Confident and complex, it's a standout debut from one of the most promising artists of the last few years.

As a record, Barragan concludes as a frustrating summation of Blonde Redhead’s overwhelming promise and a glaring reminder of the band’s flaws.

Tying everything back to the idea of the album as a showcase for Grande’s newfound maturity, My Everything ends up ringing hollow.

Brill Bruisers is spread everywhere at once, loud and crass and saturated with color and nearly fit to burst. It won’t make very many memories, but it will create a hell of a lot of good times.

Brimming with melody and bustling with energy, The Rentals have made a statement album out of Lost In Alphaville.

Meandering, extremely derivative 2000's metal.

Sparks is an album containing its share of diamonds, but only if you’re willing to sift through the rough in order to find them.

The inconsistencies within Green Language, unfortunately, undermine the potential beauty of the album’s closing few minutes.

You Will Eventually Be Forgotten offers nothing new nor does it pay respectable homage to its influences.

While it sounds as though the band are still working on perfecting their recent power/thrash/prog formula that started being established with The Power Within, everything's beginning to be pieced together quite nicely.

Angels and Devils is a triumph of anguish, needles and monsters and evil in aural form. Be warned.

There's pure pop gold to be found here, but also envelope-pushing alchemy that turns these songs into unforgettable aural expressions of joy.

Get Hurt may go down as The Gaslight Anthem's worst album to date, but that's not much of an assessment: a difficult Gaslight record is still a really good album, and it's commendable to experiment, evolve, or otherwise try something new.

All in all, Sand + Silence is an accomplished blend of rock, indie, and pop.

They Want My Soul chases that sound far past anything Spoon have done to date in their careers. It’s a chase I hope never ends.

Gorgeous melodies are painted across a variety of instrumental backgrounds, forming an ideal blend of his more traditional emotionally-charged ballads and bolder, more unfamiliar pieces.

Gemini, Her Majesty easily manifests as the album you expect and deserve from a group of consummate pros like the Rx Bandits.

As easy as it goes down, The Voyager is a record that rewards repeated listens.

The Golden Age Of Glitter then, is a subversive record. Things may not be as they appear at various points throughout, but that’s no reason not to give it a go.

Given the great work apparent on the album’s first half, it’s a pity to see the album slide to a close so disappointingly.

Whatever Funk’s motivation in pumping out yet another breakcore grenade in his long line of breakcore grenades, My Love is a Bulldozer is at the very least an engaging listen--make of that what you will.

The massive hooks and catchy choruses that the band has forever been associated with also return, providing Lowborn with some of the group’s most memorable tracks.

As it stands, Wild Crush is their most complete, well-rounded and accessible record to date.

There’s plenty to be pleased about here.

The Next Four Years isn't the best record of the year, but it is the most honest--and sometimes that means so much more.

Strange Desire is perhaps the fullest-sounding and most charismatic indie-pop album you’ll hear this year, just in time to become the defining sound of your summer.

Yes, they still have a few kinks that need to be worked out--for instance, they need to address the game of musical chairs at lead guitarist--but a whole, The Afghan Whigs look just as unstoppable as they did in their prime.

Days of Being Wild won’t ensnare your senses or make a concerted effort to win you over, which is okay. All you can do is just embrace it, listen to it, and hope that it grows on you.

PQ are at their best when they’re short, sweet and erratic.

Celestite feels like it is more than just a simple companion piece to Celestial Lineage, and there is more than a Cascadian black metal band behind the subtle guitars and massive synths of Celestite: there is an idea that is beginning to take root.

For anyone interested in the world of contemporary analog synthesizer music, Ishi should be a welcome addition to any collection.

Just as Mosaic flows in easily, it flows out the same way.

X is a vapid and overly confident album that feels more like regression than progression for Ed Sheeran's indie folk sound.

Change is what led them to write the album they needed to, and in turn, left us listeners with the album we needed to hear. Change reminds us that we didn’t know Every Time I Die like we thought we did--but they sure read us to a tee with From Parts Unknown.

In the Lonely Hour is less meaningless and vapid than a song as unapologetically hammy as “Classic,” but the result is unfortunately the same.

Filled to the brim with consistently excellent songs, Once More 'Round The Sun serves as a blueprint of how to go commercial without sacrificing one's artistic identity.

