Yet even Campbell can’t save Desire Lines from coming off as creatively stagnant, just as pretty as ever but overwhelmingly pedestrian.

Weapon is the sound of a band that still has something to say, but delivered with a comfort level commensurate with their thirty years of existence.

Savoir Adore are best suited for exploring the recesses of indie-pop, noting what’s worked most successfully in the genre’s past and utilizing it to shade their brand of music as they please.

With all its sonic diversity, consistency and precision, ...Like Clockwork is an impressive step in the right direction.

At its core, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is a rock solid record that sees Alice In Chains settling in the confines of their own style.

False Idols has the potential to be a more accessible and instantly enjoyable album than say, Maxinquaye, but because it's not as challenging to the experienced trip-hop fan, False Idols is also vulnerable of losing some its captivating allure.

IV Play succeeds in spades with its production and songwriting.

Jama Ko is, for twelve of its thirteen songs, political in the best way, using a deeply focused aesthetic both to engage with and as a momentary escape from the social environment which produced it.

Being able to grasp a second chance has provided Collins with real impetus, and we as listeners can only sit back and reap the rewards we can from the resulting output.

The music is more intimate this time around, and makes for an infinitely more telling description of who Baths is.

Not much on this album is immediate, and that’s a little disappointing, but more than any other National work, Trouble Will Find Me hints at depths upon depths hidden beneath the surface of thirteen very pretty songs.

In two albums, the man shatters our conceptions of music--and in the finale of his trilogy, he glues the pieces back together and hands the end product back to us, thereby redefining the word ‘musician’ in a single gesture.

This record is brooding and shadows, joy and smirks, a blood-red dusk on a quiet desert evening; all emotion and sparkling instrumentation, confident of where it wants to go and even surer on how to get there.

As with many records that share Wake Up’s exuberant qualities, the individual tracks are largely hit-or-miss.

One Of Us Is the Killer is the explosion all of us were hoping it’d be, and yes, lethal as ever--now it’s just easier to pick up the pieces afterwards.

Silver Wilkinson is a more streamlined yet enjoyably disparate record.

As it stands, it’s just another Vampire Weekend album, except the songs are less catchy and more sterile this time around.

It’s a much more jagged experience; a patchwork as opposed to an exercise in consistency. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Nightmare Ending manages to be Eluvium’s most evocative and interesting work to date.

It's a whimsical exercise that allows the Melvins to test their limits with an agenda that pushes them to break away from typical patterns and artifices. Yet, even as they explore what it's like to take on the personas of their influences, the Melvins still manage to sound surprisingly natural throughout.

It’s so perfectly and lovingly written and produced, recalling everything that made you fall in love with the band and their life affirming sound to begin with.

It may be palatable and generally inoffensive on a whole, but Ghost on Ghost really goes down best when viewed as a supplement to other better, more transcendent material already out there.

Volume Three can’t flourish under the force of her considerable personality or Ward’s craftsmanship, because the latter has been deadened and the former is unwilling to break the illusion.

Monomania demands an undivided attention and continuous play to truly see the beauty within its surrealism.

At only 28 minutes long, Lysandre is easily digestible in a single sitting, but that really just embellishes its true purpose--to temporarily whet our appetites till all those other Christopher Owens solo records appear.

Home is a sometimes captivating, occasionally flawed, but always intriguing release.

Sister Faith may not be entirely consistent, yet in the long run it proves way more heartfelt and genuinely bruised than a typical hardcore punk offering.

I hear Wheel slightly differently every time I listen to it, but what stays the same is the overarching feeling that there is some ungraspable quality to it, something indefinable in the way these songs come together, as if multiple worlds are eclipsing each other while remaining individually visible.

There are a lot of cosmetics present to cover up the band’s shortcomings, but not even the most epic posturing and glossy production can hide this record’s blemishes.

They are heavier, and denser, and overwhelmingly less instant than their predecessors, as cloaked and finely adorned in all manner of bright, shiny synths as they are, at times almost crushed under the weight of an ambitiously flamboyant band. But these are still Phoenix songs, and by the end of a dozen listens they are as urgent as ever.

This album isn't about questioning convention, but rather embracing it. The music radiates melodicism, with each song inviting the listener into an environment of splendorous euphony rather than alienating with irregularity.

It's not only a testament to her sheer persistence as an artist, but also a powerful soul record that showcases her remarkable vocal talent with a concise collection of expertly performed songs.

This is much more of a traditional rock record than anything else Frank has done, and that’s a good thing because it means that it’s probably the most consistent album he’s made.

