Passively waiting to be noticed, Holopaw’s second album, Quit +/or Fight, is like the kid who never raises his hand in class but whom everyone knows is the smartest in the room.

The album is full of Hersh's characteristically strong songwriting and the emotional uppercuts that make her best work so gutsy.

Mostly Lee Ranaldo has created a mid-crisis record that sounds more powerful than frustrated, more strong in its beauty than reactionary in its power.

If that score at the top of this review seems unfriendly, it's not because they've grown boring or predictable; it's just another step in an ongoing process.

Albatross is a slow bloom of an album, as likely to frustrate those looking for immediacy as it is to reward those looking for substance in repeated listens.

It's almost impossible to pick favorites off an album that doesn't have a weak track.

The album flows seamlessly from song to song, but the overall feel is sedated.

Despite the absence of Timbo, Elliott continues to do what she does best: cross-fertilizing genres, geographies and temporalities and continuing to transform her musical identity without sacrificing any authenticity.

As all over the map as A Certain Feeling is, it’s much more concise than the band’s 13-track debut, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink." There’s not much extraneous fluff here.

For Wilco fans, the songs here won’t surprise. But the effectiveness of these performances, the intimacy of the quiet, and the small, new lights they shed on tunes they’ve long known all makes this a worthwhile record. It’s a record of execution over ambition.

Two forgettable bonus tracks tacked on to Sub Pop’s U.S. edition of Antidotes don’t help on that score. We don’t need any more of what’s already here.

Without the threat of squalls of feedback (like on Palo Alto) or serious climaxes (like on Rook), most of Golden Archipelago ends up as beautiful as the cover of the album, but with as little context.

He's smart enough to know what's to be done, sincere enough to do it free of distraction, and nice enough not to impose his will on you. Ted Leo has literally seen his success as an artist become a life or death experience, and he's here to tell you how to treat it like a grown-up.

The Rapture has made a safe record.

I Feel Cream is a force of positive motion that addresses criticism with the sonic equivalent of a bitch slap.

It seems to me that this album has already been made countless times by countless bands.

Skipping from dizzying keyboards to bluesy guitar, this is one of Coomes's finest musical hours, capturing his muddled musings into tight and coherent disarray and focusing in on the dynamic between these two exceptionally talented divorcees.

This is a rich, complex and conflicted soundtrack for the best comic book movie never made.

We get to peer deep into McCombs's mind, but with the benefit of coming up for air once the record ends.

If Jungles presented the formula, Ideal Lives gives us the answer.

Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass is filled with precise lyrical detail and head-nodding production, and the result is his most accessible record of his career to date.

At its best, Recording a Tape still sounds like little more than the product of a few precocious marching-band dropouts, an empty warehouse, and good intentions.

A Sunday-nap headphone-record that successfully conveys emotion.

End of Daze sounds like a short segment of Dum Dum Girls' future greatest hits collection.

A subtle, intricate album that simply gets better with every listen. A bittersweet pleasure from beginning to end.

Veirs' delicate, informed touch makes the album a worthwhile listen for anyone interested in taking the first step toward delving into America's back catalogue.

Rarely are stopgaps so magisterial, tender, and wistful. But, again, I hope that’s the point.

You won’t get the same thing twice on Kids Aflame, and Goldstein keeps the surprises coming with subtle changes to his vocals, adding layers of horns in unexpected places and by simply choosing not to be safe.