You may categorize An Album By Korallreven as background music. That's by no means a bad thing-if anything, such a distinction solidifies this album as an intense experience: a wintry escape to the wilderness with a slight detour to the dance floor along the way.

Amok ends up sounding enormous through its mingling of analog and digital sounds. It’s intricately assembled, with more pieces to pick apart than on The Eraser, which feels a bit timid in comparison

If the Big Sleep intended a record of 10 tracks designed explicitly to get listeners pumped, then the band can call these experiments a roaring success.

Charli XCX isn’t smashing any glass ceilings in pop; she’s perfectly roughing up the edges of a long-standing mold.

The album's tight production will draw you in and leave you dancing damp from sweat until the early hours of the morning.

Her cold-blooded style meshes well with Hince's clanging guitars and the sleek world they have created inside of Blood Pressures.

Everyday Robots, unfolds as a sleepy, melancholy culmination of all Albarn’s work so far. And if sweat still isn’t showing, a little distress is.

The band demonstrates its growth from angst-driven punks to thematic artists (although still retaining enough angst) by having developed and refined their musical style, as well as further grasped the emotions that are intertwined within the songs’ depths.

Upon first listen, it sounds like all of the rest-cutesy vocals, romantic lyrics, peppy poppy guitars. But on Departing, the guitars are massive, the lyrics are gorgeous and the vocals are astonishingly expressive.

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.

The result is the raw and crunchy folk record Total Dust.

Oddly enough, the most striking part of the record may be the transitions.

They make albums that make you squint and stare at the floor and convince yourself you like it, maybe. And somehow, you’ll find yourself listening until you’re sure you do.

A very pleasurable, punk-inspired listen. This is no-nonsense, fast-flying garage rock.

It's everything to be expected: Dinosaur Jr. sounds relaxed, takes a laid-back approach and still manages to make an album that stands up next to everything else that the band has released since its resurrection.

The result is a smoother, more mature sound that varies with each song evoking hints of soul, funk, old-school hip-hop and some dance music for fun.

Mind Bokeh signifies a union between sonic exploration-typically condemned to musical isolation by being defined as experimental -- and the consonances of modern pop music that are readily accepted by mass listeners.

A little more daylight would balance out the vibe. But that’s a minor complaint. In fact, on further listens it becomes the album’s appeal.

Surf City plays with a more confident and reassured sound as the group comes into its own on We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This.

Mathambo is both voracious and omnivorous. This leads to a diverse and exciting listen.

Like the cosmos itself, Interstellar is a grower.

Sometimes lying on the wood floor or recording an album of pretty retro-pop songs is all you can do, and sometimes it's enough.

Bonobo has given us a great collection of interlacing melodic songs that have real depth and distinction.

Wicked Will offers a sprint through Ettes' tumultuous world, and in the end, the whole ride lasts for little more than half an hour. Oddly, the one emotion that the band avoids-joy-is the one that it leaves you with in its wake.

Plan The Escape and No Crimes are largely uplifting, though the descending bass line and drum combo on Crimes sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age doing Go With The Flow Light; and pseudo-ripped Depeche Mode lyrics like, “All you ever wanted, all you ever need” make for the album’s most clichéd moment.

Taken as it is, this is a great summer’s coming album, the most fresh guitar pop record of the year, though it might be a bit too bright at times.

Although the album loses some steam in its second side, it is light-years away from disappointing. Instead, it is proof that this band has aged well.

The production sounds more expensive, but all the passion and intimacy of their previous work remains.

[A] fine new Joanna Gruesome record.

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.

Sonically, the capricious trio has brought about a fresh positive energy while still delving into the darkness that has always been present throughout their career.

Despite some sugary moments, Dalliance, mostly ringing with fizzy excitement, is nonetheless a record that toes the line between bitter and sweet lonely dude moments.

The songs are solid and don’t mess around as much as the show. Though the non-stop, not exactly dancey indulgence groove ride of the whole first half, no pause until six songs in, might nag some.

Nothing more than Inglish's beats and Rocks' rapping are needed to prove that When Fish Ride Bicycles was worth the wait.