It’s a loud and brash album, but too often, that’s all it is.

Wakin On A Pretty Daze comes into focus with context, though, as does any accomplished record.

It’s their most cohesive record since Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and its eternally exhausted realizations and powerful, if demanding, passages confirm that the band is as tight and concentrated as they’ve ever been.

At its best, Overgrown brings to mind Frank Sinatra's iconic In The Wee Small Hours, a record that acts as almost a thematic analogue in its lonely tone and ultimate embrace of love as a painful yet beautiful emotion.

While the album’s too inconsistent in style to be considered a successful change of pace for the group, it’s at least a promising sign of things to come.

Hayley Williams gives the first of several poor singing performances on the record [on lead single, "Low"]; the verses are toneless and she tries to cram too many words into them without really saying anything.

Unfortunately, Wolf fails in the very same manner as Goblin, albeit with slightly more class.

Full of thoughtful songwriting and brilliant instrumentation, Abandon All Life is a hellish and exigent work that grabs hold and refuses to let go.

The main job of pop music--and this is where it so often fails--is making the same old tropes sound fresh, and Timberlake/Timbaland certainly do that here.

It is without a plan and without much of an aim, save for vague touchstones in ‘80s pop and new wave, a path tread much more smoothly by Casablancas’ prior solo work.

The instrumentation at hand is stellarly crafted, the riffs are infectious and most of the album as a whole is certainly on par with the band’s discography. Yet Intronaut’s most blatant change--foregoing harsh vocals, and only utilizing singing--is a decision that severely dampens the group’s fourth studio outing.

On Meir, Kvelertak prove that it's actually okay to play happy metal without appearing saccharine or contrived.

Aside from its opening track, which I’ll get to, this album is essentially a blank space.

The album musters such little excitement from its arsenal of dynamic guitar solos and yells of self-affirmation.

The album as a whole makes for an unnerving, yet oddly rewarding experience which needs to be undergone by every fan of eclectic metal.

Bloodsports is the sound of a band who have rested, recouped and clawed back some of that old time vitality.

It’s all memorable, and it’s all worth listening to again and again.

It's really unfortunate that Inc. hasn't been able to elevate beyond these very basic production mistakes; they give an impression that No World was either unmastered or mastered haphazardly.

Although there exist exceptions, like the gorgeous “Used” (in which Monroe drops this corker: “Used, like a house where a family lived until they died and there’s a soul in every room”), the record as a whole slithers into a sort of unsatisfying middle ground.

There’s a light to guide Ólafur Arnalds’ music now, and it's allowing him to escape the darkness in a way he'd never quite imagined.

While not entirely original or deserving of any genre superlatives, Baptists' debut LP is still a welcome addition to the recent crust revival by Southern Lord Records.

As entertaining as this album may be, a lot of these songs, needless to say, feel rather parched of vitality.

Through the Window distinguishes itself as a welcomed change of pace for the artist and a standout addition to the extensive Prurient catalog.

There you have it; young lads just starting out make poor-to-average debut record. Not an unusual occurrence, and no doubt a thousand other albums released that day were no better or worse than 180.

New Moon is simply a more casual affair by The Men, a perfectly passable rock record by a band with the talent to pull that off and without the anxiety that you’ll want to pay attention.

There’s a sense of the theatrical blended in subtly among the very genuine declarations of self that pepper the rest of the album.

His ambitions as an artist might be plagued by a fanatical obsession with '70s prog, but he's at least able to channel that infatuation into formulating a very well orchestrated and enjoyable homage to his beloved genre.

The better they’ve gotten at refining their craft, at writing the perfect chorus and combining them seamlessly with organic, vivid sonics, the further away they’ve gotten from the wounded empathy that drove their earlier records. At least ice burns. Optica too often feels like nothing at all.

Ultimately, though, the bulk of Holy Fire is another sterling addition to Foals’ repertoire, and the band knows it too.

Apart from a precious few exceptions, none of the gathered musicians seem able nor willing to push each other into new musical territory that could yield fresh revelations about their union.

In Focus? is far and away his boldest record to date.

In all, Clash the Truth is a major step forward for Beach Fossils, and it’s certainly an album that I’m not going to forget about so easily, if ever at all.

Luckily, there’s enough good on this album to hide the negatives.

Widowspeak’s greatest accomplishment is maintaining that same sense of simmering, uncertain wonder over the course of one wonderfully blurry album.

