Through it all, Green’s show tune-y vocals are at center stage, and though the compositions are often too busy and can detract from his rolling lyrical intricacies, Sixes and Sevens is a very good record, if still a step short of great.

Glider is a fitting album for an overcast early winter day--cold and brooding, but not oppressively so.

Obstinate, prickly, and elusive as ever, Crystal Castles seem poised for more of the reckless aggression they've become known for.

This is, after all, a rock album, so don’t expect anything too innovative, but do expect moments of beauty and lots of writerly oversharing.

Bone-dry sessionman rock that’s either fun or stultifying depending on your mood is a tricky proposition, but fans of the TEASGJ sensibility should enjoy it either way.

The album has more than its share of bangers and certainly beats last December’s leftovers casserole More Fish on the killer-to-filler ratio, but Ghost veers too close for comfort to the feel of his worst albums

In spite of its shortcomings, this is a strong first record.

While albums like Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and To Bring You My Love found her looking inward--Let England Shake sees her peeking beyond her inner observations into the complicated web of English politics.

End It All doesn't reveal some new profundity to Beans' formula; it just happens to be the album that came out when I was finally smart enough to get exactly how weird he always was.

Envy certainly do their fair share of the legwork in making the split a success, but it’s the surprise of Thursday’s evolution that provides the richest reward.

On their latest effort, no track is longer than 5:45, and they kick the whole thing off with arena riffage and a song about bears.

It's still better than most of the records that have come out this year; it's just that the Sparks family has set such a high precedent that even slight missteps are bound to disappoint.

It’s not Sonic Youth, but Ranaldo, haunted with memory and philosophizing all this time stuff, sounds like he’s indeed having the best time of his life.

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.

Despite its conceptualist sonics and firmly placid surface, Nothing still winds up as Kode9’s most unsettling and miserablist release to date, as well as his most emotionally resonant and straightforward.

Youth Novels serves as an entertaining, but ultimately inadequate introduction to Lykke Li.

Through his exuberant, alien compositions, Deacon seeks to manifest for us the wild places of his country, the barren plains and arid deserts, and in the process, reminds us that they are things worth preserving.

Goblin is simultaneously a patchwork project and a genealogy of Segall’s influences, operating on a confidence that’s as emphatic as it is earned.

Pemberton’s lyrics can be long-winded, but on the whole, they display a postmodern reflexivity that is profoundly mind-boggling.

Fantastic Planet is an achievement in advancing that voice to a clear-eyed place, where wonder and apprehension can peacefully coexist.

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.

Equally informed by universal human crises as it is by contemporary imbroglios, the album aims to disorient, alienate, and dismay the listener. The band is usually able to do all three in a single song. Often in one line.

Hold It In recalls the excellent Stag in its effortless eclecticism, and if there’s one criticism of the album, it’s that, even with its variety, its sounds and styles can’t help but echo its sibling from 1996 and also most of the other albums at the more diverse end of the Melvins spectrum.

Each track is unique and memorable in its own way, but they all follow the same basic pattern and structure.

Instrumental Tourist is an attempt to cleanse the listener of "urban discontinuity" and experience the world as a passenger (something that's lost on a generation so used to being in control).

Their flutters of effects, long, frosted periods of sonic dormancy, pefectly balanced twin vocals, and general sense of space set them apart from the herd with a surety you only see in the elite.

The Western Lands works well as a whole and will surely please longtime fans, but I get the sense that Gravenhurst are holding back.

They try their best to make a staggering number of genres their own, but ultimately prove themselves to be jacks-of-all-trades, masters of none.