While there's little substance to be found on 48:13, it can either turn you off from the beginning or get under your skin, making for a harmless listen where you occasionally bang your head to the catchy highlights.

It's the very definition of a grower, and this record has something Born to Die never had: more reflection.

Make no mistake--this is the record that Linkin Park know they should have made seven years ago.

Aurally consistent, hauntingly introspective, and beautifully self-reflective in its just-over-a-half-hour duration, Don't Wait Up may not rewrite the hardcore how-to book, but it does showcase how to bow out gracefully, with nearly 20 years' worth of respect earned intact.

The compositions and the lyrics are strong, while the guys feel like they had a lot of fun recording.

Hebrews is a wholly new kind of album for the band. Is it cheesy, over the top and a little too saccharine? Yeah, but the first two of those apply in spades to the first couple Say anything records anyways, and honestly I’d rather have someone singing sweet nothings to me when they’re in their 30’s than try and continue spewing venomous bile that they haven't believed in since their early 20's.

It’s a record confident in its own making, even more so when it turns its focus inward.

Overall, Anathema have struck gold for the third time in a row, but for the first time there are some prominent flaws as well.

Despite being derivative, Esoteric Warfare is worthy of praise, because it keeps alive a sound practised by merely a handful of outfits, some of them sadly disbanded.

E S T A R A is not as strong an album as Ardour, not as surprising because it couldn’t possibly be. But in its own, attenuated, scattered-birds way, this album is everything we could have hoped for.

As The Stars is an album for the wide black metal audience, because it shows how bands don’t always have to choose a side and then put up blinders to the world around them. Things can be integrated, but only insofar as the breadth of a band’s musical vision and their talent in transcribing that vision into their songwriting. Woods of Desolation are more than adept at both.

Reachy Prints is yet another tedious exercise in modern IDM attempting to stay relevant, and failing to do a very good job of convincing us listeners that it is.

For now their debut release shows great promise, deftly combining the ferocity of punk with soul-baring lyricism.

The result is a sometimes great, sometimes merely serviceable album which can stand among Death Grips’ ample discography, despite occasionally sacrificing melody for amplified pandemonium.

The album clatters out of focus in a pleasing fashion.

It’s still a strong album with several standout moments, but these great moments are often hampered by the inchoate themes and parched ideas surrounding it, making the album feel at times unfinished.

Even though it might not rank as essential Brian Jonestown Massacre, Revelation is a lovely experience.

This time around, deprived of their usual energy or lyrical quotient, they are nothing more than a momentarily likable diversion.

On paper, not a lot differentiates Saintseneca from the glut of indie-folk bands that saturate the scene. Unlike the rest of the crowd, however, the band offers up an unparalleled sense of wonder within each song.

Considering what kind of experiment this was, it turned out pretty damn well.

The result is an album that is being asphyxiated by an extremely strong hand, and that proves to be the death of it all.

Musically, he moved in a slightly different direction that works more often than not.

Don’t rock up to this one expecting some life-changing epoch. Just roll with the punches.

As a Lily Allen record, it’s a sneering, vapid imitation: a Lily Allen stereotype.

Sonically, Nikki Nack is a joyous record which sees Gabril bursting at the seams with restless energy and tremendous creativity.

The best parts of classic rock find a home in Holy Vacants without ever seeming forced.

It's undoubtedly his most impressive collection of songs in over two decades.

Mainstream baiting notwithstanding, With Light & With Love is the best Woods record yet, a tinkering of the charmingly sincere folksiness of Bend Beyond into something even more muscular and full-bodied.

There aren't many artists who can deconstruct and rebuild such interesting tracks equally based on both disturbing and exquisite soundscapes, yet Fennesz continues his winning streak.

Behind The Sun is an early contender for the best heavy psychedelic album of the year, and a mandatory listen for any rock fan.

Tremors finds time to be adventurous with its feet firmly planted on the ground; it moves maturely.

The record offers moments, candid and clear, of Rowe before the fame that'll surely head her way. It’s an opportunity to see what this artist is all about today.

Truthfully, Super Collider is just a Megadeth album born of complacency and issued with only the faintest interest in remaining relevant.

