EVOL is the first time we begin to hear the ostensible rigidity in Future's formula revealing itself.

There’s honestly no real low moment on Life of Pause, but then again, low moments were never this album’s problem. The problem is that there’s really only one high moment.

Offerings of pure pop pleasure are offset with healthy doses of weirdness. It’s a sincere, exciting and excitable album that successfully adds by subtracting.

[A] near-classic, West’s Physical Graffiti, his White Album. The Life of Pablo makes the wonderful Yeezus appear minor by comparison.

Whether we like her or not, Sia might be authoring the most iconic pop music of our generation. For this reason alone, This is Acting is worth at least one listen.

What we have instead is a brooding, oddly sequenced, and scattered collection that defies easy categorization.

The only thing that comes through is that it’s competent. That’s enough to be pretty, but it still has the unremarkable safety of a band that hasn’t broken through to find a distinct voice.

Is the Is Are is certainly honest, but it could use a little more optimism, and the music’s circuitousness only adds to the feeling that a single issue is being poked and prodded to exhaustion.

Moth is a breezy, immensely enjoyable pop record that provides just the amount of pep that you’ll need to make it through the winter.

New View isn’t the crowning jewel in Friedberger’s catalogue, but it is a beautiful, unadorned meditation on life’s most delicate mysteries: potential, narrative, and the passage of time.

Paak’s got the musicianship down to a science. Now it’s clear he’s working on what his music feels like.

By challenging their audience in such starkly interpersonal terms, Savages have pulled off an even more impressive trick. On Silence Yourself, they were shouting a rallying cry from the rooftops; on Adore Life, they’re shouting a foot away from your face.

When packaged together, the album’s 41 minutes of clatter, jazz, and incantation coalesce into something otherworldly and almost marvelous.

The bottom line is this: Product is a great album, even though it isn't exactly surprisingly great. Many of Sophie’s best tracks, come to find out, are the ones we’ve heard since 2013.

The album doesn’t always work, but more often than not it sounds enough like vintage Coldplay to satisfy both diehards and casual listeners.

It’s a funny and effortless mixtape.

With this album, Ty has proven that he’s not just another hook and single singer. He’s actually capable of creating a project that keeps listeners engaged for 16 tracks.

25 is not a bad album, nor is it an excellent one--it’s just good, that’s all.

Art Angels is the maximalist brainchild of a prodigious talent. It’s hugely entertaining. It’s delightfully bizarre. It’s refreshingly caustic.

Divers takes another logical step, tightening up from the sprawling consistency of Have One on Me without quite tightening up enough to return to Mender’s folk-pop. This is easily Newsom’s most sumptuously arranged album, with a more eclectic palette of instruments than she’s previously employed.

As welcome as is this darker tone, the unapologetic sonic uniformity makes it difficult to pick out individual songs.

It goes down like a reimagined debut, because it introduces a newly carefree, naturally focused Neon Indian.

There are so many moments when the music seems on the verge of exploding, but never does, and that’s ultimately to the album’s detriment.

Rarely does The Documentary 2 feel, or sound, important enough to warrant a double album, especially not one that spans three hours. The Documentary 2 perhaps works best when Game suffuses tracks with growing pains.

Deerhunter have returned to tasteful pop-shoegaze mode and made their mellowest, most lyric-driven, most calculated... and, err, most cheesiest album. Best Beach House record of 2015!

It’s not something that plays as well in the daylight. But when it soundtracks your darker, interior night life, it’s like being given a tailored suit. Everything fits, and the sum effect is something sharp and modern.

Disclosure’s second album was never going to be as huge and loud and groundbreaking as Settle. So rather than lamenting the loss, check out what you’re missing. Because what you’re missing is terrific.

While B’lieve won’t always command attention, that’s part of what makes it such a pleasant experience--Vile freely expresses himself without demanding anything in return.

Depth is a tough thing to accomplish. It can’t merely be present, it also has to be convincing that it’s there and worthwhile. Have You in My Wilderness’ best quality is that it won’t let you down if you get up close and sit with it for a while.

In the end, What a Time reminds us that music is best when it’s enjoyed when in the company of others. It’s a project that demands that the listener live vicariously through it and looks to give hope through music to those willing to listen. Nothing more, nothing less.

The ambition on Every Open Eye is obvious, and Chvrches seem willing to relinquish some of their originality to take the next step. Nor does the album possess the thrill of the new. But it’s still more carefully constructed than 90 percent of what the genre currently has to offer.

