While originality may not be high up on Blank Realm’s list of virtues, there’s something engaging about a record this wonderfully crafted and this genuine in its own personal zeitgeist.

There’s a central and important paradox at work here, something that elevates the record above what might otherwise be emo-aspirations of gushy earnestness. Singer Devon Welsh makes himself the first target of an incisive analysis.

Personal Record doesn’t always have the focus and sense of place that made Last Summer great, but it’s pop music on a grander scale, both in sound and theme.

Together these four pieces create a single, near-breathless listening experience, robust enough to envelop but varied enough to leave you both craving and curious for more.

While the Knife seem to have outlined a much clearer vision for what they were trying to achieve, they do so, crucially, through experimentation starting outward from their own comfort zones, and with almost zero lyrical element.

She is expressing something ineffable in a way that is consumable and still interesting: the album as starting point, a work that grows with the listener--the gateway drug to thinking differently.

Modern Vampires of the City’s songs rarely feel overstuffed or overwritten, with simple kick-snare drumming, plaintive piano chords, and astoundingly well-recorded vocals at their centers.

Trouble Will Find Me is impeccably sequenced, even at thirteen songs the rare National record that doesn’t contain “the one song they should have obviously left off.”

It’s a humble record, yet one with the timeless appeal to become a classic in league with the work of Waxahathee’s influences.

Monomania is the sound of a healthy and aware group of musicians who have experimented with artifice and ultimately moved beyond it.

Phoenix has somehow managed to follow a universally acclaimed breakout record with one that not only avoids falling flat, but succeeds at creating and sustaining a subtly different atmosphere.

The Terror is an unselfish view of a world free of human manipulation, and as such is a staggering listen to fans accustomed to the Lips’ sheeny pop orchestra and, before that, their lo-fi quirk.

The result would be encyclopedia-thumbing pastiche if it weren’t all so carefully curated, and if the production wasn’t so intricately, lavishly produced that as each track stretches into the fifth or sixth or eighth minute it was not still revealing permutations, secrets, strange little surprises.

RKives as a whole, hopeful and appreciative above all else, a way for the band and the fans to celebrate what they had one last time before returning to the present, to careers already well into the next phase.

Not so much a change of pace as a consolidation and careful re-allotment of her powers.

The result is a collection of great, hard-driving tracks that feel poppier than any of the long-winding snores on that new Justin Timberlake album.

You can’t really blame Bowie for conforming to 21st-century quality control when it comes to the sound and scope of this record, but it’s not exactly something to be celebrated either. What deserves celebration, or at least indulgence, are the glimpses of sublime execution on The Next Day, as well as Bowie’s skill in maintaining his mystique after all this time.

Fans of Angles should rejoice as Comedown Machine is essentially a refined version of that album’s strengths.

New Moon feels a little bit long; though only twelve songs, they are all pretty substantial (especially the eight-minute “Supermoon”), and things lag a little between “The Brass” and “I See No One.”

The result is light as a feather, with laid back songs that would be perfect played live during some lazy afternoon outdoor festival, sprawled on the grass and drinking a cold beer.

The third Foals album doesn’t represent a huge leap forward from Total Life Forever’s formula so much as a refinement.

It’s an entertaining record to hear, but at times a devastating one to listen to.

Every song, for better or worse, is constructed with its own identity in mind, and if nothing else, Mondanile commits to each and every one of these attempts at distinction.

To an extent, this album is too predictable.

Ritzy Bryan’s choruses are as sturdy as they need to be and the songs are an improvement upon those on The Big Roar because they’re lither and punchier, packing more hairpin turns into shorter run times.

It’s an exhilarating listen, even if all of this dread seems to be in the name of dread only.

Fade is approaching a late career masterwork, their strongest top to bottom effort since their mid-'90s peak.

The result is a whirlwind of a record, tight but decidedly fleshed-out, doting on death but still affirming life, and definitive proof that Widowspeak looks and sounds best in rapturous tones of earth.