When My Heart Felt Volcanic is a breezy, fun debut, but The Aces hardly stray from the road well-travelled. It’s a shame, considering they’re at their best when they push beyond the generic indie-rock song structure.

Everything Maltese conveys feels like a direct connection to the mind that bore it. It feels filterless, and with the music playing its part perfectly, we're all privy to the cool, calm and collected, swooning and crooning, world that Matt Maltese sees. And we're all the better for it.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Lost & Found is Smith’s first LP. The sureness and creativity that exudes from each and every song disguises what some would call a lack of experience.

Ddespite being a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who self-wrote, mixed and produced the entire record, it is her hypnotic voice which carries you through this album of self-discovery.

There are no full-force affairs here. Colt is a record that is to be felt however you see fit not to be simply thrust upon you. Relish in the relaxing comfort of Woods ethereal voice melting into this dark, stormy palace; it’s one that has been a long time coming, and leaves no stone unturned.

At its core, Lush is partly a remarkable debut, for the solid shape it's delivered in, mostly cohesive, conceptually speaking, but it's true that the cohesiveness of Lush lacks any true dichotomy to "spice" up the album.

Not everything on Hope Downs impresses, as tracks such as "Sister’s Jeans’’ and "The Hammer’’ fail to recount the warmth and vivid storytelling found on the rest of the album. Regardless, Hope Downs is a record that sounds like it was made in the Australian bush, and it’s when this sense of local experience is presented most effectively that it really starts to shine.

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.

The lens of amusement and sympathy through which Rhys views the turning world around him brings new life to the lineage he draws and draws from.

Make no mistake, this is difficult to listen to. You will not be rewarded for multiple listens. It is what it is. It’s not enough, by a mile. West has clearly made this for himself first, and indulgence is deeply ingrained into the concept.

The result is not a focused or sharp record--but it doesn’t need to be. The allure of Noonday Dream comes in its willingness to swell and expand, before Howard sits up and starts kicking, slowly but precisely, to steer the track in a new direction.

Whether or not Joan of Arc are intentionally pulling back from some of the density of He’s Got the Whole, a bit too much space leaves stretches of 1984 less than solid in the process.

An ambient, compelling and unique look into whether contemporary life really has to be so empty.

The four-track offering is a rather wild journey, in that it refuses to offer anything up easily. Instead, it allows its intricate layers to build up to whatever it is they eventually come to stoke inside of you.

All of those tracks ["God’s Plan," "My Enemy" and "Wonderland"] feel sparse, built softly with a light touch, which is why the overblown, full-steam-ahead manner of much of the rest of the album is so maddening and--given their past pronouncements on big studios and producers--so utterly perplexing.

Hell-On is one of Case's moodiest solo records to date.

God’s Favorite Customer isn’t afforded the opportunity to shine with Tillman’s usual charming spirit--that’s not because the turmoil of heartache is too mundane a subject for the philosophically-minded Tillman to master, but because in order to master it, he needs to do more to whip up his usual reckless innovation.

The more you listen, the harder is gets to place this record in a rundown of the overall Warpaint output.

It’s truly a fascinating listen and shows Maus on the cusp of confidently venturing into unknown territory. Even if he isn’t fully there yet, Maus is able to generate enough to show that it’s within his reach.

At its heart, Tell Me How You Really Feel offers a sense of encouragement, finding reassurance in transience and seeking out a little beauty amidst chaos and turmoil.

In its brief seven tracks, Rausch barely makes it over an hour mark, but in that time frame, Voigt gives his listener a lot to unpack and offers the idea that he still has a lot more to say.

This is the most diverse record put out under the Parquet Courts banner. ... It’s no enormous stretch to say that Savage is possibly the finest lyricist working in rock and roll today, and he’s certainly one of our most engaging vocalists.

Sparkle Hard continues this unfeasibly strong run he’s been on and adds a little more bang for your buck.

This is an often-beautiful, fully professional work from an artist that clearly knows the toys his listeners will allow him to play with outside of his own sandbox.

It feels like a fitting release for the duo who’ve been going for so long. The search for new ideas is always on, and with this one, they’ve found a winner that offers something a bit different, while not alienating.

It’s an uneven soundtrack to some early morning hotel lobby fever dream where the house-band drown in tight-collared Paul Smith suits and over-wrought orchestral-pop mimicry.

They continue to test the waters, which in itself is admirable, however, the execution in reaching a pinnacle can get lost from time to time. I Have Fought shows the Body running roughshod and a band who will continue to push and who will never settle for less.

Here Lies the Body holds a sweeter and more sentimental Moffat than one might expect. Some of these songs could be parallel universe versions of Arab Strap tales; the scenes quite similar, but the perspective lightened, finding tender humor in human intimacy that’s tart but not bitter.