Midnight Memories takes the slight progression of Take Me Home and demolishes it.

The cheesiness, loads of filler, and overly glossy production are still present and hinder much of what the album had the potential to accomplish.

Overall, Days Go By ends up as a solid record only because there are traces of The Offspring again and not a band that tries to copy others.

In the end, iTRÉ! is unexpectedly the strongest record overall of the three. Although it has its own issues, these don't drag that much the whole affair down and there aren't any horrible missteps such as "Nightlife".

In its simplicity lies a uniquely Eels beauty, realistic and wise. It may be unsure, yes, and there’s certainly some fresh horror around the bend, somewhere, but perhaps that future is more promising than what came before.

There isn’t as much outright variety as there was on Impossible Past, but there are subtle refinements that make Rented World perhaps the most musically solid album the band has released.

There are certainly a few noticeable misses (such as the overwrought ‘Ready to Lose’), but the occasional home runs are more than enough to offset those moments.

It is all about being strong. It reaches out and tries to help make sense of it all. It's a comforting empathy. The stories are intensely personal but are so easily transferable beyond their original inspiration.

Music For Robots functions as the first embarrassingly terrible album of 2014, and should be avoided by all except those with an extremely morbid sense of curiosity.

All You Can Eat is easily the band's funniest and most diverse offering to date, their confidence coming out in full force this time around.

Terje’s cocky, frisky songwriting skills shine, and It’s Album Time easily clears the high bar the producer set for himself through his remixes and EPs.

Even at 45 minutes, Education, Education, Education & War feels too long, because the Chiefs are 100% committed to impose their sarcastic views till the last second.

She sounds like she truly cares and poured her heart into her songs (and most of them are indeed co-written by her), with the overall result feeling satisfyingly emotional and incredibly fulfilling... something that couldn't be said as strongly about an album like She Wolf.

It takes several spins to fully comprehend the ambitious scope on display here as this is the kind of record that unravels the longer one ventures into its gorgeous textures, subtle progressive leanings and consistently clever lyricism.

Forcefield stands proudly on its own, a meat-and-potatoes rock record that swings for the FM fences and gets by on Monks’ considerable personality and the band’s seemingly limitless energy.

While Die Without Hope is a mixed bag, I enjoyed it enough to at least recommend it to Carnifex fans, fans of deathcore, or even fans of blackened death metal who are looking at a band with some potential in the genre.

There are almost no redeeming qualities to be found here, and the whole thing is shamelessly derivative, thoroughly lacking in any sort of creativity, and (worst of all) a logical point in Skrillex’s career arc, one which has been pointing downhill ever since 2010. Listen at your own risk.

Wildlife was a great leap forward, and Rooms Of The House further evolves their sound.

It is an incredibly unique performance that builds upon the collective legacy of its members not by pushing them to their extremes, but by uniting them back to a rooted sonic aesthetic that all too often gets buried when they are apart.

The Pretty Reckless don’t do a great deal to prove the cynics wrong here. More frustratingly, they are undoubtedly capable of much better.

There’s all the verve and naked empathy of the best of his classic rock forebears, with none of the bombast or contrivances. Lost in the Dream is a long record, to be sure, yet it never overstays its welcome.

Happiness Is is warming shot of feel good guitar pop and bright choruses that is easily on par with the best of the latter half of Taking Back Sunday's career.

More than ever before, these songs spin on their own axes: and that fact alone makes this record as positive a step forward for Tycho as anything.

Burn Your Fire for No Witness’ eleven songs benefit greatly from the heightened sense of clarity afforded by the more spacious arrangements.

The Drop Beneath is the first record of their career that truly feels like the start of something special.

It makes for a surprisingly fun and varied record. Yet, that's not to say that the record is without its foibles. The biggest problem is Die Knowing never comes into its own.

The album captures the artist in scintillating form with its potent mesh-up of gutsy inventiveness and great maturity.

The benefit for The Men playing this sort of music is that where they’re nicking from grows less important--so long as they keep pulling it off. Pull it off they do in spades for the third straight record, save for the fact The Men have yet to figure out how to make their ballads as compelling as their high-octane songs.

The new outing from the Nordic rockers may not be as essential as Sister Faith in the long run, but it certainly makes for a highly pleasurable listen.