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.

On Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing, Roberts and Hoorn deliver a beautiful album filled with bombastic, gothic and anthemic hymns that aim for deliverance.

Unfortunately, Night Time, My Time goes awry at “Omanko,” a grave misstep that verges on parody. From there on out, the record’s spotty.

Some passable stuff here, mostly confined to the second half.

The height at which Oxymoron’s target is set is not very impressive, but the precision and showmanship with which it’s hit deserves commendation.

All of the songs (minus one useless interlude) had at least something worth returning to.

In the show’s context, this soundtrack is a solid A. Evocative, thrilling, and dynamic, it’s everything you could possibly want from a TV score. On its own, it’s one of the most refreshingly forward-thinking electronic releases of the year, even if the tracklist could use some cleaning up.

The best song comes early in “Ghostface Killers”, with an excellent rapped chorus from Offset that’s been running through my head since the tape dropped and Travis Scott sounding excellent as always even if he doesn’t say much anything at all.

Twelve Reasons to Die is a straightforward concept album, and it’s very well done.

Fans of Marnie’s music are fully aware of what an album of hers going to bring, and on The Chronicles of Marnia, she brings it.

With each album Real Estate has sharpened this process, making Atlas both immediately recognizable and their most interesting album to date.

It doesn’t provide the thrill-a-minute jolts of Light Up Gold, but Parquet Courts may yet become a garage punk band that millennials can call our own.

So It Goes comes as close to hardcore as an album with this sonic palette can: dense, immediate, energetic, and uniquely inclusive.

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

For the most part, Silver Gymnasium makes for an uplifting and triumphant listen, with a positive energy running through the music and the melodies.

The title may be a little hyperbolic, but what it lacks in realism it makes up for in groovy new-wave guitar licks, other-worldly instrumentation and production par excellence.

The band may love the sounds of Built to Spill and Superchunk a little too much, but they’re also far too adventurous to settle for apery, least of all on LOSE. It’s their best work yet.

This album moves and soothes, if it does anything at all.

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.

Critically, this may not move many needles. But to casual listeners, Wild Beasts are on a mission to refine their own definition. This is must-witness music at its very finest.

For a producer who’s produced songs for a who’s who of modern artists (including the occasional non-rapper like Lana Del Rey), he mostly sticks to his guns on his debut album, which applies to both the sonics (there was no way any producer sampling Annie’s “Anthonio”--the Berlin Breakdown version--was going to be bad; that’s the ear-worming sample doing all the heavy-lifting on “Overdue”) and the features.

It grows beyond its deeply emotional roots, to become whatever you want it to be.

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

Deep Fantasy is an exceptionally produced collection--really, it’s probably the finest recording job you’ll hear on a rock album this year.

The fuse has been lit. London is just a prologue, but it’s an exceedingly promising one.

For the most part, Space holds it together, but there are a few moments that feel a little... moronic.

It’s an album that gives as much as it gains, both in trap-flow intensity and emotional catharsis.

This is the kind that makes you want to go back and listen to his older stuff, if only to remind you he’s capable of wonders.

Luckily, even without all of the context and lofty exposition, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is an altogether great and always thrilling listen.

With II, UMO remains humble in composition and production, creating an honest album that comforts in the strangest ways.

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.

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

Camera Obscura are old enough to know what they’re are capable of, and they do it passionately and with a practiced hand.

Even if Colour doesn’t drastically alter Blake’s sound, it widens and refines it, keeping what made his first two records so memorable while hinting that there remains ever further room for growth.

Here, the music feels more organic and in line with the songcraft that has formed the band’s backbone to date.

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.

It’s not breaking news that reunion music isn’t a revelation, but this album seems worse than the merely dull crop of new Owen material.

There are over-arching problems here: the lyricism that doesn’t relate to anyone except the singer, which is especially troubling on the mostly lyric-driven “Widow’s Peak”; the lack of color from the lugubrious and minimalistic approach (excepting the vocal shading of “Joe’s Dream” and the Western-tinged “Honeymooning Alone”); the dearth of melodies, make the relatively short album get wearying over time, especially when you add the too-pristine production.

