Push the Sky Away has the ability to move without raising its voice above a whisper.

When taken as a whole, and as an effervescent thumbing of the nose at the noise establishment, Total Folklore goes by like a breeze, even if the last 11 tracks (three of those ambient interludes) feel a bit overshadowed in the wake of “Ulysses”‘s monolithic, alien bliss.

Both [Frankie Rose and the Outs’ 2010 self-titled] and this one are short, sweet, and undeniably charming rock records that hold up on repeat listens more than you might expect.

There’s an impressive amount of sound and instrumentation for a trio. The consequence is that McEntire doesn’t stand out quite as well as last time, and can easily get lost in the tight, economical work from her bandmates.

As a product of Yorke’s mind, AMOK represents a measurable progression over The Eraser. It’s more experimental, varied, nuanced, and likeable.

Torres doesn’t really feel like a debut, let alone something remotely self-released–the songwriting ability and surprisingly fantastic and natural production allow for this journal-esque story to get its due.

It seems that with General Dome, Buke and Gase have managed to do just fine, and they’ve created a record that looks forward, as well as backward, to what indie rock has been and what it has the potential to be.

The most frustrating thing about these eleven songs is that it sounds as if Lidell is shackled by the aesthetic, and it’s totally self-imposed. He’s capable of more.

Anxiety matches the emotional heights and immediacy of the music Ashin was inspired by, but what arrives from his limitations--as a singer, as a DIY-ist--adds to the record a personal foundation and raw authenticity no amount of budget could erect.

While Sally Shapiro (the duo) take some much-appreciated baby steps towards new sounds on Somewhere Else, Sally Shapiro the frontwoman remains just as stuck in unrequited love as ever, and the music that supports her is no less bouncy or plasticine as her previous stuff.

The band have taken their influences with their own abilities and made an album that is as accessible as it is excitable, and seems set to capture the hearts and imaginations of young lovers everywhere.

One Track Mind aims for the feel of a great dusty road-trip album, and only through its staggering consistency does it slightly fall short of such heights. But when it hits its highs, as if often does, the collection is a transcendent experience.

While Artist Proof never quite lives up to the expectations of being a masterpiece, it is a great example of how the country rock genre developed in tandem with the folk scene.

For all its spookiness, Confrontations is ultimately a pleasant listen that goes down easy and doesn’t leave much of a impression.

Whether approached with the utmost skepticism or the most fervent zeal, m b v proves itself not merely a reputable album, but a spectacular and unforgettable experience.

What’s impressive here is how Cunningham manages to borrow from the thumping liveliness of bass music, the hyperactive repetition of glitch, and the uneasy industrial murk of something from the Modern Love label without sacrificing any of these styles’ appeal.

As a stepping stone forward and backward, No Elephants preserves her musical legacy while subtly altering her own approach to these sounds.

By endowing his demos and bedroom meditations with a sense of hopeful purpose, tempered by a resolute knowingness of the world around him, Juul has made Somewhere Else something quite special--a sometimes hesitant but ultimately warmly inviting record to cling to in this waning winter season.

As brief as the moments of goodness may be, they’re lost in a sea of noise that becomes near indistinguishable when taken in one sitting.

Iceage mine the clangorous middle ground between traditional punk structures and the often sterile world of Joy Division-indebted post-punk, but they transcend both of those genres, just by meaning what they say.

You can’t help but admire their ambition, but their tendency to overreach is inhibiting them from becoming the band they want and deserve to be.

It lacks a genuine peak like “Spanish Sahara” or “Balloons,” but it achieves greater consistency elementally, if not tonally.

As it stands, the rest of the record proves to varying degrees that it’s not necessarily reverb or effects that alienate--you can sound just as distant armed with nothing but clean instrumentation and an impenetrable air of disinterest.

It’s as carefully and intricately produced as anything the group has managed to date, but with a blinding vibrancy added to its tonal pallet and outlook.

FIDLAR are still young, and they sing about what they know; never on the album do you feel like they’re presenting themselves as anything other than what they are, and this is why the album is enjoyable despite its repetition and simplicity.

Yeah Right’s dual interests in songwriting and guitar explorations end up being its greatest strength.

As much as Mice Parade’s previous releases seemed to be insular statements, Candela is simply stretched too thin, with too little of Pierce himself in the music.

Even without the context of her back catalog, these songs are strong in their own right.

The trance-like pace of II serves to reinforce the album rather than weaken it.

It sounds like he's trying to sound less weird, when he doesn't seem to understand that this very weirdness is part of what made him so endearing as a solo artist in the first place.

The record is patient and delicate, but Chung remains a constant if not aggressive presence within every track, imbuing each with immaculate detail.

