With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.

Once the album’s 50 minutes have elapsed, one feels a sense of satisfied exhaustion in having traversed a musical landscape both desolate and majestic.

Yorkston’s collaboration with the Second Hand Orchestra seems especially fruitful, giving him a jolt, shake them out of his usual tricks and proclivities and opening up new possibilities. If the stories don’t quite scan, the musical more than makes up for it, carrying you past the sense of this music into a restless, moving, non-verbal understanding of what the artists are going for.

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

He easily sidesteps the drama that dogged he and his band throughout 2007 (and ultimately led to their declaration of hiatus towards the end of the year), turning Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel into a beautifully melancholic slice of shimmering, ambient pop.

Walking With the Beggar Boys has so few bells and whistles that it might not make it through your earwax on the first listen, but these songs are the most rewarding the band has created.

While it wouldn't be fair to hold Obscurities up to Merritt's 1990s albums with The Magnetic Fields and others, the material here certainly makes a strong claim for achieving next-best-thing status, providing a welcome nostalgic reminder of the many pleasures offered by what has already more or less become a nostalgia act.

Her performance reinforces the thrust towards freedom that shows up in the other songs. She isn’t just playing with the women and men in the band; she’s rising above them, flying high and alone in the blue.

The Hard Quartet is one of my favorite recordings of the year, a strong collection of songs made by established artists who refuse to be hemmed in by anyone’s expectations.

With Crush, these kids found a way forward, and strangely enough, they found it by looking back.

The recording shows little evidence of how acoustically challenging the glass-walled structure can be; every element registers clearly so that the music yields where it needs to and slams where it must. And slam it does, with big beats and massed choruses that bring the messages down hard and certain.

These are not songs that wander aimlessly, that get lost in mandala-like intricacies that make sense only in large, sunny green spaces, late in the afternoon, preferably in Vermont. There’s a tight cohesive tunefulness to this second album from the New Jersey-based band that transcends the genre.

This is what jamming econo means to kids whose horizon isn't classic rock and hardcore, but grunge and post-hardcore. It sounds really good.

Whatever ensemble he employs, and in whatever style he plays, unpredictability is a major component of his M.O. Silent Movies is no exception, and his formidable technique services music that continually thwarts expectation.

She makes her latest album with a full rock band and a headlong sense of joy.

It’s all very nice and a bit surprisingly, like your grandma’s favorite stew with some unexpected new spices in it. For an impromptu gathering of talents, Bonny Light Horseman feels very lived in. Here’s hoping it’s not a one-off.

Cryptograms is a tonal wash of brisk speed kicks and seasick comedowns, the kind of thing you could lose an afternoon to.

The final rush commingles anguish and ecstasy quite powerfully, glorying in the significance Mapplethorpe held for Smith and resonating for anyone who has lost someone and is willing to be taken to the water.

There are times when Lenker approaches Marissa Nadler’s eerie otherworldliness, though not for long. ... Couple that with a really good, dense, aggressive musical attack, led by Meek, but supported by bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia, and you’ve got something special, especially in the more rock-oriented tunes like “Masterpiece,” “Humans” and, especially “Paul.”

As deeply rooted in American tradition as that sound is, it is never straightjacketed by nostalgia.

Much has been made of Gelb’s ability at cobbling together musical forms, but overlooked is his skill at entwining contradictory moods.

Clearly, John Darnielle has a life story that’s inspiring as more than just the tale of an unconventional indie rock hero. Now that he’s making his best music, I think we can all be glad that he’s finally telling it.

Modest reservations aside, this is more top-drawer stuff from Shauf, as we’ve come to expect. Drink deep.

Their exploration of the genre's boundaries is so lithe and confident, and their studied aloofness here so convincing, that the familiarity comes across as authenticity and the restless impulse for expansion feels, at times, transcendent.

Songs for Pierre Chuvin, whatever its origin story, would stand on its own as a regular album, melding retro sounds and recent writing, with its spontaneity driving its melodies and structures. It’s a treasure for fans, full of references and idiosyncratic meaning. Even if probably won’t serve as the best starting point for newcomers to the band, it’s not strictly an insider’s work.

This is a record that makes me hope for even better things to come.

Akinmusire easily trumps Truffaz in the area of technical skill. His agile delivery and rounded, even-tempered tone recall facets of Kenny Dorham and Dennis Gonzalez in terms of burnished beauty and melodic alacrity.

Sugar and spice and everything twisted, Daniel continues to write music for people who like to think about why they like something and can appreciate creative, sincere homage.

It’s that rare record that’s equal parts innovation and familiarity, or what one might refer to as a perfectly designed and executed experiment in indie aesthetics.

Whether this record is a swan song or the beginning of a very late-career renaissance remains to be seen, but, like the band’s previous releases, Sanctions is perfect for the moment and likely to prove another timeless treasure for those perceptive few.

