It sounds as if Atkins and Plummer had merely sucked down a few beers and bashed out some tunes in their garage over the weekend. This is not to undermine their talents, but rather to celebrate the basic energy of the record, which makes you want to suck down some beers yourself and have a go at the rock.

An Imaginary Country is a solid record, but in the context of Hecker’s discography, it can also be underwhelming at times.

With Harmonizer, Segall moves further out into his own personal weirdness, without compromising the red meat appeal of his rock aesthetic. It’s a neat trick, using different tools to make different sounds that, nonetheless, fit very squarely into his catalogue so far.

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

Hippo Lite is a genuine collaboration. Aside from a few glimmers, Cate and Tim’s own distinct sounds are less detectable. They’ve ended up with a batch of songs that are physical in an elementally curious way.

The only times Deep Politics doesn't work is when it goes for that sun-scorched, ex-cokehead AOR sheen. Perhaps when you cast your nets this wide, a little brim is inevitable.

Part of what was so enjoyable about All is Wild, All is Silent is how unexpected it was in the first place, and such a pronounced departure for the band. Constellations, while not as much of a surprise, is no less pleasant.

Defever can still write great, melancholic pop songs.

Calamity shows the Curtains to be a band of great moments more than great songs, and in this distinction lies the difference between the listener that dismisses the album and the one that holds on to it despite its flaws.

Nothing is entirely serious. It’s all in fun--and it is fun, fortunately.

The truth of W doesn't look as good on paper, but give it time. It's more convincing than it has any right to be.

It sounds a bit like the Weakerthans did on their debut, that is, looking one way at singer-songwriter work and another at politically charged punk and trying to gauge just where they should fall between those two poles.

There’s nothing here that’ll shock experimental music acolytes, but it might be a bit much for those expecting only brawny post-rock. Like Goldilocks, I find it just right.

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

Gods of the Earth is shaky in places, but once its longboats settle in the water, it's a force.

Callahan can give us no answers. But some of us find the struggle, the ride, much more interesting when the answers are lacking.

It may fall short a few instances, but it’s a record with genuine ingenuity.

It's scattered, without a singular vision, and successful nonetheless.

Baker pretty much only has one idea, and although it's solid, he could benefit from a shift in approach.

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.

Reviver might make for interesting enough listening in the immediate, but it‘s also a prime candidate for the cut out bin of memory once the band finally arrives at its aforementioned new destination.

It’s a serious, earnest “lighten up, kid” that returns to Francis’s strongest mode, the slightly stilted personal journal; like the rest of Li(f)e it’s honest, sometimes brutally so, occasionally just brutal, and it’s hard to ask for more than that.

No You C'mon connects more quickly, but it’s the lightweight one. [combined review of both discs]

With Carl Craig producing, Jaumet offers a fittingly stripped-down suite of tense, stomach-churning tracks. Dappled with oily synth slicks, frittered timbres and blacklight radiance, it can be a heavy listen.

No massive steps forward, admittedly, but I think Wood can justify exploring this patch of ground for a short while yet.

If the first half feels a little like a warm-up, they deliver the payoff in fine style and by the end you may feel as worn out as the band must be.

Rather than the longer, complex compositions, the four shortest tracks here are the most intriguing, as they compress Tortoise’s way of layering disparate ideas into brief, disorienting beatscapes.

It’s a fitting overview of everything that’s always worked for Sonic Youth in the past.

The end result is a sugar-high of electronic keyboard and guitars reaching glam-rock heights and booty shaking lows, all based around very simple, classical ideas of song-structure.

Go figure, the most enjoyable parts of the album are hard to separate from the most annoying.

Album closer 'Warlock Psychologist' is a glorious mess of distorted keyboard and poetic non sequiturs that less dedicated bands would probably have left off the record. But not Swan Lake, whose perverse commitment to farty art-rock is to be respected, perhaps even embraced.

Ultimately, Dreamt will reward those who spend time with it, and Sparklehorse fans won't be disappointed.

“The Drunken Boat” one of the best tracks he’s done to date. The rest of the album isn’t as daring or unique. Joyner mostly follows the "Hotel Lives" template and reaps the same rewards.

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.

Here in the Deep, like the last few Arbouretum albums, is good but not mind-blowing.

As pleasant as Gunn is a guitarist, he’s an equally low-key vocalist, his flat delivery and barbiturate baritone unobtrusive and lackadaisical — just kind of there, often, buried slightly beneath Trucinski’s and well below his own gently spiraling guitar in the mix. It’s kind of a shame, actually, as Gunn’s Impressionist vignettes are quite interesting on close listen, showcasing Gunn’s marked maturity as a songwriter.

