While Jenny from Thebes is a self-proclaimed rock opera, it defies the expectations of that genre inasmuch as it’s not a sprawling, self-indulgent double album. Moreover, it stands on its own.

In Hex’s 34 minutes Mckiel ventures far and wide, but always brings you back to the strangeness of seeing something familiar in a new light, wondering at the possibilities.

You could easily call this the sequel to Secret Wars - it has the same mix of baked acoustics, crushing organ and electric guitar lines, staccato vocals, and a meditative finale built around interlocked piano and drums.

The difficult thing about Fun House, which by this point becomes apparent, is that musically it primes you for a very different experience than the one it delivers. The middle section’s prolonged, sedate atmosphere feels like a slog following the album’s energetic opening. Not that the material doesn’t reveal its own strengths over repeated listens when given the chance.

The energy ebbs and flows between these two poles, so that intellectual inquiry becomes a gateway towards straight-on freakery, and wild intuitive leaps make sense of complex formulae.

The Witness is definitely a grower, an elusive listen whose understated charms define its mystique — and also its flaws.

The version of Low that helped define a subgenre remains recognizable throughout, but their sound has expanded.

A juicy amalgam of West African rhythms and soothing electronic sounds.

The whole thing took shape with hardly any notice and minimal rehearsal, across language and cultural barriers and in front of an audience, but nonetheless catches a wave and holds onto it in a very intuitive way. Probably if the players thought too hard about what they were doing, they’d lose the thread, but they don’t. It’s a fast ride and a jam and well worth experiencing.

The final rush commingles anguish and ecstasy quite powerfully, glorying in the significance Mapplethorpe held for Smith and resonating for anyone who has lost someone and is willing to be taken to the water.

There may be an idea at the center of the record, but it’s overwhelmed by the sheer visceral quality of the songs. You listen and your guts shake. The whole room seems to shake. One is reminded of a clause the Body have quoted from Hrabal’s foreboding writing: “my whole room hurts.” If that’s akin to the affect the Body are seeking, they have succeeded.

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.”

With this latest liveliness, Pollard and company continue that relentless growth. And remember, they’re leaving the breathing space for you: no one said they needed it.

It’s good where it has to be good and it hits the notes it’s supposed to, but other than that it’s tough to find Furr inspiring in any way, especially with such a specifically backwards-looking strategy employed.

Eleventh Dream Day are living in the moment, and they have never sounded madder than they do on Works for Tomorrow. They also sound, on their own terms, quite superb, and not at all like they’re trying to keep the past alive.

The low tide image on the cover Black Sea suggests that this process of covering and uncovering is cyclical, and the music bears it out by adding a welcome bit of noise and depth to some stately and slowly evolving melodies.

You’ve got death and exaltation, followed by a sly wink at rock history. Not a bad set of tools for making smart, defiant music.

It seems often as if the songs come to life more through sonic detail and aural shape (a variety of distortion tones, drum sounds, reverb ranges, and the like) than in compositional changes of direction, harmonic depth, or hooks. This doesn't, however, make the music dull. Instead, there's something compelling about the way Young Widows use these details--a shimmer, a hum, a scrape--for drama rather than relying on the often cheap dramatics heard in "heavy" music.

Without being especially political, the album is resolutely female in the strongest, most self-asserting way.

Don’t be put off by the glossy patina; there’s a lot to hear on this record, as repeated listening makes plain.

Sleeper is a large, though not radical, departure from the bulk of Segall’s catalog. But in dialing down the fuzz and eschewing girls-and-partying songs to dig deep into his own personal demons, Segall shows marked maturity as a songwriter.

Fleeting is therefore more intimate even than your average American primitive album, with the sounds of nature adding to the authenticity and naturalism of the music as opposed to intruding upon it.

These songs still jangle, still twitch, still pulse, but there's an undertone of serenity and philosophical acceptance that makes them resonate, too.

The most astounding thing about Lord Quas is not Madlib going against the grain, but that it’s basically The Unseen 2005, completely devoid of hits, and still ultimately compelling.

Where "Arm’s Way" was mostly excess without limit, Vapours is tightly-controlled, yet still roiling beneath the surface.

I feel like Flight of the Conchords could do something interesting if they embraced the absurdity of their act and didn’t stand aloof from it at an ironic distance.

Tromatic Reflexxions is a great record for all of the reasons you might suspect – unless you don’t like MoM, or MES, or either.

This collection stands as an odd object--somewhere between a historical document and a fresh statement. Of its two components, Dethroned makes for the stronger half, and that's reassuring in its own way: in a work that weds older material with newer contributions, it's encouraging to find that the high points come from the latter.