Obsidian is a shallow and unsatisfying exploration of this dark side.

Campbell’s resplendent tone delights with the plaintive cry of classic torch singers; instead or feeling pity or sympathy, we’re now in the presence of a commanding performer who doesn’t have to sacrifice an inch of naiveté to make an impression.

Overall, One Kiss Ends It All is a little uneven but still an enjoyable piece of cosmic pop, and once you get past the occasional stutter, there is a lot to take from this one. If only every day could be Saturday.

What starts out as inviting, quickly becomes a bit irritating and ends up overwhelmingly draining and drab if tackled all at once.

As it is, Big Black Delta offers more than its fair share of thrills, but there’s the sense it could be so much better if Bates didn’t feel the need to draw the line quite so clearly between his various projects.

The album is stacked with jaw-dropping moments, underpinned by seismic emotional shifts.

The third chapter in She & Him’s discography won’t convert those who dislike the genre and it won’t alienate fans of it either.

Melodies swoop and soar, vocals are sweet and clear and some of the choruses are truly fantastic. However, its lasting impression is as an omnishambles of poor choices and awful skits and is, simply put, an absolute mess of an album.

This mind-expanding record will inspire a more inexpressible connection: you will carve your own niche within its deep and absorbing textures, and you will find new things upon every listen.

Slow Summits presents The Pastels at their most amiable, bearing the quiet, understated splendor of a picnic with friends on a warm Sunday morning.

This is The National’s 4th or 5th comfortably strong album in a row, another slight variation on a tried-and-true theme.

By utilizing a synth-based soundtrack just as organic, emotional, and unadulterated as Welsh’s voice and lyrics, Impersonator successfully matches man with machine and gives each an equally powerful, equally human voice.

With the amount of care and attention to detail found in tracks like Begin to Remember and Into Distance, it’s a shame that their more atmosphere-oriented tracks feel the least realized, coming off as throwaways in an otherwise structurally sound record.

What Daft Punk have done on Random Access Memories could be seen as a methodically curated, musical museum of the future, rather than a conservatory for experimental collaboration.

Boats has made something beautiful and invigorating at moments, while puzzling and slightly alienating at others.

Overall, its their most accessible, one whose highs are much more pronounced than its lows.

There’s a melancholic elegance in Amidon’s pieces that express nuanced forms of sadness, and as demonstrated in songs like Short Life and Pharaoh, sublime chamber arrangements spruce up those feelings of sorrow.

Silence Yourself is more than just this year’s best debut record so far and even more than one of the best records of any kind this year. It could be the closest post-punk has come to full-bodied artistry since Interpol took their own post-punk influences and gave us Turn On The Bright Lights all those years ago.

Modern Vampires of the City is nothing short of a pop music achievement, a standout album in a year full of standout albums.

he Way We Separate is an undoubtedly intimate and romantic synth pop album that, for better or worse, pulls no tricks on the listener.

It works because you can tell how much Pharaohs love house music, how much they seem to wish they’d been there back when it was taking off in the mid-80s.

MCII sounds much more concise and meticulously assembled than any of Segall's efforts.

Bottom line, this is a fun, solid output from !!!; a highly enjoyable trip with full cohesion, no true blunders, and at least three standouts on an album with only nine tracks.

While Ghost B.C. could certainly use a little added variety, both musically and lyrically (maybe Satan could sit out as lyricist for like five songs on their next record), there’s plenty here to admire.

As an initial barrage of sound, Weird Work can seem overpowering; but as we begin to divulge pockets of sense in the chaos.

Taken as a whole, Monomania is arguably their most imposing, and by far their most courageous, proving that Deerhunter have a frontman who’s willing to open up his soul to fit the demands of the stage.

What emerges is a fascinating, infinitely bleak break-up album, but one without the scope of Disintegration or the raw, intellectual power of Blood on the Tracks.

Because they write interesting but still enjoyable songs, as they do consistently on Change Becomes Us, they make their music worth coming back to again and again.