Dear’s third album proves a wealth of open-window micro pop fit for summer gusts and unexpected flints of lightning.

But for all of the good things that can be said about the first half of the record, the second half misses the very things that made both of the previous two records such conflicted masterpieces.

The effort that Cogleton and his band have put into God Bless Your Black Heart is impossible to ignore.

This record is worth having, but offers little more than a slow orbiting tour of familiar Boredoms territory.

Just about everything on Sky Blue Sky, even soft-shoe skiffles like the title track, will likely sound better live.

Summer succeeds largely because it forces Oldham’s songs into unfamiliar positions.

The growing sense that Molina released this record last year--and will probably release it again next year--is frustrating.

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.

Brightblack Morning Light is an album that knows no restraint, and its palpable excess are the perfect fit for its first-light sensations.

Its lack of focus often mutes its attempts to strike hard.

Knives is a quietly simmering LP.

[A] lean, effective debut.

In the act of making himself more accessible, Common’s verbal skills have slid into disrepair.

To be fair Free The Bees isn’t a bad record as such, it’s just that this backwards looking, past-is-best philosophy so often smacks of a distasteful and conservative obsession with authenticity and tradition, as if sounding like the past is more important than sounding like yourselves.

This is a rare example of music transcending lyrics in conveying the work’s meaning.

Ultimately we can’t get a bead on Brandy precisely because she hasn’t yet figured it out herself.... Which is exactly what makes Afrodisiac such a fascinating exercise.

Their classic albums all had filler, but The Last Sucker has none. Each song is instantly identifiable. Riffs are huge, driving, and upfront. Songs maneuver crisply through choruses and bridges, avoiding the meandering that plagued previous efforts.

His lyrics may be doggedly unspecific, but ear-worming hooks and top-shelf instrumentation largely rectify that shortcoming.

Facelessly competent, they make self-important, self-consciously literate guitar rock past its sell-by date via a simple recipe: mix together some late-period Death Cab for Cutie, some OK Computer-era Radiohead, and add in a few Doves and some Decemberists.

It’s not groundbreaking. It’s not a huge stylistic forward leap or a studio-stunt. It’s simply another of Eric Johnson and his band’s records of simple grandiosity.

This is a definite upswing from the steaming pile of crap that was Binaural, but not the return to form that older fans of the band may have been hoping for.

There is flatness where once there was majesty; there is garbage where once there was gold.

Like Blueberry Boat, this is a triumphant album of good bits.

The biggest flaw with Other People’s Lives is that the songs play to Davies’ weaknesses rather than his strengths, coupled with overproduction that veils any remaining virtue under a gauzy blanket of unnecessary studio witchcraft.

They sound laid back. They sound like they’re having a blast. They sound, well, loose.

Decemberunderground carries a distinct whiff of missed opportunities.

Thrills hits upon a unique and confident path that doesn’t seem forced or contrived.

If this is your first experience of the band, you might still find it fresh, but personally I’m beginning to feel radicalism fatigue.