His strongest set of songs yet. The guitar work remains effortless and radiant, but it is no longer the dominant thing. Instead the songs, bolstered by strings and vocal harmonies, take precedence. There’s an easy, lovely coherence to this record.

The Unfairground features ten strong songs without filler or flab. All have melodies that rapidly lodge in the brain, the kind that the paperboy could whistle on his round.

The songwriting is just as strong as anything in Lerner’s output and much like emotional nadirs, emotional zeniths also fade. Lerner’s moment in the sun is as fun for the listener as it is for him.

With Shaw’s vocals as the pivot, Dowse, Maynard and Buxton flex, weave and dance around her, resulting in a nuanced listen that extends the band way beyond their pigeonhole of “post-punk.” Hard to pinpoint where Dry Cleaning belong now, which can only be a good thing.

Rhino’s new Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky seems like it was put together as much to please Big Star fans as it was to introduce newcomers to the band.

It may have taken a while, but the rewards of this belated collaboration are exquisite.

There are songs that seamlessly slip onto your mental shelf for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists--the music-hall-nodding “Can’t Go Back,” moody, politically-aware “William Weld in the 21st Century,” Lizzy-raising “Run to the City,” nostalgic, Billy-Bragg-ish “Lonsdale Avenue” (which first surfaced via The Both, Leo’s project with Aimee Mann)--but there are also some very interesting diversions.

The songs, then, have a warmth and immediacy, even when they turn to otherworldly topics.

All of what you might have liked about White Hills is here--the Hawkwind-ish guitar excesses, the free-form Kraut drones that go on and on, a la Wooden Shjips or Bardo Pond. It’s just that this time, all the cotton batting has been stripped off, the fuzz removed to reveal structure and complexity underneath.

Her voice, pure and high with a lemon-y sharp tang, is a mesmerizing thing, all on its own, and more than a conduit for the traditional and original songs she delivers here.

Goulden sublimely aw-fuck-it delivery makes nearly everything sound sardonic, but there’s a bottom note of pure yearning here. The song [“Southern Rock”] smolders most of the way, and then bursts into flame in a rollicking chorus.

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

Where earlier tracks tended, endearingly, to drift and wander, these new ones move not faster but with more purpose, as if they have somewhere to get to.

Burn Your Fire is a minefield in the best possible way, studded even in its quietest moments with subterranean threat.

The 11 songs here are not only 90-percent hit single material; they work together in concert as an album (as well as in pairs and trios).

Even as you nod indulgently to Jordan’s assertion (on “Pristine”) that she’ll never fall in love again (of course you will), even as you worry (in “Golden”) about her a little confronting an ex- by blurting out “I’m not wasted anymore” (are you sure?), there’s an integrity and authenticity to her perspective that commands respect.

Displaying intensity, versatility and musicality in equal measure, Irreversible Entanglements is an indomitable force. Future Present Past is their best work yet.

She certainly turned in some of her most thrilling performances for the Peel Sessions.

King of the Beach has a few decent approximations of beloved styles. Perversely, they don't seem like breakthroughs--they make his old songs seem less special.

Full Circle Nightmare gets its kicks constantly. It has more heft than, both narratively and sonically, Craft’s debut, Dolls of Highland. And, thoroughly steeped in a recognizable tradition of backcountry rollick as he is, Craft delivers a decidedly modern approach to a sound first popularized decades ago.

This is not a welcoming album, but it’s as gripping and immersive as a good film about dystopia.

There are so many things here that shouldn’t mix, but the brute force of Cherry’s personality smooths them.

Dead Rider has created a vivid, weird, deeply compelling world on this album, but the band isn’t going to come to you; you have to get on its level.

Has all the hallmarks of classic Kraftwerk.

Appealing and slyly catchy.

His lo-fi production values, traditional forms, and writerly sense of detail create songs that seem to recall moments from some collective past life, one that’s just barely disappeared from view.

Fab Four Suture is a virtual treasure map, a plane of possibility.

Venus on Earth proves that world-pop fusion needn’t be a pastiche of watered-down musical tropes, but rather something vital and soul affirming--a fever to embrace.

A great deal of well-written, rigorously observed detail.

House of Land makes for a strange old-timey listen. It doesn’t stretch as far from its foundation as some of its referents might suggest, yet it continually pushes at something slightly alien. ... That intelligent play between various traditions makes for a listen at least as captivating as it is new-fangled.

It's engineered, in a feature-article-friendly way, to embody its creator's personal development and comment on it in a way that's slick, weightless and easily disowned. For the first time in Marshall's career, lighter equals better

It’s great fun, but it’s all boundless energy without centre.

The potency of AHAAH's genres of choice are both the album’s difficulty and strength; if you aren’t partial to Balkan brass, klezmer or mariachi, abandon all hope of sticking this one out.

