Producer Ray Kennedy delivers the tough, guitar/keyboard/ bass/drum sound you’d expect, with no gratuitous nods toward alt.country.... Welcome back, old friend.

It’s an effortlessly elegant and pleasant ride that even the obvious hip-yuppie trappings of it all can’t obscure.

But cliché is not the only thing that mars “Thames” and other tunes... It’s the lethargy of the tempos, the navel-gazing compositional complexity, the empty flashiness of the acoustic-guitar runs and over-enunciated words.

Wilson and her band thrive on musical democracy, where each instrument--even the most famous--gets an equal say in the song.

Shooter isn’t perfect, but it’s a good, solid collection of satisfying songs. And for those who’ve been waiting for Jennings to re-embrace his country-music birthright, it’ll be more than enough. Now he can wander some more, if he wants to.

Frances bursts at the jewel-case hinges with Comatorium’s trademarks: musical inventiveness and wildly emotive vocals.

Belle & Sebastian aren't trying striving for new heights: They're just wounded introverts looking for healing, one wistful melody at a time.

As a singer and songwriter, Lanegan's range is so much wider and deeper than anything the vast majority of singer/songwriters can touch, and his fearlessness remains devastatingly affecting.

It sounds like they’ve fallen into a niche but they’re dead-set on redefining the borders that they’ve set forth for themselves. And that is quite an exciting place for a band to be.

It’s clearly a liberating piece of work, and Humberstone’s honesty and alluring delivery is bound to resonate with listeners near and far.

What makes The Best Day work is that the songs play to the band’s strengths, especially the interplay between Moore and Sedwards.

At 14 tracks long, there are a few songs on Hardly Electronic that feel superfluous. But that’s a minor quibble, especially since we’ve been without new music from The Essex Green for a dozen years. ... And now, Hardly Electronic is here, and it more than makes up for lost time.

At times, the manicured production seems to be actively undermining the emotional fuse of the new-old material. ... Present-day Tegan and Sara are very much grown up, gay and alive. The record, though, could have used more of that grainy adolescent roughness.

While the 12 songs on Hello Exile don’t sonically deviate too much from the rest of The Menzingers’ previous six albums from the past decade or so, it offers a level of introspection relatively unheard in their genre. It’s an honest portrayal of where they are at this point in their life: not ready to settle down and give up the 4 A.M. nights at the dive bar down the street, but also realizing that those around them are in the process of doing so.

For all her bratty star power, Charli XCX’s purest magic lies in the intimate--not the irreverent.

Each of their albums experiment with genre, but GINGER is all over the place, never really sure what it wants to be. But moving forward, it seems pretty clear the group from that “BOOGIE” performance is a thing of the past, for better or for worse, and they’re attempting to evolve into something else. It’s just unclear if becoming the boy band of their dreams is the best use of their talents.

Xiu Xiu’s esoteric lyrics and challenging, textured sounds are part of what make them so singular as a group, but can also be overdone. OH NO’s moving moments of catharsis and uplifting hope are muted by how exhaustingly over-the-top the rest of the album feels.

A new level of vulnerability from Florence Welch and deft, atmospheric production from Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey) makes High As Hope another album of cathedral-filling, mountain-moving sound, with Welch’s vocals the main source of power.

Very few tracks manage to claw their way out of the monochromatic haze of too similar textures, tempos, and sentiments, leading one to believe that Johnson and Molina are too perfectly paired to push each other in any new directions.

The Montreal quartet is mostly successful in this balancing act, delivering a handful of thematically-obtuse pop missiles heavy on reverb and guitar, with trademark synths still lurking low in the mix.

Where Eno falters, Byrne picks up the slack. In a first for the notoriously skeptical artist, Everything that Happens is cautiously optimistic, maybe even hopeful.

Frost captures the best aspects of one of rock’s finest eras: a balance of structured songwriting and loose grooves, catchy choruses and meandering solos, hard rocking songs and easy-going attitude.

THEESatisfaction's zoned songwriting won't earn any retrospection, but it's wonderfully reassuring that they made an album like awE naturalE--it's living proof that unique statements can still be made in those old, unstylish indie-hop tenants.

For all its production merits and accomplishment as a tasteful ‘80s electro throwback, Museum of Love’s downfall is that it’s only nine tracks (and one is a 56-second intro).

There’s a bit of guilt in sneaking a peek, a bit of unnecessary personal fluff and a few deeply held secrets that are gifts to receive. Ultimately, what’s most impressive about In the Seams is that Jones chooses to portray Saint Saviour in this way and stick with it throughout the entire record.

Vinyl collector or not, it’s ultimately the strength of Segall’s songwriting that makes this four-songer a must-have for anyone who only has, like, seven of his dozens of releases in the past five years.

There’s some beautiful string parts, synth that rolls off sullenly into a distant horizon, and a pretty mean glockenspiel on “For You Always,” but the vocals ruin it. They don’t fit at all. It makes the album hard to swallow in the end, like an amazing deep dish pizza covered in green onions.

Genre-bending but with a common gothic ambience throughout, Gemma Ray is equal parts story teller and musician as she skillfully intertwines a diverse collection of 12 independent chapters in the form of songs that stand strong individually, but intensify when put together.