Ash manage to connect more often than not, and when the songs do work, the riffs and hooks achieve a surprisingly effective balance.

Looking backward lyrically while pushing forward musically, Fite's made a mature album that hasn't lost sense of either youthful energy or concern.

Graveola always shoots for the moon, and often hits its mark, playing with electronic and tropical sounds that add layers of complexity and intrigue to its indie rock. Even when it misses the mark, though, there’s something to be learned.

It's still nothing I'd recommend to the casual listener, but there are interesting ideas at work here.

This album will not please everyone, but it is unique when compared to Tankian's work up to now, and that is what's best for everyone.

Guerilla Toss is headed in the right direction with Eraser Stargazer, but the band could sometimes stand to remember that they can make us dance and scratch our heads at the same time. They don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.

For all the progress and deliberate diversification made over the past two years, one lingering vexation remains: Big Harp isn’t doing anything new or outside the norm.

Happy in Galoshes is a fresh start for a rock star who began his career derided as a lightweight, but who is slowly gaining respect and credibility both in hindsight and looking forward.

So while the songs here bang in all the ways you want, they rarely catch you off guard and they rarely tell you where they’re going.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings is a good album. It’s not great, but it’s their best in a while.

It is jangly, and pleasant, and perfect for the approaching summer season.

Pleasing, accessible, but ordinary and lacking depth.

Newcombe, encouragingly, has turned his career around from the dead-end fans feared, and while this may sound more like home studio two years of tracks solo project it is than a band effort, it will satisfy those who have stuck with BJM over the past 20 years, and it seems, will for as long as Newcombe keeps making records, more modest than before, but thoughtfully crafted.

This is the kind of album that, with its endearingly coarse lo-fi set-up, will leave some frothing at the mouth. Others may find the Parrots’ debut album difficult to grasp, however, especially considering the lack of variety that it offers towards its back end.

Perseverance may reward the diligent seeker, but admirers of their earlier arena rock or stoner rock--with a more raucous delivery of catchy tunes--may feel let down by this metal machine music.

"Much Too Late" is a rant that seems to come out of nowhere and doesn't fit in with anything else on this record. Aside from that, though, this is good stuff.

Because the songs are often about the tour or the people, the lyrics are often unrelatable, with one obvious exception: “100 Unread Messages.”

All the songs on Big Black Coat sound like love songs, all eleven of them.

Unfortunately, there are too many misfires here to make Clapton a standout album. You could, however, probably pare the disc down to a 40-minute LP for a memorable listen. It's a shame someone didn't think of that earlier.

The music here feels upfront and dynamic in its maturity, so even if this record full of young people trying to figure themselves out, as a band Modern Baseball has found a unified and dynamic voice. The question is, though, if you trust what that voice says.

While there is much to relish on Lovers Know, the studio-driven nature of the album feels sterile and rote, shoehorning Burhenn’s wide worldview into narrow refrains and clichéd choruses, thus caging a once wild voice.

While not every cut is a winner, Elliott does a fairly consistent job of gaining the listener's attention through her outrageous lyrics and performance style.

Cruel Summer is certainly an accomplished CD, and perhaps by sheer numbers can claim to be as massive as it assumes, but it's mostly a disc that don't have much unifying character other than "yea, this sounds as big as G.O.O.D. Music's ego."

It is powerful but blunt electronic pop; hooks always aimed to tear, melodrama at an uncomfortable volume. Still it often works.

Overall, I get the sense that Sleep Over, with all of its slit-eyed graveyard intonations, is a band that might actually improve from here, but it's padded instrumental sections evidenced on their first album here might make you feel a little bit, well, sleepy.

Gone are the darker, more gothic underpinnings of her previous efforts, replaced by a shimmering, gossamer pop sheen that carries with it only shadow elements of her former sound.

If anything clouds the reflection offered by The Boxing Mirror, it comes in the form of a couple of odd production choices.

This is a Junip record, but it's hard not to see Fields as another solid entry in Jose Gonzalez's discography, and a fitting next step in a lot of ways.