This album gets a C+ because I really enjoyed the time I spent hating it.

Throughout, Showalter comes over like a visionary risk-taker with nothing to lose, not to mention like a consummate frontman.

Though it never quite comes through crystal-clear, the intensity and sincerity of the underlying emotion manages to bleed through a confusing swirl of altered sounds.

It all comes satisfyingly full circle, but Familiars mostly washes over you when it should be lunging for your heart.

Deep Fantasy is an exceptionally produced collection--really, it’s probably the finest recording job you’ll hear on a rock album this year.

Ultraviolence, a collection of mid-century ballads spiked with blues-rock, is a stunning accomplishment. Its eleven songs whimper and howl, soothe and taunt, hypnotize and thrill.

Black Hours is a throwback, but it’s a throwback that could have benefitted from a few more forward-looking ideas.

Only the opening stanza of “Waitress Song”--in which a major label signee fantasizes about escaping heartbreak by assuming a romanticized working class identity--is outright egregious. The rest is just innocuous.

Lazaretto will likely have little impact on his legacy one way or the other, but it’s a solid addition to his catalogue.

She needs great material and she needs star power. But this album doesn’t have great songs, and the only thing that’s changed shape more than an R&B hit in recent years is the definition of star power.

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.

Fear of Men have arrived with a storybook in hand, one detailing personal pain with vivid, gentle clarity that should elevate it above any accusations of coyness.

Honest is a good deal more middle-of-the-pack for a post-Yeezus 2014 than its creator wants to admit.

Lurching drum-machine beats, gentle piano chords, and somber string arrangements form the musical groundwork upon which Albarn sighs about the encroaching dominance of technology. If you’re the kind of person who shares this worldview, you may find Everyday Robots an often lovely demonstration of post-millennium tension. If not, the album’s monotony can fast become punishing.

It still sounds like The Afghan Whigs, but it sounds more like re-workings of b-sides that may have shined in the sun of another decade.

The main downfall of Z is a lack of strong lyricism. In the rare moments that the murk clears or the light becomes too bright, what lies behind is less graceful than what it seemed.

If allowed a spot in your rotation, its placidity could nudge you into taking the scenic routes a little more often. And that alone is worthy of some (appropriately muted) applause.

It’s Album Time is a lock-tight demonstration of how crucial time is in the cultivation process. As a result, Todd Terje curated one of the most enjoyable albums that will cross our desk this year.

While Space Project ultimately feels more like a noble failure than an attempted Record Store Day cash-in, its general lack of wonderment adds little to the imaginative legacy of Carl Sagan and the Voyager Golden Record.

Food is consistently satisfying and often fabulous.

Try Me is an album that does things completely on its own rather difficult terms and succeeds on those terms.

For The Future’s Void, she’s traded in the tarnished grace and drug-ravaged ten-mile stare of her past life, but it’s not always such a fair deal for the listener.

The campy Scooby Doo spookiness that inspires Slasher Flicks’ aesthetic is so charming and irresistible that Enter the Slasher House regularly succeeds despite its faults.

Once you’ve heard one track from Waterfall (ideally “Salt Carousel”), you’ve pretty much heard them all, and while such a lack of variety might not be a nuisance to a live audience, it’s a problem when a four-song, fifteen-minute EP already feels a little stale halfway through.

A couple of pseudo-anthems will likely nurse them through a handful of unearned headline gigs--but in all honesty, the world has no need for pop music this faceless, listless or sterile.

New album Hot Dreams still struggles to find a unique vantage point on its assembly of vintage sounds and gothic vibes, but fans will be more than satisfied.

Teeth Dreams is nowhere near the best Hold Steady album, but it shows the band aging in a direction that fills us with… hope? Perhaps that’s all we can ask for.

Tremors manages the feat of being both invigorating and mellow, and no matter how many layers of sound in which the songs find themselves wrapped up, electronic or otherwise, they remain painstakingly personal and human.

Education only teaches us that the band was at it’s best when they were merely predicting a riot instead of trying to lead one.

It’s a heartfelt, narcotic odyssey through the seductive pleasures of lava lamps and black light posters, a kind of escapism that comes in the same strange, silk-screened colors as the novelty lighters and t-shirts one might find at a backwoods southwestern gas station.

Here and Nowhere Else’s disposition for self-examination coaxes out a superior depth and nuance when stacked against Cloud Nothings’ previous works.

