Sure, the band is rooted in American folk, but they're also adventurous listeners and composers, and Outside is unclassifiable in the same way records by northern contemporaries Beirut and Man Man are unclassifiable-- folk music, it turns out, is a broad and fluid thing.

Hanna mostly wins in the sea of Hollywood action soundtracks, but it's marginal as a Chemical Brothers album (I prefer it to their dry, overstuffed mid-decade works).

These guys don't showcase a similarly thorough ear for songwriting, but as far as rock'n'roll feats of strength go, GB City, their debut, registers quickly.

The Golden Record is an infinitely approachable and enjoyable welcome by an artist who sounds like she's here now, for the duration.

Mazes is an exercise in accessibility and concision, using familiar, melodic pop templates to support their drone and krautrock tendencies.

Regifted Light doesn't seem built to shock or cajole, but to connect with all sorts of people, and to last.

Even if their whole style is essentially a throwback, there's plenty of room out there for throwback done right. But on too much of Youth and Lightness, they're not the machine they could be.

Curious, constantly in motion, full of puzzle-like counterpoints and arresting chord changes, it's a joy to listen to, and one of the brightest, most invigorating records I've heard all year.

Although they've played and recorded together in the past, here they sound as though they're still finding out how to best combine their quirks.

While few really stand out on their own, together they lean on one another to impressive effect. As a result, it has the feeling of an album that really holds together. Now that's an anachronism.

As with so many bedroom auteurs' debuts, it's tough to separate the creation from the creator, and Idle Labor shows the promise of a precocious songwriter who isn't claiming to have anything totally figured out just yet.

Ultimately, Brandeis was more valuable and revealing as a bonus disc than as a standalone album.

Almost all of the songs on The English Riviera sound great, yet few of them really emotionally or physically involve the listener, and there's little to take away besides an appreciation of that effortlessly attractive sheen.

TRON: Legacy Reconfigured succeeds as much as most remix projects do, which is to say about 50% of the time, and without Daft Punk's name attached to the project it's doubtful it would have attracted much attention.

Somehow, despite a sound bank that has long since become familiar, Burial keeps finding new ideas to animate his worn, mournful samples.

This unguarded, individualistic expression encourages strong identification in listeners, so don't be surprised if this record earns Garbus a very earnest and intense cult following.

Some Cold Rock Stuf makes more sense as a collection of scattered concept pieces than a unified statement.

Though it boasts a couple of heaters, A Thousand Heys butts up against the same problem faced by so many others working in this timeless but relatively basic template -- there are undoubtedly listeners who won't ever get enough of this stuff, but how can you distinguish yourself while still maintaining the spirit of your predecessors?

The Bangs seem to place every drum stutter, keyboard whirr, and Schafer howl on equal footing, a nice testament to the tightness and democracy of their musical unit, so pushing the songwriting further to the forefront could come at the risk of toppling the delicate balance the not-so-delicate Flux Outside achieves. May they never learn to sit still.

No matter the mood, this songwriter is always quick to add fine particulars that make his songs his songs.

Mr. Dream have mastered the tricks of alt-rock enough to play these sorts of formal games, but that isn't nearly as satisfying as when they push themselves outside of their wry, cynical comfort zone and hit upon something more nakedly emotional.

There are plenty of great tunes here, just not much character. Lollipop's as catchy as your average power-pop record, but still hardly as essential as the band's peaks.

While Wasting Light features a host of worthy set-openers, few prove to be as sticky or memorable as any number of their previous singles.

So Beautiful or So What can be stodgy in its emotions and a bit too devoted to its motifs, but there's something humanizing about the album's shortcomings.

There's enough stylistic extension here that Katy finds a way to transcend enough signifiers to call herself pop above anything else.

This EP sounds like more than the sum of its parts. Maybe it's the realization that Gnarls Barkley will never top "Crazy" or that the Shins may never re-form, but there's an intriguing sense of desperation on these songs, as though both Mercer and Burton are realizing that this band could indeed be their lives.

It's not often that padding out an already hefty album actually improves it, but in the Queens' case, the revised tracklist provides a more accurate portrait of how the band molded its mercurial Desert Sessions experiments into chiseled hard-rock monoliths.

If, like me, you're one of the admirers, then there's plenty to like here. If not, well, give it a shot anyway-- who knows, you might find something you like.