Kensington Heights isn’t drastically different from anything that’s come before, but it’s Constantines’ most consistent album so far, and a good starting point for anyone who hasn’t heard them and misses that old-time galvanizing, anthemic music.

Now, 17 years removed from the original stateside release of the band’s music, this expanded reissue (buttressed with an additional disc of decent live tracks and a few cool demos) gives an entirely new generation of pop fans an excuse to dive into the group’s music.

There is a sense of every note being where it should be, glowingly back-lit and carefully arranged. It’s far from the note-bending frenzy that Polizze often indulges in — and let’s not give up on more of that and soon — but it is very beautiful in its own way and captures this endless, featureless, daydreaming summer about as well as any music I’ve heard so far.

There are a few hollow trunk rattlers here.... At.Long.Last.A$AP is no fashion accessory, it’s practically a reinvention.

The usual and worn out horrorcore lyrics resemble now parts in “found poetry,” left to their own devices. They are no longer pastiches made by humans but cosmic shards of meaning. The tracks recorded with Benny the Butcher and Elcamino (“La Mala Ordina”) and with La Chat (“Run For Your Life”) are hints at what’s possible when our-worldly lyrics paired down with otherworldy music.

Human Animal is the most textured and abstract of the band’s “official” releases in years, and while perhaps their methods aren’t new, the results aren’t simply the same old Wolf Eyes.

There is definitely a hint of entropy, an intimation that even the most intricately constructed scenarios can and will fall apart under pressure, that wasn’t there before. And that, paradoxically, makes these tracks all the more beautiful. The noise and clicks and hum impend, but haven’t yet overwhelmed; there is order and serenity here for now.

It’s a fascinating, detailed and absorbing album, and one of the best electronic/dance albums I’ve heard in many months.

David ain't the kind of thing you want to hear every day, but it's the kind of thing someone is going to play every day for a month. Or months. Whatever it takes to come back to life.

His taste in sounds and sense of what to do to them is unimpeachable, but the album's greatest strength is its resistance to categorization.

There is a coherent sound throughout the album––psychedelic electro-hop perhaps––while each song develops fruitfully without ever being dragged out.

Life Metal is music as event. It’s a terrific record.

The members of Ensemble Pearl have made an album that takes heavy, and turns it into a contemplative virtue.

The album seems like a simple, straightforward work, yet every song carries fitting surprises within its construction. ... It’s the singer’s own version of reality, but it probably isn’t that far from whatever’s actually out there. If it’s a little bent and a little brighter at the same time, it somehow only feels truer.

Given how inspired they sound here, it’s clear their musical chemistry is as instinctive as ever.

You’re going to want to hear this one.

It's brutal, direct and reflective while struggling for a way both out of and within the dark.

The sound on Darkness Rains is in line with 2016’s Glow in the Dark but seems to have sharpened and gained force in the intervening years.

On first listen Halo’s compositions tend to merge into one another, a blur of impressions like looking down on a cloud dappled landscape or passing buildings through a rain smeared train window. The atmospheres are foggy, drenched but rich, infused with the apparent illogic of dreams whose significance must be pieced together with hindsight from clues obvious and obscure.

The old version violently rejected oppression, the new one quietly totes up the damages. Both are valid approaches, and both are musically satisfying.

LUMP, a collaboration between Tunng founder Mike Lindsay and Laura Marling, is cool and enveloping, a mesh of luminous electronic textures and subtly placed instruments, all arranged around Marling’s silvery voice, often doubled or overlapping in harmony.

Little Hells, for all its melancholy, gives Nadler’s fans another reason to celebrate; any continuation of the momentum birthed with Songs III is a happy thing, indeed.

Breakdown is gleeful, digestible, and eminently enjoyable.

If you’re seeking a dose of danceable, retro futurist fun, Vanishing Twin are a good bet. Though far from original, Ookii Gekkou offers plenty of upbeat, colorful and likeable tunes.

Even the most contemplative cuts move with purpose and vigor and carefully plotted complexity. Long-time listeners might well miss the fizzing, popping, overload of good feelings that Eyes and A Certain Feeling brought on, but quieter, darker tunes have a value, too.

The Decemberists fill the album to overflowing with sharp, catchy songs, Colin Meloy’s idiosyncratic bookishness well-turned for emotional resonance without relinquishing energy or wit

Blue Eyed in the Red Room doesn’t fit any hip hop preconceptions. Moving deftly from influenced to influential, Boom Bip defines himself by leaving limitations behind.

It's furious and raging and exhausting, and the end result is exhilarating.