The New Classic, though stacked from top to bottom with an impressive collection of production efforts, is nothing more than derivative delivery soaked in stylistic heresy.

Birkenes’ vox often skews towards the incorporeal, a little too airy for its own good, and requires some form of substance to keep it tethered to the music. Without it, Pocketknife threatens to float away into some ethereal realm (as it tends to do in the latter half). That being said, Birkenes does craft some gems throughout the record.

It doesn’t provide the thrill-a-minute jolts of Light Up Gold, but Parquet Courts may yet become a garage punk band that millennials can call our own.

Smith plays it safe, joining the growing crop of British talent with big voices and little personalities. At least he sounds pleasant though.

The most optimistic light to view Only Run in is also the most condemning; it’s not so much a fully realized album as it is a promising blueprint for songs that haven’t yet been written.

So It Goes comes as close to hardcore as an album with this sonic palette can: dense, immediate, energetic, and uniquely inclusive.

They make what is quite complex musical structures look easy, almost juvenile, and package them in shiny production gift wrapped for the masses over the airwaves or PA system or turntable.

Folks will either freak out over this album or abhor its very existence, and that is exactly what makes it so good.

Government Plates doesn’t strive to be a defining post-Epic statement, but it finds Death Grips fascinated with the possibilities offered by its sound and pushing it breathlessly forward.

On The Moon Rang Like a Bell, Hundred Waters offers an album of quiet moments of subtlety juxtaposed with crashing waves of desperation.

Throughout In Conflict, Pallett opens up his compositions even more than his lyrics, but the songwriting is no less brainy, and themes no less tangled, than on his earlier work.

Do It Again is foremost a marvel of mood and pacing. The trio doles out their riches with utmost care.

While Are We There can be taxing at points, by its end, you’ll be overcome by the feeling that you’ve shared in something profound.

Overall, In Cold Blood is a pleasant listen in small doses, functioning better in manageable chunks than as a whole forty-minute work.

They may be a conflicted bunch, but boy, do they ever make a magnificent racket.

As much as you care and as much as you want to feel sad, you can’t be blamed if after a listen or two, all you feel is manipulated.

Here, as he seemingly aims for something like hard-won, grizzled wisdom, he often trips over his own lyrical ambition.

Though the revamps are distractingly overwrought (this project could have been called The 20/20 Xperience), Jackson’s voice, pure and fierce as ever, cuts straight through Timbaland and company’s more-is-more fireworks display.

To Be Kind is a loving ode to chaos, full of deranged, mutant energy and even more brilliant for it.

This is the third Pains record in a row that has enough memorable songs to play almost like a career-spanning Best Of collection.

They didn’t just retain relevance; they released the best album of their entire career.

Most of the time, Nabuma Rubberband sounds well put-together but empty, all style and no content, the kind of album that won’t offend you while you’re listening to it but which you’d be hard-pressed to remember any of once closer “Let Go” comes to an end.

El Camino was the sound of The Black Keys flexing their muscles as they reached for that sword, but Turn Blue is the sound of The Black Keys baring their soul and testing the parameters.

For the most part, though, it’s a bloody great collection of songs. The Horrors do have a masterpiece inside them, and with each release it’s bubbling closer to the surface.

The album thrums with vitality and elation.

Heard consecutively, these songs sound disappointingly like one another, and while one good belter about the pain of unrequited love is a blessing, nine in a row turns out to be real drag.

As expected, Shriek, Wye Oak’s newest full-length, is filled to the brim with surprise.

There’s good reason to think that some of the more middling fare on The Way and Color is no more than growing pains.