As is Fidlar’s style, nearly all of the 14 songs are deceptively rollickin’, sounding more like a call to arms for bored suburban teenagers than the confessions of a 28-year-old man going through relapses.

The songs grow overly long at the end (the title track is a bit of a bore), though the album is consistently beautiful, if not always ear-catching.

Here twigs sounds even more poised and self-assured.

It's a downtempo album, especially its sleepier last third, but unlike its title suggests, it's not even a little depressing.

It's often a little too wacky and silly for its own good, but overall Personal Computer is a fun collection of weirdo funk pop.

The album is plagued by similarly banal lyrics about sex and drugs that make his playboy image feel all the more superficial.... More positively, the poppier musical strategy perfectly suits his boyish vocals, and he sounds more open and less pretentious than ever before.

There's little sonic variation, but that approach puts the focus where it should be: on the raw emotion of his singing.

While there's still mystery and misdirection on his new album, Poison Season is nakedly ambitious and utterly satisfying.

Once you’ve finished playing Name That Influence, it becomes just a nice mid-tempo indie pop record with catchy guitar hooks.

Without a doubt, this is his poppiest album--but he still holds on to his penchant for a good vocal-less groove.

For all its unexpected sounds and catchy choruses, Emotion falters in its lyrical blandness.

The occasional “segues” throughout the record recall Fantastic Planet and although they help give it some variety and atmosphere, they also feel like too much of a throwback rather than helping The Heart Is A Monster stands on its own.

It’s the band’s plainest meta-record yet: a recording that calls deliberate attention to its own materiality as a recording.

With Love Is Free, Robyn once again shows she can bring together discerning dance snobs and accessible-pop fans.

Compton is easily his most introspective album.

It has some of the year’s best country songs, plus a groove-heavy take on the Bee Gees’ classic To Love Somebody.

The Richmond, Virginia, metal five-piece churn out their most extreme record in a long time.

There’s a constant push and pull between the sometimes ridiculous aspects of classic hard rock and his more serious artistic and political concerns, and while it’s often unclear when he’s joking, that tension is exactly what makes it all work.

The vocals, which in the past did a lot with a little and felt incantatory, androgynous and liminal, now sound uncannily like Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, a pseudo-teenaged smirk behind the frown.

Y Dydd Olaf’s beautifully layered sounds and rhythms convey a tightly conceived sonic world full of endless ideas, even if you can’t understand the lyrics.

It’s a challenging album, one you might not put on often.

Georgia evokes a skittering, glazed-over slice of up-all-night club life on her moody, uneven debut.

Like many of Romano's meticulous creations, it possesses all the hallmarks of a classic: a compelling, twisting narrative that bends the music to its shape.

The more conventionally New Age tracks that dominate the first half are the weakest. Things start to get interesting on Tethered In Dark, when the acoustic guitar arpeggios and synths lock together into hypnotic loops.

A sense of mood or inner life is glimpsed. But by that point [the final third of the album], it just seems like an echo of past glories.

Dark Bird Is Home sounds carefully constructed, and Matsson keeps things simple rather than making easy moves toward a grandeur that could bury his songcraft.

Emotional, stunning and one of the strongest debuts of the year so far.

Blood struggles to shift out of platitude territory with lyrics fixated on horizons, stars and sunsets, and it soon becomes apparent that La Havas is content not to go much deeper than vague universalism requires.