Refining Gutter Tactics' murky metal rap with subwoofer bass frequencies and fierce drum programming, MC Dälek and producer the Oktopus still find inspiration amid the noise.

Ignore (or embrace) the similarities [to Spoon] and there’s plenty to love about songs as lightly brooding and likably grabby as these.

Whether driving a military tank through Glastonbury or recording a synth-pop tribute to playboy '80s auto mogul John Delorean, Super Furry Animals' frontman makes the gimmicky sublime.

Perfect for Magnetic Fields fans let down by 2010's concept-heavy Realism.

The pseudonym and title (a wink to Yo La's mostly-covers Fakebook) indicate how this lark, with oft-inaudible vocals, is meant to be held up against the band's canon.

Previously, that technique fostered playfulness, but Menomena's fourth album mostly just broods.

Like Animal Collective, Youth Lagoon craft modernist pop so perfectly of its time that we're hardly aware of how much time has passed.

Pulling a Bon Iver-gone-to-Walden Pond move might be grossly overdone by now, but Lord Huron has skillfully overturned the tired mulch in favor of tuneful new growth.

Much of the rest is hollow pop-punk; nothing New Found Glory or Simple Plan hasn’t already repurposed many times over. Without its F-bombs, the sugary title track could be a JoJo Siwa song. But as we collectively emerge (again) from the pandemic, with hope to reclaim some semblance of easy fun, Love Sux is a fine soundtrack. The production is slick, Lavigne’s vocal is unwavering and loaded with just enough attitude.

While that obsession with the "big sleep" gives Own Your Ghost a gloomy power, these cross-cultural pals might consider a less depressing repertoire next time.

But primally satisfying as it is, the band's meat-and- taters thrash leaves one hungry for some Mastodon- style lateral thinking.

This young band’s musical growth supersedes the album’s imperfections, and hopefully Down in Heaven will eventually be regarded as a transition to something more career-defining. Untapped potential is an energy too.

T-Bone Burnett's understated production suggests an aqueous atmosphere, with a few actual sea shanties.

Pretty Girls believe in anthems, which would be irritating if they didn't make you believe, too. [Oct 2003, p.107]

While Gap is tougher and more fun than 1998's bland debut, Behind the Front, the Peas just aren't that good. [Nov. 2000, p.209]

This Montreal group's first full-length features a slightly brighter, looser sound than their wonderfully sludgy 2006 EP, perhaps due to the input of Justin Vernon (a.k.a. folkie marvel Bon Iver), who coproduced with the band.

These Englishmen have learned impulse control. Frontman Eamon Hamilton's playful yelp has given way to a sturdier sound.

Sam Beam's breathy croon is as soothing as a lullaby, but just as limited--which becomes an issue over two discs and 23 songs. Yet that very sameness helps this patchwork of singles, soundtrack cuts, and unreleased tracks cohere.

Here, a founding multi-instrumentalist member, a longtime bassist, and several supportive additions forgo the initial trio’s psychedelic pop for angular guitar riffs and agile Latin rhythms that evoke an adventurous, timeless sense of fun.

Guitar-less but heavy on the organ, sax, and hands-to-the-heavens claps, this home-recorded debut swings like demos of actual '60s hits. Lyrically, it's less finessed.

If the least they do is keep revealing new shades of the familiar, it's worth sticking around and seeing this band through.

Mountaintops has plenty of upbeat romps, but the most compelling moments are the epic, minor-key laments.

For all the banging beauty in its beats, Evolve or Be Extinct is too forced and uncomfortable, as though he figured he'd evolve if he just over-thought it enough.

Murdoch pipes up now and again, but he's mostly content to play puppet master in his own lush­pop cabaret and revel in the fact that he only has to write and produce these brilliantly classic­ sounding songs, and not warble them.

Most of these songs have good parts--they’re just lost in long, boring stretches of the band faintly nodding off to their distant, better work.

[A] pensive disc. [Oct 2005, p.137]

These are heftier tracks that, because of their added weight, move slower; and like any collection of thematically linked subwoofer-challenging, chart-charting songs, some feel a little Skyped-in--or at least tailored a little too much to their guiding spotlights.

A perfectly pleasant contribution to the mysterious forces driving indie pop these days.