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.

It’s when Veronica Falls stick to their comfort zone that the most memorable results arrive.

Whether treating the serious not too seriously is the right way to go about it or not, it does bring about 40-some-odd minutes of refreshingly genre-bending music that only rarely drags.

Cut Copy are deceptively complex, even at their hookiest.

Vive La Void sits credibly and comfortably alongside the rest of this indie-psych power couple’s incredible (and growing) catalog.

The Diving Board isn’t love at first listen. It quietly opens itself after several spins, unveiling a complex, winking toe-tapper of an album.

It’s a fun album, an album that the world is better for having, but hardly something you hope other musicians hear and emulate.

Unfortunately, no amount of slick beats and swagger can camouflage Untitled’s defects.

Swings from rapid-fire rockers to acoustic-inspired melodic pieces. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.97]

Unfortunately songs that aren't immediately danceable... tend to dull the excitement. [Dec 2006, p.94]

They're so determined to conjure a gothic America and its black-and-white morality that they fail to acknowledge the grace and sophistication of their source material.

Little is bad, but little is memorable or exciting or even interesting.

These pseudo-mashups expand Elverum’s vision to a Cinerama-like depth of field with the picture beautifully warping around the edges. Whatever Elverum’s true intentions with this release, it certainly has a welcome place in his vast and varied discography.

Amid its admirably complex compositional compressions, Skeletal Lamping feels like a triple-LP sprawler, despite clocking in at less than an hour. For those who have the patience to hang with Barnes and his freak-outs, it could be a masterpiece.

Even if this sudden maturity results in deeper sounds, it doesn’t always result in deeper songs.

Collapse shuffles through all of R.E.M.'s past lives; it's a greatest hits without a hit, a career retrospective with all new material.

Entrenched fans will be pleased to have another wing to explore in his ever-expanding mansion of song. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]

Lidell’s chops are fine--he flat-out rips shit up while guesting on Brandt Brauer Frick’s stellar forthcoming album and the more individual-minded tracks on Jamie Lidell hold up with the strongest of his career--but to stay contemporary and competitive, he’s also at a turning point where he has to do more than simply go through the motions.

Despite the scrappy rhythm guitar of album closer "The Mall & Misery," this project rarely resembles a rock band. It does, however, really feel like a group.