UGK 4 Life leaves listeners wondering where they might go next, and even if sated with one last release still lamenting that those further steps—gargantuan or tiny, toward greatness or overreach, whichever—will necessarily be solo, uncontrasted by that inimitable, nimble, lascivious whine we’ve lost.

The tracks are at their most compelling--which is to say: very compelling--when they're listened to in isolation from one another or liberated from the album's initial lineup. The greatest favor you can do as a listener is to allow the same open air and breathing room the songs allow themselves.

It’s a pleasant collection, comfortably consolidated and comfortably nice, despite the lack of anything earth-shattering.

Howl of the Lonely Crowd is a strong, seasoned indie-pop record that'll sustain the cult while opening up yet another avenue for the curious to stumble across one of the more tragically ignored bands of their time.

The thing that lifts The Great Destroyer just above an album like Trust is that it is more spirited: there’s a hint of revival here.

To say Yours Truly is stuck in Grandaddy territory isn’t exactly a dig; that band produced four consistently solid records, and it turns out Lytle is as competent on his own as he is with friends

Universal Audio is a triumph in pop standard, simultaneously reminiscent of all the clichés, soundtrack archetypes, and euphonic exigencies of pure melody inherent in the mainstream pop of the last two decades. Yet it’s still a fully realized, consistently rewarding, original work.

The Gents waltz their way through these ten sturdy, mid-tempo numbers rarely striking a bum note.

Earnestness is so damningly difficult to nail down, but Fink and his cohorts come as close as anything this year, displaying an aptness for cloying love songs minus the puppy dog eyes.

De La Soul [are] wise enough to keep the filler to a minimum, thus presenting a more consistent product than that offered by their followers/peers.

A dozen listens through... and I can’t help but think the band has done better in past.

Most of Cookies proceeds in similar fashion, with crunchy, showy riffs supporting clever hooks in the name of two-and-a-half minute pop nuggets that the late John Peel would have likely appreciated.

What you should go to Destroy Rock and Roll for is highly enjoyable, competent, reasonably inventive, energetic techno.

As an amalgam of mind-warping melodies and high-minded concepts, Alegranza! is more than deserving of our praise. Then again, El Guincho could have avoided the album’s key missteps by cutting down on the obvious Afrobeat tropes and experimenting more with traditional song-oriented vocals.

The three audio discs... are a mixed bag at best.

If McCombs' first release this year evoked a sense of baroque horror, this one does loosen up, offering at least a few degrees of clarity in a catalog more defined with each passing year by its creator's desire to subvert the tropes of his genre and refuse anything resembling an easy reading.

As a stand alone work this is one of the most convincing collections that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have produced thus far.

It's okay to mourn Apparat's past and question his trajectory. Just don't ignore what rests at the center: a record that, if nothing more, soaks in the present moment.

For East of Eden to be such an assured sophomore release, Victoria Bergsman has a kind of steely reserve to take herself further out of the picture on records to come.

The Way of the World is just one more Mose Allison album: exceptional in it’s own right but entirely expected.

Class Clown gives us what is most best and most constant about the band--their sonic restlessness, shambolic hooks, broken glory--and nothing less.

Too good to be merely forgettable or a waste of a decade's worth of building and planning, but too uniform and flawed to stand out as a major achievement or even one of the year's best.

Zimmerman's toned-down delivery and seeming refusal to belt out his lyrics, combined with the slow, slow sprawl of the tracks herein, make Dub Egg an exhausting and arid listen, even when its tracks are so individually satisfying.

Wilderness is nothing if not consistent, and even its dullest points are palatable given the right mood.

While not punch-for-punch or track-for-track the heavy-hitter "War Elephant" was, or even offering the tonal variety of "Born on Flag Day," the consistency has come into its own doleful focus, the lyrics have reached a blisteringly high point and for any/all flaws, and, in the end, it just leaves me holding the broken pieces of my face in my fucking hands.

What could come off as a gimmick, however, instead plays like a focused foray into day-glo disco.

None of the songs quite scale the heights of a "Stuck Between Stations" or "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," but it's to the band's credit that Heaven goes down considerably easier than Stay Positive (2008), fortunately bereft of the obvious clunkers that rendered that album's Side B such a slog.

Intuit makes sense, easy enough; it elucidates Knopf’s part in his more popular band, as if that were a secret, and it tentatively allows a familiar songwriter some more control, some new ground.