Clutch work best when they keep the pulley of punchlines and pummeling riffs running at max speed, and as a result, Psychic Warfare proves a tad too meandering to eclipse Earth Rocker or Blast Tyrant

At once cosmically huge and acutely personal, Zauner captures grief for the perversely intimate yet overwhelming pain it is. Long may she keep at this music thing.

s an aural analgesic, it goes down smooth and numbs what it needs to. But instead of tearing open the passageway between this world and whatever lies beyond, it shrinks that portal to the size of a keyhole.

As catchy and well-crafted as these songs are, they never feel restricted or overly polished. Each track is given room to grow, stretching into extended intros, impulsive solos, and oft-repeated verses.

The music on Thank You Very Quickly is a triumph of a different sort. Extra Golden have conquered whatever divide there once was between rock and benga to create a distinct sound of their own that respects both traditions.

Snaith's fascination shines, taking him places that po-faced peers are blind to.

If these 35 minutes feel like twice that, it's because Portal thought through every step, packed all of its ideas as tightly as possible, and left it for you to decode.

That's ultimately what Stoltz brings to the table with Double Exposure--moments of pop greatness, but also overlong tracks and too-generic delivery.

This record reads like an object lesson in how former glories are sometime best served by becoming a malleable part of the present.

With this crystalline collection, Watkins Family Hour offers a more compelling insight.

Hovvdy are still craning their necks back to the past, but on True Love they cruise the open road, porous and wide-eyed in the face of new beginnings.

Unfortunately, Fat Dog’s debut slumps right in that tepid puddle, weighed down by gimmicks, cheap irony, and unearned mythology. Rather than stoking rapture or rage, it prods with hollow indifference. More a whimper than a woof.

On No Shouts, No Calls, the Krautrock-esque sonics of the band's last album have been fused with The Power Out's flair for continental pop, but it's the guitars that sing loudest.

As for his lyrics, it's wrong to call them stream-of-consciousness, since that implies Wolf is a poor self-editor; nothing about Alopecia is lazy. It's more like 5 a.m. journal entries cut up and turned to collage.

You may not feel pleasure all the way through And They Turned Not When They Went, but if you're drawn to the bizarre, inconstant emotional terrain of late-night wakefulness, you'll find something honest.

Newman’s fastidious, occasionally fussy writing ensures a level of quality control as he tinkers around the margins, even if his bandmates never quite catch the spark.

Occasionally, Slugs of Love meanders off course. .... But the album rebounds on its celestial closing track, “Easy Falling,” a plush comedown that breezes by on gentle guitar and Nagano’s leisurely melodies. Like the album’s best songs, it offers a worthwhile escape with understated grace.

The collaborations on Return of the Tender Lover and the design of its production feel traditional, in the sense that they don't attempt to update Babyface's sound and instead lean comfortably on a long, established career. This dedication to tradition and honoring of his craft is less a throwback than a micro-adjustment of an enduring formula.

The results still sound as slickly produced and hedge-betting as any actual Foo Fighters album.

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.

I'm going to let the band off the hook for the holding pattern; in the meantime, we'll simply revel in the general loveliness of these 10 compositions, which utilize the debut's blueprints in the creation of sublime melodies, absorbing lyricism and delicate harmonic interplay.

For an album cast as a fresh start, Fall Into the Sun mostly feels like closure.

Instead of merely contrasting the tunefully heartfelt Barlow with the more erratic, irascible Loewenstein, the new album finds them mining common topical terrain—namely, the emotional toll of perpetually wading in a sea of misinformation—through their respective personalities.

Where Julia filled almost every available space with either emotional fullness or palpable absence, City Wrecker feels pinched and constrained; the former was a drain to listen to in the best possible way, while this new one only occasionally breaks the skin.

The song choices are smart, and all of the covers range from capable to very good, but all of them reinforce the idea that no one else could make her music.

The moments of goodness and light here bump up against plenty of songs that are depressing or otherwise unseasonal-feeling. You're happy to get the present, but it's not exactly what you would've asked for from Santa.

The smaller stakes of Stereo Mind Games feel healthier and rewarding; the music is still vulnerable, but anguish no longer consumes every moment.

Anyone can manufacture hope through a slogan, but there's an empathy and humanity that simply can't be faked as Angelakos tries to figure out how to stay atop his life. It's hard to think of a more noble goal for a pop album.