Tristen’s tastes might not fit every palette (the ‘80s influence is heavy-handed), but there’s nothing wrong with letting her voice and some big synths wash over you in pure enjoyment.

The New Classic will never be a classic, but it isn’t anywhere as bad as anyone will expect it to be.

If you can overlook the fact that Cannibals With Cutlery is a tad on the long side, you may find a great deal to enjoy and be amused with. Even if that amusement comes solely in playing a game of “spot the influences”, which To Kill a King wear proudly on their collective sleeves.

The album’s structure collapses under its own weight thanks to questionable production and a plot that never becomes cohesive. Still, Monch’s bars are among the best in the game. Put his words over shoestring production and your jaw would still drop.

Sadly, more than stomping around old ground was hoped for from this tinnitus-inducing power trio.

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

It’s a scuffed-up, messy ode to purity. It’s the kind of contradiction we might expect from artists like Neil Young and co-producer Jack White, though it still surprises.

Seven Dials is worth your money and prompts the hope that Roddy Frame will be more active in his mature years.

In her hands, it sounds just fine, and if there aren’t as many catchy hooks to be found as on some of her previous offerings, the rewarding music to be found here is worth the listen for anyone willing to take the time to let the good feelings in.

Ultimately, Days of Abandon is an album that feels like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart are trying to settle into a new sense of what it is as a band, whether that’s because Kip Berman is still continuing to find his voice as a songwriter or because his music sometimes sounds more like its influences than what it once was not so long ago.

Geraldines is still rife with the inevitable “bad” Tori songs that seem to be a mainstay for Tori records lately.... The bright spot is that there are only four of these songs, one of which is still fairly salvageable, making the number of great tracks far outweigh the bad ones.

Upside Down Mountain doesn’t take too many chances and, while I’m usually all for evolution, this is a good thing for Conor Oberst.

Confounding, yet worthy of recognition, Everybody Down is a sound release, with Tempest possessing potential to be truly great, once the logistics are shored up.

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.

It stumbles on redundancy, but always falls gracefully, in perfect time with Edwards careening musical muses; it’s a sweet mess made out of heaven and hell, equal parts bitter and sweet, beautiful and stoned.

She’s just a comfortable [singer], and that’s a good thing for her. She doesn’t need to be, nor should she ever be elusive. This album proves that in spades.

Sound Mirror is the mark of a band in it for the long haul who will undoubtedly get better and better as time goes by.

For every moment of eye-rolling overindulgence, there is an equally stunning instance of ingenuity, but the album is so stylistically all over the place, it rarely solidifies as a cohesive statement.

What you’re left with in Dereconstructed is an odd dichotomy. On the musical side, it’s your standard, albeit energizing, clamor. Lyrically, however, it’s admirable for the poignant and pointed glimpse it affords into an underrepresented southern point of view.

Struggling with the purity of its chosen narrow genre against the potential commercial appeal it helped bring about, Tightrope fails to reach the heights of 2010’s Wildwood, delivered in a time before their progeny took hold.

There’s an ambition to the sound of Fortuna that works, and it mirrors the confusion of the emotions nicely. It also signals an interesting shift for a band we’re just getting to know. But some of these songs try too hard to be the big, dramatic, hologram-on-the-wall Wizard when they sound just fine as the man behind the curtain.

What we do get with Comet is a sparser version of songs that we’ve essentially heard on previous albums.

Anathema may not be at its most compelling on distant satellites, but what is less than optimal for these artists is still several notches above the rest.

Hornet’s Nest certainly contains some killer moments, but, sometimes the sting is not always obvious.

Lovers of guitar-driven rock music looking for a smoother Two Cow Garage or more stripped down the Hold Steady would do well to visit Famous Graves.

The experiments can sometimes push too far to fit, as on “Imperial Beach”, while other moments (like “Blues in the Afternoon”) seem cut off too soon, but overall Ride the Black Wave is another solid, unexpected sound from the San Diego outfit.

As refreshing and legitimately good as the second half of Donker Mag is, it’s still not a great album overall. It’s peppered with weak lines, horrid skits, and moments of misogyny so objectionable that you can’t hit skip fast enough.

Gilding the Lily at it’s core really is a good album, it just doesn’t have enough present to differentiate itself from the pack.

It’s an album often more complicated than it seems, and that it what makes it a solid debut, even if sometimes fruitful complication fumbles into confusion.

