Frightened Rabbit's best material rivals brothers-in-brood the National and Arcade Fire, and even their B-level stuff is better than that of most acts working in this vein. But unlike those leading lights, these guys don't have the pop instincts to throw in the occasional punk scrappers, chamber-folk interludes, or disco rave-up to keep things from getting monotonous.

General Dome's force is relentless, but about halfway through these 12 songs, things run together, with muddy, [mid-dy] waters polluting the mix.

This ain't perfect, nor is it exactly sui generis, but it still ought to bump up their summer-festival-lineup-poster font size by a solid five points or so.

Liberated from the stylistic baggage of their previous albums, the Quins deliver something close to pure intoxicating emotion, granting themselves the freedom to go anywhere they want next time.

The self-production here is a bit murky, maybe, and the drums and vocals have seen sharper days. But these dudes still turn sharp corners.

On the surface, it's big, dumb, and fun; just beneath, there's an improbably complicated band at work, showing its hand only on repeated listens.

Racing through 11 disjointed songs in 30 minutes flat, Ra Ra Riot never give their material a chance to breathe. Instead, we're left with somewhat impressive ideas, squandered with impressive vigor.

On their 16th(!) full-length, True North, the group's highly evolved savoir-faire proves their greatest asset.

All told, it's an endearing bag of tricks.

The songs that collapse under their own weight find the band struggling to feel epic, but Wolf's Law still soars when the band struggles instead with epic feelings.

When consumed passively, as ambient music, his conceptual flaws recede into the fuzz of his production, a raw mush of sound that provides an appropriate and occasionally great backdrop for refreshing your Tumblr dashboard, at least until it delivers a more engaging artist to look at.

All in all, this is a well-written, smartly paced, tightly played, thematically cohesive, musically tidy piece of work. It's just that quite a lot of Camper fans probably never considered those qualities to be particularly appealing virtues.

Free Energy know that what they're emulating is about bliss not meaning, and they're savvy enough to embrace pop simplicity without condescending to it.

Return is neither a step up or down from 2010's wave-warping Causers of This or 2011's time-warping Underneath the Pine, yet it's not more of the same.

Yet even minus narrative detail or plot points, one surrenders to the logic of Richard's world, thanks to the modernist sheen holding the entire suite-like venture together, a voracious and melodic urban contemporary sound referencing 1980s pop as much as house or electro.

The musical ideas here will be readily familiar to anyone who has heard Pantha du Prince's work before.

It can feel both more possible, and yet further out of reach.

Parquet Courts' over-the-top energy, speed, and succinctness makes the combination sound fresher than anything the original elements have managed in years.

Like the film from which it borrows its title, Lady From Shanghai is an artfully awkward study in malaise.

At just under a half-hour (a runtime probably inspired by the days when vinyl records could only contain about 40 minutes of music), Lysandre is a frustrating listen.

Should these two musicians choose to continue their professional reengagement (and here's hoping they do), jettisoning the vocalists and second-rate John Cooper Clarke monologues in favor of the noisy anti-pop skank they helped invent might yet yield wondrous results. Less talk, more skronk.

Trouble Man is his first album since that second bid; it finds him finally returning to the lane that he abandoned somewhere around the time he included two Wyclef Jean songs on T.I. vs. Tip.

He's proven he can assimilate into the world of mainstream rap while still retaining his singularity.

You don't have to know Cody ChesnuTT's back story to appreciate all this--the journey is right there in the lyrics.

There's a simultaneously appealing and slightly off-putting looseness to all this, conjuring the sort of drowsiness where you'd rather sleep for a week straight than let in more heartbreak.

The music may be just as strong, tight, and impeccable--this is a band that's been going at it for more than a quarter of a century, after all--but there's a lightness missing here, a lack of passion.

This disconnect between Jesus Piece's gambit and its execution, between Game's intention and the raps served up by his guests, results in the headliner being reduced to a mere spectator on too much of his own album.

The bulk of Unorthodox Jukebox benefits from presenting Bruno Mars as he truly imagines himself: a big belter with an ear for pop hooks, sure, but one unafraid to dive into murkier waters.

Less of an anthemic, balls-to-the-wall affair than Elements of Freedom (still her strongest album overall), this one does have its own liberating, empowering charms.

