Best Behavior is a strong record on its own merits, perhaps more so if you feel a sort of investment in Dinowalrus after hearing %, but it leaves something to the listener's imagination in order to make it truly exciting in addition to something sturdy to build upon.

For the most part, though, King Con's an enjoyable collection, one that presents Winston as an artist with a strong enough personality to overcome that dip and to stand out in a scene where it can be hard to make an impression.

Bands like this often aren't lucky enough to find singers this subtle, striking, and strong.

it's more like an endpoint for devoted fans looking to connect the dots. As such, it provides a fascinating coming-of-age story of an artist who came into his own playing styles he knew he loved and others he only thought he hated.

Like all great live albums (Live at the Apollo, Double Live, After Dark), it will make you eternally thankful that someone had the foresight to hit the record button.

Into the Waves is stylized, but its presentation still manages to suit its content.

Howard's Brainfeeder debut shatters expectations, offering an always shifting balance of alien and familiar. [But] It's not perfect.

It's a series of vignettes and at its best it reminds me of amorphous copy/paste artists like Prefuse 73, musicians who wormed their way into a genre by nibbling at its edges.

Mirel Wagner possesses a curious physicality both in her lyrical conjurings and in the confident agility of her guitar playing, which together sound distinctive, specific, and personal even when considered against the decades of acoustic folk music that has come before.

Most of these songs are really pretty damn good. Tanlines have never had a problem with the set-up, but it's in the delivery where the occasionally falter.

Sonik Kicks is a good record, but it doesn't have the songwriting depth and range of its two predecessors, and as admirable as it is that Weller is still playing with his formula and searching for something new to do with it, the electronics here do the songs few favors.

Large chunks of MDNA are shockingly banal, coming across not so much as bad pop songs per se, but as drably competent tunes better suited to D-list Madonna wannabes.

Queen of the Wave just makes you lay prostrate at the feet of Pepe Deluxé in the hopes that you won't mind them relentlessly hammering you with tacky quirks and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

While Ice Level's an awful lot to process, it's the finest sort of overload; listen closely enough, and you can almost hear your circuits being rewired.

In a world that is newly full of "content" at every turn, it can be refreshing to find an uncompromising record that exists so honestly on its own.

If there's anything that keeps Faithful Man from equaling My World, aside from the occasional orchestral overkill, it's that the songwriting overall isn't quite as strong.

Rocket Juice & the Moon feels like a decent record, but an unfocused, meandering one.

The tape incorporates all of Odd Future's members with surprising ease (not an easy task considering all the stylistic differences at play) and pieces together the first release in over a year that'll remind people why they liked the group so much in the first place.

Friendly and nondescript.

It's sort of campy stuff, but it's gripping in its willful oddity.

The Belbury Tales is stranded somewhere between the abstract work of Jupp's past and the fuller sound of the live instrumentation he is applying, making this feel like his most pleasingly open-ended release so far.

It feels like he's listening harder than ever to feel out new ways to move forward, causing him to quietly cleanse his vision in ever more compelling ways.

But for all of its immediate pleasure, In Ghostlike Fading feels slightly vacant, valuing tribute and stylization above personal expression.

As when the biggest guy in the bar has your back, Vee Vee is filled with extra spittle and bottomless bravado.

My only real complaint is that the physicality of the bass and drums could have been emphasized to an even greater degree-- while your ear is constantly drawn to the rhythm section's permutations, Leaneagh's voice sits perhaps a bit too prominently in the mix, and the exhilarating wildness of the drumming is often suggested rather than truly felt.

A motley assortment of Sonic Youth nods, acoustic entreaties, and cloying pop-rockers, Ranaldo's opportunity to step out of the Sonic Youth shadows and into his own proper spotlight is mostly a miss made of mediocrity.

For a band that's lyrically so devoted to upsetting the order, Goatwhore sound unequivocally content with replaying the past.

With their harmonies and swooning vocals, they're never quite Troggs-level elemental, but these guys clearly know how to wail.