The Silence is readily accessible (certainly more so than Batoh’s eyeball-movement-tracking Brain Pulse Music), but hard to pin down. It sounds folky, much of the time, and then it lets the bottom drop out.

It’s hard to think of 7 as anything other than an extension of Beach House’s sound, incorporating slightly different, smaller ideas but all easily applied to their own syntax.

Occasionally masterful, frequently evocative, and consistently lovely.

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

Hallelujah Anyhow is the group’s third. And it’s a neatly balanced work: intimate in certain moments and larger in scale at others. What makes this album work, ultimately, and what makes much of Hiss Golden Messenger’s music work on a larger scale, is the use of implicit contradictions that run through it.

Malcolm Middleton’s electric and bass guitars have never sounded so big, and they’re better that way.

On this LP, Orcutt spells out what he does, and exercises sufficient restraint while doing so that he’ll reach people put off by the treble overload of his live performances or the ultra-raw presentation of records like Gerty or A New Way to Pay Old Debts.

Superwolf contains some of [Oldham's] most startling work yet.

Despite coming up against a couple of creative cul-de-sacs, Comma largely succeeds in blending the most appealing elements of ambient, kosmische and electro into a heady brew.

Susanna’s voice is a reassuring constant, an effortless, uninflected carrier of melody. She has her diva-ish moments, but mostly lets the notes assemble out of air and fog, coalescing with a purity that seems not quite human. .... Susanna’s earlier works distilled agitated work into timeless, edgeless serenity, but now her arrangements fuel the music with urgency.

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

Extremely unoriginal, but well-crafted rock shot through with tantalizingly brief moments of interest.

The Bachman you know is in here but submerged deep in the unfamiliar; it is not really until the two gorgeous “Song for the Setting Sun” cuts that you get an unobstructed view of the man and his guitar.

Perhaps most impressive is that in what is arguably the band's most traditional record to date, Tinariwen manages to loop in highly recognizable people and sounds without any effort.

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.

There are moments, however, when Hung and Power lock into something truly ecstatic, creating passages that more than account for the tremendous amount of pre-release hype that’s been softballed toward these two.

Bruner has some pretty sweet, vibey chops that he deploys sporadically here. If cultivated, he could deliver that skewed-fusion, weed hazed love letter he's attempted here. In the meantime, best to let him noodle it out on his own.

Third Time to Harm is a visceral pleasure, celebrating brawn over brains and shout-along choruses (“What pretty parasites!”) over songwriting complexity.

This latest recording is assured and full of intent, seamlessly integrating acoustic guitar blues with a rushing undercurrent of electronic noise, backdropping stark self-revelation with sleek synthesizer arrangements.

Things begin promisingly with “She Never Could Resist a Winding Road” and “Beatnik Walking,” two nimbly played songs on which Thompson and his band get to show off their chops without showing off.... Unfortunately, that fact [a relatively small band playing together on relatively little time] begins to show for the worse on "Patty Don’t You Put Me Down."

All Tense Now Lax at times evokes luminaries like Coil or early Current 93, but ultimately exists as its own beast, one that is never predictable, always challenging and achieves that oh-so-rare feat in rock music now: it turns the genre inside out and pulls the remains into a brave new form of noise.

The songwriting and arrangements are uniformly strong, seemingly effortless and clever.

Lloyd, the Marvels, and Williams cover an array of emotions while remaining well focused in sound (with the exception of “Monk’s Mood,” pretty enough for inclusion anyhow). It’s an impressive take by a roster of stars given over to the bigger idea.

None of this is so very different from Swervedriver’s catalog, or indeed from the guitar-crashing dream pop of Adam Franklin’s Bolts of Melody, but it is very fine anyway.

The Fiery Margin shames so many songs being written today, not with reproach, but with example after elegant example of how it’s done right.

Mind Hive is concise yet full of restless intelligence, musical ideas and willingness to push boundaries. Taut, tense, not a wasted note, moments of great beauty, 35 minutes of Wire contains enough to fuel a multitude of pretenders.

That Allen is able to continue to do this 45 years on from when he first introduced us to Sailor, Spanish Alice, Jabo, and Chick is as moving and mystifying as that big Texas sky.

Songs for Pierre Chuvin, whatever its origin story, would stand on its own as a regular album, melding retro sounds and recent writing, with its spontaneity driving its melodies and structures. It’s a treasure for fans, full of references and idiosyncratic meaning. Even if probably won’t serve as the best starting point for newcomers to the band, it’s not strictly an insider’s work.