Drenge’s debut is excellent, and it will no doubt have you appropriately ‘drenged’.

The unpredictability factor will cause some to turn to something easier on the ear, but if you were to persevere with 1000 Days, it’s very likely that you would appreciate it.

Totems functions as a decent well for drawing singles but, as an album, lacks the connective tissue to make it stand out within Clark’s impressive catalog.

Lee’s music comes from a place that’s pure, completely at odds with his current urban environment, handled with loving precision; nevertheless, it also fails to resonate when he’s too wrapped up in his own insularity.

Matmos successfully craft an environment both musical and tactile, some of the elements stretched to such extremes and arranged so well that they sound convincingly like instruments.

Reflections may have required a more rigorous process to complete than any other project he’s ever done, but it is also his most compact to date, which rejects the common belief that bigger always means better.

Our children’s children may not remember baseball umpires and humans that sang their own songs, but Bodega’s Shiny New Model makes for the perfect soundtrack to worry yourself silly about such things.

The overall sound may be modest, but in context, will most likely relate with those fortunate enough to live an affluent, fanciful lifestyle.

Lennon and Saunier interact with kindred sensibility.

There’s a whole lot of beauty in As Seen Through Windows, but it isn’t attainable beauty. When the music stops, so does it disappear, leaving you feeling as though you’ve lost something in the process.

Kairos is an intimate account on how stripping things down to a minimum whilst keeping a clear focus on limitations can actually lay emphasis on more unique songwriting.

Unsound is, in many ways, their best work since Vs.

Long Slow Dance might be a strong garage pop album with some incredibly catchy songs, but it could definitely be grounded from its chick flick sensibilities.

These light and dark contrasts make for a thoroughly compelling listen that, certainly, makes up for Andrew's shortcomings as a lyricist.

It’s a record that takes a little patience and a little effort but when given the proper attention it will become like that one album from when you were young that just won’t leave your iPod.

It’s an extremely listenable record and definitely fit to stand aside their finest work.

Despite the weak ending, Imploding the Mirage is a powerful album from a hungrier and more passionate Killers that have once again embraced bombast with fearlessness, aspiration, and confidence. You can hear the band prevailing over struggles and finding the joy in making music and being alive.

Rarely is an electronic album like sparked with such radical confidence.

Perhaps what makes this record so impressive is how, despite the elaborate layering of elements, it never feels muddied or overwrought. It knows exactly when to peel each layer back to isolate every drum kick and synth chord, like a miraculous sonic onion, so that every element is exposed.

It's a sweeping, expansive album, that covers a lot of ground and leaves the listener satisfied.

Even if Lost Girls often sounds like scrapped ideas taken from a larger project, Khan doesn't go too deep into nostalgia—still working firmly within a pop framework.

While Eavesdropping On The Competition and Jonesy Boy won’t necessarily being appearing on any coffee tables in the near future, they don’t feel up to the standard of the other nine songs. This is a small complaint because when Catacombs works, it really works, and it mostly really works.

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

As strong as the hooks and melodies are in British Home Movies, it’s her artful narratives and evocative choruses that really stick, enveloped in micro stories of traveling along paths that are paved with memories.

Songs distort from their structures, allowing for a gelatinous cortege that serves to distinguish the album with flair and maintain a fetching edginess throughout.

Grounded enough to know the limits of the listener (songs meander, but only to the confines of their ideas, never tiring out a single theme), but more than adventurous enough to remain extremely exciting.

Stylistically eclectic, or maybe even chaotic, Obey is a sublime release, its melancholic moments offered grace and any ounce of frenzy more subtle than overt.

Their amalgamation of indie and electronica is by no means revolutionary in itself, but their form of guitar infused music is an important one.

It is by far their most focused and polished album, and Danger Mouse makes sure that everything is sonically smooth (even if a few feel almost like Broken Bells b-sides).

Real Emotional Trash feels like a compromise, for Malkmus and for us.

The album mostly screams avant-garde in its minimalism, sometimes to its detriment, but there's no denying they have the talent to justify the mystery they've built.

Stuck on Nothing opens strong, closes strong, and the intermediate tracks are interesting enough to maintain interest. Free Energy haven’t created anything cataclysmically new, but they have created an entirely likable pop album.

In lengthening the song lengths and trimming the tracklist, No Mas jettisons the spontaneous, off-the-cuff energy that made their debut so incredibly fun.

By attempting to give us what we want, and provide reassurance that the Sonic Youth legacy is in safe hands, Moore has somehow managed to make it look weaker and less appealing than it ever was.

Tres Cosas does then what all good third albums should do – it takes the best bits from her earlier works, perfects the model, and then goes a little bit further.

