Crafted with meticulous detail and restraint, The Kid With a Bike captures an intrinsic understanding of what it feels like when young people find themselves in that crucial moment of life when growing up isn’t a choice, but rather an impreative.

A swirling, centripetal force guides Veronica Falls’ sophomore effort Waiting for Something to Happen. The album’s 13 wistful numbers have a billowing jangle reminiscent of Felt, Talulah Gosh, The Aislers Set—really, name any C86 touchstone or one of their acolytes.

Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a frenetic propulsion of changing dynamics and plot twists, in the vein of some of the classiest Hollywood classics, without deigning to undercooked pastiche.

Frightened Rabbit’s major label full-length debut is a triumphant album. It expertly expands on their previous work with a big, muscular series of anthems that investigate faith, masculinity, and Scottish identity while sharpening their increasingly identifiable brand of wry, thoughtful songwriting.

Singular in its scope as a Nazi/Holocaust narrative, Lore approaches a complicated subject in an uncompromising way, building upon Arendt’s “Banality of Evil” thesis to show ordinary characters in a complex world.

When Radiohead put out The King of Limbs online with just five days’ notice, Al Horner wrote an excellent blog post on how the immediacy of the release spelled impending doom for music journalism. Now, with m b v, My Bloody Valentine may have perfected the art of the unreviewable album.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about Luis Buñuel’s final masterpiece, That Obscure Object of Desire, is that the female lead, Conchita, is interchangeably played by two actresses-Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina. For a director known for pushing the envelope both stylistically and thematically for nearly half a century, this contrivance was something new even for Buñuel.

Thao Nguyen and her backing band return with something bigger and better here, after Nguyen spent a year settling down and building a non-transient life in San Francisco. The album title speaks directly to her experience of becoming part of a community and doing her part. Also implied is an artistic leap beyond that geographic or cultural adjustment, from more stylistic pursuits to introspective, life-revealing stuff.

“I’m getting tired of being complacent,” sings Mark “E” Everett on “Bombs Away,” the opening track to this 10th studio chapter of a career that often reads better as a narrative than a discography. Channelling “Hey Hey, My My”-era Neil Young in sentiment, it’s an odd line to open an album that verifies that complacency is still not something Eels need worry about.