House of Love offers an album that will likely satisfy whatever quiet hopes its fans have kept safe for the band.

A little more quality control and commitment to conciseness could have made Our Nature the explosive re-affirmation of talent Savoir Adore deserve. As it is, this party feels a little burned out, with two few great memories amid the haze.

Go Outside is definitely an enthralling and sufficiently unique record... It's a nice mixture of elements and styles that any fan of punk or quirky pop will surely enjoy.

Some minor, targeted deviation from the formula would have pushed Depression Cherry to an unprecedented level of novelty for the band, but as it stands, the record falls into a creeping, achromatic daze far more ambitious than it is visionary.

Taking the piss by playing against type, Hitchcock’s The Man Upstairs is devoid of any mystery or humor, refuting the claim that “A Robyn Hitchcock album always sounds like a Robyn Hitchcock album.”

[The song "Up All Night"] is generic, but takes a somewhat different turn, which is true for the entire LP.

SVIIB make good on the promise of their early seven-inches and EPs with this debut full-length for Ghostly International.

Despite a lack of variety, the Rifles' third album offers enough sugary-sweet and catchy guitar-pop to satisfy a certain craving.

Simply put, Enjoy the Company isn't an overly grossly spectacular record; it is just good time rock and roll.

Mugiboogie is an exercise in emotional indie that de-crescendos from brooding psychedelic thrash metal to indigenous melancholy ballads without hesitation.

The base problem is that Temples’ narrow sonic pallet holds them back from being exciting rather than just being good. For now they’re a fun, talented, and faceless rock band.

The way Never is rendered is too claustrophobic and vertiginous, rarely giving you a chance to find your bearings within the tightly packed soundscapes.

Run the Road Volume Two works as a fun soundtrack to a dimly-lit, vodka and Red Bull drenched basement party. But if you really want to kick the party into gear, the album’s older brother is still the one to podcast.

The entire disc is pleasing to listen to even if a great majority of its hooks can’t be recalled less than an hour after the closing title track finishes playing.

There’s no denying that, musically, Freedom’s Road is authentic and inspired.

When it comes to the vocals, though, Cronise never delivers on the same level as the rest of the band’s work, and the longer Gods of the Earth goes on, the more distracting this weakness becomes.

Minor, but charming.

It’s the sound of an artist trying to go on the rebound. That he partially succeeds may be cause for a quiet, at the very least, celebration, just like the sound of the album itself.

Overall, the album is a mixed bag, but it’s worth persisting with for its moments of beauty and always fun energy.

A memorable, albeit inconsistent, record by an unabashed futurist steeped in funk, jazz, electronica, and everything in-between.

Petra Goes to the Movies is creative, weird, often wonderful, sometimes irritating, and certainly the work of a terrific and inventive musician.

Time Traveller is an excellent exercise in skill that lacks a certain amount of soulfulness.

Nothing here is quite as tuneful as the stuff on Red Hash, or as fully formed, but it's a compelling set of early songs that show where his later, better stuff came from, as well as showing a raw, emotional purging of sound from an impressive player.

There are good songs here to be sure, but a measure of skepticism shouldn’t just arise from the band’s original fan base.

Overall, the compelling outweighs the tedious.

Manages both annoyance and perfection.

Sounds like Deerhoof-in-theory: zero standout tracks, an abundance of groovy sonics.

There are a lot of fascinating, really good pieces on Anthology, and several of them work well even removed from their film context. But the ones that don’t work as stand-alone songs end up calling attention to Carpenter’s limitations as a musician.