Where The Excitement of Maybe shines--like a harvest moon--is in production, composition, and musicianship, but these alone aren't enough to sustain the distinctive voice Cervenka has spoken in so boldly, particularly when they're employed in the service of pastiche.

Despite its shortcomings, Always Want is a debut that shows considerable promise and a willingness to test the boundaries of the singer-songwriter framework.

The Crosswords-“Preakness” is a monster itself compared to the gentle rise and fall of the track’s 2011 studio appearance on the cross-promotional Keep cassette.... The rest of the EP, though, like most of Panda’s recent output, just washes over me lukewarm.

Building a Beginning takes to heart every criticism of his 2013 release, inverting it into something that, though restrained and even surprisingly heartfelt at times, does very little to save itself from being forgotten.

Panic Blooms is a long overdue sound from a project that sees the absurdity in holding onto feelings while desperately trying to feel. It’s borderline pop.

The 10 selections are less a swirling cacophonous summation of Purgas and Ginzburg’s documents thus far than a series of muted, disorganized footnotes. They step out and freeze like models on a runway at a pace both deliberate and seemingly tentative. ... Most vitally, Blossoms is Emptyset continuing to do uncompromising, restless Emptyset, with no sign of stagnation (even if this very phenomenon continues to be a crucial aspect of their sound).

The fact that Hella are able to deliver the same thrills, same complexity, and same unopenable exploding package with two members that they do with five is both musically impressive and cognitively relevant to the experience of the music.

The new attention to cleanly produced and perfectly played and arranged backdrops function as both a blessing and a curse. The songs that do work, work that much better; the ones that could’ve been saved by charming details, top-shelf vocals, or Adams’ lyrics end up sounding too safe, too easy.

As the Chicagoan trio defines it on their debut album King Night, witch-house is a curious blend of aesthetics.

For the duration of their career, Trans Am have described landscapes as if from a balloon, as if the universe is readily recognizable, and yet they've continued to do so with an oddly hued and surreal perspective. Thing welcomingly continues this delicate balance between the strange and the familiar.

Dream On moves in pretty similar territory to Hive Mind and with almost as much flair.

Too often, Program 91 is a controlled explosion, hemmed in by a fangirlish conservatism. When it all clicks--as it does with "Above All" and a handful of other tracks--this is spiky twee pop in a black-and-white cardigan of glory.

Casiokids show a subtly deep thoughtfulness coursing their thoroughly joyous songs.

As a retro endeavor, this atmosphere may be lauded for its chronicity, but it keeps Coastal Grooves from scaling the memorable heights of synthed-up crooners straddling the art/pop divide (the likes of Bryan Ferry or Donald Fagen).

Ultimately, Realism neither impresses nor disappoints.

Tender New Signs does not manifest the insistent post-punk rhythms of the Led Astray Washed Ashore EP (2011), but it's not a huge departure from 2010 debut The Waves, though its sound is less chiming and more grinding (in a good way), the ethereality present only in vocals rather than in general suffusion, the darkness lingering at the edges palpable where before it was merely hinted at.

Either way, therein lies Congratulations' biggest triumph: despite being every bit the sophomore slump MGMT damn near willed it to be, it leaves you just enough reason to stay interested in what they do next.

Autodrama feels just several adjustments away from fullness.

Jessica Rabbit does not feel challenging, nor does it feel inviting. The adolescent only hopes to participate.

Like Magic, Springsteen’s last long-player, the best tunes here mine a curious retro-pop angle.

While The Morning Benders navigate the unstable boundary between tried-and-true pop structure and spacey excursions, the songs fall apart when they lean too far in either direction.

This is a good album, sure, but a better collection of songs.

The Recession, then, is a portrait of the artist as an over-his-head young man.

Something Dirty has something of the reliability and surprise of rediscovering a trusty, well-trod paperback on the shelves of a particularly high-quality, secondhand but not-to-be-outdone bookstore.

Like Plowing Into The Field Of Love, this album is rich and complex.

These are talented writers/performers at the absolute top of their game. Just as relevant now as they ever were.

Overall, the songs are more accessible, with clearer melodies and less discordance. For many bands this would be a misstep, but it turns out that Q & Not U's penchant for the catchy is one of their best assets.

Feathers is a thousand times more focused and mature than [Shivering King], and it's all for the better.

Chemical Chords is a fine album by Stereolab standards, even if it does nothing to improve upon the band’s by now all-too-familiar sound.

Maybe it's the squeaky-cleanness of the sound and singing both that keeps me at a distance; a band like Okkervil River, both sonically and thematically similar to Vanderslice, succeed partially because they don't mind screaming and getting clumsy.

Coldplay’s all about elongation this time around, and if you couldn’t tolerate their dramatics before, Viva la Vida will do nothing for you. Don’t get me wrong; to my ears, this is the group’s strongest offering yet, but since this album is the same old naive romanticism theatrically propped on a pedestal, it’s not really saying a lot.

