In Messes, I’m hearing plenty of scrappy, sardonic, guitar-slashing indie rock--“Spotted Gold” stands out--but also other things. Chura’s voice gains clarity and sophistication on the slower songs.

Birchard's music is euphoric and in your face--if only he could combine his staggering technique with some true grit.

Filled with an ineffable spiritual longing and a fractured sense of alienation, the album packs an emotional punch and a dark intelligence that sneaks up on you after repeated listens.

This is an album in a platonic sense, crafted around a clutch of real hits that were made for group enjoyment on the radio, not just for headphones in coffeehouses. And, like every Comet Gain album that's come before, it succeeds.

Holtkamp finds a beatific atmosphere somewhere between the first BEAST recordings and his earlier work.

This time, she and Wells seems intent on demonstrating that members of even the shaggiest rock outfits have a pop side, too. If you’ve been waiting to see someone try to splice together Carol King and Karen Dalton--and more or less pull it off--this is your record.

Though there are no weak links in the 10-song, 30-minute track list, Cohen tucks the album’s finest moment midway into the second half. “Night or Day” is such a catchy, perfectly executed song that it deftly snaps everything into focus, prompting the realization of just how odd and sneakily exploratory Paint a Room can be.

I’m Going Away is striking for its group sound; the Furnaces play with more air around them, more flexibility and interaction.

Sakamoto and Fennesz don't say how you should take their music, but its piano-forward sound aligns it with decades of delicate minor-key melodies that have accompanied countless images of rain on window pains and lonely pining lovers.

The Runners Four manages to capture the unbridled intensity and utter joy these four carry across in a live setting.

These New Puritans play it smart, but in service of an earnest query rather than their own smartness.

It’s the first solo Sprout album that doesn’t seem to lack from Pollard’s input.

The big downer about “Vs.” tends to be its sporadic hinting at the greatness that could have been: small pockets of significance surrounded by many mediocre passages.

Who Is the Sender? has a gently melancholy, a resigned aura that looks lovingly on this world but also speculates on the next. Both elements, the careful observation of what is and the restless querying about what may be, meld into a wise and spiritually resonant whole.

The songs here have lost none of the lonely strength of their earlier material, and the band’s performances are no less gorgeous; but the new strength of Gem Club is that their music is capable of being just as joyous as it is devastated, and the result is powerful.

Hairball doesn’t redefine its chosen genre, nor does it really refine it. It’s a straightforward album, one meant for windows-open listening on a sunny day.

If you can’t conceptually get behind the concept of a metal kid giving up noise for beauty, you’re probably not going to like the record. Otherwise, check it out. It’s lovely.

In the newfound center on Thank You Very Quickly, Eagleson and company have stealthly transitioned from indie ethno-experimental vanguards to genuine Afro-Rock champions, erasing 7,000 miles of distance and so many years of history.

Mostly because the stakes are so high, By the Throat, the would-be comeback from prodigal Minneapolis duo Eyedea & Abilities, has to rate as a disappointment, despite interesting intentions and a few sublime moments.

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.

It’s an intricate, carefully crafted set of songs that blows by in a warm breeze.

The lyrical approach has so far kept me from really warming to it, but the words are ugly and weird in an interesting way, which makes me think that maybe eventually a light will come on and it will become one of my favorites.

Continue as a Guest sounds exactly like a New Pornographers record. It’s energetic, insanely catchy and occasionally thrilling pop music. The compositions are dense and clever and complex, but not too much for their own good.

A stronger verse/chorus foundation might make the songs more instantly accessible and easier to remember. But by making it easier to access, Bowerbirds might well be depriving listeners of the chance to make their own way, to wander in the desert a little even.

It's so satisfying when a band is able to subtly re-invent its sound, as Keenan and Cargill have done here so well.

Instead of being an especially bold or dynamic record, however, it only recalls the best moments of Quality Control and EP, seldom reaching their highest peaks.

It seems that every element previously employed by the Microphones is recycled here in masterpiece capacity.

Olson’s songs are as strong as ever.

On There’s No Home, Hunter reveals a human (albeit a chemically depressed human) range of emotion, making her narrative more believable but much less captivating.

Stylistically, this collaboration veers from intimate in scope to blown-out and dancefloor-ready. And yet, it holds together neatly, shifting from style to style without really losing cohesion.

The Belbury Tales can be a potent experience at the high points I've just described, but it spends some time at lower altitudes, too, without ever unambiguously erring.

