It's a Corporate World is a solid first full-length album that gets stronger the more you listen to it.

This style shift does give Ealom some more flexibility in her range. But if the chipper, twee sounds of "I Found Out" and "Jenny Come On" were your initial draws to Dressy Bessy, then you might find the more punky direction a bit confounding.

Any listener looking to spend a reverb-drenched summer on the beach revisiting the golden age of AM radio could do far worse than spending the season with She and Him.

Clearly, Heavy Love isn’t the emotional grab bag that the title suggests, but regardless, it’s an affecting effort that leaves a lingering impression.

For a group of artists who regularly color so far outside the lines to such dazzling effect, the whole of Own Your Ghost registers as just a bit too rote and predictable, a journey back to grounds already thoroughly explored and reaping much richer rewards the last time around.

Departure is an ambitious and brave debut, one that reveals a lot of promise and an awfully big sound for just two players.

I like this, but I have a hard time recommending it to others, unless they are more interested in righteous political discourse than in actual songcraft, and unless they are huge fans of unsubtle screeds.

Molnar and Nelson’s production enhances the intimacy of the recordings. Like the old cliché says, it’s just like being in the room with the artist.

Perhaps that’s a tad cruel, but to their credit, what the Von Bondies lack in originality, they make up for in style.

While Wilco (The Album) has its strong moments, it does not have many innovative ones.

It’s strange to say, but the older the Black Heart Procession gets, and as their playing and instrumentation matures, their minds seems stuck in the past.

Rather than ending the record with an emphatic statement, the band sounds confused and adrift. Which is a shame, because for most of its passing, Robert Ellis is an exercise in confident songwriting, creative arrangements, and strong playing.

Phoenix has created an album that is easy to enjoy whilst listening, but desperately hard to love, and impossible to remember.

Aside from the wonderment that might be induced if you saw this setup create the music live in concert, perhaps it’s best just to say that this is one of the good but not great Pat Metheny records, which ain’t bad at all.

These Stars is a promising debut and one that rewards repeated listens. There is warmth in this coolness.

If only the rest of the album were as good as the lead single.

Strange Disciple finds Nation of Language’s devotion to their craft and the acts that inspired them admirably intact, even dogged. It is probably their most listenable album from start to finish. Still, it leaves the sense that, cool as they are, a bold new turn may be coming due.

If this were the kind of queer red disco deconstruction that it almost is, it would be excellent, but that's not even half the record's runtime. There's a quarter-hour stretch in the middle where it almost catches fire, but that's not enough for an album.

Bombay Bicycle Club seems to be content with genre hoping on each of their releases, and perhaps it won’t make for any one great album, but it makes for an entertaining discography.

They may have trouble making their speak-shouted vocals match up to the size of their compositions, but Religious Knives show they can make noise with the best of them, because those noises are embedded skillfully into steady songs.

Alone II just isn’t as strong as the first volume.

There are moments, like “Catastrophobia” or the overly hazy “Hot Swells”, that feel overly indulgent, expanding on textures already fully formed in other songs. Overall, though, Hubba Bubba is a solid record, reminiscent in ways of early Oh Sees records. It’s scrappy, scuffed, and full of promise.

Eating Us is at times agreeable to the point of innocuity.

No big entrance here. It’s just a low-stakes rock record made by some buds.

As such, like Blue Carpet Treatment, Doggumentary is an album that reminds us all why we like Snoop so much, and pleases us through his taste for good music more than his talent for good rhymes.

They found new ways to get to the drama and even paused along the way for some subtlety. You won’t find such traits on La Petite Mort. And although it resulted in a good James album, something tells me that they probably won’t be able to get away with this again.

The chemistry between the two is undeniable, but the format is more suited to Farina's strengths than MacKaye's.

This is the sort of release that can be really appealing to a band's biggest fans, the completists who want absolutely everything a group puts out.