Detroyer missteps are rare, and while Five Spanish Songs won’t go down as one of his most memorable albums (even the title implies this is a somewhat tossed-off diversion), it shows that he can continue to take risks and create albums that both placate and challenge his listeners.

The group took more time crafting these songs, and because of that, the album seems almost effortless.

No matter where TEEN decide to turn, they have to be commended for their creativity in conceiving such an other-worldly record.

The trio’s past experiences may explain how it manages to exercise a seasoned talent for both variety and control.... The two “Recover” remixes, by Austria’s Cid Rim and U.K.-based Curxes, are filler. They’re pleasant on their own, but neither can hold up to the original.

Although the majority of the record is devoted more to synths and vocals than to beats and bass, the sound of Personality speaks loud and clear.

If you can glaze over the four total minutes that those three aforementioned songs ["I Love You Ugly," "Madness," and "Demon From Hell"] occupy, what’s left is an all-around good time.

For all its ambitious digressions, conceptual gambles and silly experiments, it’s that spirit of adventure that makes the album so visceral.

OFF! is like a perfectly executed kickflip: over before you know it, but immensely satisfying.

As convoluted as it may seem at first, there is merit to the deranged genius of Ariel Pink.

Arbouretum brings back that good old fashioned psychedelia to rock music with its fourth album The Gathering.

The home stretch of the album is where the band really opens up, unleashing haunting melodies and intricate movements that create a soundtrack for a virtual fever dream.

The instrumental packaging (which sounds even more lux and sophisticated than ever) shifts constantly, but there's always a catchy melody to carry Nocturne through.

A passive 12 song set that toes the line between nostalgic sadness and bright optimism with remarkable ease.

Creole's comeback mixes genres, wit and personal history with an amicable charisma that could only be cultivated by the type of guy who wears a zoot suit and a fedora any time after 1943.

Enterprising Sidewalks is a multi-layered listen.

Maybe Khan is excessive in the thought process of his message regarding the world; maybe he is in fact understating the necessity of awareness to the problems our world faces; maybe it’s somewhere in the middle. Regardless, all of us could use a little bit of the soul the King Khan And The Shrines is willing to share on the record.

The sounds are bigger on Junip, but it’s the audible give and take among the performers this time that makes the album intimate.

Palladino and Church may drown their sorrows in a pool of gloomy effects, but they still make even the most heartbreaking sentiments sound sweet.

As a debut and a fleshing out of Stelmanis' previous eponymous work, Feel It Break is a solid place to build from and a reason to expect good things from Austra in the future.

This type of zip-filed nostalgia is not particularly rare or new, but what makes this meeting of the minds work better than other collaborative vanity projects is the way these two artists' sensibilities flow seamlessly into one another, erasing any sense of the cut-and-pasting that brought the album to life.

The result is a terrific, fun and most of all, genuine follow-up from one of the best surf pop bands of recent memory.

Frustratingly, the album’s lowest point comes directly after one of its high points.... That’s not to say that Surfing Strange isn’t impressive as a whole.

Sweet and thoughtful but not without edge, Lemuria knowingly toys with us on The Distance Is So Big, reveling in the loops of the lyrics and the strength of their unique saccharine force.

The band’s adept at sustaining a singular sound throughout via rabid drumming, guitar fuzz at burning moss level and the fractured harmonies at freaky.

Although the dark, pulsing beauty of “Katla” feels like an appropriate close, somehow No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers feels too brief in relation to the depth of its emotions.

While artists such as Dam-Funk, Onra and Krystal Klear resurrect this sound some 20 odd years later, Back To Reality establishes that Tony Cook was, and still is, the real thing.

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

If there’s anything missing from Goddess, it’s something that could set Banks apart from the lanscape of beats + vocals that’s so saturated today.

El Guincho dons his best Animal Collective costume on his third full-length, an album filled with Afrobeat and tropical rhythms. Yet it doesn't sound derivative in the least.

The issue on here is that not enough tracks combine both of these two, cool, newfound elements--Kinsella’s vocal and lyrical growth and the expert jamming that surfaces throughout.

