If any Screaming Females record has suggested they may someday become a group worthy of cataloging in a book like Azerrad's, Ugly is it, igniting a classic punk sound with a friction that falls somewhere between SST and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.

It's not just a collection of hits; it's an album, one that gives the project's familiar nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur.

There's no getting around the fact that June 2009 acquires most of its value, if not all of it, in context with Causers of This and Underneath the Pine.

The machines on 120 Days II are so holographically vivid that the human element can't help but seem wan.

Death Grips appeals to the knuckle-dragging troglodyte and the smirking smart kid in us: thick-headed goonery and bookish, viscera-free nerdiness, making beautifully misanthropic music together.

For an EP as flat and, well, just plain stuck as Our Love Is Hurting Us sounds, playing catch-up would've been preferable to taking a promising but not wholly memorable debut and simply offering it up a second time

On Rock and Roll Night Club, he gets weirder and churns out an unsettling brand of soft rock.

Let the People Speak feels utterly passionless and perfunctory.

Largely devoid of lyrical texture and detail, the universe conjured by World often feels bland to a fault.

There's enough of a sweet spot in the clean, backward-leaning production and offbeat samples to allow the record to distinguish itself as more than a sum of disparate parts.

Meluch and Irisarri have crafted a genuine, coherent album that conjures immense shadows and immense depths worthy of its namesake.

Harmonicraft is not without its moments; its just that, sometimes, spans of monotony and predictably make remembering or caring for those moments more work than they're worth.

The Shadow Gallery hits so strong and so true, staying this particular course for a little while longer shouldn't bother anyone.

In theory, Diamond Rugs should prove extremely comforting, a celebration of rawk and male friendship in the face of vaguely rendered but all-consuming sexual denial. And yet, there's no catharsis or viscera.

Da Mind of Traxman is notable in part because it's an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future.

At the outset, This Machine seems like an apt title for a record that surges forth with a wiry, motorik momentum; by the end, it becomes an all-too-fitting descriptor of a band going through the motions.

Backed by locals like Highlife's Doug Shaw and the band Skeletons, An Letah follows 2010's Bubu King EP with a whiplash 14 minutes of electrified bubu that presage what will no doubt be a watermark year for Nabay.

It's got some of his best pure songwriting yet, but no earth-cracking riffs. Still, as a treatise on loss and its schizophrenic aftermath, Blunderbuss is a purposeful success.

It's easy to get the sense that the intent is to let the jangling shoegaze wash over you, and if some of the lyrics stick, that's fine. But that's the thing-- they rarely do, and neither do several of the songs.

The fact of the matter is that Lineage isn't the first record to sound like Lineage.

by focusing on the range of music inspired by this movement, Listen, Whitey! allows so much of the confusion, outrage, anger, emotion, humor, and even optimism of this music to resonate anew.

Their 2010 self-titled debut [was] all hummable melodies, clap-along rhythms, and poignantly turned phrases. Europe maintains these qualities and improves upon its predecessor in almost every way.

The individual entries on Grinderman 2 are all over the map quality-wise, from inert and utterly ignorable... to half-brilliant reframings of pretty singular material.

When Wainwright falters, it's for familiar reasons, usually some combination of overindulging and oversharing.

Like any poseur worth her salt, she can make a superficial costume seem compelling without drawing too much attention to the fact that the person inside of it may not have a whole lot to say.

It's a record so enjoyable and expertly sequenced that it demands repeat listens before it's even over.

It's a thrilling look inside his brain, a microcosmic version of this peep under the hood that Battles have allowed with Dross Glop, showing off the constituent parts that now make their machine a smooth, assured, and always giddily exciting ride.

Illusion is a slight effort by any standard, even the most fair: the bar set by the prior work of the band members themselves.