Held is as sputtering as it is spartan, and as such the perfect tome to the eternal wretchedness that surrounds human need.

As Hookworms gain more confidence and their heady rhythms are spread further afield, hopes remain that future material might be slightly less veiled.

Coming in at over an hour in length, the album drags at times and begins to wear near the last part of the tracklisting.

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it before... it’s taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, or something. But it’s still pretty damn fun, and Black Mountain do it with a higher idea-per-song ratio than most of their fellow fetishists.

As a full-album, Love is Hell is a lovely, drug-induced contrast to the balls-out rockers on Rock n Roll, but Pt 2 is significantly weaker on its own.

Easy Tiger’s not his best, but it’s got focus and a lot of heart.

Telepathe may not be superstars yet, but with Dance Mother--an album short in length but simmering over with ambition--they are certainly on the right track.

For all the admiration and absorption of realness, Take Her Up To Monto is wholly surreal, enjoyable nonetheless.

Say Yes to Love is a potently wrought 22 minutes of febrile noise-punk that contains enough in the way of hook and subtle invention amidst its familiar battery to stand up on its own feet.

Marion's guitar and synth bedroom pop project continues to be immediately enjoyable, simply because he never seems to be reaching for something that's outside of his grasp.

St. Elsewhere's triumphs are besmirched somewhat by its flubs.

While Nothing Bad has great, well-written, dynamic pop songs, the album suffers from length.

Mature Themes lives up to what's promised on the tin, but only relatively so.

It isn’t life-changing, genre-defining, seizure-inducing, or any other clever hyphenated compounds, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable, rewarding listen.

Outside tastes like having returned to my favorite bar to find they've redone the menu. Only this time, all the improvements are positive ones.

The only downfall to Sahara Hotnights evolutionary sound is its middle-of-the-road attributes.

COW makes no claims to reinvent the wheel. Yet its heightened attention to detail marks a new focus for the duo, who, with less tools than ever before, manage to find a sound that’s wistful, wide-eyed, and surprisingly full of sounds new to the act, if still par for the course within the wider realm of contemporary composition.

Lucky Shiner feels at once painfully intimate and intercontinentally expansive

Fair or not, An Imaginary Country can best be described as middling: competent, but certainly not what we all were hoping for from an artist whose work up to this point has been so unequivocally stirring.

Reiterating a few of the Tonebank-Rhythm-Ko-esque grooves that we’ve heard before, albeit with a darker, occasionally shoegazy approach this time.

Things immediately slow down on the second song and stay subdued throughout most of the album. Once I realized that the rest of the songs weren't going to be as blazing as "Seventeen Years," I was able to enjoy it much more.

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).

Its library-lite funk may be full of syrupy drift, but the progressions are crafty enough to keep the listener from glazing over.

I Love You, It's Cool is an indication of the band's ability to actually live up to the hype and promises that have previously, sometimes carelessly, been thrown their way.

Hardly a return to form, Researching The Blues (complete with the burp at the end of "One of the Good Ones") is nevertheless a document of a band having a good time doing what they love. When the hooks are this strong, it's hard not to have a good time with them.

With its blend of classic Jurado themes and a new sonic palette, Saint Bartlett serves not just as an encapsulation of Jurado's career, but as a promising indicator of where he's headed.

Mozart’s Sister’s debut is a living monument to dead stasis.

This is a solid set of space rock that will melt plenty of faces, even though it doesn't seek nirvana in Six Organs of Admittance's usual ways.