Though it's well produced and confident, and goes deep into its web of influence, it seems so rooted in this moment that it feels transitory.

If Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs doesn’t do anything that wasn’t done on his enthralling 2000 LP Carpal Tunnel Syndrome -- and if, at a scant 35 minutes, it’s almost over before you notice it’s on -- it’s still worth hearing.

The experiment does at times rush off the tracks into the bushes, where either the spastic tempos prove too much for Oldham's cool croon, or the meat-and-potatoes song structures reject Tortoise's occasional proclivity toward overseasoning.

Slight doubts about whether or not Zooey Deschanel is the best person to be singing these songs aside, Volume One is pretty much spot-on.

Ferndorf gains little from its back story but loses nothing without it; to a greater degree than most records of its ilk, it is resolutely what it is.

What you're really hearing is the sound of Mark Ryan thinking out loud, through song. And even though this can be frustrating at times, it's still plenty refreshing to get such an eclectic survey of what most reformed punks are taking for pop music nowadays.

While a somewhat trained ear could tease out what came from where, it's a lot easier in this case just to sit back and enjoy work that seems to value interesting textures and arrangements - but not at the expense of the songs themselves.

Though each of its cuts clocks in at less than 10 minutes, Forever Becoming is still largely imbued with Fire’s sense of movement and grandeur.

Ka got something from an autodidact street preacher. For more resonating effect he puts together street common wisdoms and Biblical allegories.

Kowalsky’s chants are more meditative than elegiac, more active than atmospheric and don’t have any air of scientific inquiry about them.

If the quartet’s debut challenged the assumptions of what kind of music this group of musicians might make, this album shows off their own assurances: not a retread of what’s come before, but a solid follow-up to it.

The Errant Charm is by no means a bad album, but it's not great either; it's just nice in a way that is too easy to ignore for its own good.

There’s quite a lot of music here, some tracks abstract and open-end, others more conventionally song structured, all of it rather good.

It’s fairly impressive that Stars could make a record that comes this close to replicating its predecessor while still offering discrete pleasures of its own.

PH's previous efforts (the live shows, in particular) have been experiments in what an average listener can take, punctuated with bursts of pleasant catchiness. On Laced, Whitehurst has inverted the ratio, which works, which means the more grating leftovers can be appreciated for the oddities they are.

Formulaic but thoroughly satisfying.

Though the harmonic material isn’t always major keys, everything (mix, production, sonic universe) is pleasant, resolves nicely; the song structures are divided into equal measurements; much peace and congruence are present.

Vanishing Point serves as a 34-minute distillation of what those who still expect things out of Mudhoney expect from Mudhoney.

Jet Lag is a modest slice of lonesome lo-fi indie folk as they used to make it back when the para-Pavement galaxy was still busy splintering into its constituent planets, the ruminative Bermans and the verbose Pollards and the melodically off-kilter Barlows.

Songs to Play is a quiet success, maybe not as quiet as it seems at first, but operating with a definite modesty and restraint. It’s a record that takes some playing before its warbly charms come clear, but it’s worth the time.

Volume 8 explores some interesting byways of the Bardo Pond sound.

Too many records are boring. This one is visceral and scary, which is an improvement.

The tunes still aren't anything too memorable (though in fairness that's never been Boris's particular forte), and the frippertronics and sonic detail on songs like "Galaxians" makes things less ordinary than they might otherwise be, ranging between fairly standard chugging and brief breakdowns intended to sound heavily narcotic.

There’s nothing wrong with the playing here--it’s all good and some excellent--but these guys are still looking for their killer song.

Knowing that music of this stripe is only pretentious if it doesn’t work, it’s a near miracle that the entire album holds up, front to back, even those ballads in the second half that might have ruined lesser works.

Silver’s a markedly better songwriter on Outside than on Continent, more adept pacing and structure, more keen on crafting variegated moods and atmospheres. But Continent’s strength was its insistent hip-hop thump, which is largely lacking on Outside.

This is the very best kind of post-reunion album, the one that allows you to rediscover things you'd forgotten about a band you always loved.

If the last Red Krayola With Art & Language record, "Sighs Trapped By Liars," surprised with its gentility, Thompson’s dialectical relationship to/with form pretty much dictated that its follow-up had to jut out at right angles from its predecessor.