[Their] strange blend of influences can be fascinating... but Instinct - clocking in at a bloated 14 tracks and 56 total minutes - runs out of gas way before reaching the finish line.

On Life Is Good, he's lyrically and musically rich as he's been for years now.

On C.A.R., Cohn finds a loophole to get one of those rad concepts out of just that: a depressive who longs for suburban utopia.

Idea of Happiness never tries to re-imagine the concept of the summer album or, at the very least, the genre of synthpop.

Ocean brings substance with style, rather than style demanding to be considered substance.

Teeming with B-sides, live tracks, and demos, much of it previously unreleased, 21 is both exhaustive and indispensable.

There just isn't much personality on display here: Icky Blossoms strive for in-your-face decadence, but most of the time, they sound like every other anonymous dance-pop act on the planet.

The many-splendored guitar blitz of Major rings in the return of good old-fashioned butt rock, but played to the squarely measured rhythms of '90s emo and Northwest indie stuff like Built To Spill.

The writing is as crisp as the playing, ornate but without added contrivance, a credit to producer Joe Henry. A tuneful 10-song novel.

The British duo's second full-length in as many years mashes ghostly electro-pop tendencies with live instrumentation, empathetic orchestration, and tape-machine snippets, creating a world that is both compulsively listenable and eerily foreign.

The revelation in Gossamer is Angelakos's inner voice.

From moment to moment, Never's oddball quality can be a blessing, but it becomes more of a curse when the moment passes and there's little besides disparate pieces to hold onto.

Although the band's sonic stew isn't particularly remarkable or consistent (instrumentation oscillates between warm and comforting, and distant and anemic), their lyrics have a peculiar charm that keeps them alluring.

MTMTMK is infinitely more fascinating when it's pushing the envelope, mixing weirdness and darkness into the radiant multi-culti stew.

With one foot rooted in the past, the band is yet pushing forward, with an album that promises longevity and, maybe, greatness.

It's nothing new, sure, but it's proof that mining from the past is a surefire way to keep things sounding familiar yet fresh.

Smith seems to struggle with whether he wants to write emotional pop songs or dark experimental soundscapes, but the push and pull between the two sentiments is ultimately gorgeous.

1991 is all about the bubble-popping lushness of "Van Vogue" and the hall-of-mirrors shimmer of "Liquorice." It's also about the summer, and showing more of Banks than just her breakout hit.

Even if he's stuck in the past, Lewis's best songs feel timeless.

With their debut full-length, Brooklyn pop quintet Friends have released the best pop album of the summer.

When Longstreth uses his newfound focus to shake up his methods... the results are often startling.

[At times on Wild Peace] you might wonder if Echo Lake are merely a caricature of every previous shoegaze and dream-pop outfit. What saves the duo is how splendidly their iridescent sounds can evoke a moment, allowing listeners to lose themselves in the music.

Throw It to the Universe, number six on the docket by the sextet, keeps pace with past efforts despite dragging at times.

Cosmically in tune and harmony-rich, they excel in presenting their colorful, kaleidoscopic view of the world.

All of this should be terrible or grating, but because it kisses and licks every flaw and quirk with such purposeful gusto, the result is immensely entertaining and kind of magical.

It's a refined sense of balance that sets her apart from Grouper and Julia Holter, artists to whom Evans is too often compared.

The year's most outstanding rock album.

Her fourth album is arguably her funniest ... but also her leanest and most melodically daring.