Dee Dee’s strong, confident voice and songwriting compensates for the lack of originality.

Absolute Dissent reaches a few new peaks, no doubt. The band is still challenging itself, much like art punk peers Wire, The Fall and Nick Cave have in the past decade.

It’s such a blessed relief that I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face is not just extremely good, but that it is so in the way that Prolapse has always been great. Steelyard and Derrick are in classic form.

With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.

We have to unpack One Life Stand a bit to understand how its ambition operates. There are, to begin with, some tracks so fine that there is little more to say, except “listen,” including the opening “Thieves in the Night.”

Your Blues is a bold step in a new direction, risking over-the-top theatricality, but with its feet planted firmly on solid ground.

There’s a pleasing friction between the grainy or otherwise affected samples and the polished music around them. Whether they air the frustrations of pioneering artistic transgressors like Dilla and Bruce on “Poor Cops,” or propel the bombastic “Joyrider” with an echo chamber of exclamations right out of Ye’s Rick James sample on “Runaway,” they give the album an imminent sense of cacophony, of a messy world that can’t but intrude on McMahon’s thoughts. It’s a collective sound, and a haunting one.

Wincing the Night Away feels a little paunchy, a little resigned – this is music that not only is mature enough to know that it can’t change the world, but is content to not try.

This is the prettiest album Dorji has made so far, though it’s more than that, profound and spirit moving and just what we need at the moment.

Gloss Drop is the most self-sufficient world Battles have made yet, and a pretty good argument in favor of music that gets less and less interesting the more you know about it.

It’s a formidable return to his more familiar post-’04 pop form, a better album by any assessment than YATQ.

Danilova takes the peaks higher than ever and manages to avoid both the pitfalls of monotony and excessive experimentation.

One Bedroom is the LP on which The Sea And Cake jettisons most of its jazzbo pretensions long enough to finish the pure, catchy, consistent pop-funk record it's always been capable of.

The Line may be as polarizing as ever, but fuck me, can it play a righteous drinking song.

The Horror makes for a largely relentless, immersive listening experience.

His two band mates this time, Erik Walters of Globe and Silver Torches plus NW session drummer Sean Lane (who has played with Bazan solo and Silver Torches and many other artists), have never been associated with Pedro the Lion before. However, with Bazan on bass, they make a sound that is deeply familiar, rough-hewn and rambunctious with big bright guitar chords that punctuate moody, sharply observed narratives.

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

There is beauty on Nepenthe, but it’s altogether too clean and self-regarding to pack much of a punch.

Don’t Weigh Down the Light is a precise, meditative work, and one that can be rewarding with each successive listen.

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

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.

A stunning collection of unpredictability that has to stand among the best pop albums of 2003.

As far as conclusions about Popular Songs go, it’s fair to address the reader not as a consumer of the music, but as someone breezing through its clean, familiar architecture. You should check this place out. It’s pretty sweet, and I think you’ll like the light.

One skippable track makes for a slight mark against an otherwise strong return to the world. After decades of teases, EPs and live stuff, a few good singles would have been satisfying, but with a quality album, it’s certainly nice to have the Chills again.

These songs are direct, sometimes stripped down, but the components are robust, clear and smartly mixed. They sound like Osees.

Black Mountain won’t win any prizes for innovation, but their slightly bruised brand of retro is far more fertile than that of their contemporaries.

In between [“Very Large Green Triangles” and "Aesthetic Vehicle"], some of these tunes feel a little bit generic; those tracks have notable features, but they don’t seem to do anything that’s all that different from other Matmos albums.

The mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly is powerful. The writing is exceptionally good. You probably forgot about The The (I did), but it’s time to take notice again.