For all of its well-intentioned flaws and near-immaculate production, this record hums with a life of its own, confident in the abilities of its creator.

With patience, Hummingbird's panorama comes into full view, and it is one full of arrestingly arranged set pieces and an impressive sense of economy.

They haven't quite found it yet, but Esben and the Witch have the potential for an arresting and momentous album in them.

An album of pristine beauty and shimmering harmonic structure.

They still may not make an incredibly fashionable brand of music, but this new record shows that they're pretty great at it.

The album's relative indie rock minimalism stands out in stark contrast to many other bands who feel that this kind of straightforward approach is either too uninteresting or too tied to certain years in music.

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic delivers on the promise of Foxygen's previous material in almost every way possible, offering up full and complete songs filled with bright instrumentation and enough surprising songwriting turns to get lost in, but there's also a strong personality at its core bursting with a vibrancy that carries these songs beyond their specific musical waypoints and influences into a uniquely modern setting.

There's much beauty to be found here on the fifth Mountains LP, Centralia.

Elements of Light ultimately feels like a stop off between Black Noise and whatever Pantha Du Prince has waiting on the horizon.

These three tracks ["A Broken Heart," "Lysandre," and "Everywhere You Knew"] function as everything Owens could have dreamed this first solo effort to be. But the rest of the album, which aims for similar points of emotional cohesiveness, but due to some ham-fisted instrumental choices, the message can become muddled.

Unsure whether he wanted to create a sunny, party album, gangstafest, or a record of cool pop vibes, Rocky seems to have tried to make them all, and with minor successes in all departments, he sacrifices something stronger.

The album, with all of its imperfections and warmly textured moments, feels well-worn and comfortable-despite its often acerbic lyrical habits.

Ultimately, Grace/Confusion is a production best staged in the theatre of your mind.

This kind of remaster campaign is normally reserved for albums that have had decades to sink into the national consciousness as is, introducing a shock-of-the-new, hearing-it-again-for-the-first-time element, and while the oldest of the Trilogy material has only been around for a year and a half or so, the differences in the new mixes can still be jarring.

Nocturne proves that Tatum is firmly at the centre of the Wild Nothing universe, and around him orbits his dreams, influences and abilities, which seem to stretch out infinitely.

It manages to feel both too specific and not quite specific enough; while it sounds like her own personal sound world and collection of memories, the album lacks that relatable hook to draw the listener in.

Cut the World is compelling enough to change the way we appreciate the world and its sad beauty. There's simply nothing that sounds quite like this.

Although he's using sounds and influences from many of the musical hubs on the Earth, from Africa to America and plenty in between, with them he has created aural scenery that is so serene and heavenly that it couldn't possibly exist on our busy and frantic planet.

Ocean Roar [is] a truly proper follow-up.

This is life At the Down-turned Jagged Rim of the Sky, which isn't a devastatingly beautiful one, but it's still engaging in its own deep, personal way.

Like Silica Gel, Sushi isn't a bad album; it's just disappointingly mediocre, and I expect better than that from the psychedelic underground's clown prince of Cool Runnings and backseat-of-grandma's-Oldsmobile Top-40 jams.

The impulsivity that he has carried with him for most of his career has come into full bloom on Jiaolong.

Tinsel and Lights is at its best during its most Christmassy moments, which in the context of everything else, feels a little ironic, as Thorn sounds like she's trying to avoid the holiday for the most part.

It's pleasant, unsurprisingly enough, in both its sonic direction and minimal production, but it lacks the sense of overwhelming purpose usually found on both artists' solo records.

With Quarter Turns Over A Living Line Raime fleshes out the promise of earlier work and delivers one 2012′s most compelling and listenable experimental records.

They start off well, though, with a trio of solid tracks.... The remaining tracks on the album are equally inoffensive, but they don't have the same half-minded unassuming appeal to help them glide along, and too often there's one too many head-in-your-hands cheesy lines thrown in.

Release definitely sees Pangaea staying ahead of the game, voyaging without hesitation into unchartered territories while keeping a foot in familiar UK bass strains.

The album is a widening and a deepening of the style we've come to expect of Walker – but it's also got elements of a brightening of that sound as well.

There's nothing wrong with seeking to accomplish the same things your heroes did, but when a band tries only to imitate a few aspects–in this case, detached singing, jangly guitar interplay, and lyrics about teen angst–without offering many of the other aspects that made that band great–like clever storytelling and interesting perspectives--it's always going to fall short. Which Come Of Age does.

Time and time again The Luyas set themselves up in a soft kraut-like groove and fail to progress the song into something different, allowing it to fizzle out after four or five minutes.

