It’s still a trip, just a marginally more vivid one, and that’s a good thing.

The music is vastly entertaining, devilish, solder trickles of white-hot intensity running through cracks in its nailed-down facade.

While Puny will likely draw few new fans into Neville's unique sound world, those who have long fallen under the spell of his corroded Kiwi fuckery will be rapt yet again.

If an album could have hormone surges and acne, if it could sit home on prom night listening to Joy Division and smoking pot, if it could be as fully convinced of its inner worthlessness as of its ultimate triumph...in short if an album could be fourteen, this would be the one.

R.I.P is Actress continually shifting and exploring, growing and rippling, being himself in the only Statement-less way he knows how. Its 15 songs aren't for everyone and with few overt melodies, it's definitely not for everyone.

Halo's voice, pronounced in the mix, artfully mangled, purposely unperfect, reaching at unreachable notes, and occasionally beautiful, is far from a relief. Whether this is riveting or off-putting is for each listener to decide.

Now Only is a messy record, brimming with musical ideas that often drop out before resolving, and with lyrics so factual as to sometimes verge on dull. But in the name of progress, this messiness feels hard-won. You can learn from death, and Elverum proves again that you can make art from it.

Together, they drag luminous shards of melody out of a boiling murk of possibility, then let it slip back down into chaotic potential. It’s an uneasy, fascinating mix of energies, sometimes beautiful but never entirely at rest.

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

The sounds don't mesh, they stand separate and unique, a convoluted series of unique experiences looped and falling over each other in a series of accidents Whitman wants us to call 'dance.'

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.

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.

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.

It's hard to think of a more reliable, compulsively listenable formula for new wave guitar pop romance than the one that Wild Nothing has so quickly perfected.

It’s another album from Tropical Fu*k Storm, a good one edging into great.

Sure, you can hear that they're awed and distressed about the state of things, but the emotion in Friel and Warshaw's singing seems undercut by the lyrics.

The songs themselves, even when they are not traditional folk songs, share some of the time-worn general-ness of the folk genre. You do not, very often, feel that you are glimpsing directly into Gubler's psyche.

Most times, Moon Duo seems to distill whole rock songs into a single measure, refracted into a million repetitions as through a funhouse mirror.“Creepin’” vamps a blues rock riff into oblivion, transforming heat and friction and diesel dust into something otherworldly. Only “White Rose” is given the room to stretch its limbs.

It’s a nice rest, listening to Other You. It’s hard to remember what you heard, but very, very pleasant while it’s happening.

The buildup remains, but the payoff is fleeting and tentative when it's made at all – the songs do get big and loud, but there's always the hint of an ultimate impending boom which, in songs like "Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean", never comes.

The best songs on Ultraísta recall the murky pop made by the likes of Broadcast, where clarity and catchiness intermingled

The songs are good. Both musicians are pros. The execution is offhandedly excellent, like they’re not even trying but nailing it anyway. But you never get the sense that these songs matter all that much to either principal. It’s a parlor trick, a juggling act that they could do all day without dropping anything, but the stakes don’t seem to be very high.

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

Wareham’s sideline fantasy life becomes the Luna fan’s candy-infested playground.

Swim sets the more developed tunecraft that Snaith has practiced on recent records to his first set of dance grooves in half a dozen years. When it works, it speaks more accessibly than anything else he's done, and also attests to his growing ability to snag your attention without throwing all of the kitchen sink's contents at you.

None of these remixes fall flat. For Radiohead fans, TKOL RMX 1234567 is an opportunity to see their favorite fivesome in a new light by some of the world's most clever electronic musicians.

Kode9 fans will enjoy club ready tracks like “Uncoil” and “Lagrange Point” and as with his previous work, the mastery of dynamics and the production values are to rights but there’s a sense the music cannot carry the weight of its associations alone.

Moondust For My Diamond does end up feeling like it’s a few songs too long, especially compared to Diviner’s succinct, 10 song track list. Nevertheless, it’s a predominantly radiant synth-pop record that offers receptive souls some much-needed uplift.

Fever retains the cheeky humor of other dubstep artists, but its vivacity makes it his most immediate, and compelling, release yet.

Like the best songs on Front Row Seat to Earth, “Seven Words” would be completely at home in the soft rock seventies, downer sensitivities playing out against expert studio arrangements. Despite these contrasts, listening to her latest work next to her underground phase the melodic ideas and the stately power of her singing is consistent.

This is cold, lonely stuff, in other words, high on harsh and gloomy textures, low on solacing gestures.

