If viewed as a unique, and relatively unmediated collection of experimental tracks rather than an album, Collaborative Works is an enchanting listen. What it lacks in structural polish, it makes up for in quality.

Overall, this is an excellent return from an always consistent band who's legacy has grown and grown over the years since their depature in 2011.

Visions of a Life is a phenomenal achievement. It has captured on record the thrill, angst, sadness and uncertainty of being in your twenties and not really knowing what’s going to happen or should happen. All of it is never anything less than intoxicating, heartfelt and effortless.

Their adventurous spirit is in such clear abundance on Open Here, that you could almost forget that this is a band with a stronger grasp of the basics than most.

While it sometimes isn’t the smoothest of rides, there’s more than enough here to help maintain a sense of devotion to Wasser’s work.

It’s an album certain of what it wants to be, but lacking in the naturalness needed to truly convince, let alone amaze.

It shows that jazz isn’t confined to the past, or dusty records, and is loud, vibrant, angry at society and has something to say. It shows that Onyx Collective can rub shoulders with any band and give as good as they get. It also shows that Onyx Collective can write music flawless music, as well as just jam the bangers out, and have fun doing it.

It might share some sonic similarities [to Sea Change], but it's an altogether brighter beast, built by an older, wiser soul who seems to have been taking a few years to work out exactly where he wants to be as an artist.

The catchy songs are catchier; the melodies are tighter; the peaks and troughs dip higher and lower. ... If crossover hits were still a thing in the indie game, 'Watering' would be the low-key bridge to a more post-punk-savvy crowd. But other moments just fail to pop, like the title track that’s blown out and unfocused.

It is beautiful, ethereal and organic, breathing with life and is as far removed from the clean overly produced dance music which he holds in such distain. It has been a long wait, but on this showing it has certainly been worth it.

To pretend that Life is Good is flawless would be misleading, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable return to form.

Picaresque is more than an indie-pop album, it's a collection of eleven lavishly arranged acts rife with the whiff of greasepaint and the roar of an adoring crowd, which you should be a part of.

Throughout the record the ooo-oooh swoopiness is enchanting and the constant SNES-soundtrack bubblings take you back to a simpler, more tranquil and ultimately a place filled with hope.

The album is an enjoyable hodgepodge that trades neat cohesion for scattish variety.

Women write songs, but they tease us by keeping them hidden, interspersing the teeniest seconds of dazzling clarity with cool sounding sonic murk. And credit to returning producer Chan VanGaalen for whipping up an ambience as dense and seductive as that sepia blizzard on the front sleeve. His proteges are writing good songs, but it's not so much a production job as a sleight of hand trick--VanGaalan stops you from seeing Women's full workings.

If you put in the effort this is one of the most rewarding albums of the year so far, but like pronouncing its title, don’t be surprised if you don’t get it first time.

By shirking an introspective approach, he has succeeded brilliantly in wending a line between intricacy and intimacy. The output is a genuinely majestic creation, brimming with a richness of substance to both enthral and devastate.

Where Everything Everything’s previous releases were as bonkers-crammed full of a surfeit of different stylistic tics, flourishes, embellishments and more not only from song to song within each album but even in every individual track, here, a definite sound and style has been settled on.

Only time will tell whether CSFLY turns out to be as seminal as Crooks and Lovers, but that isn’t important. What is important is that it’s an accomplished, interesting and thoroughly enjoyable body of work that will be played again and again and again, on the radio, at festivals and in bedrooms the world over.

While Shah’s tunes are so enjoyable to listen to, that unsettling harmonic twang continues to add a feverish subsidy to her soulful voice, a reminder of the uneasiness of the subject matter.

The songs are little self-contained vignettes about various characters and their journeys, resembling campfire or drinking songs. Some are really bland and instantly forgettable, others--really poetic and imaginative.

Konoyo exists as a glorious symphony that brings together the starkness of electronic experimentation and the human warmth of traditional acoustics into an astonishing whole.

Civilian has just enough personality to stop it being completely pedestrian.

It’s the sound of a gifted songwriter comfortable with his craft and in his own skin, offering glinting new facets to earlier sounds and the songs present on Ruminations, and it makes for a subtle, yet striking departure from everything that came before.

Burst Apart deserves all the plaudits that can be thrown at it; albums are rarely as unashamedly, gut-wrenchingly, genuinely emotional as this.

Avatar may not be as intense or as out-of-loop as expected, but its otherworldy mix of prog-rock and freeform more than lives up to the expectations formed in the wake of 2004's Blue Cathedral.

At once Herndon’s most accessible and most adventurous record, this is digital age avant-garde sound art put through a pop prism, and it’s all the more exciting as a result.

The fact that Smith rarely untangles The Fall from the cryptic absurdist approach that has become his stock-in-trade, to head toward this type of profoundly personal material, only makes it that more affecting when he actually does deviate from his path most traveled.