Whether or not this incarnation of Horseback is apocryphal--remember, Miller says he won’t have this form forever--it’s quite possibly the closest Miller’s come to seamlessly blending roots music and metal. Even if he doesn’t think there’s a line to cross.

With 15 short tracks stacked tightly into 37 minutes, 2 doesn’t always cohere, but it’s certainly playful, freewheeling, and occasionally inspired.

It’s hard to overstate just how much fun this record is, how playful its complex rhythms are, how brightly colored its tonal variations. Plastic can be a lot of things, but here it is an utter joy.

Without doing anything revolutionary--and it doesn't--Cape Dory comes to mirror the leisurely pace of a breezy day at sea, remembered after the fact: the subtle variations, the comforting predictability, the passages of time by turns boring and serenely sweet.

Scratched up, indifferently tuned, coming in ghostly and pale like AM radio, Strange Boys’ first full-length has the banked fire of a slow burner.

Unfidelity never feels derivative or retro, Edwards displaying an alchemist’s touch as he drags all these influences into a potent melting pot.

It’s a calm, beautiful oasis in Mascis’ coruscating career path, prettier even, because of the carnage before and after.

As with the band’s previous full-length, Kairos never fails to be listenable.

Everything here is marked with a hint of familiarity, but it's surprisingly hard to mind.

There’s not a bad song in the bunch, but the songs from Death’s only official release are the clear highlights on ...For the Whole World to See.

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.

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.

This go-around does lack the face-sucking gravity of "In the Morning" to serve as a point of access, but the best way to experience Junior Boys’ music has always been total submission.

Color me pleasantly surprised. The Hungry Saw, it turns out, actually revitalized Tindersticks, spurring the band to an unprecedented level of productivity.

This is Blitzen Trapper’s fifth album, and there’s a sturdy professionalism evident on each of the songs. But it’s such a faithful recreation of a particular style that its appeal will in all likelihood be correspondingly limited.

By making a boldly experimental leap in a career already full of them, Dyer and Sanchez have created a surprisingly accessible record that shows off some of their best work to date. Whatever they call themselves, their powerful alchemy shouldn’t be ignored.

The album clearly fails to find the equilibrium or comfortable midway point between Espers’s debut and II that it seems to be seeking, nor does it make a strong case that such equilibrium is even desirable. At best, it’s a strong set of tracks that ultimately lack the cumulative force of those of the band’s previous two full-lengths.

Catacombs isn’t an exception to or refinement of what McCombs has done previously, just a soft demurral of the singer-songwriter career arc.

How you’ll come down on Etiquette depends, I suppose, on how interested you are in the tales of sad-sack twentysomethings.

The Decemberists fill the album to overflowing with sharp, catchy songs, Colin Meloy’s idiosyncratic bookishness well-turned for emotional resonance without relinquishing energy or wit

The result is a solid debut that immediately screams Abba, disco and “guilty pleasure” for the pre-ironic high school kids who don’t realize they can play football and still get crazy on the dance floor to their parents’ wedding soundtrack.

The Avalanche is, perhaps predictably, a middling reconstitution of its legitimate predecessor.

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.

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.

Kensington Heights isn’t drastically different from anything that’s come before, but it’s Constantines’ most consistent album so far, and a good starting point for anyone who hasn’t heard them and misses that old-time galvanizing, anthemic music.

Like Stephin Merritt, his East Coast cognate, Malkmus’ songwriting chops and eye for upper-middle-class detail are too-available excuses for music that is often unremarkable.

Is it a sleek and assured Euro-pop stylist or a morose, sardonic realist, messy and desperate and unsatisfied with the way things are? It is both, sometimes simultaneously. The mix of poise and scruffiness fluctuates continually. .... The point is that there’s plenty of lounge-y, jazzy pop here, but it’s most affecting when it twists slightly off true.

This is a fun summer record, and just as bitter and conflicted as any fun summer record could be. There is still an art to misanthropy, and Free Energy has it down to a science.

This Enon is leaner and more straight-forward--but also more one-dimensional.

The duo are clever producers. The album doesn't have the lopsided minimalism that's typical with the collage approach. Percussion is only as crisp as the leads and fills the spectrum evenly.

It goes through stretches of boredom. From a distance, the album seems concise and poppy. But up close, the heavy grazing of each song bursts its seams.