Clinging to the guest stars is crucial to getting through this thing--pros like Courtney Noelle provide basic hooks where the headliner's own horrible mantras ("I got so much," "Fall asleep") fail completely.

Bish Bosch is Walker's most accessible (extremely relatively speaking) work since Climate.

The reinvigorated results feel warm-blooded, definite, vulnerable, exposed.

He's brilliant when juxtaposing rhythmic brutality against euphonious familiarity; but here, he seems exhausted by the former and ashamed of the latter.

Warrior is likable enough, but not only can't it match its predecessor, it's not nearly as exhilarating or disruptive as what fellow slizzered California trashdancer Dev or assorted K-poppers have done in the past two years with basically the same raw materials.

Kreay indulges the full breadth of her influences, turning Somethin into a series of wan genre studies.

Ultimately, Wild Water never hits as hard as its predecessor, and can't match it in terms of either focus or breadth.

The now-24-year-old's voice may be simple, but it's distinctive--and as defiant as her album titles.

Bronsonland is a place you enjoy spending time in or you don't, and that does not seem likely to change anytime soon.

Sadly, as Pit forges ahead in his campaign for world domination, his artistry is what's really being colonized.

As pure listening experience, Tourist's mazelike structure, full of echoes and switchbacks, best lends itself to listening on shuffle.

For maybe the first time, the Evens actually make you miss Fugazi a little bit less.

Judging from the spirited but wildly inconsistent material on this trilogy's first two entries, a little quality control would've helped, perhaps funneling the best of the three albums into one solid offering.

It slips down easily, and the duo's knowledge and pedigree (their debut is out on 16-year-old rave label Ultra Records, once home to the Chemical Brothers and Tiësto) also satisfies the yen of longtime dance-music lovers who might be side-eyeing all the Johnny-Come-Latelies.

And yet, despite such growing pains, Clark's penchant for restless, exploratory tangents ensures that Blak and Blu hits like a ton of bricks.

There's definitely something welcoming about Koi No Yokan's comparative purity, in the band's understanding of how little they need.

Soundgarden made an album here, with all sorts of internal connections and deliberate emotional ebbs and flows.

Godspeed is all about wide-open spaces here. And it's easier to find transcendence in the desolation, to get hypnotized by a single note, or get lost in rearranging the four vinyl sides into your own personal manifesto.

[Tame Impala's Kevin] Parker's little boy may be emotionally bruised, but his capacity for capturing bliss remains unblemished.

Five songs, one skit, and just 18 minutes total, this is a concentrated dose of Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire's spaced-out, drink-and-fuck-too-much, end-of-days rap. It's also frustratingly brief and low-stakes, though it leaves you immediately anticipating his next move.

On Reloaded, he's written perhaps the most vivid rap album of the year--and possibly of his lifetime.

Lindstrom is becoming increasingly diverse; but his style is immediately recognizable--probably as good a proof of artistic development as there is. Cheap and dirty, he still shines.

The whole thing is pretty, if a bit mild, suggesting not quite another green world, but something ideal for--as its cover art suggests--watching autumnal leaves turn.

MGK is a talented rapper, but here, on his major label album, he sounds hollow.

There's real drama in the band's sweeping crescendos and ringing guitar chords; there's something genuinely affecting in their newfound emo overtones.

As the overwhelming bulk of Luxury Problems demonstrates, the producer might've learned how to marshal all the dark, weird stuff boiling inside him, but he's not about to relinquish it any time soon.

Overall, Dimension has some solid moments and no outright duds, but it works better as the basis for a playlist than as a start-to-finish album.

The details change, but the heaviness remains.

Despite plenty of practice as a contributor to Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group compilation series Self Made, Meek's label debut lacks viable singles.

Music remains the Coup's ultimate sweetener, and here the jams hit hard like the words--from the big beat of opener "The Magic Clap" to the grimy guitar on "Land of 7 Billion Dances," departures from the smooth, soothing funk that was once this outfit's specialty.

The results are the most pleasant kind of rambling imaginable.

From beginning to end, Caspian use their structural savoir faire to keep things moving, rarely giving in to passing fancies or individual showmanship.

Some will find it a disappointing follow-up to one of the great rock records of the past few years. Some will jump around and pump their fists to every chorus without giving the lyrics much thought; some will live and die by every word. Some will even find it all kind of funny. Nobody is necessarily wrong.

