Jackson writes open-endedly, shifting between direct experience and metaphor; mysteries left unsolved by her lyrics and persona are alternately heightened and resolved by the hurt in her voice, the assuredness of her arrangements.

No doubt this will all slay live, but there are parts on For Those Who Stay where Saulnier's obvious talents and ambitions never quite get three dimensional, though it's obviously not for a lack of effort on his behalf, as this is one band no one would ever accuse of not trying hard enough.

Although critics of Morrissey's solo career have justifiably argued that his post-Bona Drag ensembles haven't met the Smiths' lofty bar, World Peace Is None of Your Business is the first Morrissey album that's often stronger musically than it is lyrically.

What gets stultifying over the course of 38 minutes can be invigorating in small, pep-talk size bursts.

No Coast is the work of a proud scene divorcée declaring his allegiance to nothing but verse and chorus. And that's a beautiful thing that too few punks understand.

For those who can keep up, some exultant and righteous highs await.

It's an album designed for playing late at night; even peppier tracks like the popping-piston "Burn The Pages" and the jittery "Hostage" have a darkness to them. That darkness might not make Sia the world's hugest pop star, but it sure makes her one of its more compelling ones.

Apparently Citron is ready to leave the nest. When Beverly performs live she'll work with other players and Rose will be elsewhere, focusing on her solo music. That's too bad, as Careers makes a great argument for teamwork.

Unlike Someday World, the far thornier High Life doesn’t improve much with repeated plays: These are egghead jams whose esoteric textures bewitch more than their relatively static frameworks.

Trigga isn't as cohesive as 2009's Ready, but it's a sublime, soulful convergence of the sonic minimalism and oil-slicked synths of today's hip-hop and R&B, and its sound provides a charismatic contrast to its almost anhedonic pursuit of pleasure.

With likeminded ensembles like Brooklyn’s colorful psych jammers NYMPH and Switzerland’s Eastern-flavored, Voodoo-inspired collective Goat transmitting dreamscapes from the beyond while exuding familial, Zen master vibes, Yoshimi’s OOIOO has joined that spiritual fray with this Gamelan-inspired trance inducer.

As intellectual and introverted as Krell often is, he’s at his best when he and the music simply let go. What Is This Heart? delivers in the second half when nearly every song peaks with exuberant finales.

An album packed start to finish with some of Mastodon's best material to date.

Quality-wise, the second half of the album has a higher batting average.

In a career fraught with obsessions over the perfection-imperfection dichotomy, it turns out to be a blessing that she put pop and its various pressures on the backburner just to deliver some real summertime sadness.

Much of A.K.A. is still mawkish, midtempo melodrama that does too much to accentuate J. Lo's tunelessness.

The result is the rare heady corrective that's as fun as it is thoughtful.

Deep Fantasy is exhausting, cathartic and a little scary.

Where Craft Spells' previous release felt a bit lackadaisical, the more self-aware Nausea, with its themes of growth echoed in its synth crescendos, sports ambition.

Savage Gold is of course far more than the sum of its parts, but those parts--Killing Joke, Deathspell Omega, later Death--make for an excellent starting point for the band's considerable combined talents to spring from.

Ultimately, it's their sisterly harmonies--not their lyrical content--that provide the salve of this First Aid Kit.

Lazaretto's experimentation sounds ambivalent, its songs fractured and distracted.

He's trying to remind you that he's still tough, though these lines mostly just conjure images of Travis Bickle in the mirror: a guy alone and clueless, snarling at imagined enemies that can't talk back.

Glass Boys is easier to navigate, and doesn't engender the same awe [as "David Comes to Life"]. But its brevity allows Fucked Up to loosen a little--to indulge in sounds and tones they forwent when their albums sprawled. Less space, and more stuff: the band keeps getting denser.

Their most eccentric, diverse sounding record to date.

These performances never surrender to the anxiety of influence: All those comparisons are mere reference points for a loose aesthetic that values sustained chordal vamps above all else.

Both "Smokin' and Drinkin'," featuring Little Big Town, and the rowdy "Somethin' Bad," her and Carrie Underwood's retort to bro-country, feel forced. These are small missteps on an otherwise solid outing.

Joyously addictive mutual self-destruction is what Do It Again is all about.