I am...amused. But it's sort of like the horrific fascination of seeing a train wreck.

Parallax Error Beheads You improves upon [his previous] albums’ strengths--wide-eyed eclecticism among other things--managing greater coherence and scope than anything he’s ever done.

Convivial is the closest Ripatti has inched toward making something that would fit in with the more outrageous and flamboyantly mainstream house productions that dominate charts and hip clubs these days, and at the same time still very heady, engaging music.

Love is All has refined its basic ideas and yielded a follow-up much more playable than its predecessor.

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.

The Renaissance functions as a representation that he’s never needed to say much of anything to be immensely enjoyable.

Until the group learns to keeps pace or more effectively makes space for Thorpe, their singer will remain the first, best, and only reason to listen to Wild Beasts.

Surfing does not serve a discussion of any of these things; it is, considering all ephemeral connotations, a side project. And an obnoxious one at that.

The songs generally hold up, but the production job remains confounding. Keith Uddin’s meaty fists have ruined this album.

Smartly, Microcastle stops short of alienating, an adjective more than a few scribes have lobbed at "Cryptograms."

The record is neither a failure, nor can I imagine is it a pisstake. No, this is Tom Jenkinson letting out his inner rock star, letting his guard down from the laptops a little bit more, and having sloppy fun.

The ethno-tinted dreampop of School of Seven Bells left me stymied and listless and, most crucially for a critic, at a loss for words.

It makes for a workmanlike listen. For all the frills of doom and cadences of industry firing on all greasy pistons, the dynamics at hand are simple, rounded up summarily when the album presents its glaring contradictions as a matter of fact

This is a record filled with breezy jazz tunes ripe for a dance hall. It’s also music that will give you a headache from thinking, if you take the time to truly appreciate the multi-faceted work of art that it is.

This, then, is the future fashioned out of the stuffs of past and present, out of maintaining a firm aesthetic while employing a staggering array of techniques, out of reaching for the proverbial stars. Tronic hits with the intrinsic revelation and self-evident relevance of new truth.

Given that the record is so nominally personal and probing, it’s telling that there is not one moment of transcendence, or relief, or acceptance, or melody, or substance.

With both "Everybody" and now Car Alarm, the Sea and Cake would appear to be in the midst of an inspiration streak unheard of since their first three albums, and we’re richer for it. Impressive for a quartet of mid-‘40s post-rockers on their eighth record.

There's something downright overwhelming about this disc, whether it's the unremitting playfulness or the way the band pulls together beauty and energy from the oddest of sounds or the way over top they sometimes launch into abstract political commentary.

Like all AC/DC records, this is a troubling one to love.

It’s a sad, wonderful tone he creates, but one too shy or just too gracious to stand up for itself.

Substance-free, without a whit of melody or lyricism or artistry but flouncing about in a post-production fantasia, the album made sounds that sounded like music for people who wanted to like music and have music playing near them but make no investment in the enjoyment of such stuff.

Reefer feels like a pleasant departure from that tired self-parody; tossed-off but in a good way.

With a span of almost three-quarters of an hour, the eight components of III are on the fat side of five minutes per head, though each imbued with sufficient ingenuity to stave off the threat of bloating.

While this solo venture is a unique take on the sound developed with BMSR, his song structures and instrumentation are built-in with monotony, practically usurping the purpose of developing a creative solo project in the first place.

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.

There’s a brilliant EP lurking somewhere in this record, but Mike Skinner is either too ambitious or too fatigued to rescue it.