Naturally there some moments where having too producers and visions hurts them, but for the most part, the band sticks to the formula that's worked in the past.

That their kitchen-sink approach yielded as many wins as it did on Strapped bodes very well for The Soft Pack, oddly enough presenting a band that has proven it's more than its record collection, and possesses a heretofore unseen amount of creative restlessness.

End of Daze sounds like a short segment of Dum Dum Girls' future greatest hits collection.

This is another hyper-energized, beautifully crafted album by the Mountain Goats.

While Fantasm Planes aims to capture the ante-versions of Iradelphic songs as drifting minimalist collages, it's a tough sell after such a fully realized album.

Meat & Bone is proof positive that music needn't be so reverent to its past.

Self-Entitled [is] the most energetic NOFX record in a while, but one that still ends up a bit uneven.

Knowing the story behind Piramida's recording process does not ruin the horror movie or give away the ending. It does, however, adds a plotline to the wordless emotions the tracks evoke.

This is an album that proves that Stars are fully themselves, confident in their genre experimentation and fearless in the emotions they express.

Unfortunately, instead of being an ambitious failure, and despite all of the fantastic moments, I Bet On Sky makes the potentially more damaging fault of being "just alright."

You can see every angle and every side of the shape they've made. And the unimpeachable logic of each song, added to their odd tunefulness of the songs, makes them exciting to listen to.

Besides a cyclical feeling that veers the album into the direction of repetition at several points, Bend Beyond is a solid listen.

Conservative, instead, describes Shields: Veckatimest authorized it to be far bolder. You yearn for what could've been.

We're now at a place where we can pretty well look at Dylan's career as, essentially, an entire body of work--and, even when considering all of the obvious highlights of his past half-century, Tempest still stands out.

Though this record's pace does not change much during its 43 minutes of playtime, each track is a slow-burning confession from Summers and Weikel's subconscious, a genuine feat that has taken them 16 years to convey.

Sic Alps towers above the rest of the ample retro garage acts today, in both scope and measure.

The result is 10 songs of lyrical brilliance that will have music listeners giving Porterfield the credit that's long overdue.

You'd be forgiven to not have the hooks of these songs stuck in your head, or worse, confusing them for some other band.... Ignoring this, you have another quality catalog entry from one of modern indie rock's somewhat more surprising career bands.

Ragon has the skill to twist all his found objects into something real and new: a strange breed of robust neo-folk with a fiery art-punk streak.

It's a summer album released just too late, but should do a stellar job of carrying some heat over into the colder months. Most importantly, it's yet another case in the argument to trust Thee Oh Sees with whatever sounds capture their interest.

The duo successfully crosses Clark's talent of romanticizing morbidity through melody and Byrne's knack for eccentric pop by using a prominent horn section both as a bridge between the two and an unfamiliar element that distinguishes this as a partnered effort.

Algiers is a good record, and though perhaps it could have been great, it's still another fine turn in the winding, ever-shifting road of the Calexico canon.

Mould is at the top of his game on Silver Age.

It's a collective of conjoined poems, meticulously attuned to shake both the earth and eardrums alike.

Marshall still manages to wring pathos out of her work, if not to the same degree and not in the same way.

Many musicians watermark every second of their albums with their signature, but not Caminiti, and that's what makes his album surprisingly individual.

It takes its time, but its rewards are plentiful.

In short; it's new, interesting, and the inevitable remixes are going to be great.