While Junto is at least happy enough to lift spirits, it feels like they've left it to others to reintroduce anarchy to the dancefloor.

With Love is like a pocket book of poetry, a series of short thoughts only tangentially related. Zomby is the elegant menace, capable of beauty and great affect but too stoned or disinterested to fully commit.

Klaxons' lyrical pretensions, alas, can be a reminder why the best house and trance music often emphasizes atmosphere over meaning.

We might not learn a lot of specifics about him, but there’s a lot of honesty in his music if you look for it.

What the Temper Trap do devastatingly well is drape post-office-party mistake-hookup tackiness in the lofty imagery of global struggle....Elsewhere, the Temper Trap's pairing of sweeping portentousness with mundane douchebaggery is trickier to overlook.

The album is presented as a consumerist critique, intentionally blurring the line between artist and product, but the quality of the songs varies too widely to pull off an actual concept album.

Yes, girl in red is capable of another skin-deep album about crushes and self-doubt. But it would be far more interesting to see her attempt sincere emotional depth.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of opportunities to get caught in that lovely crossfire on Re-Arrange Us, a record that, for all its lush bells and whistles, finds the pair sounding as bare-boned and sparse as you'd expect a two-person band to be.

It's just that it feels so characterless and anonymous.

Dyrdahl never received enough credit for the excellent sound design of his work, and while Sagara seems nothing more than an interesting detour, his careful ear and sense of structure are here in spades.

If not always up to their previous heights, Mohn highlights why these guys are still the masters, while so many of Kompakt's new-school driftologists are still students at best.

Even at less than a half hour, Lo Tom suffers from redundancy, not surprising when you’ve made more than one song reminiscent of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and you’re not actually AC/DC.

The band that brought the funk to punk isn't in much of a dancing mood here.

The most disappointing aspect of Go Fly a Kite is that it sounds so satisfied, almost smug, in its complacency.

The countrypolitan aspirations of Bury Me often make it sound hollow--there's a basis in roots music, but it isn't "rootsy" by any stretch. Instead, the clean-shaven guitars, pedal steels, and violins (not fiddles) achieve an eerie minimalism.

The songs on Internal Logic are like triple-exposed photographs, their nebulous, hazy qualities occasionally belying the acute skill with which they've been composed.

Even when they're digging into the grit of a country's flaws or society's problems, the synth-driven hooks can be outright jovial.

The band's egalitarian and mutually supportive dynamic pays off on the harmonious Still Night, Still Light, their third and best album.

Department of Disappearance does sound strangely complacent and monochromatic, offering no twists on the technorganic aesthetic he's been plying since Grandaddy were still a bedroom act.

The tape incorporates all of Odd Future's members with surprising ease (not an easy task considering all the stylistic differences at play) and pieces together the first release in over a year that'll remind people why they liked the group so much in the first place.

Live It Out is stymied by lame riffing and unqualified wonkage.

Made of Bricks too often tries to smooth over the emotional cracks, breaks and fissures that happen to be Kate Nash's distinguishing hallmark. Without them, she may as well be any other London newcomer in a bright dress and matching trainers.

Unlike all previous Beastie Boys albums (with the possible exception of Licensed to Ill), To The 5 Boroughs sounds homogenous and singular in purpose-- dark, steel, and dirty like that incomplete Times Square station.

Coral Fang impresses not just by some nebulous "punk" standards, but by the standards of just about anyone who wants to be rocked gently out of sleep by the dulcet tones of thrashing guitars, pogo-friendly love songs, and possibly the most compellingly forceful female punk vocals since Exene Cervenka wailed her way out of the nihilistic abyss that cartographers call "L.A."

Detractors will be sure to note that In a Safe Place can feel numbingly repetitive at moments, but all that expansive diddling contributes equally to the record's allure: Like rolling past the North Pole or through West Texas, this record plays with its own redundancies, building an entire universe from strange, barren pieces.

This is an impressive record in many respects, and its hooks and patterns only emerge after many plays, but it's also an oddly distant one.

Despite some of the growing pains here, Backwards strongly hints at the sadistic beauticians S-M would be introduced to us as in their debut, and bravely reveals the types of psych/shoegaze pitfalls they'd later learn to avoid.

It's sort of a perfect concept for Thompson: it's not particularly clever or abstract but to actually gather the efforts, time, and resources to release this album-- straight-faced-- seems mad. At this point, though, those who delight in Thompson's particular madness will need no explanations.

Think of Glimmer as a little symphony, just with singles, and made by a musician who can't decide between the roles of producer or composer. Really, he shouldn't anytime soon.

It might not be perfect, but "chamber techno" probably shouldn't work as well as it does on the best moments here.

Whatever the actual year 2020 will hold, for now, Pavo Pavo's escapism feels cozy, uplifting, and wholly appropriate.

Across Parallels, he seems so committed to the possibility of an open-ended project that he gets lost in the mix—where once he was a maestro of controlling space. Still, these subtle and intentional shifts suggest Chung could make a more focused album in the future, if only because it will be coming from a clearer headspace.