Overall, then, there’s more here that works than otherwise, and listeners drawn to inventive Americana-cum-rock ‘n’ roll will find much here to enjoy.

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 result, then, frustratingly enough for fans who wanted something significant in the face of the Knife’s impending dissolution, is neither bad nor terribly essential; nice enough to have, but more a marker of where these still-vital artists were when it stopped being fun than anything more crucial.

The album is good that’s for sure; Sheeran is too talented to deliver a sub par album. It suffers in terms of consistency.

High Life doesn’t suffer from any real clunkers and is more consistently sonically rewarding, so that makes it the ‘better’ album. And that’s what ultimately makes it the more frustrating of the two; even the more successful collection put together by Eno and Hyde is mostly just further proof that they haven’t yet made the album together that they’re clearly capable of.

It’s a very solid record that features generally tight, compact performances of good material.

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

Elly Jackson has evolved and improved over her debut. While their may be nothing quite as earworm-worthy as “Bulletproof” on this album, she makes a strong case for an artist to keep listening to looking into the future.

The album doesn’t valley so much as it plateaus, but it never quite falls into out and out repetition. Quinn and Donaldson are too good at their craft for that, and this bittersweet set of tunes is proof of not only the lasting nature of their sound but also its elasticity.

Still Life is a little too still and could use an injection of energy to really spice things up and make the consistency of this output even more memorable than it already is.

Mandatory Fun is not his best album (even if it, by far, has his most well-conceived meticulous promotional launch), but it is still very fun, virtually every parody being completely on point and capable of holding up to at least a few replays.

Bottom line, this is harmlessly pleasant commercial-ready indie pop at its most vapid that will probably be heard quite a bit this summer.

For a smooth talker like Common, talking through his ruminations could easily lead to talking around them, so on Nobody’s Smiling, he leaves a lot of the talking to others.

It’s hard to imagine that Whoop Dee Doo will draw a fresh audience to the band, but fans of The Muffs should be pleasantly surprised at how solid this album is.

It’s safe, which only gets The Breeze so far, but, this record will undoubtedly get a lot of people to revisit, or discover JJ Cale, which is a win in itself.

McLagan has a pleasantly conversational voice. He’s a tasteful keyboard player. While he may not rock out, there’s a nice sashaying quality to the music.

It’s a good record, just one unlikely to ignite the true love its predecessors did.

The second half of the album never regains the momentum, which the first half gained so effortlessly.

It harkens back to the clever minimalism of The Platform, while incorporating all they’ve learned since their early days as a group. And though it is an uneven affair, it’s a welcome breath of fresh air in the hip-hop world of 2014.

The album drops off a little. It doesn’t falter, but it’s never as inescapable again.

It’s hard to strike a balance in music between the sound of isolation and the connection to an audience. Mirel Wagner finds that tether more often than not on this album, but sometimes it’s so dark that that tie is hard to see.

Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet) is best taken in small, doctor-recommended doses so as to avoid any adverse side effects brought on by the broader, more observational-minded humor on display here.

Brill Bruisers is a solid, satisfying record, one that found a fresh approach and created some more ultra-catchy pop tunes. If the freshness dulls on occasion when the new approach gets overused, you can still hear the quality underneath, even if you’re more inclined to move the needle back to the tunes that leave their bruise more immediately.

The album fails to suspend disbelief. In the end, Annabel Dream Reader is mere pulp fiction.

Green Language is by no means a bad album, but there are glimpses of an adrenaline shot of a record that could have been made.

Rentals boosters probably won’t be able to shake off the fact that Lost in Alphaville is just way too familiar for its own good.

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.”

Mean Love never fails to be smooth, and it displays a particular kind of open ear. For some, that will be enough.

On Lullaby, the vocalist and songwriter certainly makes good on that declaration, his refreshing lack of desperation taking shape in a melting pot of Americana, new age and electronic music.

Avi Buffalo have achieved this in theory, but the product is a mostly unremarkable follow-up to a promising debut.

This is a fresh, young band, attractive in sound and approach, playing music with echoes of many great indie-pop bands of the past.

For the most part, This Will Destroy You finds its footing on the slow burn, crawling along at a snail’s pace, rarely straying from an established formula (quiet, brooding intro, slow build/hard dynamic shift half to three quarters of the way through, louder still) that, over the course of a whole album, can be somewhat draining.

Ambition is a necessary component of success for the up-and-coming producer who’s competing with a sea of unassuming copycats and clones, but he’s found that it is possible to go too far.

