The shame of it is that somewhere in here there's an album that could've done more to revive the mostly moribund idea of 80s pop tropes in contemporary music.

Overlong albums are one thing, but overlong and sonically derivative albums are usually near unlistenable. But it's the individual songs that make Cabinet worth the time.

It's deeply satisfying, constantly rewarding, and I'm not entirely sure what I was doing before it came into my life.

Often he feels like a genre director hired for his reliability rather than excelling in his field. Still, there are advances here, a sense that Hill's VHS collection may have expanded beyond the horror section, a step up from pan-and-scan into something approaching widescreen.

Woo is more or less an extension of--and improvement on--the ideas explored on Field-Pickering's debut, 2010's Cool Water.

If these 35 minutes feel like twice that, it's because Portal thought through every step, packed all of its ideas as tightly as possible, and left it for you to decode.

Feeding People's energy is abundant and undeniable, but all over the place on Island Universe.

Long Island probably isn't going to win any new fans for Endless Boogie, but their strengths are on display regardless.

Like Cunningham's entire oeuvre, each track unwinds into a tapestry of intense sonic detail if you just give it a little time to recline.

The Messenger won't be included in the body of work that made Marr great, but it's a solid approximation of his strengths.

What was once alienating and difficult in Eat Skull’s music now reads as interesting quirks attached to pleasing packages. With III, Eat Skull is willing to be loved--and be loveable, too.

Ultimately, What the Brothers Sang is a tribute to what the brothers sang, not necessarily how they sang it.

Considering the band's taste for zoning out to infinity, One Track Mind really needed a harsher edit. With some tightening and pruning, it could have burst into bloom.

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 possible that the cumulative deadening effect of Miracle Mile is intentional, or that the contrast between the vacuous music and the spiritual ennui of the lyrics is supposed to be ironic. But Miracle Mile doesn't seem smart enough, musically or lyrically, for that to be the case.

A passive-aggressive album like Clash the Truth, which just sounds kind of confused.

inc. is both faithful to its source material and clever enough to twist it into new shapes, but at least for the time being, no world is unlikely to bring the Ageds out of the shadows.

Iceage write brilliant songs; on You're Nothing, they've found a way to clarify these compositional skills without stripping away their power.

Smith comes across similarly disenchanted and tempted by the prospect on Songs for Imaginative People, where he's torn between celebrating and bemoaning commercial excess.

For all the album's wandering spirit, the first eight tracks on Push the Sky Away are neatly structured into two complementary, four-song halves that mirror one another.

It walks the line between naive and savvy, between earnest and winking, confessional and oversharing, bratty and bold, experimental and inexperienced.

As one of classic rock's foundational albums, it holds up better than any other commercial smash of that ilk.

The fragmented texture of the songs doesn't allow it to slip into bland slickness, but it's clean, theatrical, and kookily conservatorial in a pretty satisfying fashion, if occasionally a little too keen to change tacks within a single song.

Off/On is a solid record that thrives on the idea of possibility and hedged optimism.

Pillowfight is technically flawless but thoroughly unexciting.

The samples and some of the lyrics feel a little too controlled, on-message, and conceptual, which is unusual since her songs often tease out the dark emotion in mundane, everyday moments. As a result, No Elephants often feels hermetic and occasionally impenetrably austere.

Taken apart from the high expectations set by their debut, Waiting is another strong collection of guitar pop gems from a band quickly proving itself to be a better, more elusive quantity than any easy genre tag might suggest.

Like Total Life Forever, Holy Fire threatens greatness, and whatever disappointment comes from missing the mark is mitigated by its scope: A bomb needs to be operational more than it needs to be accurate.