One of the great pleasures of The House at Sea is that you can enjoy it without thinking about it, on a purely sensual, intuitive level, without feeling that there's nothing there to consider.

While wildly uneven and far from either's strongest work, Instrumental Tourist does have its moments of inspiration.

Candela doesn't represent Mice Parade's most memorable outing, but it does showcase a willingness to expand the expectations surrounding their sound.

McCombs has performed a bit of rodeo jiujitsu, stealing his band's name back by invoking the myth of the West.

In A Wonder Working Stone, Roberts continues to tinker thoughtfully with the shared tradition of the Isles, always somewhat familiar but modern and discordant enough to render pause and consideration.

Most of Light Up Gold's songs are either filled with clever insights or self-aware honesty.

Coming Out of the Fog is quite a good album, but it contains no real surprises.

It's a fine album, but after each listen I find myself wishing a little more had happened, that more of the human behind it all might shine through in unexpected ways.

The A List of Burning Mountains performance is a stand-out LP, which shows a pleasing growth of confidence to expand beyond the confines of hyphen-rock.

Blood Rushing is an odd cornucopia of sounds, styles and rhythms bound together by Foster's singular voice and unwavering control, and such a surprise on first listen that I found it something of a grower.

[Fade's songs] blur and fade like old memories, but leave a meaningful impression.

Though the scale of these EPs isn't as wide as some of Muhly's other recent works, it feels every bit as immediate.

Pye Corner Audio's latest [is] the marquee example of Ghost Box at their most distilled, their most essential: reaching beyond by reaching within.

For now at least, the fragments are intriguing enough to keep me waiting for the next ones.

It's hard to think of a more reliable, compulsively listenable formula for new wave guitar pop romance than the one that Wild Nothing has so quickly perfected.

Bergsman's new set pieces offer no more lasting sustenance than the harder to resist but hardly nutritious candies from The Concretes' confectionery.

Life is People sounds familiar, but never tired. It's a difficult line to tread, but Fay and his guests largely pull it off.

It's one of the best live albums released by a modern "mainstream" act that I can think of. No exaggeration.

Though AUN isn't always interesting, it is a cohesive collection, and I don't doubt for a moment its suitability as the score for Honetschläger's film.

The sections of ORO are turns utilitarian and incongruously beautiful.

Sushi sounds enthusiastic but slight, with generic synths and run-of-the-mill dubstep-inflected bass lines.

Répercussions exists in a completely different universe, far removed from rock tropes, and sits comfortably within the spectrum of modern electro-acoustic and minimal composition.

For a man who long ago turned the fear of change into his best friend, it's disappointing how uneven his explorations are in Nookie Wood.

It seems cliché to say that music works on a few different levels, but in the case of Relief, it's true.

There's plenty to like in this abbreviated outing, and hardly anything to raise the hackles.

The problem with Golden Void is that it sounds so much like the Black Sabbath, with its intricate, chopped up time signatures, its big-footed riffs, its surprising facility with tunefulness even during mayhem.

Bish Bosch really is his beautiful, dark and twisted fantasy made manifest.

The best songs on Ultraísta recall the murky pop made by the likes of Broadcast, where clarity and catchiness intermingled

Like a raging flood, JSBX has picked up all sorts of things on its way down, but unlike Irene, the band has turned a jumble into something tight and precise and essentially its own.

If this is fusion cooking, they've balanced the spices well enough to come up with a dish that tastes mighty good.

Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is neither an easy, nor comforting listening, and absorbing the entire album can occasionally leave the listener gasping for air. However, as a portrait of a dystopian 21st century musical landscape, there is little better than this brand of pure British blackness.

The ingredients that make up Dark Crawler are a tasty mix, and Danjah could do worse than keep cooking with this recipe.

Ultimately, Love Will Prevail probably isn't going to win over any newcomers, but it's a solid addition to Cult of Youth's catalog; it's pretty clear by now that nobody is doing this type of thing with the gusto and attention to detail that they are.

There is palpable excitement in both the songwriting and the performance. And this energy prevents what might have been some late-stage lulls, where the riffs seem retread but the songs still feel new.

Like any good ongoing collaboration, theirs is already moving beyond its initial definition, gone past the novelty of lutist and filmmaker into something more enduringly interesting.

