This music is as simultaneously functional and pleasurable as Luomo's more active house tracks, only it's for an opposite function--and a more sedate set of pleasure centers.

Murs for President is such a weird album to listen to in a strictly critical sense, where it stands as a more-or-less average release.

It's lovely, it's pleasantly unsettling, and there's a hell of a lot of it.

While Lost Friends’ slow-building ascents and soaring choruses function as necessary release valves for the unrest bubbling up from Joy’s lyrics, over the course of 12 tracks, a certain identikit quality takes hold.

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.

The best songs on In Times New Roman… are hiding in the back half, resulting in an unusually lopsided experience.

The strongest songs sparkle with a morose charm. On “Dumb Guitar” and “Shipwreck,” Balency-Béarn’s plainspoken singing wafts over murky lounge-pop, giving The Sunset Violent some much-needed friction.

She does so much work on Get Gone that you wind up hoping she follows through on her promise.

You get the impression he isn't really trying that hard, that bettering his bests isn't a notion that interests him, 20 years after the release of Red House Painters' debut album. He's the kind of talented songwriter that can mostly pull that off; though for a record so spare and simple, Among the Leaves comes off as strangely confrontational.

As a pure lyrical record goes, Pro Tools doesn't disappoint, but fans who want everything to be a banger will be let down to find that there's not a lot of headknock here.

The best moments are when the song forms fracture a little, and Perhacs' multi-tracked voice is allowed to spiral free.

Often, Costello just sounds prissy and uptight in these more relaxed environs.

There's a wealth of great material here... all diminished, to various degrees, by genre affectations.

Stereolab engage in the funkiest, heaviest music of their career. While monotony still remains a passion, subtle psychedelic flourishes and thick percussion pumps add much needed verve.

HMHAS is just another good record from Billie and Finneas—certainly tasteful, and arresting sometimes, but all the session musicians in the world can’t make it a masterpiece.

An odd, pleasingly unclassifiable instrumental record that was inspired, bizarrely enough, by a hurdy-gurdy performance he saw Keiji Haino play 28 years ago.

Elegies to Lessons Learnt is an undeniably effective 50-minute ride, but it's also rather coldly mapped out.

The Wild Things soundtrack boasts enough illuminating, atypical turns from Karen O that make it worth experiencing independent of its source.

The riskier these covers get, the better they demonstrate what made Frightened Rabbit’s music compelling.

On Show Your Bones the Yeah Yeah Yeahs occupy only one corner of the territory they claimed on Fever, walking confidently in their own footsteps but without claiming any new ground.

Good as these guys are at mashing up genres on the fly, there's no denying the straighter, fist-pumpier stuff here works best.

Instead of the charming, shaggy stoner vibe that permeates most of the current A&C catalog, Cinematographer shows off a nerdier, bookish quality.

Kinshasa One Two is worthwhile both as a cause (all proceeds from sales go to Oxfam) and as an experiment, albeit one that requires some judicious editing to extract the tracks that really count.

The solid foundation of moody songcraft on their two LPs is ripe for development. Shaking their minimalist DIY ethos in favor of more lavish impulses may be just what Jeanines need to truly transcend their influences.

No one song matches the widespread appeal of Lupe’s best work. Still, the overall impression makes up for that lack of dynamism; the understated tracks give his intricate riddles room to breathe and Drill Music in Zion gives Lupe’s humanity and command of language plenty of space to exhale.

on Tempest, his latest album, Bob Dylan mostly sounds insane. That volatility can yield tremendous rewards-- on the ferocious "Pay in Blood", it clarifies his nihilism, his cruelty-- but it can also be distractingly unruly, inching toward self-mockery, all wild undulation and hairball-retch. Which would be okay-- embraced, even!-- if the rest of Tempest didn't feel so rote.

All the Things may only mark the first step in the Milk Carton Kids’ transformation--but, in eliminating so many of the constraints they once placed on their music, they have already crafted the richest, most accessible songs of their career.

It can feel like discovering an old roll of film in a vintage camera, or like going to a dive bar and messing around with the jukebox. While it aspires to be the heart on your sleeve synth pop of the past, it’s most successful as mood music to soundtrack the present.

While the tight playing and vocal pyrotechnics are impressive, Ditto's narrow lyrical scope gets really redundant.

Aside from its abundance of overlong songs, You in Reverse is marred by a lack of strong melody when compared to Built to Spill's other records.

It's one of the least distinctive things he's put his name on, a step backward into Southern-rap exercises that point you away from K.R.I.T.'s music and toward his heroes.

Despite White Hills' plentiful output, pacing remains a problem for the group. Live, as they run marathons around a riff, that's less of an issue; you're surrounded in the moment, lost in the feeling. On H–p1, though, it means you spend half of your time waiting to reach the crest.

Like all GBV albums, it’s slipshod and freewheeling. ... Also like GBV albums, there are bright spots, and they make dismissing the band harder than it should be.

It is the most technically proficient and hard-hitting music in their discography, albeit at the cost of their unique intimacy and warmth.

