An album adhering so strictly to a simple formula can't help but become redundant.

He comes across as an unfocused sample artist who is too eager to show off all the cool stuff he can do.

The album has plenty of stirring moments, but it falls short of being truly engulfing with its sound.

As a result, Know Better Learn Faster is (with the exception of the last track, an awkward dance number called "Easy") an album full of radio-ready singles, each as infectious and heartfelt as the last.

Not that every track here needs to be radio-ready, it's just that with the themes being so dense, another morsel to take with you would have been welcome.

Outside Love is brilliant, disturbing and powerful.

The lack of musical coherence here is jarring and irritating.

As a genre that's saturated with trends, micro-trends, and anti-trends, it's rare to find someone doing something that makes a legitimate claim at being totally unique.

The Knot isn’t a happy album by any stretch of the imagination, but optimism can be found within the notion that Wassner and Stack, by some strange alchemy, make sadness beautiful. In so doing, they have made an album that needs to be heard.

The urgency and bone-deep brutality of The Sunset Tree may be missing here, but Get Lonely is a gentle, lucid and honest reality that works as a testament to Darnielle's keen instincts for situational observation.

After Robots more than answers the call to hype; it breaks down the borders between countries and scenes, and it bears a message that it’s just as possible to create progged-out songs of unending complexity if you’re from Johannesburg as it is if you’re from Williamsburg.

Because of his relatively privileged upbringing (he's from a wealthy part of Toronto), Thank Me Later is less about chronicling and rising up out of his environment (like basically every rap debut since Illmatic) and more about how Drake is uncomfortable being famous.

Where Now Here Is Nowhere was equally about force and restraint but always in separate parts, Ten Silver Drops does well to blend the two.

With Consolers of the Lonely, the Raconteurs are still content to play record-collection plunderers, but instead of ripping what they can from the '60s, they spend much of the album as twenty-first-century stand-ins for Grand Funk Railroad, Blue Oyster Cult and Three Dog Night, playing big, limp, calculated rock 'n’ roll.

Axis of Evol remains yet another solid release from the Black Mountain frontman.

It's all there in those opening lines: Your familiar arms, I remember.

Everyone who likes Howlin Rain’s sound will come away from Magnificent Fiend wanting more. At just eight tracks, it’s a rare full length that doesn’t seem full enough.

A funeral is a termination, but can also be a clean slate. Lanegan completely "gets" that duality--and wields it expertly.

Credit Callahan then not just for his latest vision, but for how he done it.

The album is boastful, vulnerable and witty, usually within the course of a single song. It may be a bad man’s world, but a bad girl’s record makes it that much more tolerable.

The guitars come at you from all angles, drums bubble up and clatter like a perfect assembly line, the vocals soar or are flung in from behind. Melodies sneak up and poke you like stray branches. Grab your headphones and start wandering.

Nothing sounds empty, nothing sounds cluttered.

The Ruby Suns’ greatest strength is how easily they’re able to pull off this mix on Sea Lion without seeming over-bearing or preening. It makes the whole album seem effortless.

In the Vines--like Raposa and his self-proclaimed "bad year"--is something rare and curious only if you’re willing to wander through the rough patches here and there and accept a subtle discord along with the harmony.

Anyone who has found beauty in a chipped tooth or a grazed knee will find much to love here. Jewellery certainly doesn’t suffer from a paucity of ideas, and the lyrical subjects are more than a match for the band’s heterogeneous musical leanings.

Expo 86 just straight up rocks. It never lets up on the monstrous riffs it delivers in its first 10 seconds.

Father Creeper is his greatest achievement thus far, succeeding, if nothing else, as demanding listeners to enter his warped headspace.

While the unabashed pop moments on Interstellar are truly great and welcome, Rose easily proves she's capable of more daring things.