Cupid's Head is a dark, exquisitely detailed album that rewards patience and further cements the Field's reputation as one of modern electronic music's most satisfying auteurs.

Despite the overcooked jumble of your typical oft-delayed all-star concept record, it really does fall together as pure music. Just stop paying too much attention to Del's lyrics.

It's the intricate musical subtleties Stewart weaves through them that blow your hair back.

While Yuck made listeners nostalgic for the first Clinton term, Glow & Behold will just make you wish it was 2011 again.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 is not only superfluous, it actually erases some of the gains made by its predecessor as it plays into the worst trappings of self-indulgence.

Fuzz consistently run the risk of noodling for a bit too long or pushing one idea a little too far. It's tricky to balance loud and quiet, and Fuzz are still finding their footing.

Without outside direction, however, Dr. Dog quickly go back to their old ways. Afrobeat specialists Antibalas provide the horns on B-Room, but their talents are wasted on songs like "Long Way Down", the beginning of which sounds like the Wayne's World dissolve tuned to a baritone sax.

Days Are Gone's is so polished that Haim could easily be seen as clinical and lifeless, but their lighthearted attitude complements their recording rigor.

Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy.

Those first three albums have always been easy to put on and enjoy, and now we have a fourth to go with them.

Dramatic and driving, it never quite escapes the upper atmosphere, though thick loopy synth shapes provide an ample climax, showing how this band can go bigger without forsaking its cloistered center.

Ghost Wave get comfy in simplicity, tone, and tempo, and maintain that true course for the rest of the record. There’s a great, mid-60s Stones energy that runs underneath Ages that keeps the whole thing hearty and on its heels. But Paul’s faux-lysergic lyricism peppered throughout is never as focused as something like the Stones' “19th Nervous Breakdown”, even though he matches that jaunty cadence often.

The first seven songs play out like a 20-minute power hour, but the album loses a bit of steam after that.

Soma sits still, paralyzed by the weight of a sound that’s too big for this promising band to manage, at least for now.

The Dead C are lifers, then, who are too in control of their own sound to be detained by expectations--of their own music, of rock'n'roll, of their legacy at large. Armed Courage proves the longterm vitality of that sadly rare strategy.

As a double album, Scratch might have produced something like an elaborate mixtape with originals on one side of the Maxell and covers on the other. In execution, however, I’ll Scratch Yours plays like another artifact of the 90s, this one less fondly remembered.

Brass is certainly an easier record to wrap your mind around than Flux Outside. But, with one too many good-not-great melodies and that nagging sense that these guys are holding something back, it's also a whole lot less likely to get itself lodged in your skull.

Hell Bent, while elemental, sounds sincere and grounded but free--a self-assured debut of principled pop-punk that leaves room for growth.

Blouse found a balance between texture and melody: here was a band that clearly cared about atmosphere, but never at the expense of a solid, Top Gun soundtrack-worthy hook.

For now, on record, Chvrches know how go big on an intimate scale, to remind us of the stuff that keeps us living.

There's a strong sense of someone not reaching particularly hard to get beyond their influences, but even that takes on an appropriate hue as the album progresses.

Colonial Patterns is a fine album title, suggesting so much yet giving little away.

The new version is in fact more textured and nuanced, but not at the expense of the album's bone-dry, brutalizing crunch. Most of its touch-ups are tastefully unobtrusive and illuminating.

It might be subject to less scrutiny had it not followed Interstellar, but then again, it might not be subject to scrutiny at all, and simply filed away with any other competent and unexceptional dream-pop.

Yours Truly is a very safe record. Mostly written by two of R&B's most mawkish hawkers, Babyface and Harmony Samuels, it’s built on cliché and tradition, and written professionally to a fault.

Nothing Was the Same is Drake and 40's most audacious experiment yet in how far inward they can push their sound; a lot of the album sounds like a black hole of all 40's previous productions being sucked into the center. Song-to-song transitions, which have always been melty and blurry, are more notional than ever.

Like most records that lack a central stylistic thrust, Take Me to the Land of Hell often resembles a great collection of tracks instead of a coherent overall work.

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.