David Berman's dead-pan poetics are imbued with such emotion and provide such insight when juxtaposed with the often entertaining, memetic alt-country arrangements - the sound of Berman laughing in the face of the void, either in protest or defeat, or both. Such a great record and such a sad record, given everything.

On Who Are You Now, Madison Cunningham shows that being immensely talented is a very, very good time. She's also considerably more musically mature than most successful singer-songwriters around today, which seems to help when you're putting together a really sweet record.

I want to like Phoebe Bridgers more than I do. There is little doubt that Bridgers is brimming with potential, but many of arrangements on this record leave quite a bit desired and the overtone of bland self-pity is very off-putting.

Few records manage to be at once so intimate and grand, complex and simple, poised and jovial. Weyes Blood is doing very well.

This record too often flies under the radar in the canon of Canadian indie rock music. It's a beautifully imperfect showcase of Daniel Romano's uncanny ability to make distortion somehow tender. Something special.

Social media tag-lines don't make for artistic or insightful lyricism. The catchphrase-based, paper-thin ideology Mystery Jets puts forward in A Billion Heartbeats is made even weaker by their uninspired musicality.

When you let kids play whatever the fuck they want rather than telling them to simplify their ideas, they grow up and write records like Every Bad.

Frances Quinlan is a phenomenally talented lyricist, songwriter, vocalist, and instrumentalist, but I can't help but feel like this is an alternatively arranged or more intimate Hop Along record rather than a fully separate project. If I didn't have Hop Along for reference I don't know if I'd be into this as much as I am.

Finally Free by Daniel Romano by Dan Bejar.

In every way, muddy.

A beautiful sounding record written by a guy who has never cared whether or not you’re into it.

A couple dudes from LA save the guitar solo.

A quintessential record from the True North.

The focus group that wrote this didn’t even do a good job!

This record was hungover and is now sorta drunk in a suburban sports bar in the early afternoon.

This record sounds great and is interspersed with moments, but it's lacklustre overall and lacking experimentation beyond what shows itself to be Waxahatchee's Saint Cloud formula. Doesn't suck though.