Without a doubt there are quite a few moments on Loose Fur to enthrall diehard fans of anyone involved. And yet, when all is said and done, I’m still wanting more, wondering what else they could have done.

Regardless of the art-school pretentions offered up-front, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan deliver the goods.

Here, as elsewhere, there may be subtext and hidden allusions but the important stuff is bouncing around on the surface.

In the Maybe World feels like an (unintentional, perhaps) sequel or response to Geek the Girl, turning down the intensity while sharing a twilit mood.

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

After years of sluggish BPMs and charts run by screw-influenced beats, the people may be ready for something with the uptempo beats of Presents James Grieve. The question now is whether Addison Groove wants to be the man for that job.

Set ‘Em Wild, more so than many albums like this, at least has the quasi-coherence of forming out of the above-mentioned process, and if anything, that makes it more interesting than just a collection a songs.

The presence of familiar things makes their music go down easier this time around, but it remains a challenge, even after many listens, to feel like you understand what you're supposed to feel.

It’s clear from the beginning that Bell can handle the vocal chores but what remains questionable is Clarke’s ability to rescue his beats from the predictable morass of synth pop’s stodgy past without, of course, overdoing it.

The album’s first half is its best half, a rollicking set of surf/rockabilly/garage rock ragers, all tied loosely to Powers’ awakening to gayness, to underground music, to drugs and to a very alternative lifestyle. .... After that, things get slow and weird and, honestly, a little dull, though there are spooky, mystical, reverb shrouded moments in “The Smoke Is the Ghost.”

Shame’s standout songs combine the band’s ugly intensities with inspired bursts of melodic riffing.

I was really hoping that some critical insight the bigger publications had missed would shine through here, and on this front I am let down, albeit pleasantly: all this record strives to be is a power-pop record, of second-string Lennon/McCartney-crossed-with-Americana type that proliferated in the ‘70s and has carried on, doggedly, through the decades.

Emika's made a very personal album here that succeeds by its own exacting standards.

Backed by twinkling music-box guitars, a line such as “I knew the moment that I saw you that my life would never by the same” feels too sugar-sweet to resonate. The musical chemistry evident among Meek’s band of talented players thankfully overpowers this tendency for the most part.

If anything, it’s the failure to rise above its component parts and create a unique and recognizable sound that keeps Replica Sun Machine from being the breakthrough album this promising trio deserves.

Front-to-back, Real Life Is No Cool does exactly what it set out to do and no more: be a collection of dance pop tunes so solid it feels like they’ve always been there.

Sheff’s delivery, however, is the Black Sheep Boy’s biggest flaw.

After three albums of encroaching conceptuality and quality, they’re cutting back on their known strengths in order to give everything over to the concept and the creative challenges it brings, never quite abandoning the listener, but requiring an undue amount of effort.

Despite the added breadth, Porras still sticks to the bare necessities to get his point across, making for guitar passages that meditate on every ringing note and hazy chord.

It is awfully difficult to bring audiences out of themselves without stacks of speakers, massed bodies and the possibility of timing things just right, all of which only the right context can provide.

The Shining welcomes listeners to reflect on the magnitude of Yancey’s career, as any posthumous work is apt to do. Unlike Donuts, however, this newest offering will not leave Yancey’s listeners despondent about what could have been but, rather, will provide a fitting epitaph for what was.

She’s at her best when sticking to a palette of steel, indigo and black.

These tunes are constructed around static, meditational sonic atmospheres that fluctuate in volume and timbre but do not fundamentally change. There’s a sense of the eternal in them, even when as in “Scarper” they twitch into propulsion with percolating electronic rhythms.

After a few more times through Hit After hit, you begin to sense there's something more to these songs. It may be a knock-off, but it's an incredibly nuanced one.

Tapestry of Webs is a different creature. Jordan Billie’s vocals can still process a scream as well as anyone, but there’s a newfound fondness for melody audible in these songs. When melodies do crop up, however, it’s less likely to inspire bliss than to accentuate the ominous mood sustained over these dozen songs. There’s a post-punk minimalism and a no-wave crash-and-burn spirit on display here.

The songcraft has gotten notably sharper in just two years as well, making this very much a band to enjoy now but also one to keep an eye on for later.

Holing up by himself, worrying about money, obsessing with death and letting the walls close in is probably not good for Dwyer as a human being, but it's certainly good for Castlemania.