It’s a record that boasts glaring maturity without diminishing the iconic immaturity.

As the trio continue to remould and refine their craft, Mess, an album fuelled by impulse, demonstrates their ideological core hasn’t moved an inch.

ingles is sometimes stark, and sometimes surprising – but its key constant is that it’s rarely short of spellbinding.

Taking a hard line against any sort of compromise, Sisyphus is equally amazing, confusing and frustrating.

Darlings is very listenable and mostly fun--just don’t overthink it and keep the BSS comparisons to a minimum.

My Krazy Life is in essence a retooling of GKMC, and YG comes out, unexpectedly, as a talented and believable vessel for the story that the album tells to express itself.

Ultimately, the highlights here are still middling fare, and mostly, I just couldn’t wait for Recess to be over.

Forcefield a passable, fun album.

It’s nerves are uneasy, but Lost in the Dream stands as Granduciel’s most open-armed record yet, filled to the gills with selfdom and sprawling musicality.

Mastermind passes by as a single, indistinguishable blur. To the credit of Ross and his many co-producers, the experience is rarely leaden and often engaging.

Simply put, it’s just another Kid Cudi album--a scattered collection of songs developed as a concept album, but never fitting together to form something great.

Blank Project never aims for luxuriance. Neneh Cherry instead undertakes-- and nails--a riskier feat: a reflection on midlife that sounds both wise and inventive.

This is music that operates at full force at all times.

Despite the growth it signifies for Mount, and the candor with which he delivers it, Love Letters is so lightly sketched that it never fully engages on a gut level.

Ørsted’s debut LP wears its history heavily, composed of equal parts previously released and new material. It is a risk for an artist as dependent on earworm shock value as Ørsted, but a deliberate one that yield dividends at the end of the day.

Imperfect as it might be, the album’s relentlessness is also it’s chief allure. In reality, Eagulls sounds more innovative than it probably is due to the world in which it arrives.

A record that’s all too often content with mediocrity even though its finest moments reveal just how close it came to greatness.

Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son is long on atmospherics, but woefully short on songs.

Simply put, this record has no teeth.

Let’s Go Extinct isn’t the breakthrough that will earn them that big wave of new press, but it’s good enough to warrant some recognition.

With Cilvia Demo, Rashad proves his place in the Californian crew’s lauded lineup, and TDE show their own versatility on the cusp of hip hop takeover.

Apocalypse Soon struggles to keeps things interesting over its modest seventeen minute run.

With each album Real Estate has sharpened this process, making Atlas both immediately recognizable and their most interesting album to date.

Tomorrow’s Hits carries on the classic rock torch, for better or worse.

The real embarrassment is that more than the work of his peers or his idols, mostly Pharrell’s just ripping off himself to seriously diminished returns.

The height at which Oxymoron’s target is set is not very impressive, but the precision and showmanship with which it’s hit deserves commendation.

Annie Clark stands astride St. Vincent, a colossus in total--and thrilling--command.

Present Tense may be a less accessible offering from Wild Beasts, but it’s their most human--a mesmeric bundle of contradictions, indignities and pleasures.

Morning Phase never sounds anything less than opulent.

Unlike the best of the Notwist’s output, Close to the Glass isn’t emotionally nourishing, primarily because there’s no real sense that anything is at stake.

For as commanding and affecting Burn Your Fire for No Witness can be while it plays, the album remains elusive when trying to call it to mind later.

Voices marks a more complete work from a duo fully in sync; in their element.

Ultimately, The Unnatural World is a frustrating album.

Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything explores the moral murk of our times with glorious abandon.

Marissa Nadler’s limnetic new album, July, is both eerie and soothing, a lullaby written to induce nightmares.

Maximo’s strength has always been in scorching post-punk anthems (“Our Velocity”, “Graffiti”) and hyper-literate melancholic balladry (“Acrobat”, “This Is What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”), which work so well when bolstered by Paul Smith’s erudite lyrics and uniquely accented delivery. They pull off the former on “My Bloody Mind” and the latter on the excellent “Leave This Island”, but elsewhere the hooks and melodies rarely match the frontman’s grasping literary pretensions.

It’s light, jangly, and just right for the summer at the end of this wintry tunnel.

For now, Little Red stands as an example of what happens when the zeitgeist leaves you behind.

Almost nothing about it works.

Have Fun With God has greatest potential as nap music on long bus rides, but is otherwise only listenable in the context of its source material.