At their core, the songs are fundamentally concerned with unguarded and confessional intimacy yet the manner in which they are presented is a hindrance as, on the whole, there is a sheen to Designer which it could well do without.

The quiet build on 'Where I Lay' gives way to a gorgeous explosion of pianos and drums with haunting harmonies that, more than anything, signals just how much Broderick has grown as a composer and vocalist in the space between albums.

The second Drugdealer album isn’t quite the knockout it could have been, but it easily delivers on the promise of Collins’ debut. If his idea is to let this latest incarnation stick around for a while, we’re in for a real treat.

Sometimes he lands on stanzas worth savoring (“All that I fear is that all that I have given you is a ship out to nowhere that wants to be out of control/but I see the light in oh so many things out here, and a lifetime so gently now sits on the stairs to my home.”) Other times, timelessness gives way to stuffiness, with lyrics that act more like riddles he doesn’t really care about solving (“When every wind is an afterlife out here, what language do you dream in when you’re drunk?”)

With Life Metal ... they have minimized those aspects of their sound which were perhaps becoming too comfortable for them, and too familiar for the audience. The result is a work rich in texture, depth and tenderness.

Ventura feels more like a collection of songs than a fleshed-out album, but the runtime is much slimmer than Oxnard and its highs are quite a bit higher.

For the most part, the album sears with sharp-witted tales of urban life set to a tense and restrained musical background but there is a waning of the insistent energy towards the album’s end.

Map of the Soul: Persona is a bold, if tempered, call to Western media.

The dynamics of their indie-punk have never been sharper or more finely attuned to the spin of their forlornness.

PUP feel stretched and loose on Morbid Stuff. As rambunctious as the songs can be, that wouldn’t be achieved without the seriousness that they approach their art.

The back half of tracks plays out like a rehashing of the first half more than an expansion on them, and Ribbons suffers from it. ... Still, the inviting nature of this record is well worth the time.

The combination of Rozi Plain’s curious, hopefully wistful ... songwriting and the meandering, caressing lull of the playing makes room for new, soothing life within the singer’s work.

Sulphur English strips the band’s sound of much of the colour and light that they had increasingly let in over their past few releases, to send listeners careening, disorientated, into a dark and stormy night of the soul, with little promise of a brighter dawn.

Generally speaking, Ambitions manages to boast Prins Thomas, and all of his varying interests, at their best. There’s no hesitate to be found here, only a constantly moving narrative and sublime certainty of intent.

For many decades the duo’s music has dwelled but thrived within the public consciousness, and even though No Geography looks backward at their heyday, it simultaneously looks forward further than most electronic artists today.

Light Conductor have made an accomplished album with a retro-futurist sensibility and it is clear that they have moved this project forward under their own terms - long may they continue to do so.

Though Thalassa does not capture the most positive of emotions, Gika reassures her listeners that sometimes feeling something--even anger and sadness--is better than feeling nothing.

There is a pleasing directness of intention to the metronomic drumming and the arpeggiated keyboards that would be sufficient to keep a crowd dancing but look beyond the surface level and there is unfortunately plenty to make you cringe, too.

The result is dense, hard to categorise, and an exhilaratingly beautiful work full of blinding light and doomy shade.

Floating Points lives up to expectations with this mix. Both intimate and dreamy, Sam takes us on a journey that's very much welcomed.

They may not always rock as straightforwardly as fans may have wanted, but what’s clear in The Seduction of Kansas is that Priests are out to please themselves in whatever minute ways they can in their wasteland of a country--and you can either join them for the tour or go back to sticking your head in the sand.

An ambitious, varied and ardently rewarding listen, Titanic Rising is pop music for ages and worlds far beyond our own, and an emphatic show of prowess from one who is sure to be one of indie’s new radiant lights.

There is enough quality here to suggest that The Entrepreneurs can produce something truly special. They haven’t quite pulled it off yet, but Noise & Romance is noisy and affecting enough to suggest the promise of future triumphs.

It's easy to stand in awe at the masterful abrasiveness and thrashing communication of anger and unease on Dog Whistle, but its pacing is an equal wonder to behold and a perfect reason to deem Show Me The Body as ambassadors of hardcore’s future.

The album’s strengths aren’t limited to its bookends. ‘Rainfall’ would go down as the instrumental track of the year if not for the vocal contributions of Katharina Caecilia Fennesz, which blend so gracefully in the mix that you might not even realize they’re a human instrument.

Hourglass Pond is an off-balance album. If you played the album to someone who didn’t know Tare had a new album, it would be very unclear where it belongs in his discography.

Doko Mien indeed falls short of the bands body of work but that doesn’t mean that every song on its own has something to offer. For the most part the group is still never derivative as their own unique spin is still apparent on every track. For the most part it is just too subtle to be noticed.

He and his brother have made an album that’s too impersonal to provide an actual emotional connection but also lacking the vision necessary to provide something out of this world.