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

The album relies less on hooks and more on a sparse energy, but the listening is engaging enough to keep the listener around to the end, focusing more on cohesion rather than theatrics.

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.

Spirals downstream into dreary non-sequiturs faster than the glue addict who lives four blocks from me.

Despite the absence of Timbo, Elliott continues to do what she does best: cross-fertilizing genres, geographies and temporalities and continuing to transform her musical identity without sacrificing any authenticity.

Vast in scope and breathtaking in its beauty, Illinois may very well be the album that heralds Sufjan Stevens as one of this young century’s most talented artists.

Wilderness is one of those albums where if you like one song, you like the whole lot, and vice versa.

Free the Bees shows a group of skilled musicians who are comfortable in their style and songwriting, and it plays like it was unearthed in a warehouse basement, where it was hidden for the last forty years.

Total immersion in the passion of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reveals the true power of music as a means of artistic expression.

Sleepy, sporadic and inconsistent.

She seems to be lost among her new surroundings, pulling in old styles and dated arrangements to seemingly express her dissatisfaction and confusion with where music is going.

Dressy Bessy is a one-trick pony, and twelve songs of the same fuzzed-out retro-rock riffs are too much for one person to take at once.

The rock was catchy, but it’s the slow stuff that flips you on your axis with its depth.

It is a cinematic work, a work of focus and intensity, and a work that demands attention.

Although these songs of attempted triumph comprise the band’s strongest material yet, they still lack the originality that will shed them of the “underrated” label they’ve worn for the last decade.

As much as the album may be a breath of fresh air, it still resembles what the Britney’s on our side of the Atlantic are putting out, closer than many would like to admit.

People will fall in love to this music, and Coldplay knows it.

At worst, McEntire renders the songs on Man-Made a tad monochromatic. Most of the time, the production and songs come together seamlessly.

Instead of copying the aesthetic of 1970s rock ‘n’ roll, they’ve copied some of last year’s more popular indie records. The result, though at times satisfying, mostly feels contrived.

Nearly everything on Minimum-Maximum sounds astoundingly fresh.

Turin Brakes’ expansive and more daring previous work held an encouraging arc that promised risks and excitement, but JackInABox, while a pleasant listen, fails to cash in on that potential, and is unfortunately a step back for the talented duo.

In a genre that’s desperate for new ideas, Allien’s lack of advancement on Thrills makes for a little less enjoyment.

The songs could have been chosen more wisely, especially because some significant fan favorites are absent.

Oasis has given us another album chock-full of jangley Brit-pop numbers and stadium-rockers, and the result is a formulaic rock record.

It lacks the mind-blowing qualities that made Rounds the essential album in his catalogue, but Everything Ecstatic is another must-own from Four Tet, the most reliable of producers.

But even at its toe-tapping best, this quintet from Newcastle can’t convey a sense of passion.

As you listen to it more and more, the music begins to make sense, the hooks come into focus and everything appears in sharp resolution, manifesting itself in a giant pop animal created for your indulgence.

Not only does The Woods jumpstart a moribund genre, it also serves as a wake-up call for the zeitgeist.