You only need to read through the song titles to get a sense of it all, but the carefully constructed builds of tracks like Wish We Had More Time and This Is Where It Ends make spending time with sorrow hard to resist.

Is this record the cure to the ails that is the sophomore LP? Yes and no. Yes, it's new and fresh and spilling over with more of their unique brand of high-energy rock; no, as there's some missteps and growth is often traded out for immature jabs.

While it shares many similarities with the quieter side of their first record, it never quite achieves the same heart-rending beauty we know they're capable of.

Given the long list of contributors, the singularity and cohesion achieved in Goodnight City is something to be applauded. It is also solid evidence that Wainwright’s creative well has not run dry, but rather thrives upon the influence of others.

It's an album of striking and stark beauty, with finely crafted songs that feel stripped to their bare essentials, and just allowed to be what they are, unadorned.

A 37-minute album that feels closer to feature-length.

Dig into it deeper and you’ll find a surprisingly rewarding account tell-all that sounds like an extraordinary premise to a film. And the score they write for themselves, as thrilling as it is, can be somewhat overwrought at times, resulting in an aural mood that could've used some dramatic nuance.

Sonic Youth have captured that exploration perfectly and transformed it into a piece of work that not only embodies the various degrees of emotions and thoughts we all experience, but it creates new ones whilst doing so, through it's exploratory and deeply affecting methods.

It’s a buoyantly hopeful album where Hyde gives a final wave goodbye to his darkest days before moving on to greener pastures.

Where Chapman excels where others fail is that he's endearing about his self-deprecation, often conveying truths that read as casual as his relaxed arrangements. He also likes intertwining astronomical reasoning and science into his contemplating, because why wouldn't he.

The ambition they pursue overall shows in what Young himself affirms to be the band's best work, and their belief in that shows through and through.

Overall, Arrow is the quintessential Heartless Bastards album to date.

While the music might still be a bit detached and remote, the more collaborative nature of this record does make it easier to meet half way, as does Stelmanis’ unerring sense of pop melody, and of when to drop a 4/4 beat for maximum effect.

Carrying features stellar glockenspiel work and a beautiful chorus, but uncharacteristically poor drumming and a gaudy ragtime piano solo. Perhaps the most damning indictment is that the worst songs are all similar enough to blend into each other.

With Ha, Ha, He., they have refined that formula [of the self-titled debut] further, sharpening up the edges of their sound and ultimately delivering a superb record.

There are no compromises to be reached, and that's what makes No One Can Ever Know such an authoritative listen.

Like 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, Before the Dawn is commendable for its almost obsessive attention to detail that has produced a collection of gorgeously layered and dense songs without ever sounding laboured.

It's difficult to judge a soundtrack separate from the production. But even without the visuals, Lazarus is still worth a listen or two. The performances range from solid to great, and the covers of these classics are often fresh.

Simply put, it's far too repetitive, especially considering its short length, and even on repeated listens tracks seem impossible to tell apart--particularly, after the strong opening provided by Welcome, the run of Apart, Motion and Expect all sound pretty much the same.

This brief collection of tracks shows growth and expansion whilst maintaining the addictive pop elements and retro recording style that made us fall in love with I Will Be.

Only a few songs ('Beyond Here Lie’s Nothin’,' 'Shake Shake Mama,' and 'I Feel a Change Comin’ On') really jump out of the grooves and the rest sounds like our greatest living songwriter coasting a bit--which is a whole lot better than not giving a shit ("Self Portrait") or flailing around aimlessly (pick an 80s record).

The truth is that No Joy is unadulterated, all-surrounding sound.

New Moon shows The Men, who have always been admired for their ability to pull such diverse influences but held back for their lack of originality, expanding their horizons and coming into their own.

Perhaps ... the best way to describe Boys & Girls: unwilling to innovate or add anything new to its genre, preferring to remind us of the roots of rock instead of showing us what made the pioneers so great, a reminder of a past love instead of a new love for us to discover.

Repetition is considered their weakest strength, which isn't true at all--they introduce shrill synth textures and dub elements with a good understanding of technique. It does add the slightest variation to their acerbic post-punk, all rendered with a cheerful stance even if there’s an apparent loss of rage. Still, this party feels less exciting than the night before.

There’s enough here to please die-hard fans.

This only falls flat when you want more - and that aside, Belong really is a good album.

Cooder’s playing is sometime perfectly suited for the project, but other times seems horribly out of step with Mavis’ intention.

To an extent, it may sound like just another day at the office for Sunn O))). Nevertheless, this team-building exercise is still more compelling than whatever employee engagement activity your day job offers.

The major problem is that this doesn’t sound like a band that’s pushing itself any more, or at least not making the same sort of pushes that lead to the brilliant sucker-punch of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the vastly underrated A Ghost Is Born.