To be a little more complimentary, Bespoke sounds like darkly magnolia-lined city streets, like late afternoon, like crisp hotel beds. Darlington may have tailored the album from existing sonic cloth, but at least this time the seams are a little more skillfully sewn.

It’s certainly an enjoyable collection of pop songs, but, unfortunately, it’s mostly innocuous and not as remarkable as past efforts.

Cowboy Worship isn’t a cohesive work the way Love was, despite its material actually being a bit more polished in places. But hey, for an EP, this is almost 30 minutes of good-to-great music, and that’s more than you get from a lot of LPs these day.

All of this makes White Hills sound a bit generic and derivative, and I suppose it can be at times.

Alongside Youngs' anxious, distracted acoustic guitar picking, the most characteristic sound of this album is a damaged electric guitar, pealing its mournful, inarticulate song again and again.

Blouse may have inadvertently produced one of the most notable, truly unencumbered reflexive turns on the genre (and almost necessarily by extension, its subculture) in recent memory.

The group is at their strongest going off on long, meditative tangents of minimalist techno, but too often GusGus obscures their instrumental prowess with lyrical absurdity.

Our Ill Wills is a good pop album. Now go make your own.

The tracks as a whole may come off a bit uniform, containing little in the way of surprise, but Family Crimes is nonetheless a sweet reward for those of us who’ve spent years following Jeweled Antler and everything after.

Expertly and diversely arranged, the songs of Heart of My Own build and hover, often in surprising ways.

While the Evens' sparse arrangements may lead the guitar-playing world to finally give drummers their due, an album that is too minimal runs the risk of being absorbed in too few listens, never to be returned to again. Of course, The Evens avoid that trap by going straight to the most obvious musical cliché, "excellent songwriting."

The question, regrettably, becomes whether or not their transgressive lyrics are funny, whether they're 'appropriate' in a world where we're hung up on identity politics. This difference is significant, and it's precisely here where our reaction to Goblin becomes less weighted: if it's all in jest, who really cares about the relationship between his lyrics and our values?

This album is legitimately well made, and despite his limitations as a rapper, The Game has skill enough to support his charisma.

While the (simulated) exploration of the innards of this destruction may not make for the most hospitable or easygoing electronic album of the year, it undoubtedly goes some way to achieving its stated aim, even if its ethics could conceivably be indicted from the above-mentioned angle.

When they get it right - as they do on half of Personal Life - The Thermals are a joy to behold.

Violent Hearts manages to tread the line between familiarly catchy and refreshing throughout.

I've rarely heard an album that wields so many weapons--not effortlessly, but with such painstaking mastery that it's almost arduous not to be won over.

Although the album bares many dark and barren moments, as well as the recycled voices of pristine, angelic choirs, few songs are ever overtly “positive” or “negative.” They probe atavistic fears, wistfully and with an endless curiosity.

Broder’s voice adds an extra source of dynamism to the mix. It all adds up to a sound that revels in rock’s limitations while working to redefine them.

It might be helpful to think of Blood Bank not as an EP but as a single with a solid new A-side and three largely irrelevant B-sides.

Not only is it exciting to hear Youngs challenge himself with genre conventions, but it’s also comforting to know that no matter which mode Youngs adopts, it always sounds like him.

As with most Adams records, the fact that some of the songs made the cut is perplexing.

It’s a fun ride, to be sure, but once the high wears off and all that’s left is the darkness, you can catch a faint glimpse of oblivion. Hopefully we get to peek deeper into the chasm the next time around.

Ditto and company take indie-rock in a direction many of its fans are not used to, in that the focus is mostly about the human voice and the way the musicians compliment the singer's attack.

The contemplative Mary's Voice may win over listeners who couldn't stomach the unrefined energy of The Music Tapes' older work, with artistic integrity intact.

A real carnival of a mess, completely inconsistent, sometimes really horrifying, and, more often than not, entertaining.

This time around, Chasny is clearly interested in writing structured songs with clear lines drawn throughout, with seemingly no concern for the reactions that might ensue from such high production and exacting precision.

A generous musical vocabulary enables each song to speak with both a familiar voice and novel inflections.

What do these songs evoke? Nothing much in the realm of emotion.

Sure, it's a logical progression from 100th Window, but because their progressions are neither commonsense nor predictable, it's difficult to predict how it will hold up in terms of posterity.

Either too sugary or too bitter and complacent, Normal Happiness is a strictly a family affair.

Jukebox is a big, bold kiss-off to the indie ghetto that’s braver and all the more interesting for the approach she’s chosen.

Colors dispels a greater notion of contemporary selfhood with its sheer tastelessness. It holds status as the most truly perplexing move from the artist to date. Unfortunately, the result of that move is borderline unlistenable.

