Like much of People of the North’s catalog, Era of Manifestations comes across as an attempt at extreme therapy; I secretly find myself hoping the band never quite finds the peace that its raging towards.

What is frustrating are the infrequent but genuinely interesting moments of creativity and cohesion, which suggest that if Marching Church had taken their time and laid off the improv a little, there might have been something special here.

Sonnet positions Meluch somewhere beyond the insular place he occupied before.

For an act so consistent in their sound, it’s hard to get a bead on their ambitions.

New Glow may be Matt & Kim’s most polished album, but their songwriting has never been more amateurish.

Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart does leave you wondering what more the two entities could have accomplished had they worked on this for more than a week.

An album that delivers a gorgeous, if somewhat restrained, step forward. It’s a document of quiet, if not necessarily earth-shattering, revelations.

For a record so bent on impressing the listener, Culture of Volume somehow never manages to leave a mark.

Curren$y may not do "new," but he is very good at what he does: riffing on cars, money, women, weed, and obscure moments from television shows.

There’s a very palatable poppy sheen on all of these tracks: Glitterbug is packed with anthemic hooks and synth pulses that sound like they were composed solely to lure Lexus.

It’s triumphant music for the hyperactive, plural city; it’s confrontational as a means to achieving communality, with no particular loyalties except to an anonymous, shifting collective of people who all want the same thing as Young Fathers--to be one thing, then the next, then the next.

There are good ideas somewhere inside The Air Conditioned Nightmare, and anyone determined enough to look might get something out of them. Lyrics ranging from naively clichéd to slyly astute.

Wilson’s chipper duets never reach equilibrium. Either his presence feels underutilized--the syrupy "On the Island" with She & Him, in which his vocals are scant--or the guests feel shoehorned into musty production that undermines their own charisma.

There are times on Captain of None where the album’s architecture is so compelling it's easy to miss the resonance of the songs themselves.

Insides is Fort Romeau’s second full-length record, and although it doesn’t continue on quite the same upward trend of his recent discography in the risk-taking department, it does boast some of his most fully dimensional and impressively produced work yet.

As the tempos stagnate towards the album’s back end, though, the affective force of her vocals loses potency—particularly on the pedestrian ballad "One Day"--and all the runs in the world can't distract from the sameness.

Iit never feels forced or like she's making some kind of push. It's unhurried and natural and real.

With Dark Red, he’s taken another turn, slipping out of the pop-shadowing path he was on in exchange for something darker and bolder, but compromised by its own disorder.

What For? is so passive it leaves your system the moment you’re done with it.

The rest of the record isn’t as brassy as "Foreign Object", an obvious crowd-pleaser, but it’s occasionally as bold.

Occasional goth clichés aside, Deeper is a thing of beauty.

In truth, they display a confidence in declining to chase or win over new fans that is exceedingly rare in legacy acts.

R&B informed the Sonics’ unhinged passion from the get-go, and This Is the Sonics pays proper homage to the group’s roots.

Despite production from current-day heavy hitters like Da Internz and Mike WiLL Made It, he still comes off like a relic from the past, the class clown who never quite grew up.

While Hunter seems more enamored of radio hits by the likes of Gary Numan and Flock of Seagulls here, Lower Dens never quite settle into an easy genre hook.

Nothing is a long album, with one cut coming in over the six-minute mark, and when it is sludgy, it is exhausting.

Little of Kintsugi gives the impression that Gibbard’s motivation to reboot Death Cab is matched by legitimate inspiration.

Cosmic Troubles sounds a sadder, vaster album than before, but one whose meditations can soothe your bones like an inviting stream.