The record remains a close cousin of Picture You, and with its comparatively brief length, it’s hard not to hear it as an encore as much as it is a follow-up. Surely the group has earned a round of applause.

Wild & Reckless takes a couple steps in the right direction. This band’s optimum path, however, is still several steps away.

If Among the Ghosts would have benefitted from more of a balance between those poles, Lucero’s latest demonstrates that they do the quiet stuff nearly as well as the loud.

Come Back to Us isn't Rogue's greatest work-both Heaven's Gate and Descended Like Vultures feel sturdier in terms of the long haul. But it's a huge step forward from the lukewarm attempt at populist coolness that is Permalight.

Slower songs like “Gonowhere” and “You Make a Fool Out of Me” can be a drag, but what My Old, Familiar Friend lacks in consistency it more than compensates for with adventurous diversity.

The House feels like a transitional work, one saddled with stylistic experiments and themes of rebirth, renewal, self-discovery and so on. Perhaps that bodes well for Porches Album #4, whenever it arrives. And perhaps it will tie up some of The House’s loose ends.

West has, by no means, figured it all out or emerged victorious, but the point of The Lamb is that she’s trying and her efforts have resulted in a colorful listen and touching journey.

Looser and funkier than 2006’s "Reprieve," Red Letter Year is a dazzling folk/punk/jazz hybrid.

Dawson's melodic palette's improved, but her stories are mostly told.

Nash wants to prove he’s capable of soaring skyward. Whether his listeners are willing to follow him as he scales that cosmic plane remains to be seen, but for now, Nash offers all the inducement needed for them to at least consider making the climb.

Ultimately, these guys work best when the stakes are lowered, when the pretensions and grandeur are set aside in favor of snot-nosed, nihilistic punk-pop clatter.

Say What You Like delivers more of the same qualities that made Paisley your Riding A Bike Friend.

All the core elements of Beachwood Sparks are here, but there’s also more, and less, at the same time.

It takes the time to listen and absorb the lyrics within to get the full effect. If you’re looking for something quietly magnificent and uplifting, then you may have found it.

If Grim Town focused on what mere survival looked like, then If I Never Know You Like This Again captures the gnarled frustrations and contentment alike of a life fully lived.

Despite all the tenebrosity, or maybe because of it, Hoop is chasing human connection on this album, which teems with delicate acoustics and sneaky electronic elements. She seems wholly concerned with examining empathy—even for gross internet trolls—in a world deprived of it, and there are few quests as noble.

Stargate Music, doesn’t stray from this formula. These are not traditional bangers. There are no club hits here, unless you know of a club where muffled thumps, squiggles, hisses and bonks fill the dance floor. Instead, Stargate Music is a 10-track (off)beat tape designed to add up to “an astral ode to woman,” according to Ras G.

Throughout the LP, Wallows show an ease in incorporating unexpected sonic textures and multi-genre influences while still remaining immediately recognizable, accomplishing what every band must hope to achieve on their sophomore album.

This is one of the tightest and most intricately arranged Deerhoof records, particularly rhythmically

There is plenty to celebrate and admire about City of No Reply. Coffman’s pristine crooning fans the embers just enough to draw you in closer, and it takes no effort whatsoever to find an immense, relatable comfort in her lyrical coyness. The most frustrating letdown is not the quality of the songs themselves, but how they are unavoidably ensnared by production choices so at odds with their roots.

The very best tracks grapple with eternal themes of love, fear, suffering and the transmigration of the soul, with the overarching narrative largely irrelevant; the low points, however, take the dramatic framework and hit you upside the holy head.

Her eclectic song structures and subtle melodies with a tendency to stick help give these songs an indeterminate specificity, like confessionals where her audience can fill in the details with whatever needs unburdening from their own souls. Maybe the sense of place in her music, then, is whatever place it needs to be, for whoever needs it.

This labor of love represents an earnest conversation between a musical trailblazer and a young fan--an interplay of innovation and tribute that many music fans would likely endorse.

Where previous Pink Mountaintops releases sounded a bit tossed off and crudely drawn, Outside Love is an intricately illustrated affair, built out of druggy walls of guitar feedback, reverb-drenched male/female vocals, and leaden drum splashes.

Minaj is at her best-at her most compelling, most ingenious, most human-when she indulges every weird mannerism that comes into her busy brain.

Where Devotion contained only three or four songs with big, traditional choruses, Tough Love is built on them.

Try Not To Freak Out is a solid rock record throughout.

Songs For Judy plays best if a listener can manage to ignore such contextual inequities and instead immerse themselves in the slice of time and space that the album brings to life.

The album, by and large, plays like a live recording; somewhat endearingly sloppy performances add to the authenticity of a band whose honest songwriting is more important than any flash-in-the-pan posturing.

Nothing on Appaloosa Bones will blow your mind or stop you in your tracks, but it’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout, simultaneously free of forced erudition and mass-produced pandering. It is, perhaps, not music for everyone, but fans of Isakov’s stylings will be thrilled to introduce his latest venture into their daintily-plucked campfire song repertoires.

On GUV IV, Cook’s songs feel fuller and more fleshed out.

