Space Is Only Noise is a paradox. It's a dance album that can't be danced to, a lounge album that you actually want to listen to, but most importantly, it's an electronic album with emotion.

We Come From The Same Place is an album that often opts for the direct over the obscure, but taken as a whole it evokes something difficult to articulate about life and love. Both musically and lyrically, this album serves as definitive proof that this band is on a roll.

On a superficial level, Trouble Will Find Me, the National’s latest full-length LP, probably won’t convert any listeners who’ve written off the band’s music as boring.... Of course, the power’s in the poetics, and Berninger concocts some truly heart-wrenching images this time around.

More than ever he seems to accept his differences and embrace them, making an album that is more a solid work of art than anything previous.

Zoo is a bleak record, but through prolonged exposure it can begin to feel like a place you want to stay.

It would be incorrect to say that the duo is pushing “weird” to its sonic limits; “curiosity,” mostly in the space of the extremes of human personality, would be most apropos.

Foxygen is never overpowered by its influences.

This album is clearly not one you would want to put on in the background of your next party. In every aspect (its forms, melodies, instrumentation, etc.) it is a challenging and engaging hour of music.

Tear The Fences Down is open and inviting, and it's hard not to be pulled in by its verve and genuine sincerity.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave will do more than satisfy existing fans of the band; new fans too would do well to start here.

Some of the best parts of The Lion's Roar are when the Söderbergs harmonize together.

It may have taken three years for Go! Pop! Bang! to see the light, but fortunately, in Rye Rye's case, she has only gotten better with age.

You can enjoy Salad Days for its unadorned flow and easygoing weirdness, or you can stop, reflect and be moved by its fresh honesty. It’s worthwhile either way.

Despite a new sense of freedom, Ebert carefully crafts the album to keep a good balance between a full sound layered with an array of instruments and vocals to simpler textures that showcase just one element of the music.

I Am Gemini marks a brave and experimental turn in a new direction, but at the same time it's a nod to the old-in the best and least wallowing way.

The group's stab at human emotion is a smashing success because it's coming from a real place: the death of former band member Beau Velasco.

Black Lips puts on a hell of a show on Arabia Mountain, and it doesn't even need riots and stage diving to keep you interested.

The album’s 15 tracks don’t quite reach the 40-minute mark, but each track has a unique identity that both stands alone yet slips into the narrative of Xen.

With No Mythologies To Follow, MØ has established herself within an emerging circle of powerful pop dominatrixes but with her own distinct sound full of versatility and vitality.

Man Man has an image to uphold, and it does that while refining its focus. The group has moved forward conceptually but at times still sounds like the trained animals and clowns from the circus that ambushed the orchestral pit, and that's just fine.

While many artists choose to play it safe on their debut album, Doldrums has decided to take us on an untidy journey into his own headspace. Lesser Evil is an unflinching and unashamed document of that trip, like a travelogue of a doomed vacation through Woodhead’s brain.

A clean, laid-back production and ambitious lyrical themes.

The result is honed and sophisticated, unique yet smartly referential.

It’s a cracked, smart and surprisingly powerful album, you just have to listen a bit closer than usual to hear what it’s trying to say.

Montonix's latest installment is just as spirited as its live shows, but doesn't include all the sweat and fear of burning to death.

The album lags a bit on a few songs where it sounds like one half of the group had the majority of the say during the writing process. These instances are few and far between though, leaving the rest of the album as an intriguing concoction of two bands coming from polar opposite sides of the musical spectrum and meeting in the middle to make something new.

Mount Moriah remains committed to a sparse, skeletal vein of Americana that values precision over ambition. That’s not to imply the album isn’t a rich and varied listening experience, but its ambiguities and complexities are shaded in charcoal, not paint.

Listen to this album with the volume cranked.