Star Wars is their strongest record in a decade.

Mable might not be a knock out of the park—"Bench" sounds like lukewarm Weezer, and the five-minute "Out of Body" seems out of place--but it might be one the catchiest sets of pessimist punk songs since Fireworks’ Oh, Common Life.

Locrian chose to slow down and create consecutive meticulous albums. They are isolated and involved worlds of sound.

They are a powerful outfit, and Subjective Concepts is cohesive and fierce.

Future was always straightforward, never ashamed to confess his depression or infatuation, but the narratives never felt so focused, nuanced, or vulnerable than here.

Barring a couple of forgettable, filler-feeling tracks like "Don't You Think I Know?", the biggest drawback of Does It Again is the production. It doesn't sound bad, but the washed-out reverb and pushed-to-the-front keyboard creates a distance that the band sounds like they are constantly fighting to push through.

This set is the document we've been missing of the onstage Family Stone of legend: the tightly knit extended family that sang and played together, the group that magically united black and white audiences. If it doesn't quite live up to their radiant reputation, it comes pretty close.

Like so many country albums, especially recent ones by Monroe's friend and bandmate Miranda Lambert, The Blade could be stronger if it was more streamlined and sequenced with some kind of overarching narrative in mind, but that's almost beside the point when the album sounds so damn good.

There are solid hooks scattered all over No Life For Me, and they sound like they could've been knocked out in five minutes--each melodic note notches in the expected place over thrumming power chords and steady drums.

This is Ducktails’ most discriminating and tasteful album, but the project is at its best when there's a certain amount of exploration even within its narrow parameters.

There are moments on Gold and Stone when it seems like these songs long to wander off, to further explore some of these textures and moods, but not a single track extends past the four-minute mark, almost as if out of fear of throwing the album off its tight schedule.

It’s not that the album is bland, it’s that it doesn’t really do anything or go anywhere.

Here, and on the album’s other highlights, the air of mercantile anonymity feels generous rather than cynical, the music as anxious to accommodate its imagined audience.

The moments where things sound like they’re spilling over, bleeding outside of the track's imaginary lines, are when LP is most thrilling.

The strangeness and slightness of Instrumentals 2015 is admittedly refreshing in our age of overdoing it, and it does fit with the whisper that is Pearce's overall career arc, but when placed next to Flying Saucer Attack's best music, it still comes off like a faint echo.

Echoes is more of a grab bag: Enormous festival fillers and hard-nosed club bangers rub up against wondrously bizarre studio experiments and some of the best pure pop songs Rowlands and Simons have ever made.

Instead of opening up new possibilities in the originals, Beam and Bridwell unwittingly demonstrate how limited certain songs can be and therefore how unsatisfying certain covers can sound.

Isbell is obviously familiar with the music of the region, yet Something More Than Free sounds nondescript and--worse--placeless.

Nina Revisited… A Tribute to Nina Simone seems geared towards introducing a contemporary to the High Priestess of Soul, and how well it does that remains to be seen.

Sometimes the songwriting relies too heavily on swelling harmonies and crescendos, and occasional lyrical clichés grate.

Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala.

Transferred and restored from S&M Recordings’ original LPs and tapes by Emmons himself, How Far Will You Go?'s 16 tracks are threaded together by deft production details and a forthright sense of humor that posits the duo as unsung heroes of those glam, pre-punk years, which, in essence, they were.

Sometimes Williamson sings, after a fashion, which is where Key Markets gets weird, in much the same way that early Fall records got weird when Mark E. Smith tried to carry a tune.

Atheist's Cornea maintains an urgency that’s palpable even for those who don’t speak Fukagawa’s native language.

As a whole Lucky 7 sounds a lot like everything else Statik Selektah has done up to this point; the album is neither offputting nor particularly exciting, and it's hard to feel strongly about at all.

Homesick is not quite a concept album, but there's a ghost of a narrative visible in the record's bookending tracks.

Whereas that band [Title Fight] used shoegaze and sludge as references and jumping-off points, Creepoid treat it like the whole point, and the album grows wearying long before it's over.

For all of their upgraded production, instrumental technique, and influences, All Is Illusory sounds like a record that primes the Velvet Teen to succeed around the time Cum Laude! was released—but making the best "2006 indie rock" record of 2015 makes them stand out in a way that they hadn’t managed yet.