The world is crawling with Fahey-loving acoustic guitar players these days--in large part thanks Tompkins Square--but ones as good as William Tyler are rare.

The end result is the 11 songs on Unlearn, which I'll save you the frustration of calling "eclectic" and opt for the even more euphemistic "well-informed."

It isn't the transcendental work of which they're capable, but nonetheless taps into a thriving, sometimes exhilarating strain of striated rock music.

Much of what lends the album distinction is the tension created between the band's bold, confident projections and the more delicate core at their center. At times, that tension can be disorienting.

Now, they're just going through the motions.

While Carlson and company continue to explore new influences (much has been made over the band's recent declaration of affection for Pentangle and Fairport Convention), Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 sounds to me like a different manifestation of the same sound they've been exploring for some time now.

A dozen listens later, I'm still not sure if there's a beautiful core here that's half-obscured by the wrapping or whether it's the wrapping itself that's beautiful. Either way, it's a remarkable finish to a very promising album.

This is clearly a departure point, unexpected but more than welcome.

Bardo Pond's self-titled is a massive, monumental piece of work, proving once again that this long-running outfit can still crank the heavy, mind-numbing psych that it's always been known for.

At its best, Surf City's debut is catchy in both melodies and enthusiasm. And while the latter occasionally prevents this album from achieving resonant emotional depths, "Icy Lakes" suggests that they are very capable of achieving those if they so choose.

Truth first: James Blake is not a great record. It is a good record, and maybe even a slightly provocative one, in that an album this spare, minimal, and myopic shouldn't, by rights, be stirring the pot so much.

Every song comes from the same mold that they've been working with from the beginning. And as the critical mass of messy hits continues to pile up, there are new revelations that rise to the surface, as well.

Dye It Blonde ends up capturing the post-Beatles hole in the most authentic way possible.

Techno is, by its nature, hauntingly cold. By pumping some blood to its extremities, the Dirtbombs craft a fresh strain of disco soul.

We get a brief chance to eavesdrop on a band of unique genius at its most raw, its most prankish and its most fun. It almost makes up for the chills, the sweat and the free cans of watery domestic.

The Jackson-White reboot casts the song as a swampy, country vamp, and while it isn't a horrible idea in theory, it does feel contrived and a bit of an unnecessary pander. Even with that misstep in mind, though, it's pretty tough not to root for Wanda Jackson and The Party Ain't Over.

Credit to Beam, of course, for challenging himself rather than continuing to remake The Creek Drank the Cradle over and over again, but Kiss Each Other Clean is unlikely to count among his best work.

It feels like Bejar's comfortable with himself – relaxed even – and that feeling saturates the entire album. It's a confidence that makes Kaputt the best Destroyer album in ages.

Alas, the manic pace of the total structural collage makes it awfully hard to settle in as a listener. Deerhoof vs. Evil has a Guernica quality, in which pleasure and humanity are sublimated to the grotesque, which in turn is justified by the supposed inevitability of rational progress.

The greatest appeal of this record is how little acting takes place, how little consideration has been given to "fully realizing the sound." Because when it comes time to take it or leave it, I'll take the whole thing without any regrets.

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).

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.

Thee Oh Sees conjure sweet, sticky fuzz, and there's very few spaces on Warm Slime to take a breath, or think about what you've heard. Then again, it's this very saturation that makes Warm Slime such a natural high.

Nothing on In Evening Air quite achieves the slow-burning power of the title track to their In the Fall EP. But as a distillation of Future Islands' textured, unpredictable approach to pop, it's a fine starting point.

It's decidedly a Pallett album, just breezier. I like it.

Everything in Between is as fine a monument to imperfection as they've built so far.

As a literally small record, the EP can seem like a diversion. But it is an immensely enjoyable one.

While some may regret Barnes's toning-done of quirkiness or ambition, False Priest plays to his best qualities while minimizing his weaker ones.

Epic pulls from more corners. The voice at the center isn't arresting, exactly, but in the end that's unimportant. You'll want to stay.

For those, like me, who previously dismissed Aloe Blacc, Good Things warrants our reconsideration. Blacc's changed his tune. We probably should, too

Mostly these songs seem slight and shy, unable, really, to support the massive facades of synth and disco drums that Small Black layers onto them.

The most interesting tracks on this album sound like music for the great Pier 1 Imports in the sky, suggesting an infinity of pure, terrifying stasis.

So even though Popp's new sound palette seems like a step back, the way he uses it is as au courant as an oil-soaked pelican. O is not a retro move, but the work of an artist dealing with the now.