There’s a sense of stagery in this album, as there is in all JSBX discs....

This Mess Is a Place is considerably more grown up and pop-leaning than any of Tacocat’s previous albums, with lavishly massed vocals and bounce-y hooks, yet it retains an air of joyous subversion, sweet but spiky and smart.

Molina succeeds in creating a sound refreshingly unfamiliar and exotic.

It’s successful on pretty much every count for two main reasons: 1. It’s well-written and blearily produced; and 2. It's self-aware and not neurotic.

If anything, the album isn't obnoxious or overproduced, and those who are more forgiving of beauty-mongering landscape pop likely have a year-end list candidate. Those who are into Apparat's more adventurous work and collaborations, though, should pass.

Basically, if you hate one track, sorry boutcha. If you love any of them, though, you are going to love them all, unconditionally.

The result makes for a listening experience that's intense and potentially awkward, but one that also somehow rings true.

There are a few hollow trunk rattlers here.... At.Long.Last.A$AP is no fashion accessory, it’s practically a reinvention.

The initial pleasure of past Animal Collective albums is missing, but that may be the point. Panda Bear's grasp of the sublime makes this disc more than worth checking out.

Now that we've all gotten past the question of whether or not their latest album is the true reincarnation of Daydream Nation, it's nice to be able to just bask in the variegated textures and layers of sound.

Macaroni is an album that deserves to be heard.

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

Re-invented and fully assured, Pattern is Movement is a band that can do what it wants. One can’t argue with Pattern is Movement’s results.

This is the best live album I’ve heard in some time, intense enough to hold your attention through its massive two-hour length, inventive enough to add something to what you think you know about these songs.

Pretty much everything else in Meluch’s body of work can fit somewhere between this LP and Sonnet, but surprisingly these two disparate poles are unified as the best work of his career.

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.

Joachim Nordwall, Daniel Fagge Fagerström and Henrik Rylander are enough of a quorum and enough in sync with one another to make a defining closing statement.

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

There’s no question that Y is an essential, classic album, but it’s also a unique one in that it is both chaotic and robust enough to be very open to reinterpretation in the right hands. Bovell clearly qualifies, and the result is a companion album that can serve as a through-the-looking-glass partner to the original, easily able to stand on its own.

It’s an eccentric mechanical universe that Kamikaze Palm Tree has constructed and well worth visiting.

It’s loose and enthusiastic and full of joy. The radiant jangle, the bloopy bassline, the dreaming, coasting vocal line of the title track all speak to substantial talent and skill — but at play.

One of outsider DIY’s best beloved primitives is backed up by a very capable band, for a curious mix of goofy, giddy but locked in grooves. .... The highlight here is languid, lyrical “Lemonade Sunset,” a still clambering, still clanging, still ranting ditty that has somehow been soothed into romance.

They're not breaking significant new ground here, but neither are they standing still.

On All Things Will Unwind, though, the bursts of inspiration in each corner and crevice remain too stiff to merge into anything more than the sum of their parts.

Nadler can’t be pinned down, and all of Strangers is an indication of that new challenge she both creates and meets.

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

Roberts sounds alienated, but not arrogant, like some of his labelmates often can. His vocal melodies lack warmth and pain, but I find No Earthly Man's blank stare profoundly appropriate.

While the key tracks here could all hold up as singles, they're joined with interludes that make Ghost People an uninterrupted flow.

This one is subtle, but very much worth exploring.

Although its influences are strong and well synthesized, and the results are listenable, it falls short of being anything other than used bin fodder.

A lot of the material sounds incomplete, as Scher and Hey have a habit of backing off just when a song sounds like its coming together.

No One Can Ever Know is quite a good album, not as fresh as the debut, but more complicated and premeditated.

Have you ever fallen asleep during the X-Files’ opening credits, then awoken to a Volkswagen commercial? Have you ever wanted to?

Elephant Eyelash is fantastic, an indie rock record that nicely balances absurdity and directness, pop hooks with stoned weirdness.

They’ve found a way to wedge different sonic elements together, creating an assemblage of oft-quoted elements that feels fresh and vital even when its tone turns elegiac.

Naive and wide-eyed, Wander / Wonder tries so damned hard to feel real, to make big dreams and grandiose plans feel distantly (but not quite) attainable.