Despite the nods to “Strawberry Fields Forever” on opener “America,” Unrepentant Geraldines bridles and bristles against the constraints of pop music.

On their sunnily deranged new album, Repo, Black Dice somehow manage to do away with context entirely, constructing music comprised solely of sound effects designed and recorded themselves.

Like their forebears The Kinks, British Sea Power remain resolutely iconoclastic, supremely melodic, quintessentially British, and utterly unique. God save the Queen and her royal navy.

Longing and heartbreak are universal themes, but what Rostam does is make them accessible, thought-provoking in an artful manner that will serve him well in as he navigates his solo career.

An Evening with Silk Sonic works because these two artists know how to complement each other extraordinarily well. Hopefully, down the line, they will work to reinvent the wheel instead of merely paying homage to it. But in the meantime, the world should just enjoy the pithy musings of this lively pair.

The record stands as a solid collection from a trio of exceptionally talented individuals.

Foster’s dismal allusions to The Great Gatsby and Daniel Johnston are clever, yet it strays from the collective sanguinity of the rest of the album. Despite those handful of flaws, Sacred Hearts Club is an enjoyable listen.

Pratt has a very, very restrained way of supplying strength and relief during our hectic moment. Her songs are so quiet they almost don’t even exist, but maybe that’s how we need to feel for just a moment--like we’re just air.

Although Avi's taken a few risks with Ghostbird, the artist has still delivered a record full of material that could easily be used as the backdrop for a "stay positive" surf film--a comfortable range for the singer's talents.

While the rhythm section is fairly basic throughout the album, there are a few bright moments when simplistic rhythms turn into entrancing bass lines or brisk drum fills. So while these moments of musical clarity might make Moonlight worth a listen, they likely won’t warrant a plethora of repeat spins.

The way that Soft Metals experiment with repetition without needing much time to do so is unusual and impressive, with Lenses ending up so much stronger for allowing the ideas behind the music to drift into view of the audience.

The new album is a return to form. Yet Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions still manages to range far and wide.

With the songs segueing from one to another, neither the mood nor the message are ever in doubt. That’s fortuitous; despite its ample stock of songs--21 to be exact--the album still clocks in at just under 45 minutes.

It grapples with and effectively communicates what happens after the party, what it feels like to come down.

SAP does not contain a single bad song, but the record is lengthy.

Sobriety requires courage, and hopefully, that bravery paves the way for the more sonically diverse Best Coast that we get a glimpse of on Always Tomorrow.

It’s an inspired recasting of Annie’s wispy voice[on 'Marie Cherie'], which seems to ring truest when draped in melancholy. That vulnerability--more than anything else--sets Annie apart from the pack.

Payseur offers little besides the opening track that looks forward. Clash the Truth suffers because of this, playing as an introduction for a band that is to come, a band that will have sonics to match their musical ambitions, that could break free of their hazy daydreams to which they remain shackled.

The album—their eighth overall—finds Jim and William conjuring up wicked, writhing, guitar-driven goth rock that’s full of grizzly, distorted guitar-driven shoegaze and snarly, industrial clangers.

Mark Lanegan makes blues for our time, chopping up sonic tropes, stretching them over handcarved laments, wrenching them from his throat and bleeding badly all over them.

Darnielle is having so much fun splashing around in the cinematic world of gory retribution that his delight is, perversely, inclusive and inviting.

Eno does his best to keep things floating on Someday World, but without a partner able to punch in the same weight class, their combined efforts end up uneven and lopsided.

On Broken Equipment, BODEGA don’t sugar-coat the intoxicating feeling New York can create when it gets into your blood. If you can survive the constant rent hikes, shady practices from shifty landlords, collapsing infrastructure, and a cyclical reshuffling of artistic epicenters and neighborhood fixtures, it’s an adrenaline high worth building a life around. This one’s for the ones able to hang on.

You can cook a hard-boiled egg quicker than it takes to get through a Kurt Vile song, and we love him for that. The stretched-out jams on Back to Moon Beach are consistent with the last 15 years of his sound, yet it holds some of the greatest work Vile’s done in nearly a decade.

There’s not necessarily any closure here as Finn brings his trilogy to an end, but there is a sense of completion. After examining these characters in different lights, from various angles, it’s as if he has done what he can to make their stories resonate. Whatever he decides to do next will indeed be the start of a whole new war.

Despite suffering from a steady ebb and flow of musical contributors over the course of their collective career, the music still taps into a cinematic style, turning songs such as “1998” and “All the Hail Marys” into narratives full of arched drama and concerted deliberation.

Remnant’s vision is so utterly singular, weird and compelling that you’ll stick around for this mapless journey. God only knows where they’re going, but being lost is most of the fun.

Ultimately Chiccarelli deserves credit for reigning in Broken Social Scene’s disparate elements. If he doesn’t always streamline the sound, he does manage to make it appear more contained and cohesive.

While this old dog isn’t learning any new tricks, the band’s unmistakable chemistry shines, and each note is a glimpse into a youthful energy that hasn’t been seen in quite some time.

Covering Ground is an accessible, listenable peek into Ragan's vision of acoustic music, and it will appeal to the punks and the folkies alike.

