This is almost selfishly indulgent, and unless you haven't heard the previously released "Dr. Marten's Blues," you have very little to learn from the rest of the album.

With nothing wasted, it leaves you wanting nothing more.

It has a known start and finish, with a middle that's tied together cleanly enough.

Taken as a whole Shy Pursuit feels like a flat amalgamation of post-millennial indie-pop tropes clean-cut from the quirks and charms of their creators.

Most of these songs would make for a devastating end to an emotionally charged, disturbed album. But ten songs like that in a row?

Nupping proved it, and Natural History amplifies the point that Dope Body are a completely unimpeachable unit from a musical standpoint: able to fit in with contemporaries while still sounding undoubtedly like themselves, carrying on the proud outsider-rock tradition of their hometown.

The other moments here retread instead of reform, so while the trio's stubborn vision for their music is abmirable, its limitations become glaringly clear as you get to the record's end.

On the whole, Anxiety lacks the addictive quality of its predecessor, and it's certainly less musically interesting.

As a genre that's saturated with trends, micro-trends, and anti-trends, it's rare to find someone doing something that makes a legitimate claim at being totally unique.

Control System is one of the better mixtapes to come out this year.

It's the sound of a cooking band truly cooking it in the studio. Everything sounds like it's about to jump the rails at any given moment.

While the album, at times, feels a bit monochromatic, it maintains its intrigue and never loses its vision.

Words And Music expertly explores the intoxicated love of music and the sheer joy of being a music fan: feelings so universal that they will never be confined to particular eras.

The hooks often lack a singular focus, and there's a significant amount of fun to be had while working in a studio that's better off left on the cutting room floor.

Beautiful front to back, it's still an album that never quite asserts itself.

The true brilliance of Cancer For Cure is its refusal to find common ground, to come to the middle and meet anyone.

Its power and poise never ceases for 90 wonderful minutes.

If Family Perfume Vol. 1 can be seen as a progression where Presley is settling into his skin, Family Perfume Vol. 2 is a cathartic catalogue of letters never sent, the consequences of past decisions poignant enough to keep Presley musing, wide-eyed, remorseful--but nonetheless hopeful.

Black Mesa ventures deep into individuality but it's ultimately a fever dream that's more accessible to the man who created it rather than to an audience.

Dismania makes for an altogether appropriate title for an album this interested in gathering the common ingredients of despair, anger and disaffection.

It's his finest work yet, which is saying something, and the kind of record that will resonate for years not just because it's reveres history, but because it understands it and isn't afraid to demand answers from it.

Even if they are more refined, they may still sound very much like what Blackshaw has given us before.

Adventures in Your Own Backyard is about as confirmatory of an artist's status quo as an album can be; it takes Watson's style in no new directions, preferring instead to bask in its own childlike exuberance and to demonstrate all the trappings of ambition but little in the way of earning it.

Only Place doesn't say or feel much, which would be fine if it didn't sound like it was trying so hard to say or feel a lot.

In 2006, it seemed like Beach House couldn't outlive Beach House. In 2012, Bloom is the bar to clear.

For all its questing, though, the album's--and the band's--heart and soul are the simple arrangements which, layered upon one another like a stack of firewood, often signify something greater than their sum.

They act as a constant reminder of the power of music that isn't afraid to be ugly, blunt, and confrontational.

You could never truly expect a truly cohesive album from Santigold, and she's met expectations.