It’s an interesting, intermittently excellent album from a skilled group that could still use a little help in getting out of their own way.

For this and a couple other of IRM‘s electronic-heavy songs, Gainsbourg sounds like she’s doing her best Trish Keenan, though the songs lack the warmth and haunting tension a band like Broadcast can create from similar soundscapes.

C'mon doesn't break much new ground for Low in the way that their last two records did, and that's clearly not the goal here.

It’s smart, depressing, inoffensive pop perfect for a rainy day.

Where the record works best are its bookends -- the places where it most sounds like Cat Power.

The terrible truth is that -- and maybe this is a matter of an album’s length, replayability, interesting tenure, obedience, whatever -- Gruff Rhys will always be as politely awesome as Gruff Rhys has always been, and that’s just not enough anymore.

I can think of nothing more liberating than to dive into its dark waters.

Mr. M is something to behold in its details: the kind of record that seems to open up gradually over time, graceful and pretty sure but brimming subcutaneously with many yet-undiscovered pleasures.

Musically the most important aspect of this collaborative effort is that their voices work so nicely with and against each other.

Pemberton’s crafted a uniquely engaging sonic statement that stands on its own legs.

What's interesting isn't that an ambient record has suddenly introduced vocals, which is nothing new, or that these vocals are used exclusively for talking rather than singing, which isn't particularly surprising. What's really important is what this talking is totally, explicitly about: rather than just hinting at atmospheres and moods, vaguely suggesting a concept which can be seized upon as the thematic core of the music, Loscil provides what is literally an explanation of an album, which in turn makes the album about the act of its explanation.

The tinny, noisey/flangey/hurtful sound that's shellacked on in cheap 16 bit hinders some of the best material he's written to date.

Some of these songs are excellent, in an unfinished but inspired way. But many of the album's tracks evidence a band that's bursting at the seams with talent, only to stumble on unfocused, scattershot song-writing.

So, yes: this is cuddly, warm and intimate, just like all your favorite blogs have said.

A welcome new start for this talented band.

While it's a coalition of fantastic talents, Themselves submit to the expectations of a pussy glitch-pop crowd, and the Notwist mistakenly assume that hip-hop fans don't want songs with dynamism or structure.

We, The Vehicles is a fine collection of songs by a band running on all cylinders.

The real credit, however, goes to the songwriting of the eponymous duo. This album was not "saved in the production," as it were. The Con is a document written in the half-frenzy of a clusterfuck.

It’s better than Nouns, better than the best songs on Weirdo Rippers (2007), and for once, I think, offers this cool idea that Randy and Dean’s next record might move away from the unilateral and slightly prudish use of noise as nothing but noise.

Nearly everything about Citrus is so accomplished, refined, and downright transcendent that it could very well stand alongside Loveless as a modernized shoegaze staple.

It’s a lot of slickness that adds up to little, though, as a culturally myopic Roots Manuva audibly struggles to feel out the changed face of hip-hop; he sounds unsure of what tone to take and what words to say.

I believe in the Vivian Girls. In every gorgeous harmony that coats bitterness, in every ambition subjugated to truncated song structure and muffled production, in every bouncy beat beneath a baleful drawl somehow made of equally bouncy elements.

If this is EitS attempting to summarize and compact their three previous albums into one easily consumable package, the results merely drag the listener along through series of “catastrophic” cues that tell them what they should be feeling.

Yes, the album stretches itself a little thin towards the end and some of Smith’s slurred lyrics are truly unintelligible, but essentially this record is joyously, thankfully, inexplicably, after all these years, still the sound of the Fall.

Another left-field triumph for Gira.

The Magic Numbers is one of the best pop albums of the year.

Infiniheart is too bright, too beautiful, and almost too good to be believed.

It’s a fine record -- one of his better in some time.