The first half of this album serves up to be a dynamite, nearly EP-of-the-year standard, if it was an EP. But, the whole album seems less focused and ideally not so much of an album but more a collection of tracks.

At a focused 48-minutes, The Bones of What You Believe comes soaring through and makes its difficult for you not to press replay when it all fades out.

She triumphantly succeeds in displaying what it means to not sugar-coat pop music in London.

Factory Floor achieves something that many albums don't--it serves up as a impressive album with no expectation.

It’s more direct in many places, but finds a power in that directness that has led some of the band’s best music.

Bleak, distant, polarizing, and beautiful, Wolfe’s fourth album makes a gargantuan impact.

The Dodos have released what is at once perhaps their most interesting, strangest and even most concise work to date.

No Better Time Than Now is close to a great album, but it's flawed in its existence to experiment, ultimately experimenting a little too far.

Though the narratives are harder to follow, and the refrains more verbose (or simply absent), this music is still full of youthful anger. The nature of it is simply more suitable for a recent-high-school-graduate-aged kid grappling with more knotty insecurities. It’s also probable that much of Earl’s younger audience has grown up with him, and will relate to this impressive record even more deeply than his first.

Hobo Rocket will fit nicely, next to the rest of the nostalgic but new psychedelic records of 2013. Even though it is certainly spontaneous and short, the feeling of joy is intensified, even if it is for a moment.

This album strain on the ears or on the brain, but when the last track plays out its last seconds, it leaves a feeling of satisfaction.

It is Chance’s ability to transition fluidly between self-imaginings that makes him such an impressive and likeable rapper. It’s also part of what will make Acid Rap one of the major hip-hop releases of this year.

[Casablancas] builds atmosphere out of evocative lyrics and emotional scenery, and he does it without leaning on linear narrative or songs with singular interpretations.

As the name suggests, the tracks on Early Fragments are disjointed in terms of their release date and the band’s maturity. But this is to their credit, as the juxtapositioning only adds to the unpolished, lo-fi nature of their material.

It's these odd melanges that clench together into perfect hooks that make Ministry of Love as promising as it is.

This is the best mix of various recordings Moore has done since A Thousand Leaves.

There’s a cornucopia of sounds that definitely needs some time to be digested, but when it finally is--it’s an absolutely satisfying experience.

Honeys is the band's ultimate thesis statement, grounding their past triumphs in cruel reality that, if not buffered by their expert sense of humor, would hit too close to home too many times to count.

Usually, by the fourth album, bands of the non-willfully-experimental type have grown comfortable with their sound. Yet, the Bronx of IV is not a complacent one, shaking out the cobwebs of inactivity as opposed to settling into a groove.

Flume manages to be somewhat of a timeless release in terms of modern electronic music, one that could have dropped at any point over the past 12 years or so and still made an impact of some sort.

There are moments when the ambivalence toward everything sounds like it might, just might, be giving way to genuine concern.

More often than not, they miss, retreating back instead of charging forward.

No one will ever get sick of Love Songs--they're an essential product of the thing we call the human condition. But it's easy to get sick of these.

Marked with woe from beginning to end, BerberianSoundStudio is closer to antichrist than Hallelujah, but Broadcast reminds you that divinity is intrinsic with death.

Nothing seems to rattle them, and hearing that Zen-like outlook on record is immensely refreshing and inspiring.

Even with him covering just about every lyric here, this album never stagnates.

These lo-fi pop gems have been polished, and the result is sparkling.

Life is People does have its missteps, but even those don't sap the album of its undeniable charm.