Aesop Rock’s terrifically brooding new record.

It’s an expert turn by seasoned professions thoroughly in their own comfort zone.

As bland and timid a record as likely to come out in the strikingly boring year of 2006.

Heim is very nice and also very spare. Less ebulliently cheating with surprise and indulgence is Hvarf, worth the band’s typical awe just for the official addition of live staple 'Hafsól' to the band’s buyable repertoire.

Pretty much nothing from Dear Heather is without some kind of significant flaw, and the only thing saving it from being below average---at least in a general sense, and not kept strictly to his own discography----are the few moments that Cohen is kept solitary with as little outside interference as possible.

Crow’s ego and identity have been largely removed from Living Well’s equation, and in its place are a number of undeviating, short, one-word-title indie rock songs that don’t require an explanation or setup.

Whether it marks the beginning of a significant shift for the group or not, Molina's growing confidence as a vocalist and songwriter remains levels above his peers -- and, like Songs: Ohia's final days, proves more than capable of forgiving its own shortcomings.

With shorter, tighter songs far more reminiscent of 80’s post-punk than Southern AOR, Aha Shake Heartbreak can only be considered a pleasant surprise.

I was surprised that it holds up well to close scrutiny--in spite of my reservations, the album is well performed and crafted, with a surprisingly mordant thematic unity touching on mortality and the soured promises of childhood--but I’m still bothered by its anonymity.

[A] lovable shamble of a rock record.

The result is that we have a transitory album, but also a typically beautiful and subtle one.

What makes In Evening Air a great break-up album is the same thing that makes Teen Dream (2010) a great break-up album: it's not exactly that the lyrics espouse these profound, poetic truths about relationships so much as they use sonic patterns and pretty mundane language to create a sad and disorienting sense of something very familiar disappearing.

Of Montreal will always appeal to anyone looking for a world to get lost in. Is it too much to ask for him to visit ours once in a while?

Dälek have refined their work but their work has no reaching trajectory.

Their rhythm section (ooh, two drummers!) is serviceable but generally underwhelming, and song by song the record just falls flat.

This is Rhys wholly in his wheelhouse: offering up a handful of standalone highlights and clever deep cuts, hitting pleasure centers along the way, and quietly adding to a catalogue as deceptively substantial as anyone currently working the pop circuit with fifteen years behind and at least another fifteen ahead.

Fourteen tracks may seem slight for someone with that kind of longevity and creative drive, but if it means we get a listenable, often times surprising collection as opposed to a bloated vault dump, then I'll take this over something more "complete" any day.

This album maintains youth and vigor through dirty language and clean production, but eventually settles for something very middle-of-the-road.

In the end, Fuckbook is a disappointing Yo La Tengo album, but the band’s made it clear that it doesn’t want it to be that, instead just a pretty good Condo Fucks record.

The starburst drum-fills, the jackknife stabs of guitar, the vocal melodies bronzed with catchiness-all of it soars, nodding at vitality, as though the aesthetics of joy might, if stressed enough, smother sadness until it's finally gone for good.

Motion Sickness is an unnecessary document that is almost disquieting in its puppet-like manipulation of the facts. It’s a live album masquerading as a bunch of inferior studio cuts.

There was just so much I loved about Damien in Absence and so much that disappointed me.

It is a cohesive suite of powerfully effective songs with one thing on its mind: "the inexorable march of Time."

In the end Love Is Simple is less than the sum of its parts. Its balls-out rock is fun but hopelessly overloaded (like, how many vocal tracks do these songs really need?) while its softer sections sound like brief intermissions before the guitars pick up again, making them relatively limp.

The best way to package this album-Flying Lotus, Madlib, and Ian Curtis in the weirdest musical threesome ever tailored for the likes of DOOM and Ghostface Killah-as the normal routes of genre identification don't quite do it here.

The result is a whirlwind of a record, tight but decidedly fleshed-out, doting on death but still affirming life, and definitive proof that Widowspeak looks and sounds best in rapturous tones of earth.

It just simply seems that Stuart Murdoch isn’t a very portable songwriter: he may be able to write Stuart Murdoch songs for Stuart Murdoch, but translated to anything but his music frequently exhibits its participants’ weaknesses, and the end result is unsettling and unfulfilling like few Belle and Sebastian products are.

Shaolin is simply tiresome, a heap of cliches with no animating force beneath its husk-like frame, not so much a follow-up to anything but our long-held anticipation for something better.