Survival Skills is a call to arms, and a poetic, uncompromising one at that.

The Outsider shouldn't be framed as the second coming of a masterpiece but as a stepping-stone.

It’s admirable that Auerbach would want to start looking outside of the limitations he and fellow Key Patrick Carney put on themselves at the jump by bringing in a full band to augment his sound. But there’s not much on Keep It Hid to enjoy that couldn’t have come from the Black Keys.

For all the talk that's been made recently of Bazan's own struggles with alcoholism and faith, it's telling that on Branches the strongest, most evocative tracks are those that, in the singer's beautifully worn and warm delivery, choose, in essence, melody over meaning.

Galactic Melt is a joyfully faded and distorted take on electro experientialism. Get sucked into its wormhole.

Though the album doesn’t develop a theme throughout listening, the all-star analogy holds up.

He offers soem new aspects, as well, most notably the refined production techniques, which give the album a warmer, more polished feel.

Hold on Now, Youngster... succeeds where the band does hold on: to genuine emotions, to vulnerability, to a cohesion that threatens to shatter under the pressure of self-deprecation and relentless skin-pounding.

Levi's gift lays in kitschy nuance that is inherently pleasurable. And by diving into more conventional songs on Never, she loses a bit of this endearing personality.

Bleariness and monochrome sexual appeal are more popular than they were when The Raveonettes first broke, so you wonder how they'd be received had this been their first record, not their fifth.

The thing One Life Stand has going for it though is its thematic cohesion. This is an album about demanding commitment (from your bros, partially, but mostly from your lovers) or at the very least hoping for it.

An album adhering so strictly to a simple formula can't help but become redundant.

Few mainstream artists can hope to produce an album as wonderfully weird as The Sweet Escape.

Carey has made a debut record that is both solid in its own right and hints at the promise of great things to come.

The Future Crayon... succeeds in being just as captivating as the band's proper albums -- or perhaps even more so.

Control and ambition can go together, and Meiburg proves that, in the right hands, the combination can yield some exciting results.

The End of That feels like something built with the intentions of making a grand statement, but it comes up a few great songs short. Honestly it's pretty remarkable for what it attempts.

Those who credit Benson with the poppier side of the sonic stew cooked up by the Raconteurs can probably make a pretty good case for that notion based on his solo outings, and What Kind of World is no exception.

As its name implies, Snowflakes and Car Wrecks is meant for winter listening. But the open space on this EP is good for curled up meditations in any weather.

Shout Out Louds have long been a case for the positives of going singles-only, and they probably keep that reputation here. But by a minor degree, Work is Shout Out Louds' finest album-length statement.

Axis of Evol remains yet another solid release from the Black Mountain frontman.

It showcases an artistic range that had been up to this point unexplored.

The Looks is prevented from achieving classic status due to its derivative nature, but its finds success in the Daft Punk formula all the same.

When the proudly worn tropes – the irascible low-life characters, the working-class heroes – show up to break up the life-affirming stuff on Dream, they're an afterthought (the jokey “Outlaw Pete”) or worse (heretofore never to be mentiond again "Queen of the Supermarket" is, well, really fucking terrible). That's why the finest moment of the album is "The Wrestler."

While the frequent use of echo and the isolation of each instrument lend the record a spare quality, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is hardly akin to Bowie and Eno's emotionally stark Berlin Trilogy. Instead, the album sounds like a band trying to regain its footing by returning to its fundamentals.

Spoils contains enough perverse and engaging lyrical quirks to make it worthy of investigation, and who can resist lines like: “And here’s the dowry of the leper/ A walnut shell and a peck of pepper” (from 'Hazel Forks').

The album feels unfinished, but not totally incomplete--instead, a documentation of something altogether mystical.

Coming on Strong is one smooth record; even with all the glitch, all the bleeps and bloops, and all of the genre bending, it never leaves any residue behind.