Get Lonely is a record that requires multiple listens (itself a first) but which absolutely forbids them -- I've been unable to listen to it in one sitting after a month. Not out of its weakness or my boredom, but in its relentless despair and my weakness.

Angles manages litheness; First Impressions was all sludge. And despite the rumored ills surrounding the recording process, the resulting album paints the band as re-energized and optimistic, playful in a way their last record so detrimentally wasn't.

The Crying Light may prove to be too precarious to hold up on its own in the future, but for now Antony & the Johnsons have provided a perfect gateway to their music.

Specifically though, Rebirth absolutely boasts some of the best tunes that Cliff's recorded since his string of successes surrounding the international releases of The Harder They Come.

Each time the album so overtly flips over, the same brief blushes of goosebumps, the same visceral highs, the same infectious, clapping percussion: I straight up have a crush on this album.

Most of the songs show the band in top form.

So in comes an album with zero individuality, zero originality, zero workaroundability...and it’s really good. How good this thing can get is sort of terrifying considering how bad this material might sound in the hands of other bands.

Sometimes this gets boring, when tracks lull and hunch into the next and Sam’s voice doesn’t do much to challenge the monotony. Sometimes it’s confusing to hear such graciously restrained music eventually show itself as meticulous, experimental, and deep, deep, deep. Well, not confusing. Refreshing.

She etches out a style that is as feeble as it is vicious. And she owns it, her voice only an assurance of just how cool she really is.

The Horror is one of the label's most tenacious offerings yet.

There is always a feeling of constructive clarification at the heart of Clay Class, and that reappraisal of the traditional sense of progress is something that is cemented by the ideology shining through the holes that Prinzhorn Dance School so artfully poke through the fourth wall.

Immolate Yourself feels like a transitional record from an act that was almost ready to make itself crystal clear.

Ultimately, Avatar’s change in direction is hardly an unpleasant one, partially because it’s really fun to lip synch “Let it burn / Let it bleed!” while playing the air guitar on your knees, but mostly because it still rocks frighteningly hard.

It is maybe a bit surprising that it's so damned interesting to listen to, and that, along with everything else on The Something Rain, is a powerful testament to the skill of the musicians Staples has surrounded himself with.

With II, the Psychic Paramount have created an record both gratifying in its dense magnitude and equally rewarding in the fragility of the elements that the album is composed of.

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.

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

The Drive-By Truckers remain a distinctly American band, a band whose stories are on equal footing with the music beneath.

These songs are enjoyable and beautiful and pure hip-hop --- glittering, hard diamonds that hopefully won’t get buried in the underground scene’s mounds of coal.

Despite being monstrously homogenous and boring, The Fallen Leaf Pages is too much of a melodic accomplishment to dismiss.

The concept of a modern type of guilt is probably supposed to imply the effortlessly achievable comfort and depressed humility with which much of the album is sung. Perhaps ironically, the best way to enjoy Modern Guilt is with blinders on to this sort of temporal perspective.

One of Stern's greatest strengths is that she never relies on any tried and true shorthand when it comes to self-expression.

Another left-field triumph for Gira.

When it's warm it offers a cool side, the underside of one's pillow, and when it's frosty it offers a coverlet of weight or the stable resting of a hand.

A good few years on from the rise and partial Fall of the Decemberists, Meloy and Co. are managing, still, to carry the fire.

The music of The Iron Gates at Throop and Newport is about as universal as this stuff gets.

Ceremonials is a sumptuously produced album of mystic pop anthems.

No matter how smartly sequenced these parts are in Desire’s segmented flow, they remain varying nascent coups without one distinct rallying cry to organize the din.