What Makthaverskan lack in variety they make up with a passion that cannot be quenched, and the dreamy undercurrent it carries throughout is filled with a shot of optimism that is undoubtedly contagious.

Although Yorke’s songwriting prowess is still very strong, this record is by no means perfect.

While Fantasy Empire is definitely still more of a tweak than a departure, when you’re still producing albums as monstrously savage and bewildering as this over 15 years into your career, those tweaks can still sound pretty damn significant on their own terms.

It sees the Cumbrian exiles embracing their maturity and demonstrating restraint, without scrimping on the songs.

Nothing Valley is an intense, hugely engaging listen.

It’s true that a band can only write about the same topics for so long, and it is nice to see Bonnette taking his lyrical approach in a new direction, but the lack of that intensely personal touch unfortunately makes the songs on Christmas Island far less relatable than the band's past catalogue.

The songs that make up Lazaretto are the most diverse on a White album since Get Behind Me Satan, and even more impressively, the songs themselves could stand alongside those on Icky Thump and Consolers of the Lonely thanks to the wonderful arrangements.... Of course, Lazaretto, for all the growth it shows from Blunderbuss, could never be as good as the work that White rattled off from roughly 2000’s De Stijl to 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan.

Most of Attack on Memory has an abrasive, shrewd backbone, but it's those moments where Baldi hones his sweet touch where the album finds a satisfying balance of surprise and comfort.

There’s nothing new here, but it’s a strange feeling of someone else repeating back what you’ve probably been thinking. Tempest acknowledges she’s not saying anything revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth saying.

Millionyoung refrains from too many of the bombastic tendencies of electronic music as a result, and we're left with something quite listenable.

This latest offering from Fleet Foxes embodies their entire catalog of folksy sounds, seasons it with some jazzy elements, and pares down some bloat (only one track over five minutes). Perhaps the only surface flaw of this album is that certain songs build too quickly and fade too fast.

Yes, it’s been done before, but as much as there is to nitpick, there’s just as much to revel in.

All that being said, every track has at least something of interest about it, and with Obscurities managing to squeeze in fourteen of them in less than forty minutes, even the worst never outstay their welcome.

Overall, Amo is a strident record, difficult to categorize and, in a good way, uniquely spliced and sequenced with little fear of crossing boundaries--but part of mastering this dark art is knowing when to put the paintbrush down.

If you like your pop music with harmonies and heart then the Explorers Club could well have recorded the soundtrack to your summer.

Mellow Waves doesn’t immediately grab your attention like some of Oyemada’s past work, but his careful attention to craft remains intact.

While a lack of editing and consistency may keep neo from being better than promising, the energized rush of holding the void and hyper-melodic the sickness deliver two of the album’s best moments, the latter being the most successful synthesis of So Pitted’s want of strange and aggro.

My own axes aside this is a fun and highly commendable record; well produced and with some excellent pop songs in tandem with enough stratagem to be considered a real credit to the band: scattered hints of genius, however, are not the same as the real thing.

Despite some missteps (sadly, a few egregious ones), Some Loud Thunder is successful in displaying the group’s breadth of talent and ideas.

Cheatahs doesn’t make any great claims of originality, and it certainly doesn’t break any new ground. It just succeeds because it is what it is.

Guero is a record with lots of great ideas and some very good songs... but I can't help thinking that there's just something missing from this release.

In their dramatic interplay they find their lust for perversion and compulsion, as if exploring the infinite degrees of their relationship with the same piquant allure of Gainsbourg and Birkin (albeit less warm and more interpersonally brittle).

Into the Waves is an invitation to float. The mature lyrics and vocal performances in conjunction with the flow of disco-like melodies makes you feel like you're walking the fine line between fantasy and reality. It's a lovely indulgence.

Smalhans won't be the most memorable record of the year, but that's partly because its great strength is its subtlety, which makes it constantly refreshing.

It’s mostly a collection of decent tunes, polished to a blinding sheen.

Even if you've learned to appreciate the methodology of music, or lack there of, there are moments when too much misdirection can make you feel lost instead of dazzled. Nonetheless, this quintet from Leeds deserves at least one very enthusiastic thumb up for this compilation.

Despite being nothing original, Crimes of Passion comes off a good rehashing of the genre, making you rethink what Jesus and The Mary Chain's Just Like Honey really meant.

It's in how she alters her ghostly, choral-like voice that she's able to elevate her entire environment.