To all indications, Rain in England is irredeemably bad. This is what it sounds like when everyone fails to point out that an idea isn't worth indulging.

There's a strength in what these four musicians are capable of together, and the best moments on Tidelands explore the boundaries of such an approach.

Timbrally, this is just another Nels Cline offering with all of its variety and surprise, but musically, it's his most mature and satisfying.

This is still a fun and fast record, showcasing a band with as many ideas as bratty rave-ups. Next time out, they might take a look at the pros with ridiculous hats that co-inhabit their hometown, though, and tell a story.

Having demonstrated their ability to adeptly blend movement and atmospheric melody, Caminiti and Porras should aim higher than simple--albeit skillful--drones. That said, Ancestral Star delivers more than enough to reward the patient listener.

Over the course of three decades, Gelb has managed to make two albums that are great all the way though: Chore of Enchantment and 'Sno Angel Like You. He's made dozens that are uneven, and this is another one.

What is peculiar about Undercard is the frequency with which Bruno flops back and forth between these two roles. The result is an inconsistent album that is sophomoric at turns and sublime at others.

With perhaps the exceptions of "Silver > Blue" and "Levitation," none of the songs catch your attention. No melodies stick in your mind. No spirit of the album lingers, and the room isn't warmed by its presence. It's there and nice, but then it's gone.

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.

Play It Strange covers plenty of ground and suggests that the folks in The Fresh & Onlys are far from out of compelling ideas, it also finds the band playing at a kind of strangeness that sounds suspiciously like work.

While this workmanship-like familiarity leaves little room for surprises, it also makes the hit-to-misstep ratio almost negligible. With this kind of success rate, we can only hope Cartwright has another 20 years of near-obscurity in him.

Lovely as it may be, Light of a Vaster Dark largely lacks the surprising, adventurous quality of Faun Fables's past efforts, coming off as monotone and unremarkable in comparison.

Weekend has crafted an aesthetically sound model of how a rock 'n roll band should work. It looks good, it knows how to talk to women, and some guys you know even think it's pretty cool.

Pop chanteuse lets the sunshine back in.

Absolute Dissent reaches a few new peaks, no doubt. The band is still challenging itself, much like art punk peers Wire, The Fall and Nick Cave have in the past decade.

It's powerful, it's supremely accessible, and, in a kinder, more playful world, it could be NPR button music--or at least a life-changing stocking-stuffer for scores of Panda Bear fans.

The melody is maintained, with the only difference between the two sections is a very pregnant pause added to the notes, the whole of robotic Europop from the '70s lodged into one oversized chrome éclair.

The subdued guitars and steady percussive clip-clop are a noticeable change from the band's usual jangly late-afternoon pop, but even on the richest melodies lyrics and delivery drive the album.

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

North is an album intended to be accessible, and it embodies its time and place more honestly than most records released this year--which is a risky thing to say while also acknowledging that the title refers to a time as well as a place: the Northern England of Joy Division and The Human League.

The real measure of Knoxville's success is that it always feels it has ended too soon.

Fields, the third release and first full-length album from the Swedish trio Junip, both meets and defies expectations.

The Fool brims with potential for something more substantial, but never confronts those depths.

Even at Phosphene Dream's best moments, you can't help feeling that this is a very competent, earnest reproduction of things that have already been done.

This time out, more than ever before, it really feels like Brooks and Co. are half-assing it, victory lap style, when they could have soared once again.

The Books have always been both playful and serious, but their latest album moves between the two easily and without making the listener take note. It is so subtle that even when paying attention, it still feels natural.

For the most part, Write About Love is a disappointment. That's even truer, I suspect, because Belle and Sebastian aren't the only ones getting older.

The 13 songs on What It Means to Be Left-Handed are all, in their own way, enjoyable. The ideas and collaborations on display are impressive, as is the stylistic range. But there's still a bit of cohesion missing there--something that makes What It Means to Be Left-Handed feel more like a collection of individually good ideas and less like a singular artistic statement.

You can hear him trying to sort out the differences between Aeroplane's past and its/his future without resolving them yet. Appropriately, if you often find yourself unwittingly listening to pop hits from 1975-1985, you are the target demographic of We Can't Fly.

As a listener, you pretty much have Eskmo pegged by halfway, and it's disappointing that there aren't any sonic curveballs in the second half.

Stevens inspiration or jumping off point for The Age of Adz was outsider artist Royal Robertson, and, much like Robertson's artwork, the themes in the album vacillate between the mundane and heartfelt and surreal and grandiose.

