Public Strain improves on Women in every way, which is no small feat. It's 13 minutes long than its predecessor, but Women doesn't use the extra time to spread out. The band keeps the tension up by building the various lean sounds of that record into new, more muscular variations.

Assembling an impressive list of guests that understand his legacy (Paolo Nutini, Mayer Hawthorne, and the Dirtbombs' Mick Collins among them), Coffey sounds downright vital, unleashing dusted licks and stinging wah-wah over boom-bap breaks and buoyant horns.

This type of rough-spun music isn't for everyone, but Among the Leaves is a valuable effort regardless of its pockmarks and dogged minimalism. Enjoy at your own risk.

The album's about being depressed, smoking weed, having fun, not understanding girls. You know, the moments that define any summer.

The best tracks on Love’s Miracle match Yow’s wildman performances with equally manic music. Qui doesn’t always achieve that balance, and the album sometimes feels like it’s getting by on quirk alone. But when it hits, it hits hard.

That the group’s second effort, Enemy Mine, is able to accommodate all three distinct voices in only nine tracks is even more remarkable. But that Enemy Mine is a firm step sideways is less so.

Micah P. Hinson and the Opera Circuit is a pure expression of turmoil, a cathartic release through art that skillfully avoids self-obsessed mawkishness.

Opticks is also more mature than her previous outing, which at times can seem like the happenstance work of an adorable child. It's clear that Silje Nes is coming into her own as an artist here.

The lilt of the melodies, the consistent surprises of the production, and of course the poetry of the lyrics are all more than enough in and of themselves to keep listeners fully engaged.

With The Camel's Back, Psapp grows up while successfully eluding categorization in the quest for catchiness.

White Bird Release is a solid, completely contained work.

Set Free is a triumph, full of tunes that affect well beyond their modest means.

You probably won't remember the first time you hear Plague Park, but that's not because Boeckner and Perry have failed or their record's pleasures are few. It's simply that their goals are modest and their tools humble.

Yet it is the span of moods, paired with the elaborate arrangements, which reveal something new with every listen, that make Dear John an album worth persevering with.

While Eating Us and their various solo pursuits found them sticking their necks out into the world at large, Cobra Juicy proves that their self-imposed isolation once again yields the best results.

The fact remains, however, that Cloak and Cipher is an impressive piece of work, and inevitably that idea of novelty up there is just a cultural standard, determined by every other album ever released. It's an interesting thing to consider if you're trying to articulate the context around a piece of work, but it's not too much more than that.

The Fratellis won't change your life or any of your top-five lists. What the band will do, however, is give you a few good tunes to throw onto a Saturday night playlist while you wait for the real thing to come along.

After all is said and done, the Meat Puppets have succeeded in making an album that maintains their iconoclastic reputation, but mostly just rocks.

They've all called Zonoscope less poppy and more meandering. That's not necessarily the entire case here, but don't doubt the band on this: there are fewer big singles here, and this one isn't likely to spawn multiple indie hits months after its release like the last album.

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

The fact that it turned out quite well makes that fact that much more satisfying, and elevates the album above mere curiosity to a possible road sign pointing towards Fuck Buttons' future material.

What makes the Subways stand apart with their brand of angst-ridden, razor garage-rock guile is that they truly sound like teenagers.

What remains is a band conflicted about how to stretch and how far to stray from a winning formula, between living up to expectations and confounding them.

"Epic” is the only way to describe the balance of Skeletal Lamping--Barnes isn’t afraid to throw everything on tape.

In both material and performance, From a Compound Eye quickly reveals itself to be classic Pollard.

At times, the band outdoes itself even by its own standards.

Eric Emm and Jess Cohen have produced an album is both substantially intelligent and undeniably fun in equal measure.

Some are sure to hate it, but unlike any Melvins album since "Houdini," Nude With Boots certainly demands your attention.

Given the strength of the album’s beginning, the latter half lags quite a bit, but the occasional highlight arises.

The songs are given more room to fully explore the emotions that fill the members' voices, and the music is fleshed out to portray portraits of moments in the married couple's life.

With Remind Me in 3 Days, they throw down a worthy challenge to hip-hop’s status quo.

Reefer works best as a moment that’s fleeting.

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.

Divine Providence is the group's best album to date, but doesn't necessarily have its best songs to date.

Somehow, the final product turned out better than some bands' actual albums.

The Sister is Marissa Nadler looking down and realizing that she has recently written eight good songs.

Vile seems to find his best inspiration in the album's valleys rather than its peaks.

They've got an amazing musical connection between them and its evident on this tight, pulsating, thumping record.

Obsession with detail is one of the most appealing qualities of his work, but it's also one of the most frustrating. Echo Party bears this out in painstaking detail.

The frequent presence of full-time collaborator Nancy Whang's voice on many of the songs adds an extra element of melody that largely sees the record's intention true to the end.

Texas Rose, The Thaw and The Beasts is the closest Raposa has come to a straight country record. But he doesn't come that close, as all these players steer him further out on tangents rather than towards the middle. And the record is all the better for it.

It jumps from light pop to disco funk to noise samples without ever sacrificing melody for the sake of overindulgence.

With News & Tributes, the band has matured to where the songs are initially gratifying but also grant further rewards with subsequent scrutiny.

Despite Chunk of Change's flaws, Angelakos shows real promise as an innovative electronic-song weaver.

Lopez sounds like the long lost bastard son of Guided by Voices' Bob Pollard; his songwriting showcases this kind of semi-illuminant pop that's infused with sugar-coated placidity.

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

This compilation of songs from films and tributes becomes nothing less than an inadvertent tribute to Kozelek himself, a finely woven tapestry of pop music as refracted through his heartfelt filter of pastoral, troubled beauty.