While m b v is a record that is more than capable of standing on its own, at the same time it also sounds exactly like the sort of thing that we might have expected My Bloody Valentine to produce two decades ago, and this noticeable lack of allegiance to the present is perhaps the most potent thing about this entire revisionist affair.

These two seemingly disparate parts combine in an off-putting but refreshingly rough-and-tumble way.

All in all, not the death knell that it could have been but not the triumphant return it so could have been at the same time, Descension is another addition to the Coheed saga.

Ultimately, Conduit is a fair step down from the resurgence that was Welcome Home Armageddon. But having said that, it remains a solid addition to their discography.

As crushing as some of these songs are, Heartthrob never lets you feel the weight, but prefers to revel in emotions good or bad, most often while sweating everything out under a crystalline disco ball.

It just lacks in a hallmark of all prior Ducktails releases: imagination.

The result is an unfortunately hollow album, recycled in its sound and empty in its emotion.

It's not going to impress those that irrationally expect every release to be a mind-blowing exercise in progression and experimentation. On the other hand, it should impress long-time fans and satiate their desire for no-frills, in your face music.

Target Earth is the speed, technicality and thrashy weirdness of the band's earliest album enveloped in a modern package that is also able to retain its own vibe and personality.

As it stands for now though, Red is a mixed bag, and it's up to you to sort through the majority-holding bad in order to find the good.

Fade is not an exciting record on its face, but finds itself in the emotional peaks that surface hazily here and there, through colorful production and exquisite songwriting.

In short, Long.Live.A$AP takes what made his debut new or exciting and more finely hones it.

The album is just a bunch of incredibly inoffensive hard rock masquerading as metal, and while its not good by any stretch of the imagination, it isn't a travesty to music either.

Signed and Sealed in Blood is a pleasant addition to the Dropkick Murphys' discography, but the reliance on their trustworthy, time-tested conservatism is somewhat unfulfilling here.

Greenwood has pretty much stacked the chips up against himself by deciding to get involved in this album in the first place. There's no need for him to be seen as a competitor to any canonical composer at this point in his career, but by putting his works side-by-side with Penderecki's, he inadvertently puts himself in that light, and it leaves us with an album that tells us very little about his work that isn't obvious to anybody who knows how long he's been composing (young composer still learning his trade--gasp!), and nothing about Penderecki that we haven't already known for over forty years.

Bish Bosch is as much about challenging the people that absorbed and accepted Tilt and The Drift as it is challenging the rest of the world--and while that makes it consistent with all his work since Nite Flights, each subsequent album giving his fan base another hurdle to overcome, it also gives it a thrill that's unique to both his discography and the majority of the music you could compare it to. If, indeed, there is any.

Born to Die's highlights are both slightly more numerous and slightly more effective--but it's still a very strong, successful record, whether taken as an addition or a follow-up.

Centipede HZ is a reaffirmation. It reminds us that Animal Collective plays interactive, now and forever.

Fans will debate whether Failed States tops previous records, but certainly meets the standards the band has set for themselves.

It is both gorgeous and fearsome, and one couldn't ask for anything more.

In terms of overall quality though, it has to be said that things noticeably pick up in the album's second half, as any traditional indie rock sensibilities that Gibbard may have initially had start to recede and are replaced by a grittier, slightly more abstract edge.

Ultimately though, these are minor gripes for what is an otherwise solid debut from a band which looks poised to make waves in the independent music scene for years to come.

It's a shame that the sequencing and the overall flow isn't quite right, because in all other regards, this is a beautiful album to stick on and just drift away to--this is music of impressive texture and depth.

It is undeniably a step down from her excellent 2009 release, with too little suiting such a distinctive artist.

It's the construction of it all that's so perfect: that the music can follow, this time, but still be what Grizzly Bear are all about.

I Was Here For a Moment, Then I Was Gone is simply an excellent post-rock record, with all the fat and filler cut out, leaving only room for pure, brilliant songwriting.

Koi No Yokan is a passable alt-rock/metal album by a band that is capable of much more.

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! is a truly unforgettable experience.

With its terrible lyrics, uninspired and generic music and general sense of boredom, the only positive to glean from the wreckage was at least it couldn't get worse.

It veers from cautious optimism, to sadness and to those odd moments where you feel anything's possible. Young and Crazy Horse continue to run free.

If their self-titled LP represented a slight dip in the usual quality of this band, Cold of Ages represents a trip both back and forward--back to their earlier days in terms of material and the quality of the compositions, but forward in terms of recording quality, evolutionary potential, and available elements at their disposal.

While lacking the immediate and defining qualities of their previous releases, the album still manages to outclass its peers in almost every regard.