Whatever it is, this music is full of adult pleasures.

Despite the absence of percussion, it moves as steadily as a mountain stream, a reminder of the pulse connecting club music with a much vaster world beyond. Now, more than ever, we need the long view glimpsed through Pink's rose-tinted rave goggles.

Like a lot of young artists who've been flash-fried by the Internet, these guys also aren't so much great as they are getting better, using public interest to spur themselves on. Bossalinis is cleaner and more varied than their mixtapes, but this album is also long.

Amid all that cultural confusion basking in a neon glow, Mala in Cuba is a welcome relief, an artist reveling in his uncertainty and building it into something original and authentic.

It's a completely exhausting listen, one that might prove easier to admire than enjoy. But at the very least, it's never anything less than fascinating.

The Haunted Man is her weightiest work so far.

It's pleasant, soothingly warm water, sure, but you probably won't want to soak for too long.

For all his three relationships spanned and catchy tunes composed, Gibbard is too nice to dish it out, and too bland to reveal any meaningful lessons learned.

That Converge can dabble in so many styles and still inherently come out sounding like themselves is what makes All We Love work.

While other possible sonic antecedents abound, the full album feels more roots than retro, old tools reclaimed to new ends.

At his best - "The Veldt," "Closer," and "Channel 42," which has a nice, Cameo-like wah-funk wiggle - Deadmau5 is a topflight roots-of-EDM mimic. At his worst, he's a troll.

He sounds as if he's just seen his own specter in the mirror, but no worries--records don't get much more alive than this.

Pink works best as a one-woman army.

The band's interplay has grown both more varied and intuitive.

Food & Liquor II is fine and good. It's just not The Great American Rap Album.

Miguel has impeccable songwriting chops and a deceptively supple voice, not to mention total command of both.

Fully formed songs suggest themselves, but too often prematurely dissolve, with vagaries always favored over the tangible.

Each new album (arriving as it does with the requisitely pompous title: Absolution, Black Holes and Revelations, The Resistance) finds Muse attempting to out-blitz OK Computer and Kid A in terms of overly serious Englishmen weeping for modern civilization and its myriad alienations. Which simply makes The 2nd Law's 50-plus minutes of 21st-century-art-rock-meets-sappy-popera business as usual.

I Bet on Sky is the sound of a great, influential band that, yes, picked up where they left off, but instead of luxuriating in the sentimental hue of the moment, got back to work and kept moving forward.

This isn't a great album, but it is a good one, in a year quietly blessed with a small crop of good records (Metric, Gossip) with dreamy synths and girls up front.

Consciously or not, U2-style evangelism is all over the Mumfords' bland but biblically titled second album, Babel.

There aren't any plinking pianos or Hollywood strings, but the music still goes big the way we've grown to expect from Green Day.

Total Loss is a beautiful album, all ambient longing and sadness and spectral pop, rising and falling without warning - no other artist gets more emotional effect out of leaving things not quite finished. But it still feels not quite finished.

They deepen their sound past lo-fi into something redolent of actual studio polish.

It's a drag that so many of Mirage Rock's most transcendent moments--the stuff suggesting real maturity--are so quickly undone by such nonsensical toss-offs.

Sebenza, though, is less a showcase for younger SA talent than a genuine international collaboration of equals.

At its worst, Kill My Blues indulges in too much Townshend-esque noodling, but at its best, it proves that one of alt-rock's greatest howlers can operate at full power even without pushing herself to detonation.

[A] beautiful if vague fourth studio album.

So no, this is not a cohesive crew album, but has there really been one since Marley Marl's In Control, Vol. 1 came out 24 years ago?

Very little here could be accused of being twee; Folds sounds invigorated to have a rock band behind him again, making him play harder, sing harder, be harder.

For the first time, the ballads are as memorable as the dance cuts.

Byrne and Clark rarely interact vocally, sometimes suggesting two solo outings spliced together; and the grooves have an anonymous vibe.

As a sonic experience, Tempest kicks most Dylan albums in the cojones.

Obviously, hip-hop loves its thugs, too, especially if they're the antiheroes of a relatively nuanced piece like this one.

They [Adam Young's fans] deserve better. We deserve better. Come to think of it, Adam Young deserves better.

What makes this music special is what Smith does with all that stylized sparseness, transforming it into something alive and dynamic instead of merely sleepy.