Ultimately, Cheek to Cheek is pleasant through and through. It’s not the greatest standards duets album ever recorded, but nor is it a dud.

Sadier seems to have taken a new direction with Something Shines, finding a nice middle ground between her last two albums, yet somehow erring a little too far on the side of safety.

Gothic is another solid set, but you can also feel Hildebrand finding the borders on a sound that has the potential to sound limitless.

Mended With Gold shines and wilts in equal measure. For each injection of bombast draws the band further and further from their essential qualities. And yet, this departure, too, was inevitable.

The Breaks is just a pretty good pop album.

Without Burnett directly quarterbacking the affair, the sepia overlay that tinted Life Death Love and Freedom and No Better Than This is too transparent this time around.

Although heavy in pretty atmosphere, Savage Imagination often lacks immediacy; this problem might be resolvable through live improvisation.

On her own behind the piano or over drum programming, the songs sound sad in a somehow less convincing way, perhaps because so much of the rest of the record doesn’t try as hard to convince us of the hurt and does anyway.

Overall, Weatherhouse is a good album that could be better if it were only redesigned around its own strengths.

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.

While it’s thoughtful of Nicks to dig deep into her unreleased catalog, the middle third of the album drags on a little too much as the middle five songs can, and should have, all been cut down by a minute each.

The atmospheric jangle of the title track has that Pumpkins-esque fuzziness, too. The other half of this EP is too by-the-numbers to recall.

Unraveling may not be the best We Were Promised Jetpacks record, which still goes to These Four Walls, but it is the album that demarcates a clear if ultimately less certain direction.

There’s simply not enough sonic variation going on here to make Soused nearly as compelling as its respective creators’ past efforts.

Accented vocals, softened, clipped consonants and misshapen vowels help to make the familiar sound in some ways new, but ultimately proves to be little more than an exercise in revisionist revivalism of the emo varietal.

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.

Hungry Ghosts feels like two steps forward for OK Go and one step back.

Working with new producers has opened up his style, his writing, his approach, all in exciting ways. He just might need a more brutal editor going forward.

As an experiment in radically rearranging existing music, this album is a massive success. As a listenable album, though, it falls a bit short.

As they spend the album working their way through a handful of loosely related styles, Lifer carries with it the feel of a mix of like-minded groups rather than that of a cohesive whole.

Sometimes it sounds like a deathly serious joke. Other times, it sounds like nothing more than a nicely produced notion that happened to cross his mind one day.

It’s a mixed bag. Bundick is trying on a little bit of everything with Les Sins, perfecting nothing but never quite failing either.

The problems with The Endless River are not so much what we are given, but what is left out. Without the vocals, something is very clearly missing and the listener is left wanting more.

Ultimately, Motion is somewhat of a scattered album with some shining moments.

Yes, Forever is mostly redundant. But if that’s the only thing you have to say about it, then that’s a little unfortunate.

Dream Police feels here like its own project, like a stand-alone band just getting started. With that feeling comes excitement and discovery, but also a learning curve.

Major League is a volatile act with a subtle streak. If the lyrics can catch up to the tunes, the band will be tough to ignore.

Even though not everything here quite works, the tracks that do are a great deal of fun and show Midler in fine form.

A good time here, but not much more than that, alas.

The “Greatest Hits” CD is made up more of deep cuts than big hits, but with a few well known tracks included. There is substantially less Eminem than on the first side.

The album is classy and appealing, and although it’s not particularly challenging, it’s still a lot more than just background music.

All in all, Black Star Elephant seems accomplishes its goals--delivering an album that thrives off its ‘good vibes’. There is no denying that Nico & Vinz better their listeners by eschewing negativity, not to mention avoiding profanity for the most part. That said, sometimes so much positivity grows ever too schmaltzy and a bit blasé.

His flow is solid on this album, and there’s no reason to suggest Ghostface is done, but if he is trying to recapture something, all we get here is sound and fury.

The sounds are attractive, sometimes unique, but a personality gets lost in translation.

So much of the album winds up repeating itself thematically that despite the giddy sugar rush one feels when overloaded with hooks like these, a surprising amount of the songs here don’t have that much staying power, especially during the disc’s final stretch.

Overall, Adrift is pleasing and gives one a moment’s pause to really consider what’s at work here, even if the songs in the middle of the disc are generally not overtly sterling and you can point to areas of the album where there’s a weakness at work.