Despite a smattering of highlights, there’s no gut-punch anywhere on Jukebox.

Push the Sky Away’s rewards are interspersed among plenty of frustrating moments, yet even at its worst, it’s a fascinating album.

They cram in so many styles it could easily come across too clever, like a band that claims to be equally inspired by Wu Tang, Cheap Trick and Cher. It doesn't happen. The tracks have a life apart from the name-that-tune layering that drives their sound.

The privilege of reinvention is something we've always granted rock bands, so why not extend the courtesy to Black Sun, an electronic album that's awkward but earnest.

On the flip side, identifiable guitar sounds emerge, with tones sufficiently intact that a sharp-eared listener might be able to tell that Gordon and Nace played them.

It is quite elegant in its clarity and cleanliness.

Their sound is as big and manic as it’s always been, and the melodies as infectious, but the content slinks away from even the prickly personal politics that populated their first singles.

Limitations can be freeing, but King Midas seems to tip-toe around a great deal of Martin’s artistic inspiration. The album successfully shows off an under-heralded side of his work, but it’s a shame that the sonic violence was deliberately repressed, rather than skillfully incorporated.

Asiatisch is impersonal and airtight. Musically, the album is fascinating, diverse and expertly produced. But a chance was perhaps missed to deliver something with more to say.

The immediate embrace of anything analogue-warped by certain corners of the Internet shouldn't detract from Forever, as it's quite an engaging listen when the right (nocturnal) mood strikes.

More bands should, logically, sound like this. It’s a wonder that no one wrote the song 'Pine On' before now, as incredibly basic and memorable as it is. That said, Obits fall short of Froberg’s Hot Snakes.

Even accounting for his career of uncharitable experimentation, Martin Rev’s eighth solo album is something new again. To wit, it’s a haunting, intricate electro-classical record.

In veering so hard and so often, they manage to be that rare thing: interesting. Save for later the development of brand identity and a recognizable aesthetic.

As their music has grown more detailed, the details have become ever more foreboding.

While Endless Falls and its predecessor created an organic sound by including improvised contributions from a small ensemble, the string and piano contributions here stand with classical seriousness.

Ringer is another step forward in one man's ongoing aural self-actualization through refinement of his experiences and influences.

Riches' voice can still sound a bit flat on some tracks, but his vocal and lyrical abilities have grown by leaps and bounds.

It's a rarity, though, when kids successfully switch from absorbing listlessness totransmitting it themselves. That's the case for Mikal Cronin, who takes these circumstances and makes something of it that is big and varied and hyperactive.

Dissolver sounds like an album made by folks who are mostly sick of challenging convention and just want to swim in something that reminds them of why they love rock music.

These are exceptional bar-band songs, sure, but they’re still bar band songs. Where Tomorrow’s Hits suffers, though, is in its wholesale familiarity.

It's a great, moving set of songs from one of the few modern songwriters to actively challenge his own preconceptions of his art.

The Body, the Blood, the Machine reveals a band that's a bit older, a step slower, and startlingly sardonic.

The overarching narrative structure and sequencing make this album a well-conceived exercise in storytelling.

On Our Endless Numbered Days Beam feels some pressure to subtly expand his repertoire, but the swampy blues of tracks like “Teeth In The Grass” and particularly “Free Until They Cut Me Down” interrupt the aforementioned mood like unwelcome hiccups.

The music is progressive as hell, but this feels less and less like the right thing to be concerned with.

Through the Green is one of the finest dance LPs of the year for sure, but it's not something I could listen to every day.

Certainly fans of the Blonde Redhead of old may damn Penny Sparkle with faint praise. Yet if Penny Sparkle veers a bit too close to Blonde Redhead meets Sade, it is mostly pleasant, and not for all of us is that word an epithet.

On 4, he tinkers a bit with the trim, options and manufacturing methods, but leaves Dungen’s styling fundamentally unchanged.

Devout isn’t perfect, some tracks are superfluous, but as a defiance of white stereotypes and genre clichés, it’s a remarkable work.

Though I Love You can at times appeal on an intellectual level more than an aesthetic one, it still has a host of admirable (and listenable) qualities.

A decidedly pleasant listening experience, if not an altogether important one.

Zayna Jumma is the first non-cassette recording of the band playing in its electric glory, and their first CD release.

It’s not what you’re expecting from Moon Duo, but it’s nonetheless quite appealing, this magic, glowing sound space that isn’t quite real, but better.

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.

As Long Island is the most attractive and consistent Boog release to date, it is still a difficult proposition to say “hey, this band is for you.”