It is the Knife's most political, ambitious, accomplished album, but in a strange way it also feels like its most personal.

Victim of Love is ultimately a less successful record than No Time for Dreaming. For one, Bradley seems less connected with this set.

It's the first release for the band as an “all in” musical endeavor and it definitely feels that way.

By matching their ever-evolving, exploratory musical ethos with less eager-to-please, more confrontational modes of performance, the album marks the moment when the Flaming Lips become whole again.

Time is a delightfully shambling debut that succeeds in spite of obvious trappings.

Rkives is a full-sounding collection that reads like a long-lost Rilo Kiley album from the early-2000s.

If Fleetwood Mac shimmered more, rocked less and were organic without being raw, that might suggest the level of evocative language and romance The Lone Bellow exudes.

This is smart, well-plotted music, which makes its anger all the more effective.

This is Kinski’s most straightforward rock album, and certainly the Kinski album with the best, most concise vocal songs. If anything, the cranked-up, low-tempo instrumentals are now where the band fares worst.

At best, the verses, bridges, and instrumental passages feel custodial, doing little to disturb the flow so that the chorus can deliver a proper dynamic boost. Mostly, they just feel like Guards killing time, and Follin's power-pop Madlibs make the 45 minutes of In Guards We Trust feel significantly longer.

On their second album, Tales from Terra Firma, they continue to be almost crushingly dull, making well-appointed and cheerfully empty music that successfully communicates next to nothing.

Machineries of Joy lacks the kind of crucial equalizers that appeal to all levels of education--big hooks, convincing physicality, legible emotions.

Vanishing Point is both an anachronism and, if you’re on Mudhoney’s wavelength, a hilarious bulwark against everything that’s annoyingly ephemeral about contemporary underground culture.

Live at the Gluepot is more immediately impressive [than the new compilation], just in terms of sheer speed and momentum.

While their formerly peppy mode could be exhausting, it's difficult not to yearn for a bit more razzle-dazzle on Heza.

History and transformation are, understandably, recurring themes in the new lyrics on Change Becomes Us, and it's a treat to have this missing link in the Wire story repaired, even if it's as much an anomaly in the present moment as Document and Eyewitness was in its time.

It seems boring and a bit lazy to say that Wiley sounds best when he’s still offering up recognisable grime tunes, but it’s undeniable that on The Ascent the strongest of such efforts capture the rapper in his best light.

It’s a not a crime for a revivalist outfit like the Black Angels to occasionally lapse into flower-power corniness; if delivered with a little self-awareness, it adds to the appeal of the anachronistic package. What’s not forgivable on Indigo Meadow is the pretension.

Rarely does dark doubt sound quite so inviting.

What it lacks in traditional hooks, it compensates for with distinct and weighty gestures.

At its best, Wolf manages to make the inroads toward accessibility that Goblin wouldn’t and pulls it off without sacrificing too much of Tyler’s refreshing capriciousness.

Until in Excess rewards patience, but the roar of old is missed.

Though there's an electric current coursing through Ride Your Heart, it's too often wasted on mundane material--which is especially disappointing given how zany and lyrically imaginative their previous band was

Rainsbury, Bailey, and Law showed long ago that they could draw a crowd with a bold gesture, but Seabed's appeal after multiple listens is in its details.

There’s no question he can put a good tune together; what’s less clear is whether he can interpret those tunes as well as he writes them, and breathe a little flesh-and-blood human messiness into them in the process.

The only moments where Wayne sounds marginally interested in his own music come when he veers furthest away from rap.

As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy.

Keeping solidly in line with the Brainfeeder tradition, Nostalchic is a forward-looking album, warm and comfortable but never obvious.