Though the concept of "growth" can border on illusory, the shady, gnarled Black Forest comes on less strong than Pale Young Gentlemen, but is ultimately a lot harder to shake than its charming, if slightly hammy predecessor.

It's not perfect, but it's closer than you'd expect from someone who just a few years ago was a member of a C-list girl group.

Even if McCombs remains impossible to pin down, on Mangy Love, he’s never seemed more intent on making a connection.

The record represents a roaring comeback for the band at a moment to which their sound is particularly well-suited.

There's a prevailing sense of definite vision, but not one of the product being excessively labored over. Sure, there's craft at work here, but whereas most albums recorded over long periods of time sound weary and defeated in the final analysis, The Noise Made by People is positively vibrant and alive.

They have a knack for hitting the melody where some more experimental outfits might opt for a diverse array of craziness.

Jay Stay Paid's biggest strengths don't lie in its guest roster, impressive as it is. It's the way these reconstructed, reassembled beats so vividly show off how left-field he was willing to get in the service of finding new ways to make a beat knock.

Logos feels familiar and assuring, another affecting dispatch from a corner of indie music that is increasingly starting to seem like one Cox pretty much owns.

Most of the songs on Mind Control are worth a few spins, but nothing on here quite matches “I'll Cut You Down” from Uncle Acid's 2011 album Bloodlust.

Time & Space is actually a punishingly familiar collision of yesteryear's crossover rock with textbook hardcore bluster.

Despite the glossy guestlist, The Lost Boy remains Cordae’s show. At 15 songs, it could have used an edit, another voice in the room telling him to tone it down. But still, it’s an assured debut.

It plays like the last record’s darker shadow. As with every DIIV album, it sounds timestamped from the year that punk broke, but the mood is heavier, louder, queasier. The guitars jangle less and brood more.

Staying mostly faithful to the spirit of the originals, Mesmerism aligns itself with Bill Evans’ piano trio albums or Duke Ellington’s collaboration with Max Roach and Charles Mingus on Money Jungle. The sound of the new trio is warm and intimate, putting melody and rhythm at the forefront.

Nothing else on Metamodern is quite so bold or quite so dense as “Turtles All the Way Down”, but Simpson comes across as a man deeply dissatisfied with the easy answers country music typically passes along as wisdom.

At its best, Blume is a testament to the rich aesthetic diversity of London’s jazz scene.

Ode to Joy’s beguiling folk songs are direct and generous, quiet sounds coming from a big room.

Backed by an all-star band that notably includes Wilco’s Glenn Kotche and Megafaun’s Phil Cook, Tyler is able to summon a wide range of moods, from plaintive pastoral folk to a particular kind of kosmische American music that fuses Brad Cook’s spacey synths and Luke Schneider’s gorgeous pedal steel like a slow, steady breeze on a hot summer day.

Dilly Dally always sound like they're being crushed throughout Sore, in a good way: They inhabit the dank space beneath dead weight, the place where the good stuff festers.

There are a few moments when the concept's cooler than the result, but in general The Rose Has Teeth's experiments result in frenetic dance tracks doubling as reading lists.

Now a bandleader of a live ensemble rather than a solitary synth programmer, he has opened the door to an entirely different sort of career for himself, one where concerns for the dancefloor shrink away to nothing, and the possibilities of repetition are infinite.

White Roses, My God won’t be for all Low fans, and though—perhaps as with the strangely comparable posthumous SOPHIE album—its reception will certainly be softened by goodwill, it stands alone. Sparhawk releasing a record this immediate and inchoate feels like a gesture of faith, in both listeners’ patience and the musical futures it might yet bloom.

Throughout, the much-improved vocalist Neil McAdams leads plenty of shout-along choruses.

Blue Raspberry proves that Kirby is particularly dialed in on these vicissitudes of intimacy. With a little fine-tuning, she could transcend.

There’s confidence in the imperfections across Caveman Wakes Up.

Underworld’s never had trouble getting listeners to their feet. This gorgeously love-drunk finale makes Barbara a record that can bring them to their knees.

he point is that there are lots of people who haven't yet had the occasion to discover Elliott Smith, and ultimately this gives them a chance to scratch away at the bittersweet reality of his work, at how conflicted he sounded, at how bitterly unresolved his career remains, and how every single song still somehow feels like both a confection and a dagger.

Not all of Diamond's new songs go awry. Most just go away, their melodies dissipating, their lyrics flimsy even through those tremendous pipes.

Taken as a whole, Masculin Féminin is a scrapbook made of records that already felt like scrapbooks, but collectively they form a portrait of a band more multi-dimensional than their Sonic Youth Jr. rep suggested.