Home Acres, on the other hand, is immediately likeable, suitably complex, and not really very adventurous at all. Instead of reinvention, it commits to recombining old elements in a thoughtful, thematically precise way.

Making the transition from Songs into Instrumentals is more of a listening challenge than one might imagine. While both albums are populated by the same radiant guitar tone, the playing on Instrumentals is much more exploratory and tentative, dotted with hesitations, pinging harmonics, string buzz and misarticulated notes.

Presley is an oddball psychedelic pop artist of considerable appeal. He’s also an experimenter in digital minimalism. Larry’s Hawk eats all kinds of stuff, apparently, and you just have to keep feeding him.

This set is intriguing, though recent Fall is easiest to take in small doses.

While not exactly self-evident or easy to spot, the song structures are more prevalent than before.

While this is the most accessible Phosphorescent album, Houck's flair for musical surrealism is still very much on hand.

By turns languidly bluesy and as stark as an oak branch against a February sky, her music is a treasure, and this record fills in a story-line with far too many gaps.

There’s something off in the way that the euphoria attaches to the chillier depths of his songs. It’s unsettling enough to suggest that it maybe could be interesting if it worked, but it doesn’t quite.

Parquet Courts needs an extra injection of grandiosity (as 2014’s towering “Instant Disassembly”) when they slow things down, and they don’t always provide it on the songs that need it the most.

As I said, there is nothing really to fault, at least superficially, with Night Gallery, but it just never builds on the decent ingredients at play. It's simply far too easy to forget once you've heard it.

A solid, if not predictable emo-tronic excursion.

Even as Barnes works with a more limited palette, the drums/bass/guitar ensemble sounds as tight and crisp as could possibly be desired. He just doesn’t seem to want to be as gentle as the music that he has created here, resulting in a frustrating, and sometimes rather irritating listen.

At the end, S-M is still a silly tribute band, years away from hoeing a unique row. But when musicians crank out such a joyously chaotic mess of someone else’s forced nostalgia, it’s hard to be mad at them.

The album’s elements--large scale pop and tightly controlled electro--don’t always work together, but they come together on the very last track, 'Radio Kaliningrad.'

Maybe Butler was aiming higher than simply "dance music." A laudable ambition, but one that sadly isn't matched by the content of Blue Songs.

The Richest Man In Babylon is strictly background fare. If you run a coffeeshop, you’re cooking with gas.

While wildly uneven and far from either's strongest work, Instrumental Tourist does have its moments of inspiration.

Together is a good album that is catchy and full of hooks and does a lot of what we've come to expect from the band. Having said that, it's also a step down.

Unlike previous output, the ten tracks on Attention Please are slick, synthesized, almost club-ready vamps (or at least that seems to be their aspiration). The affect may be intentional but for the most part I found them to be drowsy, forgettable, head-nodding throwaways with at least a passable amount of textural variety but very little in the way of memorable song-writing.

There’s no question that when they get it right, the Walkmen are captivating. But with songs like 'Long Time Ahead of Us' and 'New Country,' the only thing keeping your attention is Hamilton Leithauser’s slurred laments.

Fading Parade brings back the guitars, but continues the slide toward formlessness, with songs that are always pleasant but no longer very compelling.

So refined at times it borders on the insipid.

Strawberry Jam is a mixed proposition if ever there was one.

Right from the start, it’s the attention to detail in the arrangements — what Frank Zappa used to describe as “eyebrows” — that brings Norm to vivid, radiant life. ... Regardless of how gorgeous it all sounds, sometimes the songwriting does feel a little wanting, as if Shauf has penned a decent verse and chorus, then run out of ideas about how to add another section to take the song to the next level. ... By keeping all the songs to a succinct few minutes, Shauf stymies their potential to evolve into longer, more complex pieces.

The more faithfully you capture these songs, the worse they sound. The Lillywhite Sessions may be DMB’s darkest, most dangerous material, but it is still slick as hell. No question, though, that Walker approached these songs out of love, and for that, you have to give some credit.

It sounds like the Good Shoes are tired and mildly sick of it all--and unfortunately, it’s catching.

With no connecting thread or great songwriting, I Am Very Far is difficult to engage with. It has its moments, of course, but the more I listen, the more I think of it as a creative palette cleanser -- a chance to try out a few ideas while planning the next big song cycle.

The confident, relaxed, but still concise and appealing “Vertical” indicates that Animal Collective still have some life in them, and as much as some of Painting With can tend to grate, it’s still an improvement from the band’s last two albums; trying to write pop songs instead of dance records or noise jams suits them in their middle age.

