Citrus is an outstanding record because it doesn't fixate on what makes great shoegazer music but what makes great pop music.

One of the biggest surprises of the year.

taTu, somehow, miraculously, still matter.

It sounds as if a bunch of no-bullshit straight-edgers have been cooped up in an underground drug den for a week with only Pink Floyd records for company, and then released blinking into the daylight and shuttled immediately into the recording studio.

That’s why there’s no cacophony and very little white noise: the finished product is essentially of a common mind.

It’s hard to imagine The French Kicks making a great album, given their limited changes so far. That doesn’t change the fact that Two Thousand is a very good one.

The restraint the whole band shows, on this, their most finished and instantly effective album, becomes something more than respectable: the Clientele’s commitment to their own sound has crystallized into something almost wonderful.

Riot! is immediately appealing because it focuses on sounds that have been neglected by the genre’s frontrunners. This is an uncomplicated album comprising of strikingly uncomplicated music, entirely lacking in 15 word song titles, Jay-Z guest appearances, and theatrical meta-concepts about performing in a rock band.

A remarkably notable debut.

It offers in personality and atmosphere what it lacks in originality.

A record that positively teems with gleeful personality.

It’s both business as usual and their most complex set of ideas to date.

Beach House’s debut is consistently candlelit, worn at its lacy edges, and at once vertiginous and embracing, somehow residing both at the hearth and on an icy precipice.

The big difference behind the two albums’ superficial sonic similarities lies in the direction of this one’s gaze: panoramic, rather than immediately ahead. Whereas Bang Bang Rock and Roll was drunk, It’s a Bit Complicated is sober enough to think about being drunk.

Whether it’s the end of an era, the beginning of a new one, or just a lucky break in what looks to be a still-incessant deluge of output, From a Compound Eye bypasses the earlier seven LPs-plus released in his name to mark the emergence of Robert Pollard as a solo artist proper.

Musique Automatique captures both the vibrant spirit of Europe as well as the feel of modern pop to create a wonderful album.

It's a bit of Michigan redux, which works because it's so uniquely Stevens and so uniquely beautiful.

Sing ‘Other People’ leaves behind much of the violence of Gira’s approach but retains the same soul-plunging ambitions, both allying him effortlessly with the druggy expressivity that characterizes practitioners of newer psychedelic music and belatedly identifying him as an influence and antecedent.

Despite Beyond’s tendency to feel like a career retrospective in spots, it contains plenty of songs that rival Mascis’s best work.

It’s the most consistently entertaining and lasting of R. Kelly’s albums yet.

The listener who comes away from the two-hour experience of …And Their Refinement of Decline without becoming a bit misty at least once is too hardened for my friendship.

The impeccably crafted Different Days is at its best when it exploits the vocal strengths of Anderson and Costa.

Even the lesser tracks here endear themselves upon multiple listens, and the best stuff is uniquely exciting given their context of departure from a well-loved sound.

The best numbers show Hart gaining subtle confidence as a composer without feeling the need to break the mold completely.

There’s a cohesion and a simplicity to this collection that makes it a must for any fan of the label.

Lots of handclaps, woo woo backing vocals, and laughs amid funny observations about contemporary urban hipster life reveal an assured and charming debut.

Discover A Lovelier You is as good an album as any in Joe Pernice’s discography.

Of the album’s 13 tracks, not one feels like filler.