That all changes with Nursing Home, as production legend Steve Albini sharpens the group's teeth into the fangs Let's Wrestle was always meant to bare.

Freeclouds seems to be a culmination of many different ideas and styles all brought together in one album, and this diversity of sound is exactly what makes the album work so well.

On its fourth LP, Arctic Monkeys combines its clever, tongue-in-cheek wordplay with a wider variety of sounds than it ever used on its other releases.

Listen to this album with the volume cranked.

It’s exciting to listen to an artist just go for it, and that’s obviously what Me Moan is: an attempt to synthesize genres of music that don’t quite belong together.

An hour-long exploration of the group's first full-length work that is every bit as diverse as the artists chosen to work on it and as iron-dense and deeply bassocentric as the original.

This sixth, self-titled album shows a noticeable maturation.

As always, the darkness is cut with moments of mirth, even though no one will mistake this for a dance party soundtrack.

This EP, while a little inconsistent with the “usual” sound that a club record should have, speaks volumes of the deftness that Halo possesses.

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

The group has not only improved on the directness of their music, but this album flows in a more continuous stream than their previous effort.

Their latest album, Voices, showcases more maturity and focus than their previous work.

To match the classier trappings, Bronson puts on a slightly more professional showing--gone are the botched lines, the charming flubs and the repetitive stalling of Chips--and, for the most part, he pulls it off with style and grace.

Blake and Childs have no need to prove why they're considered some of the U.K.'s best songwriters and musicians, but Jonny does just that.

The entirety of No Ghost is filled with poetic verses about the usual triumphs and failures of love, and taken together amounts to an emotionally mature piece of work with a healthy amount of upbeat, exciting tracks to go with it.

The past four albums have focused mainly on the singer/songwriter. On Tripper, Johnson turns that formula around and focuses everything outward-the lyrical themes, the more-involved instrumentation and the mood.

What the album seems to lack in originality, it makes up for in classic rock 'n' roll sensibility.

As a debut album, Eagulls proves that this band has tremendous potential.

On False Priest, Brion drastically widens the canvas, giving the music a newfound clarity, symphonic sweep and thick low-end.

Powers is going all in on this one, inviting you into his Wondrous Bughouse and daring to pour light into an often dark place.

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.

Certain moments, like the opening and closing tracks, reach a little further past doo-woppish hippie funk into Ravi Shankar super-hippie sitar and ambient electro, suggesting a potential for experimentation in the second year of the Stepkids' existence.

Sun Airway may be losing some of its psychedelic characteristics that attracted many of its original fans, but the new sounds allow its lyrical creativity and musical experimentation to grow without confinement.

Strange Weekend takes on the lofty task of musical multitasking and succeeds.

Putrifiers II is not the masterpiece TOS fans may have been hoping for. But it is another piece that let's Thee Oh Sees maintain the role of reigning masters.

The emotive howls of their pub rock provide catchy blasts of energy that are more familiar than groundbreaking but who’s quality should not be discounted for failing to meet the hyperbole that preceded them.

Having spent so much time racing from one experiment to the next, it’s fun to hear the band settle in and take stock in its own legacy.

Musically the album is a quick burst of 11 bubbly songs that never take a dark turn or venture into a minor key.

It’s an admiringly unorganized attempt at turning it up to 11, where both digits are represented by a middle finger.

The album has an easy-going pace to it, opening up a little more with each graceful transition and quiet revelation.

The tracks are truly hidden gems, kept from mass appraisal via DIY distribution methods in the '80s, home-recorded cassettes and vinyl. Vasicka and Peanut Butter Wolf's efforts here revive and catalog some truly infectious would-be synth classics.

But because of its uneven idiosyncrasies and its cheeky self-flagellation, At Best Cuckhold sounds like Avi Buffalo’s coming of age story.

The vision of Southern California terrain Barfod molds in Salton Sea seems strangely undead and haunting even at its most jubilant moments, creating a chilling sense of something epic and part-human.

What makes Paracosm unique from Greene’s previous endeavors is that Paracosm is like the voice of John in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, asking for balance in a world inundated by the synthetic. It gives us a little breathing room from all the heavy drops and synth-pop without totally giving the technological age the slip.