Take that undeniably delightful charm, add their increasingly laudable songwriting, and pepper in some wise instrumentation choices, and this makes for a strong album, one that bodes well for more in the future.

They've uncluttered their sound on their latest release, Red, a five-song EP that plows through the same unsettling, white fence dystopia with more precision and an overall clearer aesthetic.

Despite the various moments of divergence on True, there is a musical uniformity that makes the album sound like a 45-minute multi-part song, a significant departure from Amoral, their disjointed but adventurous debut.

Everything resonates crystal clear, and I suggest you pick it up for the holiday season. Surely, someone can appreciate its beauty.

While there is more focus to the classically tinged electro-pop songwriting on Soft Fall than their last album (2010′s Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier), it shows up in moments, and disappears entirely at others.

For better and for worse, All My Love In Half Light also sees Lady Lazarus finding her footing as a musician, and is a less cohesive and consistent statement than Mantic.

Though they certainly had friends in high, grungy places, Rat Farm is another example of how singular the Meat Puppets are, each new record sounding more like themselves than anything else.

Get There is an intelligent, authentic alternative rock album that sounds as enjoyable to live in as it probably was to make.

It’s much easier to think of Singer’s Grave a Sea of Tongues as Oldham highlighting the many facets of his songs, breathing new life into them and showing his versatility, rather than purely recycling them.

Absent Fathers, Earle’s sixth album, is a distinct and deeply personal statement about the search for a rock, an anchor, anything to keep from floating into the ether when it feels like there’s nothing left to hold on to.

Weaves may not be using traditional formulas to craft these songs, but they certainly have a handle on chemistry, and that gives them the potential to create something truly explosive in the future.

The tracks flit between genres with little regard for thematic continuity. Still, the album makes up for that absence with a barrage of raw humanity.

"Sore Eyes", the only track that could have come from previous albums Widowspeak or The October Tape, halts the record some, but the rest of Almanc's 12 tracks dabble with Americana, the sounds of the '70s, and the band's already-established dreamy haze, resulting in a record that satisfies with each homage.

Like 36 Chambers adheres to a concept formula, as does Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang, relating the tale of ninjas and swords to gangstas and guns, and even without RZA, sustaining the notion that is the Wu.

At nearly 80 minutes, it’s understandable for an album like Hardwired… to Self-Destruct to have lulls, but the band gets way too comfortable way too early.

There are still instances where the band lose sight of themselves, either not allowing the real heroes of the songs to take full control or plainly not recognizing where to trim the fat.

Disclosure has found the perfect center of the Venn diagram of house music and mainstream pop. This is music you can play at the club and play for your mom; it won’t take you anywhere you haven’t been before, but damn if you won’t have fun getting there anyway.

The legacy of Remiddi's latest LP, Strange Weekend, is the eerily beautiful atmosphere it creates, just like the work of older artists such as Angelo Badalamenti, and more recent work by Ariel Pink, Perfume Genius, and John Maus, who invest a huge amount of emotion and cerebral conceit into their work, which pads out their music with shambolic, poetic insulation.

Every track presents a new side of the band in quick succession, like pushing a magic Scan button on a radio and finding a paradoxically coherent choppiness.

The strong points here and there redeem the album and are filled with so much charm that the album itself takes on a majestic quality larger than any single track.

It’s a loud record, but everything’s all there. It shakes, it rattles, it rolls, and that’s sort of a nagging issue.

Låpsley’s technical abilities are not to be questioned; her stamp is all over this album’s production, and her sonic impulses rarely stray far from “on point.” But when her heart starts to catch up with her head, as it does intermittently on Long Way Home, whoo boy: Watch out.

With each effort, BJM continue a transcendence from their early days feigning the swagger of their namesake's band toward a more complex realization; Aufheben is certainly no different.

It's just fun and fresh and, as a whole, good pop music.

It’s often messy and sometimes masterful, with the two records reflecting a revitalized band that’s found the footing that eluded them not in youthful disquiet, but in the complexities of getting older.

This LP helps demonstrate variance and unseen skills within those confines [infectious bangers and more romantic, nostalgic odes] to truly set Curren$y apart

Anti takes risks and disregards convention in a way that only a true superstar like Rihanna could pull off.

Time Travel has some stellar moments but is not quite the album to make a star of Alessi's Ark. The singer has time on her hands for that to happen, and happen it surely will.