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).

The Wytches mesh of sound is the musical embodiment of sixties surf dressed in severe Halloween costumes, and their ability to turn such agitation into something that is, against all odds, listenable, is a testament to this band’s grasp on their own sound.

Themes of alienation and heartbreak are set against sweeping guitar hooks, handled with a well-studied attention to craft that takes cues from bands like Wolf Parade and Modest Mouse. A wise template to base their potent anthems on.

MØ might have just released the freshest, most joyful pop record of 2014 (even if we heard most of it in 2012-3).

Iit’s hard to parse the logistics behind their songwriting, but there’s a tasteful equilibrium at hand even if each member brings out their own peculiarities.

Circuital makes it clear that we are dealing with My Morning Jacket post-metamorphosis. From a provocative indie/country/blues band with exceptional vocals, witty lyrics, and a stellar band, MMJ has found prime real estate on the premise of becoming a commercial parody of themselves.

It’s nowhere near as annoying, despite my physically manifest aversion to it, but it definitely is not trying to please you, or make you comfortable, or even happy in any way.

Whether it’s a one-off project or a fleeting affair for all parties involved remains to be seen, though for the time being, the band’s gift for impromptu creativity has served them well.

Cottrill's clear songwriting focus gets bogged down with mellow, listless ballads that sound pleasant—and not much else.

She’s made some phenomenal music in her career and a handful of songs on The Tortured Poets Department are welcome additions to her canon. These are sadly outnumbered by bland filler and compromised by an overwhelming sense of stasis.

True, most of the themes on 1000 Forms of Fear are pretty generic, but Sia’s lyrics are bold and visceral, and the production is dynamic without being gimmicky.

Ultimate Care II doesn’t inspire one to peer closer into the musicality of everyday life; instead, you’ll constantly look at the time, wishing it’d sped up so you can move on with anything else.

The Fiery Furnaces are more than capable of producing catchy three-minute pop songs. They simply waited until now to do so, resulting in one of their best albums yet.

At times it’s as if the band is still trying to figure out the right temperament to base off of for the extent of a full-length album. The result is an uneven pairing of drive and control, and the latter tends to push them towards worn-out novelty with greater force.

Overall, it's nice to spend a little time sharing Kurt Vile's ongoing journey.

Mature, reflective, elegant and just that little bit haunting, but ultimately and most importantly of all, brilliant.

It ebbs and flows, and in the end, Native Speaker is a satisfying, invigorating listen.

It's also as if Gainsborough is processing his overwhelming emotions in real life, and though his erratic compositions are sometimes too slapdash to bear, his refusal to ever settle is commendable.

While Wand’s leap forward didn’t live up to some of the expectations I’d had via 1000 Days, the light and engaging Charles De Gaulle and nicely-arranged harmonizing in Driving wouldn’t exist if not for the band’s efforts to do so with Plum.

Their idea of a party anthem may be quick to please, but their unpretentious honesty and just sheer enjoyment makes a lasting impression.

Farm succeeds just where Beyond did, by being an absolutely awesome record. If there’s one thing that can be taken away from it, it’s that we can all relax now and let Dinosaur Jr. do their thing.

Barring a few notable tracks, this debut from Snaith under the Daphni name, fails to coalesce into anything resembling the creative designs of his previous records.

Heavy Lifter tried to take some new directions and added more heft to their songs, but not in the organic approach that True Love embraces. Like joy and true love itself, Hovvdy sounds best here when they use a broader palette without getting too far outside the lines—bringing more to bear and letting in quite a bit more light.

It's a collection of tiny, almost unnoticeable changes that make this record so much more solid than its predecessors.

Far beyond simply avant garde, this is one for the abstract devotee.

Very, very few people have something clever to say and the musical ability to put it into song. That leaves us with ten pleasant songs about nothing much in particular, sung by vocalists of middling charisma.

Fall into the Sun embraces a sparkling, melodic mid-tempo sound that is strung together with careful consideration. It's uniformly straightforward, sometimes to a fault, but the trio's learned experiences elevate these songs from fading into the background.

The music shines brighter than most of his pop contemporaries. In fact, the album is so successful on this level that I could choose any given song and laud it as one of the best tracks on the album.

The Belbury Tales is a solid record and a fantastic listen.

A damn fine album.

Untethered Moon is truly the work of a veteran musician who continues to tweak the same kind of song with the adventurousness of a curious young man.

The nine tracks on this record are nimble, charismatic, and ultimately make for an enjoyable if unspectacular listen.

With The Best of Luck Club, Lahey has surpassed the achievement of her fantastic debut, changing things up enough musically to keep it fresh, but without losing any of the wit or songwriting prowess that made her one of the best young artists working today.