The first third of the mix is particularly strong. ... But the back half feels directionless, tugged this way and that across a succession of nervous techno and electro cuts; a shift back toward more atmospheric climes, a few tracks from the end, doesn’t quite gel.

The gloriously mopey sound of new wave might be novel to Norrvide and Fischer, but there's not much here that stands out in synth-pop's always-crowded field. In a sense, that's fine; Lust for Youth wear this sound well. But Lust for Youth shows they might have escaped coldwave’s dead end only to settle into a rut.

The Garden sound best at their most upbeat. ... At times, the album can feel erratic. ... However uneven, Kiss My Super Bowl Ring is proudly defiant.

While his guest vocalists don’t always make the most illuminating guides to Miszczyk’s maze-like terrain—a jumble of non-sequiturs and disconnected images, the lyrics on many songs feel like placeholders for more engaging songwriting—their voices lend texture to his gravelly analog synths, tape-warped effects, and hazy psychedelia, rounding out his retro-futurist universal with a crucial sense of human presence.

As thematically complex as Moss can be, vulnerability sometimes gets lost. ... But even in the album’s less compelling moments, Hawke retains a delicate charm. She feels believable.

The layers of sound Taylor presents are sumptuous, full of tossed-off licks of piano and guitar that gather into motifs more deluxe than his recent solo work but far scruffier than Hot Chip. Tucked into them, Taylor’s lyrics make strange but welcome bedfellows.

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.

What seems like a perfectly swell concept for a surprise gig at the local pub-- where sloshed spectators can join in on the hero worship-- feels much more suspect when reified into a permanent record.

Pinewood Smile has got more jokes than ever, and it’s the first time the Darkness don’t evoke 1974 or 1984 so much as 2003--and they’ve never sounded more dated.

Another Country just isn't nearly as consistently satisfying as Merritt's earlier offerings.

The visual [video] gambit falls uneasily between a critique of hip-hop’s relationship with corporate sportswear brands and, once again, a flimsy attempt to muster up attention. Pure Beauty plays out in a similar fashion, committing wholly to neither SHIRT’s appealing raw rap chops nor his grander concepts.

Consistent, concise and stylistically compelling, Hyperview is a good set of tracks, and a worthy crossover attempt at that, provided you’re OK with consulting the lyrics booklet and willing to take a ride on the undertow.

Despite the overt bleakness, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack shines when Mellencamp invites other people into his world—proof that he can still surprise us this deep into his career.

With Teeth manages to flip the script on Reznor's recent M.O. Instead of fronting like a more feminine Al Jourgensen-- hard, coarse, yet not totally abrasive-- Reznor comes across as the masculine yin to Shirley Manson's alluring yang: playful, coy, and with a flair for the dramatic.

The eccentric versus the consummate professional; the maverick versus the safe bet. Yet for an album called Hyperdrama, actual tension—the kind of friction that once made Justice’s music feel so vital—is otherwise frustratingly hard to find.

Circular Sounds can feel impersonal, especially in how Stoltz hopscotches from voice to voice, some far stronger than others.

It is slightly bizarre to hear aging punks perform the songs of their youth, music that would become foundational to scenes that produced the likes of Blink-182 and Weezer. But as the missing link that connects Descendents’ humble beginnings to their most iconic sounds, it’s essential.

The majority of the record's new tracks need to either be more focused or show more dynamic range.

The Coathangers keep the back-alley post-punk party going strong on a scratchy, shrieky, foul-mouthed sophomore album, Scramble, their first for Seattle-based Suicide Squeeze.

Teenager is gloomy without feeling fatalistic; melodic without feeling facile. For the Thrills, a quick locale change has managed to yield impressive results.

"Why Did You Leave Me' and 'Can't Say Goodbye' are some grown-up songs, and Snoop probably has a whole album of them somewhere in him. But as long as the pothead-pimp shtick keeps selling, we'll probably never hear it.

The kicker is that, without their live/electronic shtick to distinguish them, Midnight Juggernauts don't seem to be anything other than gifted mimics.

Let It Beard's structure, its scope, its knowing nods to an earlier era's excess.

Aside from a few ungainly, obvious missteps--trying to play the Scott Storch melodic game on 'Amerikan Gangster,' wasting the KRS run-in on a track that sounds like a D12 refuse pile ('Sex, Drugs & Violence')--the album is finely sequenced.

There are plenty of great tunes here, just not much character. Lollipop's as catchy as your average power-pop record, but still hardly as essential as the band's peaks.

Red Fang certainly sounds good on Whales and Leeches, with the production of the Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk again giving their instruments ample breadth and weight. But they do not match that surface with substance.

Tracks such as “There Was a Button” and “Traanc” are acceptable as minimal-house DJ tools, but as greater parts of a long-playing whole, they seem lost for a broader context--a context Dear previously had no trouble offering. Only at Alpha’s tail end does Audion’s (and Dear’s) personality assert itself.

That was a problem on Psutka’s last couple of albums, too; his concepts are stronger than his editing skills. Still, taken in moderate doses, it’s a strangely moving portrait of ecological collapse translated into sound.