Seeds isn’t TV on the Radio’s strongest album, but it is a radiant reboot, a move forward and a reason to move.

This can’t hold a candle to Late Nights: The Album (was anyone expecting it to?), but it’s one of the better mixtapes released this year.

Tremors manages the feat of being both invigorating and mellow, and no matter how many layers of sound in which the songs find themselves wrapped up, electronic or otherwise, they remain painstakingly personal and human.

Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything explores the moral murk of our times with glorious abandon.

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

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.

Next Thing truly is beautiful, if a little too slight to be counted among the greats in its genre. It doesn’t seem to strive for that type of greatness, though. It’s content to revel in purely being, basking in its own breathless embodiment of grace and lightness.

Where the first half of the album is strong but routine, the back half finds mixed but more interesting results.

Marshall’s lyrics are desolate and vehement, but McDonald does a solid job of ensuring that the instrumentation acts as a foil to the bleakness when necessary, providing a counter-redeeming edge to the desolation.

Their approach works because the songs are so excellently written than they’d be praiseworthy coming from a less capable, more pedestrian group

Will is a wobbly baby step from a well-honed sound to something greater. There’s not much reason to listen to it over any of her other albums, and it’s less interesting for the music it contains than the music it promises.

Her complete dominance over the sonic space of her debut reinforces Broke With Expensive Taste as a product singularly of her vision.

It’s simultaneously daunting, exhausting, terrifying, all at the same time. It’s all a lot to take in, with not a whole lot of the Gambino we are familiar with to help wash it down.

The main two highlights are the strutting “Mandy Cream” and the bass-heavy closer “The Magazine,” with rapid-fire handclaps coming in during the choruses and a sustained falsetto melody recalling Yes’ “We Have Heaven.”

The supple dynamic shadings of earlier Projectors material is gone; everything’s annoyingly crisp, with lots of things at the front of the mix that shouldn’t be and Longstreth’s pitch-shifted voice running near-constantly throughout.

Like Summer Sun, there’s more ambience, more general keyboard and synth blear, more lounge-pad speckles and dots, but the songwriting is rudimentary even by this band’s standards and the tone color doesn’t vary as much as they maybe thought it did.

Self-aware in all of the right ways and delightfully crass in all of the wrong ones, Mr. Wonderful is ultimately a bit of a lark, but it is also far more enjoyable, far more self-aware, and far wittier than it needed to be.

Volcano Choir’s second album is filled with memorable hooks, hummable melodies and arena-worthy choruses.

Most of the time, Nabuma Rubberband sounds well put-together but empty, all style and no content, the kind of album that won’t offend you while you’re listening to it but which you’d be hard-pressed to remember any of once closer “Let Go” comes to an end.

This is neither a reboot nor an overhaul of their signature sound. If anything, it affirms all the things the duo does best and then shows they can do much more.

Humanz, Damon’s fourth record as Gorillaz, is not his best, but it didn’t need to be. It’s a comeback record that’s less immediate and sugary than Plastic Beach, less iconic than the self-titled or Demon Days. It is a party record that sounds like it was made at a party rather than for one.

Space Gun is one of Pollard’s best. ... Unlike almost all the rest, there is virtually no filler here.

Nothing on The Far Field is comparable to the sheer synthpop perfection of “Seasons (Waiting On You)”, but few things are, and Future Islands prove on this release that they have some serious staying power.

Hesitation Marks proves greatness remains within Trent Reznor’s grasp.

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.

Are You Serious isn’t perfect by any stretch, but on this record, Andrew Bird has compiled 11 good songs. Every track is well-produced. Every track has competent lyrics. Every track is melodically solid. Every track exhibits Bird’s impressive performing abilities (the things he does with a violin are incredible). Every track is individually memorable.

Sure, the lyrics are sometimes a little silly, and the musical hooks are sometimes a trifle too easy. But even at its worst, this is fun stuff.