Sigur Rós’s music has always felt panoramic, and Odin’s Raven Magic is no different; its sweeping melodies harken back to landmark albums like Ágætis byrjun, but this time, the music foregrounds orchestra and choir. When the sprawling sound becomes overwhelming, it’s the hidden details that prove most tantalizing.

Yes, it's a pleasure to hear Green articulate romantic satisfaction, and good for him if he's satisfied. But the grain and pull of his voice is all about longing for both flesh and spirit, and it doesn't quite fit here.

The album is an interesting, almost peculiarly personal mix of sounds, one that almost seems underdeveloped and unlikely to win Polachek any new fans. As an outlet for Polachek’s songwriting, though, it suggests there's more interesting work yet to come from her.

Repentless is solid--far from a classic, but the best possible outcome.

On the right day, at the right time, the album's powerfully claustrophobic intimacy is more palatable; on the wrong day, at the wrong time, in the wrong frame of mind, White Chalk may be the longest half-hour in the world.

A Mineral Love bursts with cheerful, candy-colored falsetto funk, not unlike Ambivalence, while leaving out the crunch and glitch, letting the instruments breathe.

It shouldn't surprise anyone in today's age of shattered expectations that Beaucoup Fish is not as great as we'd hoped.

Despite its nonchronological sequencing and song-cherrypicking, it never really comes together as an album; it's more like "the many moods of Fucked Up," or, rather, their many variations on one mood.

Its backward-seeming track sequence improves significantly as it goes along; its instrumental interludes are better than most of the songs. Para Mí may have been the result of a near-fatal car crash, but the album is a happy meanderer.

As a legacy product, it justly preserves these 16 songs, some of which are as good as anything she’s ever done. But it’s hard not to wonder if this is really it. Part of the issue is structural. SOPHIE is roughly comprised of four sections of four tracks each, with the strangest works up front.

Through Water refines her sound: heavy piano chords; wistful, solipsistic duets with her own pitched-down voice; high, ethereal backing vocals; and low, mournful synth pads like artfully arranged clouds.

Hold Time is an enjoyable, well-constructed album, and as good a place as any for newcomers to start--it just doesn't hold many surprises.

Theirs is a meaty, swollen approach to garage rock that leaves ample room for diversions into exploratory psych and shredded rockabilly, and these moments turn out to be the best on Emerge.

As a portrait of happiness, About the Light strikes its deepest chords when Mason acknowledges the long road he took to find it.

Summer of Hate felt meek at times, content to retreat into its own shadow; Sleep Forever's many oversized melodies and wider-reaching sound prove that these guys do a lot better taking a few steps into the light.

The highs on Kidnapped are incredibly high, the lows very low, and there's not much in between.

SSLYBY have every right to feel like they have a chip on their shoulder, and if they can somehow manage to inject some grit next time out, they could be looking at a success that's an even greater revenge than "Critical Drain".

What’s most satisfying about Before Love Came to Kill Us isn’t that Reyez whizzes across multiple genres—these days, who doesn’t?—but the skill she displays at each. No matter the arrangement, she powers across it at full force. ... Like many recent pop records, the album is overlong, and the extraneous material tends to be the kind of filler that Reyez is well above.

Even if it’s stretched thin and unsatisfying in spots, Four is our most distinct glimpse of Harvey yet.

Even on the merely good ones, there’s always the sense of someone living in Clark’s lyrics, making decisions about how to transform those feelings into melodies and rhymes.

The record is expertly mixed and produced: It brims with fully realized moments, like a synth bit on “Anxious” that conjures the exact feeling of seeing an ex like someone else’s post on Instagram; the portamentos on “Slow Burn” should come with a vertigo warning. But the album’s mood is just sour.

Victorious is filled with moments that give you glimpses of the club in heaven, but like the afterlife itself, it’s always out of reach, distinct only in brief flashes and in feverish moments.

Now, he finally has some good music of his own attached to his name. It may or may not be enough to catch up to the rapidly accelerating talents of his younger peers-- but it's certainly a start.

Anything that keeps this compelling musical in the foreground of popular consciousness is worth something, and if a fan of Hedwig happens to be an indie rocker as well, this compilation is a delightful wedding.

Perhaps they figured dark times call for bright music, but this overly polished record often feels like a missed opportunity.

Raw Money Raps is immaculately constructed as identity crises go, and there's an uncontrived honesty that feels more like someone working through a multifaceted outlook on life than testing his options for which crowd to play to.

It might still mortify some of his more purist fans, but there's little on this record that a few instrumental-version substitutions wouldn't fix.

Ryonen is an engaging first strike.

Book of Travelers seems stuck in limbo about what it values most, about what it should accept or abhor. Both album and country teeter on a precipice above that inhospitable canyon, even as they keep chugging like trains along its edge.

Though it’s clear the band is refining their songwriting and getting more personal in the process, the record feels wilted instrumentally compared to their previous releases.

And yet, as loaded as the subject matter is, it does amazingly little to diminish Hatfield’s bright spirit. Even on this, her angriest record by a landslide, the singer retains the intrinsic tunefulness that’s marked every record she’s made since she was a teenager.

