The album is straightforward, but often so much so that it can seem as if there’s nothing below the surface.

The Rite should elicit gasps, not cock eyebrows—the latter of which is the most extreme reaction the Bad Plus manage to provoke.

Four albums in, it's becoming pretty clear that the genre in which Manchester Orchestra resides has more untapped potential than the band itself.

For all its internal contradictions, Salad Days is no more or less than a great album in a tradition of no-big-deal great albums.

Inner Fire's biggest problem is a sporadic lack of energy.

What he lacks is a presence that feels definitely Bart Davenport, and after a while, it begins to feel like an album full of someone else’s songs--or, rather, anyone else’s songs. His best moments are breezy and autumnal.

The appeal of the Miles at the Fillmore material is obvious: This is an amazing band and they rip, but they never leave traditional ideas of rhythm and melody behind.

Once again, though, Baldi is simply unwilling or unable to stop writing hook-filled songs, rendering Here and Nowhere Else even more tense and thrillingly conflicted than its predecessor.

There are triumphs here, but they're modest; there is, after all, little fanfare to be found in just getting up and on with it day in and day out. Consequently, Teeth Dreams--even more than the flavorless Heaven Is Whenever--occasionally feels like the first Hold Steady record that's just going through the motions.

Most of these songs suffer from a lack of motion or a mere inability to edit the excess away from that motion.

Out Among the Stars is a boon for fans of country music history as well as those who just can’t get enough Cash. More importantly, it highlights a missing link between the often disparate eras of a long and complicated career.

Konstellaatio fills a lot of room, then, with very little range. But what’s there is excellent and, for Vainio, a striking and surprising contribution to a scene that’s watched him work for at least two decades.

Dissed and Dismissed ends just before it starts to feel formulaic.

Her work on Boy should be sufficient to satisfy her longtime followers and perhaps draw some new onlookers into the fold.

YG and DJ Mustard have been dress rehearsing for nationwide stardom all along, but My Krazy Life is ratchet music’s Technicolor reveal.

Witch is a solid record throughout, but it is one of those records that feels like a collection of songs--good songs!--rather than an actu

Even though Owls serve as a touchstone in 2014, there's still little that quite sounds like Two.

Singles is risky, but the strength of the songwriting carries it over.

Dreams, with its ability to shuffle through genres while maintaining a cohesive sound, should please though who were looking for a little more ambition.

As enjoyable as it can be, Mess is a centrist record from a band without a lot of centrist strengths and appreciating it can feel like a symbolic gesture.

Fake Train and New Plastic Ideas hold important places in the history of 90s music, not to mention those of punk and indie as a whole. And they set the tone for unimagined Unwound greatness to come (which will be chronicled in subsequent volumes of the box-set series). But those two albums, and the tracks that accompany them on Rat Conspiracy, transcend time, place, attitude, and even the sprawling continuum of influence.

A meticulous assemblage of sequencers and synthesizers, drum machines and aleatoric percussion, small beeps and tectonic booms, Light Divide refracts and then reorders moody electronic music, creating more of a mirage than a mere collage.

This a pop album, produced like pop and structured to grant instant gratification. And yet, this presentation throws the flaws of Tokyo Police Club’s dullest songs into sharp relief.

Impressive as it can be in small doses, Waterfall as a whole plows ahead like a WWI-era tank, heavy and lumbering and powerful but pretty much limited to a single direction.

The progression from early singles to first album isn’t nearly the same arc as it was just 10 years ago, but it’s still weird that the first full-length showcase for Skrillex as self-contained album artist feels more like a transitional record than a debut that plays to his strengths.

When moments like the funereal horn lines on “Vostok” break into the open after several tracks of frigid drones, the contrast is absolutely heart-rending. But these transcendent moments are few, and No. 2 could still use a little more of that drama.

Mas Ysa was definitely the biggest suprise about Deerhunter's surprise show, and the strong follow-through of Worth should land his prospective first LP high on most-anticipated shortlists.

It's well-recorded, well-written, and teeming with both force and emotional depth.