriguing track out of it isn’t such a bad deal.

Concert albums never sound like the concerts they're supposed to capture, and with a band whose presence can stifle trite conversation like High on Fire's, it's a disservice.

You get the sense of an artist whose songwriting potential hasn’t been maximized, as Callinan’s got the vocal chops to keep Embracism interesting throughout.

This is ultimately a transitory record, its gate-crashing momentum tempered by songs that feel like holdovers from Gauntlet Hair’s more whimsical debut. With Stills’ crisper production cleaning up the band’s formative psych-pop splatter, the album’s more sanguine tracks.