As ever, Zedek specializes in thorny songs that unflinchingly address adult topics and full-grown problems, with the malleable backing of her guitar and band providing either momentary refuge or sympathetic cries of exasperation.

Lady's is a well-trodden field and, at times, their lyrical tropes are overfamiliar to the point of feeling vague, if not downright lazy. So Wray and Walker distinguish themselves by amping up the charm and cheeriness to the max.

Throughout Bloodsports, Suede consistently strikes the balance between decadence and elegance that marked their signature work.

Impossible Truth is Tyler's second richly satisfying and absorbing record of solo guitar in three years.

This debut itself is compelling but because, at last, it represents a clear synthesis of so many of O’Malley’s activities.

The best songs here are all nearly seven minutes long, but their erratic structures make compelling stages to watch dueling tirades of emotion swarm around one another.

For now, Cully's another voice in the crowd in that regard, but his promising talent displayed elsewhere on The New Life suggests that he's one to keep your ears perked up for nonetheless.

The Stand-In is a gorgeous-sounding chronicle of such archetypal props, characters, and sounds, though the conceit does occasionally smother their narrator’s natural, vital wit.

The murk and sloppiness of the early records has been mostly swept away.

180 is structured like a gig, with the attention-grabbing hit followed by fun but less memorable tracks that build gradually in excitement.

Every sound is lovingly recorded and given a cradle of space.

Through Mitchell and Hamer, these characters, made flat by design and even more by time, spring into full dimension, ache and grieve and flirt, live and die and get born again.

Marnia isn't the single touch that shatters, it's the long, steady stare that gives way to embrace.

Taken as a whole, it’s a pretty, enveloping record that executes its modern influences with panache, though the intangible, purely aesthetic nature of Woolhouse’s vaguely downhearted emotional state makes it hard to appreciate Defo as anything other than luxurious ambient icing.

Nothing on these songs sounds the least bit rote or comfortable, and that’s remarkable for a band so far into an unlikely career.

Entrench is the work of veterans who earned the rare second chance to make a first impression. They do not waste the opportunity.

20/20 is akin to another recent album that successfully teased-out excitement from satisfaction, Beyoncé's 4.

The resulting sound feels neither modern nor particularly retro, although it's certainly arguable that the music's buffed up, high-gloss late night classicism resembles just a bit too strongly the kind of music that, say, Poker Flat label boss Steve Bug was playing nine years ago.

Given its relatively seamless mesh of spiky, aggro party music and the more contemplative electronic moments created by Martinez and Moore, Spring Breakers is the rare soundtrack that covers both extremes and makes it work as a whole.

The other half of The False Alarms, while not a complete wash, finds the band sounding lost.

All in all, Fly Zone is an epically audacious record, boiling down to essentially a 13-track demand from Le1f to be allowed access to a mainstream audience without sacrificing a shred of the identity that sets him apart from nearly every rapper a mainstream audience has been drawn to.

All My Relations makes a few nods to conventional songwriting, but, really, it’s just as dense and repetitive as anything the drummer has ever put out.

Invisible Life is the clearest and most dynamic Helado Negro record to date.

Anyone expecting a revival of the Delfonics sound we all know and love very well may walk away disappointed. Taken on its own terms, though, the record works.

It's boldly rendered, and somehow crafts a very human world from cartoon sonics.

Ring’s orchestral and electronic score communicates the narrative’s swing from complacent luxury to riveting despair, showing what happens when worlds collide.

An album about unfit enemies and deserved death that nevertheless delights in its own music-making élan.

All Velvet Changes creates is a disquieting malaise that deflects any attempt to penetrate its billowy, monochromatic, meaningless contours.