Ryan Adams unearths new emotional riches, mostly sad ones, from his source material. And his 1989 transcends mere tribute.

Del Rey has struggled to back up her provocations with substance. Ultraviolence was an exception, a singular breakthrough. Honeymoon is, sadly, a slip and fall after a promising stride forward.

[A] strange, frequently beautiful, and unabashedly indulgent album.

It finds Prince embracing EDM and his band 3rd Eye Girl lays down some sturdy, derivative grooves that ought to signal bathroom breaks and beer runs at shows to come.

Ostensibly their pop record, this brisk, 29-minute album album runs out of ideas in the first ten.

It’s been well over a decade since Julian Casablancas & Co. have released an album as taut and wasted and sexy as Anthems for Doomed Youth.

Every song has key x-factors that transform already solid works into longer-lasting excitement.

Yours, Dreamily will be perfect comfort food for rock and roll purists.

There’s a lack of personal narrative or identity on Rodeo, and Scott will often overcompensate for the hollowness of his music.

Foals daub from a palette of varied hues on What Went Down, occasionally with spectacular results. But as an album it’s revisionary as opposed to revolutionary, refining and weaving its DNA from the albums that preceded it.

Stuff Like That There is Yo La Tengo’s gentlest album by far. It’s also their least eclectic, which is to say their most samey-sounding. Summer Sun wasn’t dynamically varied either, but it had color and texture--pools of it! Stuff Like That There is just as consistent, but not nearly as rich.

The end result is 40 minutes of music that drain the listener’s energy and will.

As good as these songs are, their lyrical monotony can be punishing.

M3LL155X, whatever the hell it is, is perfect. Rarely have five songs sounded so cohesive, or made such a dramatic statement.

A heavy-hitting, beautifully arranged EP that might or might not have been recorded between 2006 and 2008.

Crosswords, as a collection of loose leaves, doesn't have the weight of Grim Reaper but that also means it doesn't have the pressure. Crosswords is something you can just consume without trying to wring every inch of intent out of it.

Compton is an exceptional, big-budget rap album up-and-down.... Although fat definitely needed to be trimmed from this animal, it’s humbling to know Dre hasn’t let his ego get the best of him musically.

Minor sonic updates don’t entirely compensate for the lack of deep cuts, but it’s hard to fault Depression Cherry for playing to Beach House’s well-established strengths.

Emotion is so good, it’s formed sky-high expectations out of thin air.

Throughout, tracks will leave you with a noticeably bittersweet aftertaste--although it isn’t exactly lacking in flavor. It’s as though the album is missing a secret ingredient, or doesn’t ever find the right blend.

Love is Free makes a seriously compelling case that the EP should be the standard form of pop-music communication. Robyn’s latest is all killer, no filler, and leaves you begging for more.

Mine a little deeper, and all of a sudden, Another One is the most technically refined album DeMarco has produced.

An easy criticism to level at St. Catherine is that it breaks no ground, that Mondanile can probably pen these kind of fuzzy and meandering ditties in his sleep. That might be true, but St. Catherine’s highpoints will hypnotize and hold sway long enough to keep you entranced until Mondanile’s next contribution.

Poison Season is a caustic, beguiling masterpiece.

No, TMLT is not as precise as The Monitor, nor as pleasurable. It does, however, surpass it in imagination and aim. This alone cements The Most Lamentable Tragedy as one of this year’s greatest rock records.

Smartly abandoning the sappy balladry that alienated many on his debut album, Pluto, and trimming all the excess fat that made Honest, an otherwise solid sophomore effort, feel largely uneven, Future goes for the gut and DS2 can pack a wallop.

Secondhand Rapture was inconsistent and uneven at points, but it also drew some power from its unpredictability. Its successor is twelve straight tracks of mostly the same thing: worn pop clichés. This dullness plagues the album from start to finish despite Plapinger’s best attempts at shouting through the monotony.

The record boasts snappy hooks, passive-aggressive bon mots, and plenty of noise, proving that Tweedy has no intention of calming down anytime soon.

Individual melodies may not stick in your head, but Magnifique, as a complete work, offers a musical experience unavailable beyond Ratatat’s veteran production table.

Currents is a consummate grower, in part the musical evolution is overwhelming.

The record’s occasionally bright moments are swallowed up by scattered thoughts and stale beats.