Pole’s technique still relies heavily on the minimal, but Steingarten is garnished with a sonic density lacking on his first three full-lengths.

It’s definitely a more expansive palette, and not entirely to my taste, but I’ll defend any artist who takes a chance like this.

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.

When McCombs gets deep into his vision of the world, or maybe a liminal state between ours and his, he’s at his finest on Tip of the Sphere. He needs a lifeline, though, to keep him tethered enough to this one that neither he nor his audience wanders off. He hasn’t gone too far, but the steadiness works better than the spiraling as this disc goes ‘round.

A ragged, gnarly listen, Future Teenage Cave Artists is, fittingly, one of the band’s most experimental offerings in years, offering short bursts of breakneck, catchy garage rock, counterbalanced by plenty of reverb-drenched dissonance and eerie atmospherics. Just as it feels like it may be settling into something approaching conventional songcraft, the band chucks in a blast of competing ideas that sound like they’re eating each other alive, desperately scrambling for survival.

The songs are best when they say the least, implying depths that are, perhaps, mostly in the listener’s head.

Each moment of each song is completely unpredictable, to the point where even after multiple listens some of these transitions still seem to come out of nowhere.

Mostly Taiga is about sensation, playful and wild and smart but moving way too fast for contemplation.

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

At times, it sounds as though the band was still working through exactly how they wanted all of the various elements to work together, such that there are some immediate, hook-filled songs ("White Winter Hymnal," "Your Protector," "He Doesn't Know Why") and other songs whose more complex structures require more from the listener.

An album on which the odd lyrical infelicities barely detract the duo’s breezy musical confections. Brijean still reside in a pastel world but the shades of gray have become harder to ignore and Macro is a homeopathic remedy which works best when they make you believe.

The songs are fine, the lyrics are striking, but there’s nothing to break your heart.

Though Woke Myself Up is a group project, one still gets a sense of it having been recorded at home, amongst friends. They seem to be having a nice time of it.

What makes Strength In Numbers interesting is the way it departs from the usual.

Biasonic Hotsauce is broken up by some campy skits that buffer the genre hops, and after a few of them, the record turns toward electro.

An album full of cover versions is not really essential listening, although there are a few songs here reminiscent of the better covers from past Yo La Tengo albums.

It's a gorgeous and dreamy feeling, and one that's easy to spend a lot of time in.

More often than not, Slave Ambient offers a sound that's equally familiar and new, simultaneously meeting expectations and evading them. It's an album whose immediate accessibility cloaks a deeper, subtler series of rewards.

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.

At the end, Wyatt takes the For the Ghosts Within's over-riding mushiness, runs with it, and it makes it totally work.

When obtuse means nonsensical and there's no one consistently there to tie the free associations together, it becomes less a case of judging Vast on his own street odyssey and more a case, ironically, of falling back to where we started in the least desirable way: It's good, yeah, but it's no "Iron Galaxy."

When MF Doom takes the time to plot and scheme it, no idea is too outlandish, no beat too unorthodox, and much of MMâ?¦Food? is the work of a master chef cooking up some marvelous shit. However, masters get held to a higher standard.

Thomas has a near prodigy-like ability to generate indelible hooks that pull from a relatively deep well of inspiration.

Sunwatchers II is an enjoyable listen, and its energy and good intentions are admirable; it’s clear that Sunwatchers take the spiritual and political implications of musical ecstasy seriously.

District Line delivers the latest dissertation in cross-pollination and like past projects it’s a bit of a Frankenstein affair.

Look, this isn't a Clinic record that's gonna convert anyone not already checked-in, but it is another encouraging move, proving that the band is not content to stagnate in the confines of its sound.

Though it's well produced and confident, and goes deep into its web of influence, it seems so rooted in this moment that it feels transitory.

If Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs doesn’t do anything that wasn’t done on his enthralling 2000 LP Carpal Tunnel Syndrome -- and if, at a scant 35 minutes, it’s almost over before you notice it’s on -- it’s still worth hearing.

The experiment does at times rush off the tracks into the bushes, where either the spastic tempos prove too much for Oldham's cool croon, or the meat-and-potatoes song structures reject Tortoise's occasional proclivity toward overseasoning.

Slight doubts about whether or not Zooey Deschanel is the best person to be singing these songs aside, Volume One is pretty much spot-on.

Ferndorf gains little from its back story but loses nothing without it; to a greater degree than most records of its ilk, it is resolutely what it is.

What you're really hearing is the sound of Mark Ryan thinking out loud, through song. And even though this can be frustrating at times, it's still plenty refreshing to get such an eclectic survey of what most reformed punks are taking for pop music nowadays.

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.

Though each of its cuts clocks in at less than 10 minutes, Forever Becoming is still largely imbued with Fire’s sense of movement and grandeur.

Ka got something from an autodidact street preacher. For more resonating effect he puts together street common wisdoms and Biblical allegories.