Hayashi’s eclecticism gives the album the feel of an anthology and although his beat making is terrific and provides a thematic backbone, the real interest here is what’s going on around, beneath and between. If his wish were to destabilize and upend expectations, then full marks, but too often he seems to retire behind his tools and allow his technical skill to overshadow his considerable artistry.

Golden Era, the smartest, funniest, most urgent hip hop joint of '11 by far.

New Moon contains a handful of good songs, just like The Men’s prior two albums for Sacred Bones. The main difference here is that the stellar tracks aren’t embedded amongst thrilling instrumentals.

The result is not a great leap forward but a stationary jump--with one foot forward, another backward, and a hard landing on both feet.

You’re going to want to hear this one.

What’s more notable, and important, though, are the continuities present here. Not just in instrumentation and mood, but also in those things’ presence in Cooper’s newest weapon: words.

This is a record you could play on the car stereo whilst burning up the miles on the Tennessee interstate, and it’d never sound wrong.

Ultimately, nobody's likely to claim The Secret Migration as a great album, I'm afraid. But it possesses energy and inspiration that its predecessor greatly lacked, and even the weaker songs here have something to recommend.

It’s an odd concoction of fun and confrontation, at once rigorously disciplined and existentially silly. The Official Body is a hard one, toned and taut and not fucking around, except when it is.

This is a decidedly unhurried album, and it takes a while to find the small pleasures within each song. But once you do, it’s really fantastic.

Iceage cleans up its sound, slows down the tempos and adds instruments like strings and piano on this third full length, but none of this takes the rawness out.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor still has a place in this flattened landscape despite its familiarity, its flaws, its limitations. Luciferian Towers is testament to the group’s staying power, an unexpected but welcome declaration of defiance.

Most surprising here, though, is Nolan and Ambrogio’s wildly successful approach of ballad forms.

It carries the manic, youthful energy of Parks’s very best works, plants itself deep inside the listener’s brain as though tapping into some deep American (meaning in this case both North American and West Indian) musical unconscious, and magically holds together as a single, unified and exhilarating listening experience despite its meandering through a dauntingly wide range of material and approaches.

The emotional excavation Jayda G has done with her sophomore album is admirable to witness and a joy to hear.

When it comes down to it, though, I can look at the track list and sing you back the most important lyric in any song. If pop music is meant to create a shared experience, consider this album a success on a whole bunch of levels.

A nasty, dense and confrontational mess.

Beauty & Ruin is Bob Mould’s catchiest, most tuneful album since Copper Blue, full of ear-wormy melodies and bouncy hooks.

If you prefer the combination of styles in his other Thrill Jockey work, or the more ambient and experimental character of A Child’s View, this may not be your bag. There is a specific focus on 10th, a consistent if ultimately unspectacular attempt to see through a child’s eyes.

Dispensable, and far from groundbreaking.

Up on High will sound like nothing much the first time you listen, but stay with it, because the songs are soft and unassuming, but excellent, and they’ll catch you in the end.

When Religious Knives stretch their limbs, they’re still good, but both 'The Storm' and 'On A Drive' lack the power of their more formed songs.

Wilco is a Great Band, if you like stuff that’s boring. And a lot of people seemingly do.

At some point, you may, in fact, find yourself hankering for unaccompanied Mods, and to that end, let me direct you to “Megaton” with its loopy, pinging beat, its hammering bass pulse, its artful disdain.

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.

These first five songs are like a good singles collection, every one of them free-standing and complete, none of them particularly relating to the others. The rest of the album is slighter and less compelling.

Out Hud’s new-found pop smarts leave you hoping that they’ll drop the instrumentals and devote a whole album to songs.

The lyrics lack the indirectness of so much of The Blackened Air and Road to Ruin, just as the piano-embroidered instrumentation skims the surface of what the singer’s band once plumbed with all of its clawing and scraping.

Goat are a bit too tight and knowing to be transcendental or truly trippy, for now at least, although the Afro-beat leanings that crop up all over Commune point at avenues rich in potential out-of-body experiences.

Ultimately, Instrumentals 2015 is minor in everything but the quality of the music--and that seems a very FSA-like play indeed.

These songs are dull because they are about dullness, as sad movies are sad because they are about sadness.