The sleekness of the production--this is far gauzier than the straight-ahead brilliance of On--can get in the way sometimes.

Ultimately, BEAK> are only interested in that quasi-mysticism that endless jamming affords.

Confrontational as Hello, Voyager is, it’s also a carefully constructed work by a group of players that know how to wrench compelling music out of dark places.

There’s certainly something to be missed in this simpler direction, but not too much.

You won't catch every note, every shift--he's never that transparent. But there's a welcoming feel to this record that makes it resonate longer than any jarring shift could.

Show[s] only a hair's breadth of progress from previous albums. That's not entirely a ruinious outcome, but it's not always an enticing one.

Sure, Barton Hollow's love-swept core and well-worn conventions might make it a tad limited, but for what it sets outs to accomplish, it succeeds with pitch-perfect elegance.

Quasi's reappearance with their most consistent album in a decade feels appropriate.

By all accounts, A Strange Arrangement is a potentially star-making turn from a completely unlikely source.

While the album has the signature Wavves sound, the songwriting and production is taking on a sophistication that only comes with a progressing level of musical maturity.

Together, which was recorded during a period of lengthy down time for all parties earlier this year, is the sound of five guys bro-ing down, drinking beers and recording an album. It’s not the deepest thing ever recorded, but it is a fun little record that bears no pretense of seriousness.

The cuts that utilize Batoh's brain-pulse method are nevertheless striking pieces of electronic minimalism -- stark and compelling.

The record's general aesthetic stays the same, docile sounds, pitter-patter polyrhythms, and shimmering vocals, but the ear-tickling mutations along the way is the appeal.

While the Evens' debut was a little rough around the edges at times, those imperfections have been buffed away for Get Evens.

Above all, One Second Of Love is a triumph of atmospherics and arrangements.

While The Bachelor is not a bad listen, it takes a little more energy to understand than seems fair for what it delivers.

Even with the highlights, there remains a feeling of paralysis on Synthetica that's reflected in the uneven tracklist.

Despite its basis in a genre with an expiration date, Causers of This is nonetheless an album worthy of consideration. While lacking in straight-ahead pop sensibility, it redeems itself by simply being interesting.

It is the most realized of their albums to date, and it showcases the group fully exploring the possibilities of the niche that they created for themselves two records ago.

While Grandaddy may be no longer, Aqueduct appears confidently able to assume is place as a purveyor of lo-fi writ large.

These four new songs are impeccably recorded, and frontman Kip Berman's voice sounds so intimate and close it's as if he's whispering a secret into your ear.

No longer firmly fixing their gaze upon past, The Brunettes have begun to turn their lights toward the future with Paper Dolls; moreover, these bouncy little bedroom discos should be more than enough to ensure that the band’s present (and future) remain bright as well.

Is Growing Faith feels more like an actual lost psychedelic-era gem than a revivalist record.

Explosive, mysterious and refreshingly strange.

The album rewards those who listen with songs that are confessional but also insightful.

Dipping into heavier rock elements can make emotional lyrics seem misplaced at times - it almost seems like the band is intentionally aiming to present a man's record - but even the album's rare moments with jagged guitar are tastefully executed.

The Diver, in its poppiest moments or in its dingiest moments, can never quite get out of the house.

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.

Moody Motorcycle is a deft reappropriation and re-imagining of the harmonic pop of the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

While still mostly a success, Zoo marks the first time where Ceremony do not seem 100% sure of their own identity.

On Disappearance, Lytle yet again hits that perfect balance of gentle storytelling and hard, dark emotion.

Another Country, whether in rock or country mode, is an album built on the voice of its artist.

Mission Control is a collection of catchy, raucous tunes. There’s little innovation here, but that’s not what these guys are about.

The writing, arrangement, and pacing is deliberate enough to create a sensible package yet light enough to invite a listener in.

With its out-of-this-world visions and lines like “Floating off the edge of the ocean/Out into the galaxy,” Dystopia gives listeners the urge to escape to distant lands.

Boston Spaceships is his most accomplished musical vehicle working right now, and Let it Beard is one of the finest releases in his endless discography. Period.

Under the Blacklight is at once more ethereal that anything Rilo Kiley has ever managed previously.

The EP feels more like a work in progress with aspirations of something greater than the ultimate collaborative effort that so many said this would be.

Tightened and more focused, Just To Feel Anything wouldn't entirely jar the listener out of their headphones. Still, it shines when you hold it up to the light.

On the whole, Together smartly meshes thick orchestration with their lean energy really well, picking up where Challengers left off and improving in a lot of ways.

Baby 81 is a wicked crystallization of all the sounds on the first album, tightened up and brightened up and even louder and more textured.

Arm’s Way represents a step forward from "Return to the Sea" creatively if not as an artistic whole.

The odd bits and bobs typical of the 7-inch and B-side world manage to make Advance Base Battery Life a little more interesting than Owen Ashworth's previous work.

They display a loose, gritty feel that ought to please metal fans as well as those who still think this is Crow’s version of Spinal Tap.

This new direction doesn't feel like a 180-degree response to the noodly fusion sounds of It's All Around You so much as a natural desire to light out for new territory.

For those interested in a group that still finds ways to take Krautrock down several roads, Circles more than succeeds.

God Forgives, I Don't is slick, large, and sounds like wealth.

In reality, Technicolor Health is a remarkably eclectic, dynamic album even in its use of rather obvious launching points.

It is totally listenable and, to relay a personal anecdote, sounded highly appropriate at a recent social gathering.

Broken Ear Record... seems to embrace a certain sense of pop influence, albeit far beneath the manic din of sonic exploration for which the band is known.

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.