Birkenes’ vox often skews towards the incorporeal, a little too airy for its own good, and requires some form of substance to keep it tethered to the music. Without it, Pocketknife threatens to float away into some ethereal realm (as it tends to do in the latter half). That being said, Birkenes does craft some gems throughout the record.

It is this cycle of futility and human effort that makes Hummingbird so compelling, and so much more rewarding the second time around

As a whole, Lesser Evil can be a lot to take in: it’s hyperactive, unstable, and disoriented. Most of the time it feels like all three at once. Yet Doldrums’ ability to hop genres with ease, write catchy melodies, and--above all--sound like he’s having fun doing it renders his place unique in an overcrowded genre, and his debut a promising one.

They’re not always entirely compelling, but it’s difficult to question Meloy & co’s sincerity in these Kumbaya moments, and that is the band’s true triumph here.

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

It sounds great while it’s playing and means nothing except that it sounds great and will sound just as great 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Now we have Little Dark Age. The true follow up to Congratulations, the record that is doomed to enjoy the benefit of the regret of the music writers who panned Congratulations and also to enjoy the inevitable backlash against the backlash. The record is more than good enough to earn these accolades. The highs are very high.

It is an album that needs to be experienced in its entirety, but in the age of remixes, the blogosphere, and Adderall, who will have the time or patience to dig into Impersonator? Those who do will find parts of it beautiful and rewarding, if they can stomach the emotional drain.

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.

Folks will either freak out over this album or abhor its very existence, and that is exactly what makes it so good.

Guilt Trips is legit--an EDM record that’s smart, tasteful and fun. Maybe nothing new, but pretty damn good.

It’s rare that a record comes along that so boldly states its own greatness, and it’s rarer still that such an album actually lives up to that promise. Wise Up Ghost does.

IV feels subdued and professional, something you would never expect to associate with the quartet.

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.

They do work up some magic every now and then.

Gliss Riffer offers just enough hooky material to entice you and make you dance, but you still need to work hard to gain even an inkling of understanding into Deacon’s vision.

Bouchard really puts work into these tunes. He strives to make each one better than it really needs to be.

While the album is beautiful both sonically and lyrically, in some of the tracks, Batmanglij falls into his older artistic patterns that feel played out. However, if you weren’t aware that he was in Vampire Weekend, this might not be as obvious.

Heard consecutively, these songs sound disappointingly like one another, and while one good belter about the pain of unrequited love is a blessing, nine in a row turns out to be real drag.

Food is consistently satisfying and often fabulous.

This onslaught of concepts and sonic rushes drives Redemption right along, carrying the listener through Richard’s vast and captivating imagination. Though she tends to repeat the styles of her earlier works, Richard still sounds like nobody else in the game, and for that Redemption stands apart.

In finding their way back to what works, it too often sounds rehashed to make it a true return to form the band has been yearning to find.

Ultimately El Pintor feels a like a blast of icy fresh air after a sticky, sweltering summer’s day.

Too little is far better than too much as dozens of overstuffed double albums have taught fans of each decade. Every song here is a hit and Antisocialites is brilliant.

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.

This is music that operates at full force at all times.

The songs rock and are well written and that’s enough.

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.

Is Trouble In Paradise a groundbreaking work of unparalleled foresight and talent? No. But is it a spectacular assessment of La Roux’s painfully progressive growth over the past half-decade? Maybe.

Ruins isn’t a bad record, or a weak one, it’s a boring one.

Each spin offers a chance for escape, but what endows Berglund’s sophomore effort with the glow of a masterpiece is its accessibility.

The genre-spanning approach dilutes what could have been a memorable project, leaving 32 Levels with a storage of untapped potential and only a few beacons shining their fullest light.

SweetSexySavage, because of its consistency, can be run through easily, especially in a car with the windows down and the bass up. Feminism, rebellion, and plain old badassery pour from Parrish’s lips, and her melodic sensibilities are sharp enough keep you engrossed.