Tidbits keep the sense of fun in The Beths’ music, they aren’t enough to fully invigorate their second album among the more sluggish songs. They’re mostly a reminder of what’s missing.

Deer Creek Canyon is a deft fine-tuning of her meandering rustic tendencies, the tweaks so minor and carefully placed they're at first nearly imperceptible.

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

Night Time, My Time isn’t the reactionarily somber anti-pop drag it could have been--instead, it’s a smart Kelly Kapowski hair-whip and loud bubblegum-crack of a record that lends itself to compulsive listening.

Black Metal offers few definitive answers, but this time around the hazy images he's projecting have come into sharper focus.

It’s exciting to hear the freedom of Jóhannsson’s compositions in autonomous music, and with Orphée he’s reasserted himself as not a just an elegiac film score guy.

Nouns is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible; besides, it's way more satisfying to just close your eyes and just enjoy it.

What’s most disappointing about the album is how Ryder-Jones has almost completely abandoned taking any sonic risks. His vocal is dulled and rasping throughout, and the songs never blossom like those on If..., seemingly hamstrung by his limited range.

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.

It’s as if O’Brien set out to make the paragon of a modern My Morning Jacket album and succeeded in both style and sound, only forgetting to leave room for the surprises that actually gave their early works ineffable power. It’s boring.

Ambition can just as easily manifest itself as a desire to create a relentlessly catchy, "classic indie" album in your own dorm room, and if that's what Surfer Blood set out to do, Astro Coast succeeds wildly.

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.

Her musical ideas and lyrics have caught up with the ability of her voice. The songs are well varied, and transition smoothly from one to the other.

Temptation is strong enough to stand with any of Byrne's other solo work, that rare film score that works beautifully as an entirely separate record.

What they do well might be best exemplified by "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", which most effectively pairs their sense of theatricality and grandiosity with their penchant for great pop hooks.

They cast a powerful spell and sustain it over 11 tracks, yet at times you wish they'd jam, or perform a cover, or do anything to break it up somehow.

Despite the summery song titles and the beach balling associations that might follow these guys around, this music transcends the notion of seasons.

Chant Darling doesn't hit strike that balance often enough, and very few of these songs allow such a glimpse of the musician behind them. Ultimately, Lawrence Arabia's carefully tailored influences have the same effect as that stage name, as if Milne was intent on absenting himself from his own album.

Mr. Dream have mastered the tricks of alt-rock enough to play these sorts of formal games, but that isn't nearly as satisfying as when they push themselves outside of their wry, cynical comfort zone and hit upon something more nakedly emotional.

Cat's Eyes is the rare side project effort that feels as (if not more) fully realized than the band from which it borrows members.

He has the sound down, somewhere between Factory Records sturm-und-drag and grotty old VHS-tape slasher soundtracks, but you could never accuse Bermuda Drain of being a slick or faceless attempt at mere nostalgia.

Though this EP plows a narrower row than Judges, Stetson still manages to show us two very different aspects of his visceral minimalism.

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.

The headspace it produces is calming but frequently, dreamily surreal, and it often seems like a better place to live than the world outside it.

There is much more to Heaven Adores You than endearing scraps, however, and none of them are more important than the version of "True Love" that appears here.

At various points, Faraway Reach is: a shrug; a call-to-arms; a balm. At its best, it's all these things at once.

The music hammers with industrial heft, vibrates with nervous pulse, and envelops with tactile atmosphere. Even when her songs achieve moments of transcendence, they still strike you directly in the gut.

The World’s Best American Band is mixed significantly louder than anything else you’re probably listening to right now and it’s equally glittery and gritty like a blood-caked switchblade—far more polished than the similarly indebted Sheer Mag, but with more edge to rule out any comparisons to the ’70s LARPing of Free Energy.