Electric Balloon sees Ava Luna staying the course in producing music that is as heady, adventurous and intelligent as that of their debut, if not more so.

The Road Part 1 may just be the album that finally sees Lavelle step away from the shadows of Unkle’s debut. The star power is there, the record beckons to be listened to on repeat, and there's definitely an anticipation of what is to come on The Road Part 2.

Brace the Wave, then, picks up some of that slack, and is a much more tonally consistent record.

On the strength of the songs here and the pitch perfect atmosphere they’ve conjured it would be criminal if we didn’t hear more from them in the future.

There is palpable pleasure--for both McCallum and her listeners--as she shrugs off her old identity and, in losing her voice, goes in search of herself.

TRUSTFALL is largely an introspective record – mostly quiet and tepid, breaking out in select moments.

Talkin’ To The Trees is no major return to form: there is too much letting go of unfinished things on view here for that. However, in its commitment to keeping things simple and looking inwards for inspiration, it resembles 2000’s underrated Silver & Gold, which alongside Toast (recorded in 2001 but not released until 2022) featured the last evidence of Young’s 1990s creative comeback: not a bad result for a 2025 model Neil Young album.

The album’s repeated motif of smoking and cigarettes as an addiction metaphor feels try-hard rather than smart. The best tracks are those that transpose the drama of Li’s best work to the album’s more explicitly pop context.

All told, Breach is a sustainable thrill that despite the ambulatory nature of their name is more of a monument, or a line in the sand, especially in light of purported inter-band friction during the recording process.

Acoustic Dust is for those who, at a bare minimum, enjoyed Ranaldo’s latest solo efforts and are interested enough to hear what some of them might sound like in a different setting.

It would be wrong to compare this with something like the ineffable Slates, given the group’s perennially shifting trajectory, but that EP has an enduring, remarkable consistency that’s all-too-often missed.

By Night, apparently named due to the smash and grab nature of late-night studio sessions, is muscular, robust and takes no prisoners. It does its noisy thing swiftly, leaving you feeling shattered and somewhat dazed afterward. A perfect representation of punk rock in 2019, then.

The sonic architecture crafted by Chance is both spirited and steely in its gravity.

In many ways, Föllakzoid’s latest is the kind of album to lose yourself in, a void to fall through or a sea to sink into. In the band’s ongoing effort to depurate and cleanse their sound, they have created an album that is at once ominous and tranquil, only occasionally held back by a delay in presenting its most interesting ideas.

The bold ambition doesn’t go unnoticed.

A slab of seventeen tracks, the bands ninth album has managed to pack enough dynamic twists and turns to make it feel like a joy ride rather than a struggling amble. Given the weight that One More Time... holds, it's an impressive feat and one that feels significant no matter which way you look at it.

For every time the record’s constituent parts unite into something engaging, one has to sit through extended periods of meandering, directionless twilight, which frequently hints at an interesting diversion but rarely delivers upon such promises.

What they have achieved here to a commendable extent, though musically the halves are far from polar opposites, is a compartmentalization of their dueling harsh and mellow impulses.

The result is a well-tempered mix of organic and contrived capable of rivaling even the most fertile metropolis.

Off With Her Head is both focused and commanding. Her varied approach to songwriting and crafting results in some of her most unrelenting work yet, and its messiness is charming rather than trying.

As a project, Strictly 4 The Scythe is overcommitted and faintly ridiculous. Its collective chemistry is intermittent, owing something to its indiscriminately-into-the-crowd exuberance and occasionally tipping into something cynically curatorial. .... These failures are failures of abundance, though. Curry remains an earnest underground champion.

The consistent rapport between Prekop, Prewitt and McEntire is more than enough to propel the Sea and Cake steady on their course.

The real problem with The Classic is it just can’t often enough avoid the pitfalls of mediocrity, whether pastiche grooves, lackluster songwriting, or Joan’s own vocal limitations.

While it may not be as charmingly naïve as he claims, L’Aventura is an unexpected transformation of the classic Tellier formula: pure electro-madness and bearded sex-appeal.

It is such a thorough conglomeration of influences that it mostly manages to avoid sounding derivative.

It’s the witty and indirect way Thao and her band approaches the subjects in these songs that makes We The Common a minor delight.

With Afraid of Heights, a record that, for the most part, is the sound of a band treading water. It’s perfectly lovely water, all the same; there’s a slew of songs more than worthy of the record’s predecessor.

There are some dazzling moments here.