Though there’s nothing here that’s particularly original or knock-you-flat outstanding, it’s all handled impeccably, recorded vividly, and sequenced smartly to make the album’s 38 minutes fly by.

Looping State of Mind is a bold attempt at fusing The Field's emotive tendencies with something more aggressive, and for the most part, Willner strikes the perfect balance.

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.

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

[The National] turned a corner with 2005’s Alligator, fusing the moments of mania and quietude from their initial releases into a grandiose adult angst that resulted in at least two more great albums. With Beyondless, Iceage seems to have crossed a similar threshold.

It's a welcome venture, for sure, and just like all those previous Hot Chip records, In Our Heads won't go unmoved to.

It's an album that makes the most of its contradictions--the gulf between its most rhapsodic elements and its contemplative ones provides its share of thrilling moments along the way.

Don't Be A Stranger is very subtle album, soft in tone but twisted and eaten from the inside by corrosive intelligence.

For a band whose promise has often outdone their execution, All of a Sudden is their most complex, accomplished and well thought out record.

Sweeping, quietly incredible FLOTUS.

The Horizon Just Laughed is less showy than the Maraqopa trilogy, but in its quiet way just as visionary and odd.

All of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes.

Friko’s songs are real, true and felt. Songs like “Where We Been” and “Crashing Through” build from small beginnings, voice, guitar, piano into huge anthemic refrains and breakdowns.

Saloon might not attract the same short-term attention as some of their higher profile rock and pop peers in the UK, but this second album affirms that they have more to offer than many of their compatriots.

It takes a unique kind of ambition to produce something like I See the Sign, but the wonder isn't just that he does it, but that he does it so well.

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.

The second half of the album mixes up longer, quieter intervals of unreality (“The Healer,” “Walking Again” “I Can Still See”) with more bangers (“Swampland” “Red Eyes”), and packs less of a wallop than the onset. Yet there is no question that 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo is more like Ubu’s earliest material than anything Thomas has put out in years

The work is too much for casual listening, and it refuses to be background music. And so, perhaps live performance is the most appropriate setting. This double disc captures both the awkwardness of performing such inward-looking material and the communion this sort of sharing carves out. Elverum’s lyrics are searing in their specificity.

This is a wonderful album, easily as good, though perhaps less immediately accessible, than last year’s "Rites of Uncovering."

Far is a bright and gratifying listen; one that doesn’t aim at ideas above its station or flounder in search of unity.

With this revised version of the band, that role has evolved. There are more reflective pieces characterized by subdued piano accompaniment, and occasional touches that make the rock music distinctive.

One of outsider DIY’s best beloved primitives is backed up by a very capable band, for a curious mix of goofy, giddy but locked in grooves. .... The highlight here is languid, lyrical “Lemonade Sunset,” a still clambering, still clanging, still ranting ditty that has somehow been soothed into romance.

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.

Whether you want to get lost in the detail, immerse yourself in the whole or a combination of the two, this album will reward, awe and occasionally terrify you.

In Longtime Companion, he puts the drawl and shuffle of country into the service of a very peculiar vision, embracing and even seeking out the contradictions.

Salvant shows off a sharp wit in the talk-sung, “Obligation,” a fluid sophistication on “If I Lost My Mind,” and a little bit of swagger on the brief, piano-pounding “Trail Mix.” Her original songs are as varied as the covers.

These songs are massive, yet also bent and personal in a way that lets you in even as they blow you back against the wall.

If some albums make you lean in, strain to hear, fill in the negative space with your own silent ponderings, this one flattens you like a road roller. Its nightmarish sonic textures reach up out of the disc much as the figures painted in Netflix art-horror disaster Velvet Buzzsaw did, but without the comic relief.