Utilitarian sensibilities typically create better, catchier results, but Little Boots’s producers can’t help flaunting their knob-twiddling abilities, justifying their paychecks while counterintuitively making Hesketh’s music sound all the more amateurish.

While rarely graceless and often impressive (“Two Humans,” worth noting, develops into something sexy before going for broke), everything on Fight Softly just seems too much. There’s a lot that’s pretty here--but there’s a lot.

Be Brave doesn’t live up to the rambunctious energy and junkyard swagger of the band’s debut LP, And Girls Club, but instead offers more subdued moments that allow Sambol’s frontman personality to transcend the clatter.

Although a little inconsistent in its layout, The Law of Large Numbers packs that same precise bite that brought the Delgados to public knowledge, scaled down/expanded to suit its creator, who before writing songs was a physicist.

Nitetime Rainbows has its moments of bliss, but they aren’t as enveloping as I’d hoped; the problem here is that you wake too early from the dream.

What's interesting isn't that an ambient record has suddenly introduced vocals, which is nothing new, or that these vocals are used exclusively for talking rather than singing, which isn't particularly surprising. What's really important is what this talking is totally, explicitly about: rather than just hinting at atmospheres and moods, vaguely suggesting a concept which can be seized upon as the thematic core of the music, Loscil provides what is literally an explanation of an album, which in turn makes the album about the act of its explanation.

What’s happening with Similes is that it’s doing everything ambient music is supposed to do but is finding a very forward and fresh manner of going about it.

The Golden Archipelago falls somewhere in that tenuous space, never able to live up to the power of its initial impression. It’s more the kind of thing that should be fully absorbed over the course of a few attentive, complete listens, then allowed to dissipate into the realm of a beautiful idea.

The thing Have One On Me absolutely excels at is the creation of remarkable moments amid its rambling odes.

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.

Though the album is an hour long, there are at least thirty minutes of excellent music here. Those who were excited by the direction implied by 13 Moons, however, can't help but feel disappointed.

Another hip-hop comfort blanket, The Stimulus Package reminds us a dope loop and a capable MC justify their own existence.

An overcooked vanity piece from a band inflated by praise, Odd Blood heads in every direction at once.

One Life Stand hasn’t brought Hot Chip completely out of the deep hole they dug for themselves one album earlier, and it’s still not as consistent as the inimitable, career-defining The Warning, but it’s unquestionably more “Boy From School” than the histrionics of “Shake a Fist,” and that’s a good enough reason to stay with this band not just for the kids.

It may just be his best record. I’m New Here manages to pack a lifetime’s worth of artistic growth in one completely unobtrusive half-hour.

In practice and in total, Eyelid Movies isn’t a contrarian or particularly abrasive debut—it’s entirely likable, paced well and efficiently, dishing out a little something for everybody but never seemingly exhausted by this task.

With Black Noise the trance is too sporadic to even really exist, which does make it a much more appropriate record for a casual listen--but sometimes a listener just wants to get utterly lost.

Rebirth is career suicide for everybody except for Lil’ Wayne, just as hanging with him drug-wise for a night would be (I see him coaching a new friend, “No, you have to inhale through your eye“).

In this way, A Chorus of Storytellers resembles the Flaming Lips’ Embryonic (2009) in that it’s a characteristic and maybe even obvious album that stuffs a band’s commercial instincts under a protective layer of feints and refusals

while on a different album “Healter Skelter” might have been a wonderful bridge between some of the more structured stuff Shining used to do; on Black Jazz it’s just the most weird and interesting version of the same track we’ve already sat through three times.

For this and a couple other of IRM‘s electronic-heavy songs, Gainsbourg sounds like she’s doing her best Trish Keenan, though the songs lack the warmth and haunting tension a band like Broadcast can create from similar soundscapes.

This album is a misstep, certainly, but an exciting one nonetheless; I can only hope that eight months from now this band bangs out another shorter record superior to this one in every way.

Teen Dream is just such a fantastic pop record because it never seems to try to be: it’s almost as if the duo had intended to make another mopey shoegazing affair and accidentally stumbled upon something transcendent.

There is Love in You renders "Ringer" primer, posits itself as perfect solution to messy experimentation, and while it’s hard to find the divisiveness in that, it’s also hard to be truly moved.

After a decade of contrarian, even petulant repudiations of the music that made the Magnetic Fields famous, Realism is capitulation, contrition, and celebration at once. It’s back to basics in the best way.

CUD aren’t the first or best among many, but what you can hear when you listen to Boca Negra--in addition to a really excellent neo-jazz record--is the sounds of a band improvising while actually not really improvising. They’re unconsciously pulling from something rich and energetic and fundamental to the way we appreciate music.

It's in the zealous craftsmanship of doing just about everything right and causing that aggregate rightness to harmonize in vibrant song about trying to be better that the truth becomes evident: this band is for real.

What we have here is a great album, un- or under-appreciated....What Transference does is it opens a space for this band to experiment within again.