Megabear is a unique and innovative concept piece that suggests lofty questions about intentionality and artists’ agency. But a regular 12-song album with a beginning, middle, and end probably would have been more satisfying.

At its best moments, the debut sounds like an A.V. club president's wet dream, unabashedly nerdy and technically proficient. Sadly though, the record is peppered with aesthetically dubious nu-rave moments, making LOTP sound less like sympathetic revenging nerds and more like party-crazed dude-bros who just happen to own synths.

Rocky’s anything-goes tests come up short, but they feel like his alone.

It's pretty boring and one-note, but if Georgopoulos' indulgent, decadent tendencies produce the occasional dud, it seems a small price to pay for the intrigue of looking forward to what he’s going to do next.

With so little added to the originals, you have to ask: Why do this? 'Cause it's good fun.

The Shabazz Palaces cut is easily the most interesting song here, and seems to be the one you might still be pulling out once in a while in another six months. Considering that the EP, with three versions of the same song in a row, isn’t really meant to be heard as a whole, getting one truly intriguing track out of it isn’t such a bad deal.

Ward's real saving grace on Parodia Flare is the guitar, which he utilizes in unexpectedly welcome ways to propel his compositions, keeping them from dissolving into murky keyboard washes.

Respectable as it is for both men to avoid falling back into their bag of dub tricks, a few of Man Vs. Sofa’s attempts to expand their reach fall just a bit short.

The relatively sparse and chilly tone of Departing ultimately feels less like a slump than a conscious decision to present itself as the wintertime counterpart to Hometowns' prairie summer.

The songs on First Flower are vibrant and warm--fine dinner party music, if not gripping enough to stop the conversation in its tracks. Still, Burch’s emotional openness and introspection are promising, and her technical skill is undeniable. Her highly versatile vocals add texture, nuance, and depth to everything she sings.

The extras dug up for the Tug of War reissue (the Super Deluxe Edition of each also contain DVDs of era-appropriate ephemera) make for some interesting listening—demo versions of "Wanderlust" and "The Pound Is Sinking", and a version of "Ebony" with just McCartney on electric piano. But those pale in comparison to the veritable alternate LP included in Pipes of Peace.

There’s moments where the Very Best show that rather than merely parlay exuberance and global harmony, they can also manage the somber aspect of their music.

A record too tart for beauty and too well reared for intractability.

The band works via accumulation, gradually building up to moments of muted drama, yet LaCount's leads wreck that momentum.

Methyl Ethel’s debut full-length, Oh Inhuman Spectacle, is reflective of the project’s humble, hermetic beginnings, with Webb handling all the production and instrumentation.

In a sense, it seems more apropos to judge Double Up as a comedy record than as a pop record.

Throwing discordant elements into the mix to see what comes out is firmly in keeping with the spirit of the times, but the desire to create another fork in the road, to not just slavishly replicate what came before, is what makes this album (and post-punk as a genre) such a consistently fascinating area to re-explore.

The album is invigorating and repetitive in the way that walking is invigorating and repetitive.

The Wasted Years, despite its sardonic title, is a worthwhile look back at the path he took to get to those heights. While it’s not a complete document of the band’s start—this set ignores standalone singles and b-sides from this era, like a rollicking cover of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner”--it sets the table for a three-decade-plus journey that continues to surprise, confound, and satisfy.

One thing he is remarkably good at across his body of work is letting in disarming moments of vulnerability, where he pulls you in to spectate upon the wreck of his life. On Phantom Radio there are just a few too many times when it's all dressed up in unnecessary complication.

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

So Beautiful or So What can be stodgy in its emotions and a bit too devoted to its motifs, but there's something humanizing about the album's shortcomings.

On Magic & Medicine, the band's frenetic freakout leanings have been stripped away in favor of a more humble approach, placing subtlety and songwriting above the sounds being produced. It all sounds far less interesting.

Any record that emphasizes variety will have a few tracks that fall just outside the artist's reach; not everything works quite so well, although that has more to do with song choice than execution.

It’s a love letter to rap and the people who made him excited about creating again. It’s saccharine, maybe a little pat, but the emotion in his voice makes it hard not to feel fuzzy.

On TANGK, Idles smooth their rougher edges as they explore love in all of its facets—it would be their warmest and most melodic record to date, if only Talbot could get out of his own way.

Mixing downtempo with trip-hop and some samples from a funky-ass toolbox (where you keep your funky-ass tools, of course), Pepé Deluxe seem to have struck upon a recipe for success.

Gun finds songwriter's songwriter McCaughey slightly stuck in his own unique, nuanced niche.