What results is a more even effort, a more accomplished record, by all stretches of the imagination, but one that lacks a single truly brilliant track to elevate it above the legion of Brooklyn guitar bands.

They've ironed out their eccentricities, and produced their silkiest and least combative record in the process.

Essentially, Aimlessness is a jovial affair that promises more in its first half than it can deliver in its second.

While No Love Deep Web is not the masterpiece The Money Store undeniably is, it still manages to be both a substantial step forward and, even more importantly, a work not easily forgotten.

Though academic in its tone, and impenetrable at points due to it's uncompromising focus on experimentation, Movement looks inward, probing the possibility of humanity even through an album centered on electronic instrumentation

Best to sit back and bask in the confident warmth of a job well done.

It's shiny but fluffy, and sure to be a disappointment to those hoping that O'Regan could build on the promise of Special Affectations.

At first glance, Smalhans feels exceedingly necessary as reconciliation for Six Cups of Rebel, but it's quite a reliable document on its own.

While there are some issues with the feeling of déjà vu, Unknown Rooms doesn't really do anything noticeably off the mark.

Allelujah! seems more immediate and more organic, but instead of feeling blown away by it's unreachable drama and grandeur, with a decade of age behind us and the band, it feels inhabitable in a way Godspeed never has before.

While Tender New Signs may not point you in any dramatically different directions than their debut did, it certainly displays a growing maturity in both Tamaryn and Shelverton.

An ambitious concept, but not fully executed, Top Ten Hits Of The End Of The World is stuck somewhere in-between.

The way your patience is so handsomely rewarded is what truly makes Lonerism such an engrossing spectacle.

The record touches on new tonal and structural territories, however incremental, while maneuvering within the same basic framework laid out in Ital's debut.

They may be lumped in with the recent girl group pop fad, but End of Daze proves that there is nothing common or ordinary about this band.

Just shy of magnificent and unprecedentedly accessible, Emeralds' latest is not their best work, but at least in terms of the group's development, it's among their most exciting.

The Wilderness isn't really a sum of its parts in that songs might sound okay, if not good on their own, but taken altogether it makes for an album that fails to make it off the ground.

Moms is perfect evidence that Menomena are still more than capable of holding their own.

Rave Age is an awkward half-step in a couple directions for Vitalic. It's texturally half-baked and predictable.

If you can forgive Barnes' very unfortunate excursions into hip-hop and overlook what is hopefully the last few Georgie Fruit guest spots, you'll be amazed at the range of sounds that the band manages to successfully explore here.

The majority of Hands of Glory is devoted to covers, though, and while Bird already has plenty of fine covers in his catalogue ("Don't Be Scared", "Trimmed + Burning", "The Giant of Illinois"), his efforts here are something near enough lacklustre and uninspiring.

No matter who else we see in his work, this record stands on its own in terms of how it plays for the listener.

While the album may err one too many times on the side of caution and doesn't venture much beyond its superficial pop veneer–"Foolish Person" notwithstanding–it still shows a band attempting to, and generally succeeding at, conveying the warmth and exuberance of summer.

It's a thoughtful and meditative affair with a meaningful and felt collaboration at its core.

Local Business isn't a bad album, but it doesn't completely pull itself off either.

It makes for one of the most challenging yet rewarding techno oddities of the year and we get the priviledge of seeing a producer honing his craft into something especially unique and cohesive.

It's an intermittently engaging set of ephemeral longevity, ultimately a little too nonspecific and slipshod to be considered alongside the rest of his full-length catalogue.

Banks is showing some desire to move beyond the design that his career has sustained itself on, but this album shows he's not quite ready to cut the cord.

The songs are expensive in their depth of emotion but comforting in their intimacy and alluring appeal.

It takes a certain degree of self-containment in order to encapsulate a place as well as Hundred Waters does, and it's clear that the band has it.

It's one of the most back-to-front solid and uncompromising Berlin techno full-lengths this year.

The sonic corruption and disquieting sense of dread are accomplished with pure muscle alone. But instead of keeping this mindset out in the open, Metz just sweat it out over thirty jarring minutes.

2 finds Mac DeMarco growing as an artist, settling into a workman-like rhythm and puttering through some of the catchiest tracks of the year.

Like last year's A Frightened Rabbit EP, State Hospital lacks some coherency in style, but its brevity makes this less of a problem.

As it stands, these songs represent a promising new direction for Lightning Bolt, but one that they have yet to fully prove themselves adept at.

Nü Sensae are one of the most formidable punk outfits working right now and Sundowning is the work of a band whittling themselves down to occupy the very tip of fury.

For any fans of the group's 90s material, Class Clown is a highly recommended listen, especially for those put off by Factory.