It's a difficult accomplishment, encompassing pop and the avant-garde while also featuring a particularly striking element (in this case, Hegarty's voice); all three are well-represented here.

Stoltz's recreations are means to an end; he wants to write songs about good-old fashioned topics like falling in and out of love that sound fresh enough to make you play them over and over.

She writes amazing, heartfelt songs, interesting in tone and composition.

1,000 Years, Tucker's solo debut, shows a remarkable amount of growth both as a songwriter and a performer from the loud guitar maelstrom that punctuated Sleater-Kinney some years back.

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.

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

Deerhunter has come into its own, and the halcyon result is not to be missed.

What's up with all this defeat? The answers, in no particular order: Because he's Neil Young.

This is not a one-hit wonder situation, or even an album with only one good song. With King Night, Salem exhausts all its resources in a singular moment, which leaves the rest of the record to suffer through its own paralysis and mediocrity.

There is little time wasted in this record's nine songs, and that Mesirow packs so many wonderful sounds into it without really complicating the chord progressions or basic melodies is perhaps the truest testament to her talent.

Women's last record had poppier, brighter aspects than Public Strain, and it's hard to imagine what they might add to this sound beyond an amp'd up production that would wreck their very deliberate effect.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky distills everything Gira has ever done. It's a shockingly dense record, the Gira experience in 45 minutes or less. All killer, no filler, for real.

The Trip is casual, low-stakes pop that is easy to live with.

Entirely derivative but somehow not obvious, the record is surprisingly--and pleasantly--strange.

Les Savy Fav has finally delivered an album worth shrugging about.

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.

Lisbon is, for The Walkmen, a reinforcement rather than a reinvention - but for those listeners already fond of their sound, or of melancholy rock stripped down to its essentials in general, that makes for a rewarding listen.

All I did was press fast-forward, track after track. When that expectation of emotional articulation wasn't met, it brought up that feeling of outrage, as if somehow Superchunk let me down.

There's nothing self-consciously modern or calculated about You Are Not Alone, no visible strain from trying to mold Staples' style into something she's not. It's just her, as she is at her best, and Tweedy deserves credit for bringing that out.

No one can be a teenager again, not after 20 years, and The Vaselines have lost some of the feckless charm of their earliest material. Still, as they've gotten older, they've held onto much of what made them special – the reckless fun, the gritty melodies, the taunting humor – and picked up some skills.

Grinderman 2's variety and complexity never feels like a reach, and doesn't keep the album from cohering beautifully.

The farther it strays into new territory, the older and duller and more dubious Wilderness Heart sounds.

The end result is that, as far as we know (for now), Album of the Year is Black Milk continuing along at his very best.

Screaming Females do not get me because I'm not surprised by them. I enjoy Castle Talk, but it's academic.

To make so many overt references to his musical heroes while never losing sight of himself speaks to Iyer's own command. His improvisations have such clarity and vision, and it's rare that he stretches things any longer than necessary.

It's to Ejstes credit that he's stayed his course, continuing to pull together nostalgic and post-millennial sounds instead of chasing a mass audience that he probably couldn't have kept anyway.

Intentionally or not though, the vibe here tends to conjure more of a '71 than '01 frame of references, working up a slightly discordant, cacophonous sound that brings to mind everything from the Kosmiche synth-klang of early Cluster to the Industrial scree of late Faust.

While the band's celebrity rose in the wake of national tragedy, Interpol will remind you that it's time to be worried again.

Personal Life is absorbing and entertaining the first few times through, but many may not find it as engaging as the Thermals' best work.

Though a newcomer to The Clientele should not start here, it's strong throughout, with the exception of the aberrant (if mild) guitar freakout in "Jerry" and a creepy piano solo, "No. 33," which, if unobjectionable, seems unnecessary.

They're going through the motions, you can't get into it, and then it's over, just like that. Strange Weather, Isn't It? is a party where everyone looks like they're having fun.

The a-ha moments in the archaeological game Magic Kids sets up on Memphis are fun precisely because the songs are so unassuming in their saccharine one-dimensionality.

With Special Moves, Mogwai have released a "greatest hits" collection in a sense, but it's indeed more special than that. Dramatic, at turns gentle, majestic and harsh, both old and new songs blend so well that there's no feeling of weak recent material sagging amidst earlier favorites.

Listening to the work heard here, it may be a bit premature to file Carey's work beside some of the musical touchstones suggested by his record label's press corps (Bill Evans, Talk Talk), but it does suggest a good start and a solid grasp of the spaces that can be created by music.