Fans of the Everly’s can appreciate the new approach to the songs, and followers of Oldham and McCarthy who aren’t familiar with the band they pay tribute to can also enjoy the album.

The Divine Comedy's abandonment of their precious, nose-thumbing snobbery is abandoning what made them so great in the first place.

In the Kronos Quartet’s 40-year career of melting faces chamber music style, it’s doubtful that Bryce Dessner: Aheym will ever rank as one of the group’s top recordings. It will, however, chronicle the rise the compositional talents of one Bryce Dessner.

Field Music is a classic case of an album that sounds so good that it takes a while before you realize that there really isn't much going on beneath the surface.

W.A.R. is not necessarily a death knell for Monch, he's simply too talented for that. But it's definitely not an album that feels like it took four years to make, either.

It's not that there is anything abrasive or unpleasant or wrong with these songs, it's just that they all feel cut from the same pattern.

Much of the material ends up sounding similar with no one track standing out from the pack.

Born Like This is still a damn fine record, but it’s too inconsistent to do more than simply satisfy your DOOM craving.

There should be little doubt as to whether or not the Depreciation Guild have managed to refine their sound here--the question is if, in so doing, they’ve managed to obfuscate those qualities that made them stand out in the first place.

Pretty much par for the course with the Gourds.

You often get the feeling that something's just a bit off.

If you care passionately about music, you need to hear these songs. Meanwhile, the back half of the album doesn't quite scale the heights of the first two tracks.

Roberts is then left essentially targeting an audience obsessed with novelty, but his ammunition is weak.

Here they sound confident on the solid ground they've built over their previous albums and avoid feeling too comfortable, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

The fury of emotion in these songs may not always come across as clearly as it could, but you can always feel it simmering underneath, and that goes a long way towards the success of Under the Pale Moon. It's got its flaws, and lays a little too close to influences in spots... but it's also a promising debut.

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.

Franz Ferdinand’s potential is repeatedly hinted at rather than fully realized. If this career shortcut can give us any consolation, it’s that it’s better to show potential than to have none at all.

It features some of their most vital work since their first decade as a group. .... Unfortunately, it also includes their tendency to jump to different styles with odd timing and to frontload the hits, which makes it just another above-average mid to late-career album.

While there are many indisputable highlights to be found on Ashes Grammar, it can be a chore to find them.

At this point in time, Volcano Choir has made it clear that despite what the scattershot structure of Unmap may have indicated upon its release, this project is for real. Whether it remains on the musical radar for years to come remains to be seen.

The Art of Pretending to Swim is never less than pleasant, and there are no bad songs here. But it's only intermittently interesting because O'Brien's vocals and melodies are mostly just okay.

The surface boldness of the art cannot make up for how exhausting this record is to consume. Lamp Lit Prose is not for the faint of heart.

he two albums fail to cohere both sonically and conceptually. Throughout, Butler’s approach begins to wear a bit thin.

The overall structure of the album as a sound bouncing through the city is excellent, though song-to-song, the album can feel uniform in a more expected way. But that said, this is still a tight 35 minutes of pure punk rock from a band making a welcome return and refusing to go back to where they were.

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.

Yes, Hate for Sale is unbalanced. However, the Pretenders maintain an unapologetic devotion to the sound, which defined their success. Hate for Sale maintains a formidability that rejects compromise.

The album does nothing in the last 32 minutes that it doesn’t do in the first two, but the whole runtime is so fundamentally satisfying that getting hung up on its orthodox formula feels joyless and dumb.

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.