As patient and even elegiac as these sounds get, both “sides” successfully split the difference between, shall we say, swelling waves heard from a distance and the clatter and buzz of gadgets tuning up all around you. And a lot of the implicit distance in between. Buy it.

My Love Is Cool is volatile, but it’s also invigorating, charming, and hugely exciting for what it promises.

It may not be the most talked-about rap record of the year, but it probably deserves to be. Long live Ramona Park.

Wildheart is his finest and most stubborn statement yet.

The album is one giant, immaculate anachronism, unimpeachable, but rarely brave.

Kacey’s dulcet voice and talent for melody are still worthy of great respect--just about every tune connects.

Where the album certainly succeeds, though, is in its crafting of a colorful, if a tad overlong, mission statement for a producer still only beginning to approach the extent of his potential.

Instead of utilizing the talented crew’s many particular strengths to create a unique and unified sound, The Fool comes out feeling like nobody in particular and everyone at once.

Even if we were to give ALLA’s abysmal lyrics a pass, the production doesn't help, either.... Still, Rocky can, at times, be an engaging figure that radiates charisma when he wants.

Once a few months pass and the buzz has died down, this will no longer be a groundbreaking album about the complexities of modern relationships. It will just be another very good album.

Chrissybaby Forever is the music of Owens’ heart--unfiltered and unpolished, both to its credit and its detriment.

The crowd-pleasers are big and full, richly accessible and eccentric at the same time.... And yet even at its most infectious this music can pivot on a dime, emotionally, and the effect is often shattering.

The fun here is manufactured beyond belief, sometimes for better, but more often for worse.

Universal Themes covers so much ground, it can’t help but live up to its name.

How Big How Blue How Beautiful may just be a better record than the one it follows. It chisels at Ceremonials’ baroque marble sculpture to reveal something smaller and more appealing.

A collection of emotionally evocative soundscapes punctuated by more conventionally structured compositions.... It's an ear candy confection of the highest order.

The record is weighty, but with a defter, more nimble touch than on prior efforts.

Ratchet isn’t an unqualified triumph. But the album doesn’t have to be perfect to be a success. Its highs are high enough that its lows can be forgiven, or forgotten entirely.

The album doesn’t take nearly enough risks.

Each song works on its own terms, but many of the songs don’t seem to share terms.

Matsson makes solid use of a band this time too, to flesh out the bare-bones folk-pop for which he has previously been renowned.

Born Under Saturn is only intermittently gripping. Certain tracks feel heavily procedural and oddly joyless given the album’s lighthearted tone.

Production has never been cleaner. Progressions have never been tighter. The adhesive has never been stronger. And Jim James has never been finer.

It’s an enjoyable and diversionary, if not particularly nutritious, experience.

MCIII is, in the end, the perfect sunny day album.

Wilder Mind, airless to the extreme, plods on, song after saccharine song. Melodies do abound. But they’re wearying, like the mundane hell of children’s tunes, blasted on repeat, throughout a long car trip.

Deep in the Iris is more concentrated than anything Braids have released to date. If its runtime is more approachable, the songs themselves are also more intense.

The Magic Whip continues along the weird and winding path first trod by Blur’s two previous, and most complex, LPs. More often than not, the album meanders, usually for the better.

Thug’s entire approach to his music has never sounded so polished and potent as it sounds on Barter 6.

His third record perfectly distills Passion Pit’s mission statement to a mixture of musical nostalgia and energy that coalesces quite well with larger messages of accepting the past in order to embrace the future.

Alabama Shakes don’t rock the boat necessarily, but by refining the formula, they’ve proven they can succeed with a model that has become all too easy to fail with in recent years.

The band’s strengths are all the same, but they’ve been developed, and their focus seems to have stabilized and sharpened.

The art-rock band’s third LP Infinite House combines tentative dips into R&B and soul with a firm foundation in jittery, spindly, angular NYC rock, resulting in pop songs with a deliberately nervous, ungainly, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel to them.

He’s stripped his simultaneously fascinating and off-putting style down considerably without diluting its effect, jettisoning the loopy abstractions and lurid detail of Doris in favor of a commanding iciness.

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is ultimately an experience as disorienting as the sensations and emotions that Woodhead describes, strangely beautiful one minute and aggressively ear-splitting the next.

Beat the Champ, while it ain’t Songs in the Key of Life, keeps up the move toward eclectic instrumental color.