They may only be covering a small slice of what they’ve achieved previously here, but they so totally capture their moment that these songs blot out much of the world around them, so that they only exist, with you, blanketing day and night.

There’s a playful tilt to even the most serious songs, an arms-thrown-up celebration embedded in lacerating criticism. The revolution will not only be televised, but tracked in every conceivable and intrusive way…but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.

Gold Record is honest in its own fanciful way, proving that not everything has to be literal fact to be true, and not everything needs to have a physical presence to be real.

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.

The good news is that Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is Spoon's best record in a while - if you liked "Gimme Fiction," you'll probably like this too.

Lookout lacks the piercing insight of Berman’s best work––those Old Testament and American Gothic retellings laced with sarcasm and self-loathing. At the same time, there’s a casual quality to this set that trumps the belabored tangle of the last go-round.

A chilly, deliberately off-putting, but deeply fascinating record.

The energy, from the opening whistles and stomps that kick off “Driving School” to the final crazed, surf-guitar-on-two-wheels of the “Batman” cover, is anything but studio; it is immediate, volatile and contagious.

Owl Splinters is a testament to what practiced musicianship, studio know-how and an ear for textured complexity can accomplish.

It returns to the sly humor, the hypnotic barking aggression, the occasional whiffs of wistful tune-ish-ness slipped in between robotic beats of Divide and Exit and maybe does it one better.

Razorwire-sharp and reflexive, Eton Alive sees Sleaford Mods knowingly take the existential dare once more, and mostly win.

The album as a whole, however, is more than reasonably enjoyable. While still by its nature loosely strung and carefree, Born with Stripes demands your attention in a way that Living on the Other Side never did.

Macaroni is an album that deserves to be heard.

Hoffman used to be in Ex-Cult. They have the same driving, droning, chanting, intoning attack, and though it’s pitched way up high in a womanly register, it concedes nothing else at all to conventional femininity. Great stuff.

A Bomb in Gilead, assisted by several garage vets (Tim Kerr, Lynn Bridges, Jim Diamond), captures that live sound and goes it one better, uncovering unexpected depth, soul and intelligence in a set of boot-stomping songs.

The slight psychedelic divergences and other assorted flourishes keep the album interesting, but they’re not enough in the forefront to make Oakley Hall come off like some permutation of psych-rock.

Hundreds of Days is proof that Lattimore has come into her own as a composer and that her career is taking on the contours of one of her pieces: from stark beginnings something rich and wondrous has emerged.

If you ever liked guitar-driven blues punk, whether in its 1970s first run or the aughts revival, you need to hear this record.

This Mess Is a Place is considerably more grown up and pop-leaning than any of Tacocat’s previous albums, with lavishly massed vocals and bounce-y hooks, yet it retains an air of joyous subversion, sweet but spiky and smart.

On Dragonslayer, perhaps more so than any of their previous albums, Sunset Rubdown is able to create memorable, multi-part songs that stay engaging throughout and that don’t meander aimlessly.

'Love In Outer Space,' is as seductive, giddy, and beautiful as ever. It’s a testament to the album’s overall strength that it comes near the tail end of the record. It’s about as perfect a mixture of dubstep and techno as anything out there.

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.”

This is a prickly, buzzy, invigorating record from a songwriter at the top of his game.

The music can sometimes obscure the words, with only snippets allowing themes of love, loss and solitude to creep into the listener’s consciousness.... Have You in My Wilderness is another arresting album by an equally arresting artist, one who is clearly at the forefront of the global avant-pop scene and will be for some time.

Its mix of absurdist humor, lonely stoner confusion and detached sadness could not be more miserably, cathartically timely (albeit in its own, unboxable way). Smart money says this one only gets better.

The Babies' debut, released on the long-running Shrimper label, speaks well of collaboration. The album succeeds by touching on the hallmarks of both bands' sounds, while standing strong on its own thanks to some unexpected touches of true rock 'n' roll grit.

Tempest delivers her labyrinthine tales with forensic detail offered gracefully like Saul Williams, Roots Manuva, Asian Dub Foundation and Tricky / Martina Topley-Bird on Pre-Millennium Tension (think “Bad Dream”).

I Am All Your Own could be mistaken for a depressing and soul-searching breakup record if it weren’t so beautifully calm and thematically ambivalent.