Die Lit is an anomaly, an album that works almost completely from its own lunatic script. At its best--which is to say almost the entire thing, really--the album almost seems to suspend gravity.

Working within a framework isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are cracks in the formula. Mostly on the production side, which is incredibly played out. ... Still, even with the stale sound of the album, Durk is such a complex and colorful writer that it’s worth it to stick it out.

Whether it's the lack of plot, insight, or collaborators, Achilles Heel also finds Bazan's music stuck in a room with no exits, with one loping distortion-pedal crawler after another.

This album features perfectly serviceable and perfectly competent, middle-of-the-road punk rock music that probably sounds much better live than it ever could in a recording studio.

Lady's is a well-trodden field and, at times, their lyrical tropes are overfamiliar to the point of feeling vague, if not downright lazy. So Wray and Walker distinguish themselves by amping up the charm and cheeriness to the max.

Ava Luna are an exhilarating live band, and Electric Balloon is the first thing they've done that comes close to bottling that energy.

Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context.

For YG, an artist we’ve come to expect the unexpected from, someone currently standing at a career-defining intersection, Stay Dangerous is an exercise in predictability.

Really, if your parents don't dig this, there's something wrong with them. This is music for the drive to pick up the kids from soccer practice, or to the doctor for dad's yearly prostate exam.

But the thing is, somewhere between all the vamping and forced attempts at being hip and irreverent, they found the time to write and record a fine record.

One of this year's most interesting records.

The tracks here are supported by a fuller sound and more complex arrangements than on either of Travis' first two albums.... They're all competently played, but never really inspiring.

Nothing mind-blowing here, just an efficient EP filled with enjoyable music.

Tittsworth has produced, by and large, an album of potential novelty singles. That's fine--you can argue that some of the best records are novelty records--but the problem is that most of the tracks on 12 Steps are neither particularly novel nor memorable.

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.

This group is wise and capable enough to eschew nearly every shortcut of today's personality-first music culture and dial into the silence between the noise. It's what confidence sounds like.

Marks the first time the band's sound has taken a step backwards.

It's probably the best thing Defever's ever done.

What's most remarkable about this album is, despite the high gravitas of the subject manner, it still manages to capture the yearning and imagination of youth, and never loses touch with the redemptive qualities of interpersonal connectedness.

True to its title, Voices in a Rented Room is modestly scaled and simply structured; the tone and form established in a song’s first verse don’t change by the time we reach the third. But even within these confines, New Bums rarely retrace their steps.

Tennant slaps his heart on his sleeve and gets on with things. The result isn't awful, although none of it is as spooky and playful as the cover of the Passions 'I'm In Love With a German Film Star' that the Boys produced for Sam Taylor-Wood last year.

Good Evening is minuscule and precious, both of which are charming descriptors, but its fragility is taken to an almost palpable extent.

Rather than dismiss Just to Feel Anything as a mistake, perhaps it's better to think of it as a mixed detour, one that some of the band's followers might in fact welcome.

Concrete and Glass won’t shock, sparkle, or challenge cultural norms, but it’s a (mostly) lovely place to inhabit.

Aside from "Valkyrie", Together is a solid collection of well-crafted songs. However, in spite of the quality, the album isn't entirely satisfying.

Late in the record, the perky "You Know" also stands up to the quality of jj n 2, but between these tracks is mostly B-side fare. It's a shame, but I don't get the sense listening to jj n 3 that jj's best work is behind them.

Appealing and in tune with admirable influences but ultimately lacking the sort of unpredictability or drama that can make these the songs that saved your life rather than reminiscent of ones that can.

All My Relations makes a few nods to conventional songwriting, but, really, it’s just as dense and repetitive as anything the drummer has ever put out.

BRMC is a big, dumb band who writes big, dumb songs.

When left to his own devices—as on the chopped-and-screwed “Roll” and the Jersey club-indebted “Pure Gold”--Girl Unit rests on formerly niche sounds that have been adopted by more mainstream-facing artists.

A radio edit of the title track tacked onto the end serves as an unintentional critique of Half a Human—it’s just too easy to remove the two minutes of synthesizer drift and end up with a perfectly enjoyable Real Estate song about the deceptive nature of passing time.

It's a true departure in sound and method; this is not a lazy or complacent record. McPhun, though, never settles into these new sounds, and Fight Softly retains very little of the ease and abandon that, to date, had marked the Ruby Suns.

It’s full of bulletproof hooks and sticky turns of phrase. But in committing to a more conventional form of superstardom, Swift has deemphasized the skill at the core of her genius.

These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within.

Given its one-off status and unique format, Are You In? is probably a diversion rather than a reinvention, a mixtape-style curio given big business backing, but hopefully some of its reinvigorated sonics find their way to the next proper De La Soul album.

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

Braxton has evoked the spirit of ’90s R&B without ever sounding like she’s simply throwing out nostalgia bait.

The highs are high and the lows are subterranean at best. And that’s that. .... Luckily, Neil Young is so damn good at what he does that even his most hurried material leaves room for some genius.