While this album is far from The Hour of Bewilderbeast part two, it does represent a return to Gough's more stripped-down formula of simple, ramshackle pop songs built on electronic and symphonic detritus.

Do It! is about as radical as Clinic seem capable of, which is to say that they finally seem smothered by the borders they’ve set for themselves.

If this album works, it’s because of moments like “Landslide”: those that cut through the density of an artist in flux, one susceptible to myriad influences, managerial grumblings, and producer cues, overeager to pass off his work as undeniably unique.

Somehow, it all works remarkably well together. There are a number of songs that feel like guilty pleasures, and the Gram Parsons/Bob Dylan/Neil Young influences are worn on Adam’s sleeve, but lets face it: we’d all rather hear Ryan doing this than trying to bite ‘70s FM rock or Brit-pop shoegazer nonsense.

Coming from an unknown artist, West would be disappointing if it was anything at all; coming from Williams, it’s entirely abysmal.

Headhunter’s Nomad, taking cues from the mutated sonic vocabulary of minimal techno connoisseurs like Berlin’s Basic Channel, is altogether headier and more unreal. This is a futuristic, moody and vaguely menacing kind of dance music.

These songs, especially in the album’s first half, are uniformly gorgeous—the melodies are often quite good, and this record is all about finding ways to showcase melodies—but they suffer from sameness.

Taken all together, 29 is a staggering piece.

Fluff-heavy, Fast Cars snitches on the upcoming full-length: Blockhead better be back on beats, because Bavitz is moving in a sparse, faux-spacey direction that sounds bored compared to his busy work on Bazooka Tooth, Labor Days, and Daylight. But since there’s always going to be two or three songs on any Aesop release that deserve your Jukie-Board sig file, and especially since the The Living Human Curiosity Sideshow finally allows the listener to figure out what the lyrics to those great songs are, this one is just barely worth your lunch money as well.

There really aren't any bad or outright boring songs here, though Castlemusic's very best moments are largely front-loaded.

Classics can testify just like Ratatat (2004) did, and there’s no shirking of moral duty to melody, but the “growth” between the two albums leaves the sophomore effort a bit of a chore.

It is his fourth record to be titled Finally Famous, which is preposterous for a lot of reasons, the largest of which being that he is still not famous.

This loosely associated collection of songs isn't even the logical extension of some of the more unwise artistic wanderings of Worlds Apart (2005).

There’s no getting around it: this sentimental, electronically-hackneyed glitch-pop shit can be remarkably effective.

Mister Heavenly, for better or worse, have debuted as a strong musical voice, one with perhaps so much combined talent and perspective that their reverence occasionally gets the better of them.

It’s perfectly reasonable to listen to Tape Chants at an ultra-low volume (a la Morton Feldman), but to absorb all of the color and contour of this veritable ocean of sound, I recommend playing it very loud.

The garish cover of Ghostdini is apt: this is an elaborate and unfunny joke, not to mention--if it even bears mentioning at this point—profoundly hateful to women

The record attempts to fuse dance music and complexity, but doesn’t quite reconcile the two; instead, its mindless thrills butt up against impenetrable baths of sound.

Where † crafted sly treasures out of gaudy detritus, single-minded as it may have been, Audio, Video, Disco simply settles for canonizing the forgettable.

Hal is basically just a pleasant, fun album.

There’s other fun songs on The Sun, but nothing that sustains itself as consistently as “Charlotte” and “Numbers.”

I doubt that anybody who found enjoyment in Behind The Music will be able to outright hate Origin Volume 1 because it’s about as similar to its predecessor as a follow-up record can be.

If Surrounded by Silence was Prefuse 73 beside himself, or even ten steps behind himself, Security Screenings is a commendable return to the path blazed by One Word Extinguisher and its subsequent outtakes.

As quiet strings and stupid whizzing noises pull the curtain on LP4, all I imagine is Ratatat going, "Alright, party's over, guys" and all I can think is "wait, is that what was happening for the past 43 minutes?"

Christmas Island shoots you down and makes loathing the same thing as self-loathing. But it’s also inspiring to listen to.

If there’s a weakness to Makers, it’s the occasional unmemorable tune in the album’s middle section.