There are certainly more fun moments than not, at the very least rendering The Grey Album enjoyable, but it’s hard to argue for any reason other than its novelty.

The record is more about preserving hip-hop culture that about creating something fresh.

The tracks that are built on longer samples and vocals are more involving.

Alligator's biggest missteps are the moments when the music joins in the apprehension, rendering the coyness in Berninger's lyrics unreadable.

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.

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.

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.

The net result of The Uglysuit’s formula sounds something like an imagined pairing of Bedhead and Phish. It’s all right as far as it goes.

Espoir is an unusual release, part interesting artifact of aesthetic oddities, part field recording of a talented man with a smooth voice who knows his way around a guitar. Not the ideal introduction to Burkina Faso, but worthwhile nonetheless.

Although sloppiness normally both describes and compliments their sound, Shadows is messy with little to redeem it.

An often fascinating, if frustratingly uneven record.

On the stereo, Who Loves the Sun is almost too pretty, coming perilously close to that "beautiful music" vibe popular in dentists' waiting rooms.

Like Darnielle’s shrill tone that many have come to love and now mourn, We Shall All Be Healed is sometimes on the mark, but often left of center. Its moments of clarity, although surely there, don't come around enough to keep it near the stereo.

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.

Like Masana Temples as a whole, “Dripping Sun” is fun but uneven, too ambitious stylistically and not quite ambitious enough sonically.

Tao of the Dead makes me, by turns, want to improve my attention span and want to listen to something else.

The majority of the first half finds Ejstes at his most melodically direct — including singles “Nattens Sista Strimma Ljus” and “Skövde” — while the second half indulges some questionable studio experimentation.

Nothing quite so interesting develops; instead, heavy generic riffs create the impression that Dave Grohl may be waiting in the wings to launch into an anthemic chorus. ... This is music that would sound best after the third beer. I hope, though, that Tyler is preparing to offer up some fresh, forward-looking music soon.

Sex Change is uneven from song to song, but name a Trans Am record that isn't. What's something here is the smoothness with which the record evens out as a whole.

Speck Mountain might have a great album in them; this one isn’t bad. But I hope that some day they get over themselves and really get down.

Ultimately, as the disc draws to a close and one hushed sonic wisp after another drifts by, justice is done to neither Foster’s considerable talents nor Dickinson’s genius.

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.

As an album, The Crying Light is neither as revelatory nor as consistent as "I Am A Bird Now."

A Dream A While Back is entertaining enough. Hearing Higgins recorded so simply can be starkly beautiful. Yet, anyone contemplating picking up a copy should be reminded there's another, far better record that should be heard first.

While there’s no disputing the attractiveness of its well-polished recording... it’s patchy and... in places, disturbingly adult-contemporary.

As a mood piece, there are poignant moments, but nothing resembling a clear emotional statement.

The problem is that if it’s not very compelling as theatre, the theatrical parts get in the way of enjoying the songs, which are pretty good in a brash, bull-headed, punk-belligerent kind of way.

The majority of Friend Opportunity fails to surprise. While it’s an easily listenable disc not without its share of good and engaging tunes, for a band who have made some of the best and most confounding pop music of the last decade, it’s a bit of a letdown.

Two compact chunks that could have made a gooier whole, one can certainly consider the potential excellence of “Seadrum”’s sprawling galaxy-march against some “House of Sun” morphed licks.

Ultimately, it's hard to embrace Sepalcure. The record has received some critical acclaim, and as far as stateside bass music goes, Sepalcure deserve the attention. But something is missing...risk.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing to the band besides the concept. Far from ramshackle, exploratory fun, the songs are paint-by-numbers melodramatic nonsense with a few interesting genre gestures.

While the individual songs here impress, Holograms feels more like a collection of singles than a cohesive work.

Nothing wrong with clearly highlighting your influences, although you do run the risk of reminding listeners why said influences are better.

Newman's third album is beautifully put together, well played, slyly and cleverly worded, but it works too much on the surface.

Waves is an album filled with nice touches and sincere sentiment, not much more.

It's not as good as Ugly, but it's not as bad as Travels, and it's a welcome step in the right direction.

Established fans will appreciate a few new gems in the catalogue (I've returned repeatedly to "(They Found Me On the Back Of) The Galaxy"), but those unfamiliar with The Intelligence would do well starting with Deuteronomy, Fake Surfers or Males before circling back to this one.

This is great for obsessive fans and for the remnants of the Elephant Six community, for with Electronic Projects they can get a more complete picture of the band. But why make them pay for it?

There's no denying Lynn's skill at reconciling disparate sounds, even if the brightest moments fail to paper over all the cracks.