Hurricane Bar sees the group amp up the hand-clapping choruses and delivers a leaner collection that recalls everything from the Animals and the Small Faces to Hanoi Rocks and the Libertines.

They may play noisy guitar rock, but they also wear military uniforms in concert and write songs about Czech history. Man of Aran illustrates both the successes and shortcomings of that dichotomy.

Ring is an ambitious and impressive statement, and one that should help Glasser avoid that one-off attention to become a lasting artist. Its highlights are unique and mesmerizing, and the few lesser (and by lesser, I mean not flat-out fantastic) moments leave room for her to grow from here.

The band plays its own game of seduction throughout the album, giving us danceable, practically glandular beats while singing lyrics of fear and loathing.

It's been a captivating listen thus far, and will likely remain that way wherever he takes it next.

Like Pigeons before it, A Different Ship is a solid album, but one that still finds Here We Go Magic on the road to perfecting and updating their sound on a full-length album.

More than the last few albums, Wolfroy rewards this kind of close relationship between listener and performer.

The Air Force goes beyond music that you play to clear out a party; it's the album you play to let your invitees know that you actually hate them.

Brimming with the enthusiasm of a true lover of music -- jazz, in particular -- The Further Adventures of Lord Quas will appeal to listeners who don’t bring any preconceived notions of what a hip-hop record should sound like. But even for the biggest fans, the second Quasimoto record can feel uneven.

The fact that it turned out quite well makes that fact that much more satisfying, and elevates the album above mere curiosity to a possible road sign pointing towards Fuck Buttons' future material.

As False Priest beds down in its second half, the album still has a sonic charge, but the frenetic sense of discovery from the first half drifts away.

Cokefloat! is a complicated punk album, all id and very little superego. It's not juvenile so much as it is childlike, and what makes it childlike makes it heartbreaking.

Rockwell is a promising debut, and she’ll be wise to stick to the road less traveled on future excursions.

Widow City is a fascinating album. Unfortunately, sometimes it's more fascinating than it is listenable.

With Calla’s song structures and melodies more concrete, though, Valle’s desolate imagery has begun to lose a bit of its mystery, and consequently, some of its appeal.

Here the hairier, dronier doom aspects of the band’s sound have here largely been put on hold to focus on songs, and the results are the sort of mixed-bag of serious stunners and unfocused ideas that we might expect from a superbly talented and intelligent band trying to eke out a new path in the wake of a defining album.

A solid set of tunes with some interesting musical elements not typically present in Beam's dynamic.

The songs are given more room to fully explore the emotions that fill the members' voices, and the music is fleshed out to portray portraits of moments in the married couple's life.

Divine Providence is the group's best album to date, but doesn't necessarily have its best songs to date.

The standout tracks are the featureless "Flame Throwers," "Odds Cracked" and "Auralac Bags," the latter of which boasts a noir-ish, alleyway-chase-scene type of beat.

As she sets her sights on bigger targets, namely war and terrorism, it's hard not to wish she'd remained as narrowly focused on the politics of personal freedom.

Dios (Malos)’s buoyant yet sophisticated glow incites a plethora of feelings, but the album stands out above most of the band’s dreamy indie-rock counterparts because, undoubtedly, the members of the band are enjoying themselves.

Jiaolong may be a perfectly competent incarnation of Snaith's undeniable talents, but it doesn't quite induce the stupor it should.

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.

While this record may not be one that I listen to end to end, over and over, there is little doubt that it is the perfect soundtrack to a serendipitous, still-to-come, drive into the unknown.

Blueprint could have cut-and-pasted his way through 1988, recycling hooks, beats and samples, but he clearly took his time and laid out his vision.

Begin to Hope has its highs and lows, but it is a journey worth taking.

At times, Party Intellectuals is as close to a straight raw rock sound as Ribot has come, though this record is all about uncorking a heavy dose of his improv/punk/soul/noise/free-jazz vocabulary, with some drone, some Moog, a little Latin, and a little blues tossed in.