Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars fears not experimentation, and has the chops to occasionally shine through with awe-inspiring beauty. It’s worth it to not have a front-to-back ear pleaser when the peaks are this brilliant.

Love in Shadow is a startlingly unique addition to the band's catalog, and the most dynamic and interesting album that Aaron Turner has ever created. It's easy to see the multitude of cracks and smudges that besmirch this messy record. It's even easier, however, to just sit back and enjoy one of metal's weirdest and most fascinating releases of the year.

At some point or another, we all feel as though the electricity of our existence is being trapped in a confined space, waiting to break loose. The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us pops the lid, vigorously releasing that energy into the atmosphere. It’s liberating.

Diamond Eyes is wild and serene, and I can honestly say its Deftones' best album to date.

The union between the two musicians (one entrenched in Cretan folk and medieval music, the other in instrumental rock and post-punk) is the alchemy which makes this record both structurally cohesive yet subtly and, somewhat contrarily, diffuse.

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

Ma Fleur is a triumphant return for The Cinematic Orchestra.

The only concern with this LP is that it doesn’t really explore new grounds. It somewhat recapitulates their experiments, albeit in a tighter, more experienced manner, instead of taking steps forward. Despite this setback, the record is arguably their hardest hitting in over a decade.

The end result is an album that passes by without any significant misfires, and at least a handful of headshots. It's probably a stretch to say that he's met the potential signified by the queue of people within the industry that have recognised his talent and reached out to him, but TYRON's best cuts provide further unequivocal evidence that there is something special about Tyron Frampton.

Earth Patterns approaches “atmospheric masterpiece” status. It’s full of colorful and refreshing music which captures the essence of beautiful outdoor spaces in the summer or fall (with this sense perhaps encouraged by the gorgeous album artwork).

For the average Goat acolyte, I would say that Medicine successfully takes the band forward, with balanced experimentation and enough psychedelia to make you have an outer body experience while you do the dishes.

You will hear the first song five times on this album and the second song twice. Some might argue that mellow synthpop brain-emptiers of “The Darkness” and “Lifeline” constitute independent third and fourth songs, but these are such bland re-re-ree-renditions of A. G.’s longstanding crusty pop Cookbook that flattering them as autonomous entities demands a greater creative effort on your part than the man himself was ever minded to put into them.

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

While it certainly has a few weaker tracks, the core of the record is truly breathtaking to behold. It’s a moment of self-discovery and commitment to growth that eschews the lavish tendencies of Star-Crossed for something more personal, honest, and vulnerable.

The witty anti-gangster taunts of A Little Bit Cooler and pretty much everything else on the album, makes for a fun, but still quality, Hip-Hop record.

Laugh Track makes several welcome adjustments to their present-day formula, but it’s hardly a wholesale reorientation – and make no mistake, the National are still very much in need of one.

With the progressive-pop-doom hybrid that Ghost have crafted on Meliora, with the occult aesthetic running in parallel to the music--is a resounding victory for the Swedish sextet and is assuredly the band's strongest album to date.

Sun is a rewarding return to a new Cat Power, one who seems more at ease with her music and herself than ever before.

Water Curses sits just shy of being worth the price of admission, even if the individual tracks are.

It’s full of charming melodies, carefully placed harmonies, and biting lyrics from two of the most influential songwriters around. Some days you just get lucky.

Bunny's performances are pristine: the record navigates its hooks, sonic sways and immaculate v..v..vibes with palpable ease.

Liars successfully created a stimulating, challenging, and disturbing record and while it may click immediately for some, don’t get frustrated if you find yourself lost in the woods.

There is something for every Mark Lanegan fan. It is also a good starting point for those unaware of his music. The only mildly bothering element is the production, since it doesn’t fit every tune. On the upside, there’s a rawness to the guitars and especially the vocals (most of the time they sound as if he’s singing in your room in front of you). Even so, during the multi-layered parts, some details get lost in a muddy pool of reverb.

It may not be an especially immediate album, and is definitely not one which can be listened to as background music for fifty minutes, but its slow-burning qualities turn what initially may seem a little messy, into a satisfyingly cohesive release.

This is a transitory album true to its name and its concept, illustrating a challenging but ultimately temporary chapter in Silberman’s life. Of course it’s not his best work, but given the obstacles he’s faced, it’s not a bad first step as the world of indie-rock slowly regains one of its most talented and alluring artists.

As far as simplistic and generic post-rock goes it’s fantastically inoffensive. Yet with the face of the genre ever changing, God is an Astronaut and their sixth are slowly becoming a relic of the past.

It ends up sounding in love with pop music and longer-form experimental music as well, but the mood captured, and the meditative speed it's captured at, plunge Heartbreaking Bravery into new depths.

There’re a lot of fumbles here unfortunately, a couple tepid ballads, a lot of irritating goon-hop, and a couple songs that go on for far too long (though most of those fall under one of the former categories.) However, the band impress again on ‘Touch too Much’, possibly the album’s best track.