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

The vocals alone would be a lullaby, but in this broken orchestra, they’re insomnia. Yet spending time with this record allows the burs to break off. If you give in to its strange terms, You is soothing.

In the relentless, rampant pursuit and procurement of new musical product, it’s easy to lose sight that a return to and expansion of what’s worked previously can prove just satisfying for both artists and listeners.

Your response to Be Up A Hello will depend on your tolerance for Squarepusher’s virtuosic onslaughts. It can be as exhausting as it’s exhilarating. If there’s a sameness to the BPM readings of the up-tempo tracks a deeper listen reveals the layers that are buried beneath the frenzy and show Squarepusher has lost none of his edge.

Refuge clocks in at over an hour, an hour in which, as stated earlier, not a whole lot of stuff happens. And yet maybe it takes that long to clear out the buzz and chatter, to slow down, to focus on one sound at a time and to find a stillness. It’s too long, it’s too slow, it’s too eventless until it’s not, and then you’re there.

As Cunningham pans across the channels, his sound design strikes the ears and creates synaptic leaps that draw pull the listener’s focus. Many of constituents will be familiar to fans of Boards of Canada, Two Lone Swordsmen and Aphex Twin and if the early tracks of Statik sound more challenging in their discordances, you will feel borne along by the idiosyncratic juxtapositions Cunningham creates.

There are still songs here with all the hallmarks of a classic Sandwell cut (“Self-Initiate” thumps mercilessly with its UFO synth pulses and “Restless” could slip right in the middle of a live set), but they are the exception rather than the rule.

On The Odd Couple, Gnarls Barkley gets halfway to the heights of St. Elsewhere and seems content to stay there.

This is a great album, and you’re probably going to want to hear it again and again.

While Jamie Stewart & co. succeed at replicating the fractured nature of their live shows – the mix of sparse and dense, broken and enraged, auxiliary percussion and programming, noise and melodiousness is all here – it's beginning to sound rote.

They’re simply better songwriters than many others in the field, and their ability to recontextualize these sounds into something so subsequently fresh and familiar is a stunning achievement.

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.

This is Frog Eye’s most elegantly structured, premeditated, composed album ever. It is also miraculously, unexpectedly the band’s best to date.

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

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.

You can’t listen to Via without going through the wringer, but you also can’t listen to it without feeling stronger, surer and more defiant afterward.

More even-tempered than almost any of their previous efforts, it’s their most consistent full-length since Realistes.

Back in the mid-1970s Faust asserted both ownership and ironic distance with the song “Krautrock;” here, they show that they can still wax motorik if the situation requires it.

ISAM's clusters aren't as advanced as Tobin might have you think, and only represent a monumental leap forward if you compare them to his trio of classic albums, all of which were recorded more than 10 years ago.

So is Patton a charlatan or a genius? While Suspended Animation doesn’t exactly settle the question, it’s shitloads of fun trying to find out.

Despite the intricacy, the provocative joining of primitive and futuristic, you’re left with both too much and too little. The tracks run on for over an hour in their skeletal, restrained way. There’s not so much to think about, and a long time to do it in.

One of the most beguiling and rewarding Six Organ of Admittance albums — 39-minutes of synth ballads, cracked space-glam and 1980s-glossed guitar overload.

Glynnaestra is not quite of this world, but that has a good bit of its appeal.

Taken as a whole, however, OH consists of more stellar stuff from a band that’s always taken the tortoise’s view of the race.

It covers too much ground, spreads its inventive energies too thin.

Wild Peace is a work in progress, a document of a band on a very fast track, but still figuring out exactly who and what it is.

To wit, what irritates most about Compass is the way it assaults the listener with wave after wave of sonic winks, of moments intended to be witty or clever that instead fall flat. Busy and fussily filtered at every turn, I guess it’s ‘crazy’ sounding or something, but there’s nothing communicated in the slightest.

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.

Particularly in the lugubrious opening half of the disc, Clogs tends to repeat things simply for the sake of repeating them without really building towards anything.

Thom Yorke used to make better music than the nine anemic Atoms for Peace cuts here.

You can feel him, almost, willing the elements of words, drums and bass to come together in a music that is more than the sum of its parts.

Stepping gingerly and keeping balanced in precarious places, Wald is a cat. It’s as pleasing as a purr.

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

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

Bill Callahan's latest solo effort is so laid back that it almost never gets going at all.

With so much in the blender, it's a testament to BSS's production skills that tracks like this don't fly apart. But they do get muddled.

