Deeply individualistic, dark and woebegotten, one can’t help but root for his continued presence seemingly regardless of his efforts.

Lost Marbles is no more inconsistent than most respectable bands’ A-side albums, and attains greater brilliance on a number of occasions than they could ever hope for.

News and Tributes does lack the visceral immediacy of its predecessor, and is a significant if subtle departure for the band, so it would be hard for anyone who fell in love with their debut to embrace it immediately. But, given time, the record gets under your skin in slow and somewhat surprising ways, eventually coming off sounding like a very good transitional album by a group with a whole lot more staying power than most would have credited them with two years ago.

Even amongst his New Jersey-based peers and labelmates, Lynch's work remains disconnected from pop and from folk music while never being truly disengaged with it, and Terra serves as major evidence of his growing confidence as a composer and player.

Popp sounds as if he's having a ten-year-old argument with himself, and though he's certainly earned the right to make the point that this argument still holds currency, O is less than convincing.

With Playtime Is Over Wiley is finally living up to his reputation by achieving consistency without becoming mediocre; delivering a steady, honed set that's sharp enough to split flesh from bone.

Quaristice--the band’s 9th full length, with about as many EPs--is probably the best album Autechre could have created at this point in their career.

The honesty of Bozulich and her band is striking, their creativity voracious.

Port Entropy, Shugo's fifth LP (depending on how you reckon Fragment, his 2003 CD-R self-release), decisively occupies the realm of the waking: the nimble, the abstract, and the exciting.

Better to think of this one as a purposefully delineated double A-side.

It begins with two heretofore uncharacteristic forays into garage rock, wanders into several guitar epics, tries on an acoustic guitar and the French language, and somewhere in there plops down a typical Quasi number or two. Unlike their three previous albums, though, Coomes shows up with some bullet-proof material.

Worldwide‘s participatory highs are intense, if fleeting, and that cover would look amazing on a t-shirt.

Despite some engaging song-craft, however, the album overall feels lacking in real substance and its fixations leave me blase.

What The Tale Tells employs stock language to present stock characters going through stock conflicts.

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.

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.

The record is absolutely at a pace with the band's great debut.

There’s plenty of virtually virtuoso moments to make it worthwhile, and Doom just isn’t one to suck no matter how prolific he gets, but this sequel can’t help but disappoint after Vaudeville Villain.

Patrick Wolf still engenders a puzzling and sometimes fascinating discussion about romanticism and pretension and authenticity and songwriter worship, but what’s disappointing is that he seems to no longer be a part of that discussion, simply the subject of it.

Despite the fact that it’s an obvious misstep from a band that seemed bulletproof... it's still a strong album with a lot more charm than, say, the Bravery or the Killers.

Three more songs of similar quality and dropping the story about how this was just some free writing experiment and Sweaty Magic would probably have been one of my albums of the year.

On Talk to La Bomb, the main elements of the Brazilian Girls debut are still in place, but both vocal and instrumental elements head toward the middle, leaving us with a more polished and ultimately less satisfying listen.

Tokyo Police Club have readjusted their approach-a much leaner, Strokes-ier brand of indie rock, which allows them to continue to play to their strengths while conveniently avoiding the missteps that held them back before.

Listening to this record is like hearing someone who has some moral fiber describe their first one-night stand. There is seriousness, jubilation, unease, and regret.

There's a lot of rappity-rap cliches at work here: overwrought punchlines, vague disses, bitching about the industry. Kweli spends a good chunk of the album acting like a drunk, unemployed superhero, stumbling into supermarkets to aid old ladies whose purses are fully in their possession.

The remainder of Echoes is considerably more diffuse, engaging in levels of genre-hopping that might seem a little desperate were it not for the fact that most of the songs hold up.

Although flawed, Rockferry holds a startling amount of promise.

Kidnapped by Neptune is overly long and ambitious, even if it is a determined step towards something far more interesting.