Matricidal Sons of Bitches frequently dazzles, but there are more than few moments of frustration along the way.

Lux is immersive, intriguing, delicate and evasive, like many an ambient record. And, inescapably, it doesn't resonate as much as Eno's groundbreaking works in the genre.

The Bears for Lunch is a far more solid affair than Let's Go Eat the Factory, balancing Pollard's Who-like aggression and Kinks-like whimsy in punchy, melodically memorable songs.

With this encyclopedic set, Smith delivers yet another convincing musical document for his consideration as one of the most accomplished composers/bandleaders currently working in creative improvised music.

If you're in the mood, the repeating riffs may fit right in; if you're not, you'll grow weary midway through each song.

His taste in sounds and sense of what to do to them is unimpeachable, but the album's greatest strength is its resistance to categorization.

A genuinely engaging and fun album.

The title is Norwegian for "poverty," but its rewards are as rich as they've ever been.

It's always interesting to hear artists develop, but one can't help but question the conviction here.

Lamar has once more asserted a great and formidable talent, and good kid is triumphantly and unmistakably his, but the artists that stick around longest are the ones who let us make their art our own.

The results, which are generally not very good, fall into the same aesthetic gray area as the majority of mashups everywhere: laudable ambition, misbegotten audacity.

Cold Showers uses that cavalier attitude behind such a simple bedrock of references--Joy Division (a song called "New Dawn" all but writes a countermelody to "Insight"), The Church, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Strokes, Interpol--that creates a level of tension across Love and Regret that sustains them far better than any of their peers.

This Dreamless Sleep, is often beautiful, but short on such surprises, and it becomes a bit of a snooze as a result.

Burning Daylight's best songs emerge from an ominous fog of sounds.

For a collaboration that could've easily become a Cocoon of styles and persons past, The Orbserver in the Star House plays surprisingly spry.

The guitar is the wild card in these tightly reined-in, metronomically repetitive cuts. It rises in fits and starts, jabs at solid masses of beats, tests the outer limits of rigorously defined song structures.

While not a rapturously groundbreaking record, Cold of Ages is a rock-solid entry.

All these songs drown together, dissipating like wet Kleenex as soon as they're done.

Psychedelic Pill is earnest and perverse, simplistic and complicated, epic and underachieving--guess the old cuss still has it in him after all.

At just 37 minutes, World Music is wisely edited--most of the songs hover around the 3-minute mark, so they speak their piece and move on before you get tempted to start peeling apart the layers to see what they're really made of.

The musicianship, melodies, and performances are sound, but hollow. Everything does what it's supposed to do, without ever fully engaging on any real emotional, human level.

Honor Found in Decay, the band's 11th or so studio album, is an organic, humanizing refinement of said retooling, one that is very subtle yet undoubtedly informed by guitarist Steve Von Till and bassist Scott Kelly's forays into the fandom and unadorned tribute exercises regarding the late Townes Van Zandt.

For post-apocalyptic strains of electronic music, there's no one better at the moment than Andy Stott. Luxury Problems makes for one hell of a calling card.

Scheidt is a capable acoustic guitarist with a flair for ornamentation, but well-wrought filigree does not an album make. Confronted with the choice between hearing this record again and taking a nap, I'd opt for the snooze.

Aside from the chopped vocal of the title-track, the mind-warp of "R in Zero G," and the woodpecker rhythms that liven up "Fraction" on the back end, the album feels dated.

The end result is as fascinating as Silent Servant has ever been.

[Animator is] the sound of a group taking a familiar sound, segmenting it, and discovering that the results can be infinitely compelling.

While a somewhat trained ear could tease out what came from where, it's a lot easier in this case just to sit back and enjoy work that seems to value interesting textures and arrangements - but not at the expense of the songs themselves.

The balance of melody to unease is rarely this well maneuvered.

As a whole Book Burner may be as focused and relentless as anything they've yet released.

GEM isn't just a fresh take on an old sound; it's an audit of the constraint placed on female artists in the past and a table-turning journey into what might have been possible if musical freedom meant more than obedience to parents, husbands and record producers.

Provider isn't necessarily going to settle old scores. Its a notable release, though, both as a new work by a talented singer-songwriter and as one of what one can only hope will be several satisfying postscripts in the narrative of a great band.