Trophy far more often concerns adult themes, and it navigates these topics with a clever lyrical hand that few teens could muster.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea is an endearing, comfortable offering from a band that will hopefully do 10 more albums.

The album is uneven by previous PB&J standards, but the band earns high marks for proving their hooks can translate into any stylistic language.

Depths hide in both the party music and the comic lyrics, but Roberts & Lord don't limit themselves to formula.

Crazy is the soundtrack of being young, in love and in the sun.

It’s developed in parts, compelling, and his existential struggles are somewhat realized.

The vibrant and varied arrangements are plenty approachable.

While this sampler doesn’t begun cover the whole of his efforts, it does boast enough essential songs to qualify it as an adequate introduction.

On the whole, Developer proves to be a more than accurate title.

For better and for worse, Hubcap Music seems to announce that “the man from another time” has finally made it to the present.

If Versus communicates anything--and it communicates a lot, sometimes too much--it’s an examination of the linear relationship between producer and listener, a warning for the artist against the magnetic allure of pontification.

The songs are bolstered by a generally unsettled sound throughout. Yet rather than opt for a tumult, Hatfield maintains a persistent pulse and an air of determination.

Jayne’s music is at once disorienting and familiar.

It stands as a sometimes-confusing document of a particular time and place in the story of this constantly evolving art project.

Hinton’s own voice doesn’t show up on his latest LP, but it doesn’t have to. His songs tug at heartstrings all the same, and in a cultural landscape where “Does this make you feel something?” is now the predominant question, Mercury is sure to prompt a resounding yes.

Imani is less appealing when it treads too close to feel-good platitudes (“Inspired By,” “Twist of Time”), though Gab’s conversational flow still packs enough sincerity to get away with lines like “Family will have your back when everybody else will skip.”

With such lovely environmental textures, Sixteen Oceans makes it easy to imagine how warm a fully ambient album from Four Tet might be. For now, it’s nice to be able to stare out the window with Sixteen Oceans.

For the most part, the songs are compact, with only the closing instrumental, “Weekend Wind,” passing the six-minute mark. Jeremy Earl’s falsetto is at its most confident and versatile, gliding over tunes that explore the headspace newfound fatherhood has brought him.

Everyday Life lives between the stripped-down comfort of Ghost Stories and the mercurial nature of Viva La Vida, but most importantly, it provides more hope than ever that they have another masterpiece in them.

Not everyone will be pleased, but those hooked on Swim will be thrilled.

Fallon has a knack for crafting sturdy tunes that border on anthemic, and every chorus has fist-pumping potential. He has a full-throated approach to vocals, singing nearly every song, even the slow jams, in a raw, aching voice that conveys a sense of urgency.

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? has its faults, not quite hitting its full potential, but it gets damn well close, delivering an infectious record for the post-party hangover.

It’s A New Day Tonight offers hook after hook after hook draped in a credible vintage sheen by folks that understand vintage sheen. As long as you’re not allergic to classic pop-rock earworms, it’s a solid record that deserves repeated spins.

While it won’t fill the void left all those years ago in the mighty Leviathan’s wake and features a few gratingly saccharine moments, Emperor of Sand is full of passionate performances and serves as one of Mastodon’s most surprising and relatable releases yet

It’s a respectable collection of bluesy rockers that showcase the brothers’ strengths.

Comfy isn’t always what you want, though. And while Meteorites walks that line, we can at least take comfort in the fact that McCulloch and Sergeant are still doing it, and doing it well.

Weezer’s big “return” is just fine.

Death Peak has some brilliantly immersive moments throughout. ... Upon repeat listens, the fine tracks that marked the early part of Death Peak sound tarnished and wanting, the combined weight of the album suddenly appearing uneven and cumbersome.

In 13 songs, Wild Cub creates infectious, intricate electro-pop that blends ‘80s beats with electronics and synths worthy of the aughts.

Spirituals is an album that takes admirably big swings in its desire to shake all constraints off, and inevitably, there is messiness in the movement. The risks pay off, but leave some of the tracks in the album’s middle stretch to play supporting roles.

White is not hurting for fans in any of his musical guises, but he might have many more if he were to lighten things up a bit.

It’s pleasantly concise—a welcome change from Oczy Mlody and Heady Fwends—and doesn’t rely on excessive guests, 24-hour songs, LPs pressed with menstrual blood, or any other gimmickry to impress you. Now we wait for the Broadway adaptation.

There is something that feels almost too comfortable on Lateness. Taylor stays in the same well-worn groove he has been grinding on for the past decade and shows no signs of looking for an exit strategy.

Let The Poison Out marks no departure for The Beets, and it shows few signs of greater ambition.

It’s a beautiful sounding collection, no question. Sometimes, though, Adams’ exacting, just-so approach to the sonics undercuts the power of his lyrics.

It’s hard to call this a misstep at all, but its best quality is keeping hope alive for what will come next.

Ceremonials abandons so many of the musical avenues she mapped out on Lungs and focuses instead on a monolithic sound that is certainly affecting but is becoming increasingly conventional in 2011.