Blues Control are one of the most intriguingly unclassifiable outfits in contemporary music, putting forth music that is clear and refined while also being absolutely incomparable.

Robert Schneider has always been an expert tunesmith, which makes the potentially disastrous transition from garage rock to super hi-fi feel like a natural extension of The Apples' ambition. Not only has the evolution been seamless, but an expanded mastery of studio technique has only served to buttress a fine collection of songs on Travellers.

The final product is an album marked by the unique signatures of its creators that ultimately fails to play to any of their strengths.

Prolific folks like Presley tend to forget the presentation of an album, and Cyclops Reap seems like a step in that direction: not just a collection of songs, but a collection of songs that work well together.

Yet despite its cryptic, apocalyptic themes, it’s more appropriate to say that Courage Of Others is a more formal, deliberate album than its predecessor, owing less to “take it easy” leanings and more to the prodigious prog-folk of E.L.P., Giles & McDonald, or the most minor-key offerings of Pentangle.

Listening to Slaraffenland find their way, as they approach indie-rock from a rarified angle, is enjoyable enough in itself to cancel out any inhibitions.

Twin Sister ultimately make music seemingly wired to appeal to our most intrinsic pleasure centers, and--as befits the album's title--it's nothing short of rapturous.

Not great, a few catchy moments, certainly not god-awful, but just bland enough that after three listens, all life is drained from it.

The lyrics are particularly generic, even for a pop band, and they render The Broken West’s mission obsolete.

Song of the Pearl, then, is well-executed, but stuck in the same gear, especially in its middle.

Eno's true strength has always been in his ability to constantly create, to constantly make good noise. Small Craft on a Milk Sea finds him doing exactly that, and the results are at worst incredibly listenable, and at best utterly invigorating.

These Four Walls is a consistently exciting album full of memorable songs, and one of maybe five records this year so far that I would recommend unreservedly.

Cold Hot Plumbs cobbles the weird mechanical detritus from last year’s dank and gloomy Hubba Bubba into something capable of using its spindly appendages to pry open your eyelids and shine shafts of colorful light directly through to your brain’s misfiring synapses. Sometimes it even goes down smooth and sweet (you’ll develop any complications with time).

Though for him this may seem to be a progress toward honesty and wholeness, for the listener the benefits are not so clear.

The results may indeed be reflections of Yorke’s skill and sensitivity, but as compositions, they are self-contained and fully anticipated creations whose power to surprise or displace the listener has waned.

Absolution is an emotional, philosophical, sophisticated, poetic, and beautiful piece of rock music.

Unknown Rooms is entirely built on pure rests and negative space, the nerve-racking space of silence. Everything on the album sounds and feels distant, as if the sounds are emanating from the other end of a dark eternal hallway.

It’s “Lost Boys and Girls Club,” “Cult of Love,” and “Trouble Is My Name” (“Trouble is my name/ Is it your name too?”), endless clichés in songwriting, narrative, subject, and sound.

One of the most refreshing rock albums of the year, a collection of songs that advocate a form of moshpit populism that, even if you don't quite get it immediately, will eventually win you over with big, sweaty hug after big, sweaty hug.

Press down on the ambiguities of Lust Lust Lust as much as you want, and you’ll still be trapped in a world of surfaces.

A fantastic record for Morrissey fans.

A change in demeanor accompanies this change in style, however, and it's a turn for the worse: Phoenix now gesture at being a Serious Group with Something to Say.

CrownsDown certainly achieves its obvious intent, its impeccable production, and untouchable vocal dexterity, firmly reestablishing the group as a definite talent.

Blunt’s not a master of wordplay, and he’s certainly not trying to be a good technical rapper. But his flow, his delivery, is entrancing.

Every track on Women serves a purpose to the overall stereo image, resulting in a debut that sets the bar very high.

God is Good shows a clear effort to steer their boat past the Nile, past Yemen, and into new territory.

Ciara is the singer’s most realized full-length to date and one of this year’s most thrilling pop moments.

I'm sure purists would prefer to snag the recently remastered originals as opposed to this Gift, even though those older fans would be able to appreciate this album most.

Despite their best efforts, Free Reign marks just another step in Clinic's journey to unfortunately become even more forgettable.

Listeners looking for a long-term relationship are advised to look elsewhere or lower their expectations for love.

With Dynamite Steps, Dulli has delivered the fully-realized statement of self-mythology that his fans knew he was capable of, strutting his stuff like agéd legends who've long since been internalized, making it look easier than it should be.

[A] near-carbon copy of their debut record.

Each record is made for the true believers, but this new one should at least bring a few more into the fold.

Is the Is Are, like its title, conjures up a nothingness that is suffocating, especially coupled with the way that the band sells this music as if it were some kind of spiritual exercise.