The album relies less on hooks and more on a sparse energy, but the listening is engaging enough to keep the listener around to the end, focusing more on cohesion rather than theatrics.

Damian Abraham's vocals are still the star of the show, but the cleanness of Couple Tracks shows how, with the right kind of engineering, Abraham's behemoth-unleashed singing, rather than alienate non-hardcore kids, ices the cake on an already great band.

At times Melted falls into the familiar lo-fi production trap: lack of variety in sound and tempo. However, at its best moments, Melted's songs employ playful riffs and weighty guitars to create textures as varied as the ones in Segall's sweet treat analogy.

It's easy to see Smoke Ring being remembered as the stepping stone to a transcendent piece of work in Vile's discography.

To call the album the band's most accessible to date is no slur. There's nothing wrong with accessible indie rock when it's this pristine and polished.

This is a great record, full with a daring, hard-earned hope, and a deep emotion. And that's something a lot of records could really use these days.

It’s Blitz is representative of Yeah Yeah Yeahs tightening as an unit and delivering their best album to date.

There Is Love in You is expertly sequenced, played, and produced from start to finish. It's the work of a restlessly creative auteur circling back and turning out his most confident, definitive work to date.

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

Brothers, meanwhile, proves that the Keys can still put a few more miles on their well-driven blues machine, regardless of what direction their non-Keys work takes them.

Filled with bounce, bite and surprising cohesion, Post-Nothing is a deceptive little piece that is as much fun as it is subversive.

Bleak, distant, polarizing, and beautiful, Wolfe’s fourth album makes a gargantuan impact.

It’s more direct in many places, but finds a power in that directness that has led some of the band’s best music.

Like the rest of Primary Colours, this is the sound of a band finding themselves out of favor and having to really strive for greatness. The Horrors will still have a hard time winning over new converts, but they’ve done a magnificent job of confounding expectations with this release.

Their voices and sound may be immeasurably more ragged and weathered, but if Neurosis' idea of "consistency" continues to include this kind of additional exploration at this point in their career, may their journey never end.

Love Remains shows that Krell is definitely adept at delivering feelings, but there's more than a couple of tracks that could use a little more personality.

Patti Smith's voice is clear and powerful, an embodiment of her singularity as a poet and musician.

For Van Etten, it's a logical next step in her upward trajectory.

It is a cinematic work, a work of focus and intensity, and a work that demands attention.

Tears of the Valedictorian is an incredibly dense record and may take several passes before you can even begin to peel away its layers. That sense of rigor, though, is what makes it so arresting.

Playing up his role as elder statesman, Green gets away with delivering the familiar back-in-the-day sermon because listeners expect it from an icon of the past. However, by infusing such consistent gentleness throughout the entire record, he pulls off the unthinkable in the early 21st century--a momentary respite.

Even without the quirky, theatrical pop she offered in the 1980s, she has held up beautifully after her long hiatus from recording, creating a record that is very much her own.

Sure, 2004's God Bless Your Black Heart may be the Paper Chase's best album in terms of accessibility, but the band has taken its usual dark angle and bent it another hundred or so degrees toward further obtuseness.

Love Travels at Illegal Speeds is by far Coxon's best solo album, and if his sensibilities remain where they're at now, it's conceivable that he'll never be able to top it.

Even amidst amazing production by her friends Christoffer Berg and Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid, the minimally arranged Fever Ray is best swallowed when Andersson distorts her vocal effects.

As the watery floating of "I Think Ur A Contra" draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that not only did the members of Vampire Weekend succeed in creating an excellent sophomore album; they've managed to survive long enough to outlive their hype and its attendant backlash.

Instead of copying the aesthetic of 1970s rock ‘n’ roll, they’ve copied some of last year’s more popular indie records. The result, though at times satisfying, mostly feels contrived.

The Mouse and the Mask’s levity is the antithesis of the dense Madvilliany, and it continues Doom’s steady march toward achieving legendary status.