Not much of a change then, is it? But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Both on Why Choose and in the live setting, Shopping’s music elucidates the urgency and modularity of postpunk and delivers a host of compelling songs along the way.

Bardo Pond isn’t so much about evolutionary change as the recurrent invocation of altered states via sound.

This album is very aptly titled, since it is nearly always evoking a kind of nameless, non-verbal good feeling that sometimes lofts us up and out of our tediously tick-tocking lives. Are Euphoria bubbles up and out of the mundane and time-tethered into unreal, glowing landscapes of altered experience.

What To Look For In Summer is a terrific career spanning selection of some of their most loved songs the performances of which give lie to the common wisdom about a bunch of fey, romantically challenged, wallflowers. If anoraks just wanna have fun we could do far worse than spending 100 minutes with Stuart Murdoch and company.

They nail the curves and changeups so well that you only notice the complexity in retrospect. While it’s happening, it seems mostly like good rock music

In Black Duck, they draw on many different aspects of their respective, eclectic backgrounds, flitting freely from sun-drenched cosmic country, to driving kraut rock, to radiant, enveloping ambiences, all played so expertly that it seems effortless, though it probably isn’t.

The song selection, from two very distinct periods in Oldham’s discography, makes for a cohesive album, and it exemplifies how strong his songwriting has been from the beginning.

Deacon is a gifted musician capable of so much more, and that makes Bromst feel like a waste.

Future albums will reveal whether this is as much of an offshoot as Mogwai’s other soundtracks, but this understated, solid effort reveals a lot more imagination and prowess than most bands that have been around over 20 years.

Even if Speech Therapy, for all its dour resignation, seems a rather surprising Mercury Prize winner, the gentle, pretty sounds behind the quivering sadness of Debelle’s voice remain true throughout.

As a portrait of a man in a city sharing his thoughts and feelings, it’s strikingly effective, all the more so for being so far-reaching.

You could hardly spend a pleasanter half an hour than drifting to these slackly tuneful, drivingly rock rhythmed, 1960s-esque songs.

The abrasiveness that seems to have jumped out of Serpent Music for many seems to me to have a higher purpose of providing a counterpoint to Yves Tumor’s overarching thoughts on love, loss and meaning. For all its quirks, this is a really beautiful album.

Summer Sun is a stunner, a subtle but substantial collection of non-sequiturs that displays the scope of Yo La Tengo’s tweaked-out serenity.

The 13 songs on What It Means to Be Left-Handed are all, in their own way, enjoyable. The ideas and collaborations on display are impressive, as is the stylistic range. But there's still a bit of cohesion missing there--something that makes What It Means to Be Left-Handed feel more like a collection of individually good ideas and less like a singular artistic statement.

There’s maybe a bit less of the clever wordplay here than on previous albums, but the words, like the music, are sturdy, not over-crowded, unexpected and right. There’s not a cliché on the disc, but the lines lead exactly where they need to go, slipping sideways into standards that are off center enough to matter.

Their take on classic guitar rock sometimes lapses into a mid-tempo morass but Bush Tetras have been a constant state of evolving for nearly four decades. Sley and Place are still compelling presences, and it’s good to have them back.

The recondite spirit remains, but the sense of restlessness has disappeared, and with it much of the impertinent energy that propelled "Gone Ain’t Gone." What we gain in its place, though, is more rewarding: a closer look at the mechanics of Fite’s itchy-legs sophistry, the nature of his controlled eccentricity.

Holing up by himself, worrying about money, obsessing with death and letting the walls close in is probably not good for Dwyer as a human being, but it's certainly good for Castlemania.

If it was a foregone conclusion that the long-awaited Iron & Wine/Calexico team-up wouldn't result in anything revelatory (or incendiary, as it were), it was almost as inevitable that it would be rewarding all the same; safe, not sorry, sad and elegant as ever.

It's not as good as Ugly, but it's not as bad as Travels, and it's a welcome step in the right direction.

An intense fifty minute ride through the minds of one of the best new bands to emerge in recent memory.

The combination of bile and hook, of wiry, mistrustful intelligence meshed in danceable synth pop works throughout the album, the contradictions bristling without overwhelming the tunes.

Say this for The Joy Formidable's debut effort, The Big Roar: It tells no lies and seeks no modest ambitions.

If the album’s second half falls off a bit due to the programming of consecutive slow burners, the orchestral layering we expect from the quartet is still there.

Lonely harmonicas, keening fiddles, plinking kalimbas, and vaguely dubby drums twist in and out of the interwoven vocals, their melodies like ivy vines climbing a fence; the lyrics grow on you just as slowly, requiring several close listens before they start giving up their secrets.

For those of us who love music, in whatever genre, that distorts and mutilates its own conventions, Legacy! is undoubtedly one of the releases of the year, with an infectious, yet challenging groove that startles even as it enchants.