Monomania is the sound of a healthy and aware group of musicians who have experimented with artifice and ultimately moved beyond it.

Hypermagic Mountain absolutely trounces nearly every other act in its general stylistic area. Regrettably, however, the duo’s fourth album lacks the formal and emotional peaks and valleys that encourage listening and re-listening to albums in other less hectic and punishing genres.

Enough Thunder certainly offers up enough for any Blake fan to both love and hate--and at the end of the day still be entirely unsure of exactly what to hope for.

The record is a virtuosic display of talent (I don’t even know what sounds I’m hearing on the chorus of “Juliann Wilding”) but it comes across both too eager to impress and too self-satisfied to edit.

On Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile introduces his voice as an element into his solo music, and in turn takes one step forward and two steps back; though his songs are perfectly adequate, the reference points and production are easier than on any previous Ducktails release, and they suffer for it.

It bears all the signs of an artistic statement, stretching for meaning even as it reconstitutes and tears at the corners of its component definitions. It is both complete and incomplete; logical and wayward; good and, yeah, bad.

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

Though at times deeply affecting, Voyageur is not the great statement of a record one might hope for after a four-year absence.

It’s good, and I don’t mean just because it reminds me of Mass Effect‘s soundtrack but on the terms of a record: it ingratiates and ebbs and even exasperates, at a stretch, before rewarding in the end.

Some of the more irregular numbers scream “demo” between their whisperings--think very early Arab Strap, midi beats in place of the crass Scottish semen puns--but overall it’s a solid little barometer, one or two cues offering insight into Casiotone’s current organic direction.

I’m Going Away is a good record, it just doesn’t really sound like the Fiery Furnaces. Though for some, I’m sure, that’ll be very welcome news indeed.

On this, their debut, they’ve shown us they can pull downtrodden bents as good as anyone. But I’m being serious, serious rock band: on your next record I want to hear something more Pope-like.

The monolithic nature of the album feels necessary, but like any sustained chord, every other song tends to have less interesting undertones.

These are good songs, catchy enough to claim a place in your head while grounded by enough passion to put them close to your heart. It’s just that the Long Winters have proven themselves capable of even better than that.

Some Loud Thunder is a mixed bag of spectacular material and hodge-podge studio doodles.

The Blueprint's vaunted resuscitation of sample-based boom-bap rap production is replaced here by big corny synth wipes, a sometimes-fascinating corollary to Jay’s corporate sense of purpose.

Here we’re given a respite from Bon Iver’s heavy crises while still loving on Bon Iver; here, Volcano Choir is inevitably weightless--a pretty happy band with a pretty happy album.

It’s unquestionable that Shine contains more than a few of the most embarrassing recorded moments of Anastasio’s career... More often than not however, Shine serves as a fine reminder that Anastasio is a pro who’s been doing the rock thing far too long to release a crap product.

While it never outshines the alt-country canon that precedes it, The Brag & Cuss is a welcome addition to the genre, an album that understands its influences and rarely oversteps the boundaries they’ve set.

It's a broken diorama, exceedingly imperfect, and as moving for what it isn't as for what it is.

Robin Pecknold's well-chronicled bout with writer's block and three years later, Helplessness Blues has arrived, and the good news is that it unquestionably sounds like a Fleet Foxes record-which is to say: warm and exquisitely pretty.

Substantive lyrics aren’t part of Pip Brown’s forte but, then again, they’re totally unnecessary in the genre to which she peddles.

Lucky Shiner is a good argument for the album as a conceptual whole, and for a musical environment a bit slower than the singles-based landscape that birthed Gold Panda as an entity to be reckoned with.

So it’s possible that the songs on Wait For Me will end up in the same coffeehouses and car commercials and other small, sterile environments as those on Play, but Hall’s drawing inwards as hard as he can, to the great benefit of his compositions, and Wait For Me is unabashedly majestic.

Too Beautiful to Work isn't focused enough to create an atmosphere that whole, and for all the virtue of its experimental tendencies, "Cold Canada" shows the record might have fared better if it wasn't so antsy.

Much of Love and other planets is too accessible to be denounced, and too melodically strong to be ignored.

Their latest, Castle Talk, isn't a staggering improvement on that front. It feels--and, in its middle section even more than on Power Move--not so much a cohesive, self-contained album as a collection of Screaming Females songs that will sound very good live.

The problem seems to be a not yet fully developed understanding of how to make their pop moments gel with the layered atmosphere they seem committed to.