Wolfe seems out in the open for the first time--overall, though, she's more interesting when she's deep in the woods.

Newman's third album is beautifully put together, well played, slyly and cleverly worded, but it works too much on the surface.

Jiaolong speaks in a more comprehensible language because it's not florid psych-pop, but as with Caribou, I do not see a way to become anything other than a spectator of this music.

Nothing wrong with clearly highlighting your influences, although you do run the risk of reminding listeners why said influences are better.

For most of its runtime, highlights included, the album is mired in the same self-drowning-out that afflicts the best of its ilk.

Formerly Extinct is a little over-cooked, and the album would have benefitted from being left a little more raw at its core.

Thirty minutes of METZ feels more like hard work than fun playtimes, and the sameness of the venture underscores the futility of whatever it is they're trying to accomplish, which falls somewhere between "artist defending bowel movement on a gallery floor" and "third demo tape by an up-and-coming new band."

It's got an energy that's usually associated with naiveté and learning instruments on the job. The trio knits their little hand-played loops together loosely, and in a certain light, there are places it unspools completely.

It's a nice album. One of the things that's really interesting about it, though, is its relationship with nostalgia.

Established fans will appreciate a few new gems in the catalogue (I've returned repeatedly to "(They Found Me On the Back Of) The Galaxy"), but those unfamiliar with The Intelligence would do well starting with Deuteronomy, Fake Surfers or Males before circling back to this one.

The temptation to move to these songs is unequalled in his catalog and, consequently, the willingness to engage the material (and artist) in a positive way also makes Sentielle Objectif Actualité a unique challenge of a very different kind.

Bubblegum Graveyard is sophisticated when it needs to be sophisticated, funny when it wants to be funny, and its plodding beat lends itself perfectly to that excellent Osmonds guitar move where they bob their head upwards and tap their foot on each count.

In short, Efterklang could've made this entire record, and certainly that trio of great musique concrète songs, in their bathroom. Easily.

The songs here are mostly ponderous, nine-minute long epics with very little in the way of song form, melody, or musical interest.

Don't Be A Stranger is very subtle album, soft in tone but twisted and eaten from the inside by corrosive intelligence.

Ultimately the album adds another respectable line to The Mountain Goats' discography.

It's not as gratifyingly raw as 1983 or as paradigm-shifting as Los Angeles or as self-important as Cosmogramma, but it's more expansive and refined taken in one sitting.

It is full of unusual clarity and purpose and seems to have benefited from a certain amount of restraint.

Incorruptible Heart really is a wonderful album and something beautiful to listen to, but I find myself having a very difficult time emotionally connecting to it.

Maybe people with better audio equipment or a more jaded approach to electronic music have been enjoying him this much all along, but the remaining 47 percent are in for a surprise.

It's an album that makes the most of its contradictions--the gulf between its most rhapsodic elements and its contemplative ones provides its share of thrilling moments along the way.

For a band who made their name on straightforward, meat-and-potatoes indie pop, Strapped is all over the place.

During these 18 minutes, you can sense a tension between the darker atmosphere and the pop inclinations. That's a combination that's yielded its share of greatness, but the two don't fully merge here.

Sagittarian Domain is an intriguing offering from Ambarchi, if not something with a great deal of potential for repeat success.

Runner signal a return to the "heritage" S&C sound, balancing motorik pulse and unbridled delicateness, regaining some of the spirit and intention that had begun to flag in the process.

Krell seems like a victim of his own good intentions. There's a kernel of an idea here.

Many of these tracks--indeed some of the most interesting--are more snippets than fully developed destinations. But there are real skills on display here.

While a lot of their peers have attempted (unsuccessfully, mostly) to beat down the doors of California's psychedelic myth, Sic Alps have taken their time and found their own way there; in doing so they've created one of the best records of the year.

This austerity is reflected somewhat in the duo's avowed debt to the ambient tradition of Harold Budd and Brian Eno and, whilst that's not bad thing at all, it does mean that, at times, Ursprung tends to fold itself into the background.

It's furious and raging and exhausting, and the end result is exhilarating.

Eight is both more concise and more varied [than his last outing, Drawn and Quartered].