All the sullen lyricism dulls any chance of frisky spark. This does not make it a bad album, but it was a bit of a disappointment.

The album is saturated with high poly-harmonies, finger-snaps and hand claps, but the Charles Atlas-invoking title communicates Wavves' real agenda--"nyah-nyah" pop sucker-punches, sunny smiles so forced they come off as sneers, intense self-deprecation as psychic body armor.

I'd call Dynamite Steps a solid listen – but not an imminent classic.

Grande is making no effort to be discreet, instead explicitly owning her sexuality—the album is called Positions, after all. The juxtaposition of beautiful violin sounds and risqué lyrics has become one of Grande’s signature sounds, and it suits her well.

When Butler isn’t taking cues from the music he grew up with, he’s more prone to wander around in just-nice-enough piano balladry. But when he is, he ends up with something which seems to bear his own identity more than it could otherwise.

While intimate and personal in nature, Piano combines minimalistic instrumentation with simplistic lyrics and makes for an album that turns lackluster as a whole.

The rest of Flock, originally released in Ireland in 2006, shows a depth of musicality and imagination too great to serve simply as a sonic backdrop for the tired angst of southern California rich kids.

The record as a whole is a listen that’s both inviting and challenging, and it seems like it’s one that’ll keep returning rewards for a long time.

There are moments when the synths, pianos and strings coalesce to form something resembling the urgency and poignance Swan Lake is capable of, but these spare highlights are only barely worth looking for.

A record enveloping enough to be therapeutic but vital enough to be inspiring. [Dec 2006, p.89]

Put together in one tidy and creepy package, Paranormal does the near-impossible: offering something of worth for fans of his ‘70s output, those folks that clued in once Alice popped up in Wayne’s World and those newly minted fans who were welcomed to his nightmare on his recent run of tour dates. There’s almost no other rockers of Alice’s vintage that could pull of such a feat.

Revolution Radio is a loud, energized power-pop album in moody punk clothing. It sounds pretty goddamn radiant when it’s playing and leaves little impression when it isn’t.

Combinations takes on topics you’d expect from kids whose ages range from 15 to 23: heartache, rebellion, love. It is, almost literally, a sophomore effort. The DuPrees have become better musicians since their debut, and they want to show it off.

Little Honey finds Williams in celebratory mode, with raucous rock, bluesy testimonies and tongue-in-cheek twang.

It's just so utterly satisfying.

He manages to allude heavily to other artists without losing his own idiosyncrasies. Chief among them is his syncopated jive-cadence delivery.

But the overproduction and studio gimmickry haunts the halls of this collegiate rock, constraining Hynes’ squeaky-clean instrumentation between alternating tedium and banality.

It’s lovely and streamlined, the musical equivalent of a Saab.

Here Come the Rattling Trees is a wonderfully delightful thing to have on in the background while doing just about anything. As a cohesive statement, though, the album falls short of gelling, piecemealed as it is from fragments of a larger artistic vision.

Cobra Juicy leaves you sonically stoned, in a good way--good luck even getting off the couch.

The spirit of early Sabbath permeates 13, which is a solid record for those with realistic expectations.

Between the middle-of-the-metronome songs ("Keepsake"), mild bridges ("Handwritten") and ballads ("Mae" and "National Anthem"), the most riff-heavy, driving songs on Handwritten push the album from a good one to a great one.

Hills End is an impressive debut for a group that originally began mostly as a songwriting collective than a performance act.

Weekends captures the ambivalent mélange of feelings that makes it damn hard to leave the couch after a crushing break-up.

This second Broken Bells album is going to be the Random Access Memories of 2014. Only it’s a way better record, brimming with energy, urgency and something Daft Punk’s pop breakthrough is missing: an appropriately dirty sonic edge and--if you can collect your thoughts amidst all the booming bass and squint your eyes just right past the blinding DJ lights--some damn fine songs.

Holland’s fourth--and perhaps best--album (featuring contributions from collaborator M. Ward and guitarist Marc Ribot) foregoes the smoky speakeasy atmosphere of 2006’s Springtime Can Kill You for a more contemporary roots sound, which provides a more evocative backdrop for her signature vocals.

Having led such a big life, Kristofferson serves us a small but welcome comfort in the great unknown.

Vic Mensa’s new album, The Autobiography, is a lyrical, plainspoken hip-hop record that successfully taps into early-2000s alternative as it dissects Mensa’s personal struggles and larger social issues.