Blasting through 11 songs in less than half-an-hour, Pre Strike Sweep never settles into one mode or frame of reference for long. Instead, the album drags and scrapes itself into being for its entire duration, angry and bleeding and looking for new angles with every new riff, crash, and tortured scream.

The album drifts by with a bittersweet solitude, like a more innocent reading of Satie or a less distraught take on the piano ambience of Eluvium contemporary Goldmund, reflecting on the most dream-like aspects of childhood with these warm but distant piano pieces.

Daveed Diggs' rapid-fire verses are precise and unflinching, detailing gruesome scenes with pinpoint accuracy. Much of the album, particularly the interludes, is filled with field recordings, giving the sensation of being on the run and uncertain of one's fate.

RAT WARS' abrupt pivots make a visceral impact, but they're never distracting -- they're just more proof that well into their second decade, HEALTH are still discovering formidable expressions of hurting and being hurt.

The album is impressive, especially in small doses or when Steele reigns it in a bit, as on the pretty, bossa-nova tinged "Miles Away." As a whole, it's a sometimes exhausting listen.

The record may not be their masterpiece, but it is an important piece of a surprisingly strong career.

By the time we get to the end of disc two, the broad strokes have coalesced into something quite remarkable; as Williams searches through the nooks and crannies of her songs, you sense she's discovering things that she didn't expect to find, and it's a tremendous thing to hear.

Despite the delay, Dark Night of the Soul shows what a talent and what a generous collaborator we lost in Mark Linkous.

Davila 666 have that all-important spark of primitive energy and power that have made bands from the Sonics to the Hives so vital and alive, and Tan Bajo is another great record that all fans of garage rock, new or old, need to add to their collections.

As expected from Apparat, LP5 is an ambitious, inventive album which runs on its own intuition, fusing studio wizardry with honest expression to frequently thrilling results.

While the group are not strangers to sociopolitical subject matter, Dancing on the Wall is their most overtly so yet.

More engaging and more thoughtful than a standard best-of, Last Night All My Dreams Came True is a rousing goodbye from one of the most acclaimed bands of their generation.

Let It Go was well worth the wait and McGraw is still at the top of the heap.

Nature Noir proves that Crystal Stilts aren't a one-trick band and it gives anyone who's been a fan up to this point an extremely compelling reason to follow them as they grow.

Everyone Else Is a Stranger is easily one of Lindstrøm's most gleeful records, and one of the easiest to recommend.

As Blumberg puts on his Neil Young hat and laments "I've got some things to do/Some private things to do" on closer "The Plan," one can't help but think that, although perhaps overly self-indulgent at times, Hebronix could well prove fruitful.

There are moments where Single Mothers feels like art therapy as much as music, but this album communicates its pain with intelligence and a gentle touch, and as a singer and lyricist Earle grows with each album; there are more than a few moments of brilliance on this set if you don't mind sharing a rough and lonesome road with Earle for a while.

In the Mountain in the Cloud is also the band's most cohesive album, suffering from none of the unevenness that crept into some of their earlier work.

ICONOLOGY is a good placeholder while fans wait for the next chapter of Elliott's brilliance, but overall seems truncated and undercooked.

Weather Systems stands with Anathema's finest work.

What We Saw from the Cheap Seats succeeds more often than it frustrates.

Eternity of Dimming is a beautiful, nostalgic (in the best meaning of the word) hymn to time and place, a long suite of songs that falls together like a wonderful quilt of memories.

For those who've longed for the return of his immediate, loose, warm, live recordings, Live at the Great American Music Hall is where it's at.

Perhaps the concept and execution are conventional, but even in this utterly expected setting, Clarkson retains her fiery, individual spirit, and that's what makes Wrapped in Red appealing: to the letter, it delivers what it promises.

Without mellowing too deeply or becoming so serious that the songs aren't fun to listen to anymore, +/- turn in a fantastically studio-crafted album that communicates greater depth and more sophistication than any of their other work.

Ultimately, The Pink Caves has a haunting, surrealistic quality that, while melodic and song-based at times, also feels abstract and organic, as if these songs were not so much written by the band as cultivated as they grew out of the earth.

Ten spiny noise-pop jams that occasionally resemble New York contemporaries DIIV, and even bits of early era Cure, in their moody guitar styles.

Yes, the references are abundant--in an homage, they're supposed to be. Wobble employs them with a curator's taste; his skill as a bandleader creates space for disparate tongues to communicate before evolving into a different musical language--his own. Everything Is NoThing is a monster.