There's definitely a lot to like throughout this disc; the band has boatloads of talent, and the eclectic spread gels much better than you'd expect.

More often than not, ColleGrove plays out like 2 Chainz pulling his friend and mentor up by his bootstraps while ceding a bit of the spotlight in the process. It’s a generous gesture, but a costly one.

It's an impressive influx of new talent, but you would be hard-pressed to hear it for most of the album.

Running a mere five songs and 15 minutes, AHJ is a wholly fat-free effort that favors tight, snappy, emotionally direct songcraft over the genre experiments and instrumental excursions of ¿Cómo Te Llama?

Yet like last time, there are plenty of sturdy, major-key melodies that go straight for the jugular. But whatever sing-along quality they have, their effectiveness is almost always determined by context.

In Calder's songs solace proves elusive and fleeting, but when she finds it, it's always during moments of calm.

You, Forever isn’t a soft-rock record, but it is a record that reframes a certain kind of softness as strength.

Now and then, Wild Beasts break beyond the surface to offer a few sharper observations.

It works both as something to take to heart and a to-date career statement, as the making of Honeyblood turned out all right, after all.

Sleater-Kinney has made heart-stopping, philosophically challenging rock music. Path of Wellness takes a more pacifist stance, content to let life happen around it.

While Obits may have ditched the buzz and scrape of their roots, that music's sweaty abandon, or the pursuit thereof, is still deeply embedded in Obits' sound. And that never goes out of fashion.

Sun, Sun, Sun is a modern pop simulacrum of traditional country, devoid of the electro accents that pocked the last Elected record, pretty delectable as long as you've a strong taste for ham.

Effected is a confident step toward turning what used to be fantasy into cold, hard reality.

Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.

Business Casual is fierce and competent, and evinces the rippling of powerful musical muscles. But its affectations are so grating that it's tough to make it through it all in a single listen.

As the album progresses... Farrar's lyrics become increasingly stilted and veiled, reverting to the forced wordplay and disconnected evocations of his most obscure songs. In the past, this tendency toward purple opacity could be excused, but on Okemah it hinders Farrar considerably.

Walker understands her strengths as a storyteller, and on Still Over It, she’s at her most commanding when she sings for herself while evoking the pain of other women who’ve been hurt.

Walking Like We Do has moments of thoughtless escapism—and a couple of earnest bum notes—but it comes into its own when it blends humor with darkness, suffusing everything with gentle, sarcastic nihilism.

Don’t Be a Stranger is a charming collection by a confident and competent group of musicians, but its drawback is its same-ness.

There's no denying the Joy Formidable's passion, vigor, and pop smarts; it would just be easier to appreciate those qualities if The Big Roar didn't so often sound like a big blur.

It’s exciting seeing how they’ve learned to play off of each other’s energy. It’d be easy for Uzi to coast and phone in verses after the year he’s had so far, but he’s shown no signs of slowing down.

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

An encouraging but ultimately disappointing contemplation of time's ceaselessness, love's promise, and Harvest-era Neil Young.

At its best, angel in realtime. so convincingly sells his grand vision of the world that it’s easy to accept the grandiose production, too. The whole gambit is so outsized that, even when it only kind of works, it feels like a victory.

Arbor Labor Union have taken a respectable leap toward realizing the throbbing cosmic Americana that clearly rings in their souls.

He seems perfectly content to let these small-wonder songs shuffle out unobtrusively into the world, and it's come to feel like a comforting spot to return to every couple of years or so.

Screaming Females’ entire existence has been a rare testament to consistency and, despite being five years in the making and inspired by a devastating breakup, Desire Pathway can’t help but be their most consistent album yet.

For all its wrath and fury, Devil Music feels safe and predictable. It’s a hell of a party, but it’s one we’ve been to before.

By the end of Animal Nature, Escort proves it’s gotten craftier and has found a bit more clarity, and they hit a nostalgic sweet spot that will never grow old.

The wide-ranging production often makes it easy to ignore the rough spots. Classy instrumental interpolations (Chris McClenney and Erick the Architect’s piano-led strut on “The Baddest,” every Statik Selektah beat here) sit next to glossy boom-bap (Chuck Strangers’ “Wanna Be Loved”) and crossover beats (Mike WiLL Made-It’s “Cruise Control,” BBEARDED’s “Welcome Back”). It’s a testament to Joey’s growing ear that he sounds good on all of them.

While the best work of the Clientele created worlds, The House at Sea charmingly aspires to being a photo album, something to inspire your own travels rather than serve as a substitute for them.

When he’s not wasting time trying to glower, he proves himself surprisingly versatile. ... There are a lot of guests on Hollywood’s Bleeding, and all of them sound engaged.

Musgraves’ album summons up the mid-’60s era nostalgia of A Charlie Brown Christmas, gliding naturally from her established Western-swing throwback aesthetic to kitschy exotica and vintage pop, with an expertly curated song selection that leans on campy novelties, classy standards, and a stocking’s worth of originals.