Thomas glues the pretty (Garbus' vocals) and ugly (his own screeching, see also: his work singing in Witch) together with fantastic melodies, at times so plentiful they bury one another.

The diversity of sound the band rolls out on Pe’ahi is certainly refreshing, but it takes a chunk out of the foundation of their career.

Cronin’s music has always been ingratiating, but that quality works against his material here, which yearns for something deeper or darker. There are clear limits to the affability that makes some of his previous singles so winsome.

There seem to be so many questions stirring inside SOAK, and yet Before We Forgot How to Dream douses them in so much prettiness that they lose their spark.

More often than not, listening to Songs for the General Public feels like watching the D’Addario brothers throw old ’45s at a brick wall to see what sticks, snickering all the while. They want you to have a good time, and they sound tighter than ever; they just need to figure out how to control the Frankenstein that they’ve made.

When Weiss manages to get outside himself, Intersections uses emo as a step towards something more resonant.

WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD has plenty of gorgeous moments. Those moments will inspire the most generous listeners to wonder what this record could have been, if Hakim had given it more time to gestate, and maybe edited himself more.

Ballads were a staple of H.E.R.’s initial five EPs, and she again uses them frequently on Back of My Mind, for better or worse. Nearly all of them are simple and pretty. ... The choices she makes—from the glossy R&B production to favoring vocal riffing over a good hook—feel altogether safe, like she’s protecting a legacy she was born into.

Though it is abstract, Old Punch Card is playful. It's like the sound of a guy bumping around in a room filled with weird noisemakers, trying out one and then another until he finds one that sounds especially interesting.

Smalhans is a reliably generous gesture from an artist that takes pleasure in indulging himself and his audience.

If The Way and Color is not all the way there yet you can hear it as a promising document of a formative period.

Stepping confidently into her “rock era,” Miley offers a genuinely pleasing, though sometimes hamfisted record that staves off the awkwardness and missteps that plagued her previous albums.

He sounds damn good over trashy, flashy electro that manages to keep pace with cadences as hyperactive as his own, and, above all, he's way more fun than he's often given credit for.

In its brief onslaught of sneery fun, Vicki Leekx only occasionally reaches the dizzy pop heights of Arular and Kala. But it does give us an M.I.A. who, once again, seems to be having a blast doing what she's doing.

They're still honing the edge that's going to set them apart. But for the time being, the hooks are enough to convert plenty of true believers.

There’s just enough to think about without getting fatigued, as the Strokes continue to toy with the sound of their late period.

With its winking humor and percolating rhythms, Plantasia might turn away some human listeners, but there’s a sense of joy and possibility in songs like “Rhapsody in Green” and “A Mellow Mood for Maidenhair.” It’s hard not to smile at the oddball charm of this strange enterprise.

Hour of Green Evening might have benefited from more of that wilder teenage thrall, but for the most part, what the music lacks in rowdiness it makes up for in emotional complexity.

The result is a dance record that wears its political themes like a Halloween costume—great for cheap, campy thrills but falling short of striking any deeper, never mind radical, notes of terror.

One standout is “Ruins of a Lost Memory.” .... It’s a concrete, compelling closer to an album that otherwise slips from memory as swiftly as a dream.

With The Mountain, Heartless Bastards have shown that they have the tools and the talent to take at least tentative steps forward into a more ambitious and diverse sound. But it's surprising that they sound so introspective here when they could, and occasionally do, sound world-beating.

It's bound to ruffle feathers and turn off old fans, and in a way, going so outright "pop" is one of the gutsiest, risky things a pillar of the scene like Scuba could have done.

He's no longer hiding in clever loops or layering. This sensual album suggests a producer at the height of his powers.

As the band churn up sound and fury, we can hear the strident strains of Balliet’s cello, scribbling suicide notes in the background and lending some gravity to an album that sounds, tragically, weightless.

If the stories are slightly different, for better or worse, the song remains the same.

Daughters of Everything is rock‘n’roll rendered on Etch A Sketch: imperfect and monochromatic to be sure, but infectiously playful, and liable to spin off into any direction at any moment. And, occasionally, you find yourself marveling at an accidental masterpiece.

Her fifth full-length Air Lows feels like a goth psychedelic ritual intended to plumb the depths of the listener’s unconscious; while the record doesn’t always hit its mark, the moments that do sustain momentum radiate a delectably gnostic hum.

Mosquito is not without highlights, but it requires some patience to unearth them, because when this record is bad, it's loudly, brazenly bad.