Two fistfuls of songs that are at once as tight and as expansive as the band has ever been. The trio isn’t unrecognizable in their compositions, but it’s the way they use space that appears to have shifted. The result is formidable for fans and an easy entry point for those just joining the journey.

Exhausting, energetic and bold – all adjectives apply - except for one hang-up: Ghost has done this all before on their previous album, 2004’s Hypnotic Underworld.

Don’t worry if Smith’s quirk is your main draw, though, because Slime & Reason only furthers his evolution into becoming a mad scientist of digital dub production (with excellent contributions from Toddla T and Metronomy) and vocal menace.

Here Hayes gives every instrument space to breathe, while creating a beautiful group sound that moves with all the lithe grace of ‘70s soul sides.

Lost Time is a spiritual statement, executed through but not limited by drum kits, and it works towards revelation.

I'm From Barcelona is fun, but ultimately shallow.

Seek Warmer Climes is still more visceral than cerebral. It washes over you in a foul, cold, gritty spray, and you can hardly breathe when it’s coming straight at you.

Is Talkie Walkie the redemptive effort their audience has waited for? Yes and no.

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.

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

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.

To think about Invisible Girl too much would most certainly do it a disservice. Khan and BBQ are obviously not reinventing the wheel -- they’re just reveling in the eternal command of lock-up-your-daughters rock & roll.

As with their earlier release, Extra Golden seems to shine particularly in two speeds: an amped up tango rhythm that seems to accompany the more soul-driven songs, and a faster gallop that tends to yield the most sweat

Its appeal is immediate, rather than slow burning, and you can see it gaining fans who are less transfixed by eccentricity, more interested in tightly constructed songs. Yet at the same time, the words and images in these songs are deeply personal and self-revealing in a way that, I think, the first two albums were not.

Without the contextual anchor that Vo’s art gave to “Deforms,” Girl often gets lost in its own tormented vision. The album plays out like a series of crises, some real, some imaginary, some personal, others global. ... The better angels of Xiu Xiu’s nature are on display in the slow, scraping cello elegy “Amargi ve Moo” and in album closer “Normal Love,” the closest Girl gets to a legitimate pop song.

The players worked remotely, sent in files and Johnson and Kaufman fit them together. All of which makes it even more remarkable how effortless and streamlined this album sounds, how its sounds swirl around the listener like warm currents, and how carefully Johnson kept the balance between letting the songs speak for themselves and enveloping them in luminous arrangements.

Brian Borcherdt has made rough, beautiful songs out of broken bits of things, haunting atmospheres from the gritty transience of dust, and that's something worth doing.

Because of the language barrier and the unfamiliar cultural references, you’ll probably miss some of the subtleties, but that makes this album all the more fascinating. More than most records, it’s a journey through a strange, dreamlike landscape that resembles what you know only tangentially. Mystery, indeed, but an intriguing one.

As the music comes full circle, Vertigo Days forms a satisfying whole. On subsequent spins, more and more subtle threads and parallels become apparent, highlighting the craftsmanship The Notwist have invested in what may prove to be their finest album to date.

Everything on this oddball album demands your attention, often in unexpected ways.

It blunts and softens its influences, whether heavy rock or soul or krautrock, and delivers them in a medium-temperature hippie haze.

Though excellent in brief parts, much of the album is still worrisome, at times specifically seeming to document a band running out of steam.

It takes time to acclimate to the album's frenetic fog. In that sense, Centipede Hz is both a return to and rejection of form.

We worship “cool” in rock and punk. We love the bands that stay unaffected behind their dark shades, from the Velvets on down. But what’s so great about this second Bar Italia album is that it shows how hard that is, and what a cost it exacts.

In short, the observations are sharp and the music cranks. Twenty-first century Brooklyn doesn’t sound like much fun, but Bodega does.

Today is the Day ranks as an outstanding album on its own merits, but its timing is also impeccable. Arriving at the end of this year, it will hopefully silence those who have accused Yo La Tengo of sliding into mid-career pleasantness.

Listening to Equilibrium is like attending a Matthew Shipp museum retrospective: one samples the various facets of Shipp’s recent career without delving too deeply into any one of them.

As it stands, I enjoy it for what it is.

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.

This is where the irony comes in--he sacrifices most of his originality to referential tropes. Through successfully emulating noteworthy keyboardists of the past, he nearly obliterates his own identity as a practitioner. It's not that he isn't good, either. He's too good.

This is a record full of loose ends and fractious energy, not at all compromised by its move up the food chain.