The new record finds singer Paul Banks and company reorganizing old reliable, post-Joy Division moves to deliver a fresher (more cheerful even?) atmospheric post-punk plate.

While Mean Love is his most experimental album to date, it’s also his most precise.

Luckily, Picture You Staring does deliver on the promise of its lead single.

Every move on the album is intentional and nothing is unchartered territory for Zammuto.

This album’s most striking moments often come when Mascis commits unreservedly to the ballads.

The best tracks, like Burn Out The Bruise and Wire Frame Mattress, possess the lyrical degradation and sludgy rhythms of the early grunge ethos, if being tossed around with the surfing-a-graveyard sounds of L.A. antecedents from right before grunge, notably the Flesheaters and the Gun Club.

After The End is a damn good pop album, and it’s not concerned with where it fits in the world.

The songs are catchy and celebratory in every way we could hope, and what’s more, this album itself is a cause for celebration.

This time around, the specifics are there. And though each isolated moment may not be immediately relatable, they create a universal portrait of our struggle with the loss of youth and the arduous task of soldiering forward while a part of us grasps for those milestones of the past.

Bahamas Is Afie is an album that draws very specific parameters for itself and makes a point of staying well inside them. Bahamas never over-plays or over-shares, hence the resulting album is one that rewards repeated listens.

There’s no attempt to make any songs appropriate for looped listens or party playlists, and yet it’s precisely because of this that Experiments In Time sounds like it could’ve only come from Willis Earl Beal, and Willis Earl Beal alone.

LP1 takes the humid isolation of Twigs’ EP1 and EP2 and twists it into ten tracks of relationship Hail Marys. But there’s a subdued sense of strength running under Barnett’s pleas that translates into a dark confidence, and in that tension is where LP1 finds its best moments.

Rosebuds have a smooth, beyond approachable, ear-massaging loveliness, this time honed with a production clarity of near Steely Dan-like proportions, if on an indie level. Instrumentation remains fairly minimal, delicately played and mixed to perfection.

This doesn’t feel like yet more easy-trash, pool party punk (though it is that, and good at it), but something that has a preternatural songwriting zing and energy not predicated on just the fumbling charm of a stained ’80s metal t-shirt and Ronettes knowledge, but actual, like charm.

A solid road map of new found diversity and eclecticism is laid out throughout a large chunk of They Want My Soul, and despite the inevitable growing pains, Spoon really does seem poised to continue rising from the ashes of their near disappearance.

It’s good right away, but it doesn’t make sense until later. Gist Is might take patience, but it pays off.

Lese Majesty is a seriously weird album, but it succeeds in calling the genre’s current established order to question and challenging what it means for something to be considered a hip hop record, all while remaining sonically pleasing enough to keep the listener engaged with the ambitious message that Shabazz Palaces is adamant at getting across.

While each song on the album seems to tell a different story, together they tell one: Some things may have changed in that six-year interim, but those changes have only worked in Lewis’s favor.

This is a strong indie rock release that further establishes PS I Love You’s sound, improving upon it but not really do much to shift it. Maybe that’s a good thing though, because this album is a great listen.

Conversations is an album that will sink you into some kind of woozy hypnotic stupor, not pull you out of one.

Their tactics may be minimalist, and their sound may at first feel archaic, but sometimes pure ingenuity is all musicians really need to be noticed.

A solid, ambling around, summer daytime soundtrack, rather than the numerous nighttime ruminators we’ve already been frequently offered this year.

Can’t Love is a sonic semblance of moving from a bustling warehouse in gentrifying Brooklyn to wandering around alone on a culdesac in the rust belt and wondering what the next stage is.

Although most of Careers chugs along with a sandy roadside candor, some tracks, like the churning, heavy Planet Birthday or the clinically pulsing Hong Kong Hotel, play with disparate textures.

Liberation! may not achieve its loftiest goals, but Bauer does manage to launch his solo career with talent and class.

By existing at their own preferred pace, PHOX’s wonderful inability to conform to anyone else’s standards is what forces listeners to slowly digest their subtly multi-layered sounds. PHOX may be self-sufficient enough to do without your love, but it certainly deserves it.

Familiars‘ ultimately succeeds in delivering the third consecutive full-length gem from the Antlers.

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.