These New Puritans play it smart, but in service of an earnest query rather than their own smartness.

It’s the first solo Sprout album that doesn’t seem to lack from Pollard’s input.

The big downer about “Vs.” tends to be its sporadic hinting at the greatness that could have been: small pockets of significance surrounded by many mediocre passages.

Who Is the Sender? has a gently melancholy, a resigned aura that looks lovingly on this world but also speculates on the next. Both elements, the careful observation of what is and the restless querying about what may be, meld into a wise and spiritually resonant whole.

The songs here have lost none of the lonely strength of their earlier material, and the band’s performances are no less gorgeous; but the new strength of Gem Club is that their music is capable of being just as joyous as it is devastated, and the result is powerful.

Hairball doesn’t redefine its chosen genre, nor does it really refine it. It’s a straightforward album, one meant for windows-open listening on a sunny day.

If you can’t conceptually get behind the concept of a metal kid giving up noise for beauty, you’re probably not going to like the record. Otherwise, check it out. It’s lovely.

In the newfound center on Thank You Very Quickly, Eagleson and company have stealthly transitioned from indie ethno-experimental vanguards to genuine Afro-Rock champions, erasing 7,000 miles of distance and so many years of history.

Mostly because the stakes are so high, By the Throat, the would-be comeback from prodigal Minneapolis duo Eyedea & Abilities, has to rate as a disappointment, despite interesting intentions and a few sublime moments.

Jiaolong speaks in a more comprehensible language because it's not florid psych-pop, but as with Caribou, I do not see a way to become anything other than a spectator of this music.

It’s an intricate, carefully crafted set of songs that blows by in a warm breeze.

The lyrical approach has so far kept me from really warming to it, but the words are ugly and weird in an interesting way, which makes me think that maybe eventually a light will come on and it will become one of my favorites.

Continue as a Guest sounds exactly like a New Pornographers record. It’s energetic, insanely catchy and occasionally thrilling pop music. The compositions are dense and clever and complex, but not too much for their own good.

A stronger verse/chorus foundation might make the songs more instantly accessible and easier to remember. But by making it easier to access, Bowerbirds might well be depriving listeners of the chance to make their own way, to wander in the desert a little even.

It's so satisfying when a band is able to subtly re-invent its sound, as Keenan and Cargill have done here so well.

Instead of being an especially bold or dynamic record, however, it only recalls the best moments of Quality Control and EP, seldom reaching their highest peaks.

It seems that every element previously employed by the Microphones is recycled here in masterpiece capacity.

Olson’s songs are as strong as ever.

On There’s No Home, Hunter reveals a human (albeit a chemically depressed human) range of emotion, making her narrative more believable but much less captivating.

Stylistically, this collaboration veers from intimate in scope to blown-out and dancefloor-ready. And yet, it holds together neatly, shifting from style to style without really losing cohesion.

The Belbury Tales can be a potent experience at the high points I've just described, but it spends some time at lower altitudes, too, without ever unambiguously erring.

Go figure, the most enjoyable parts of the album are hard to separate from the most annoying.

The vocals alone would be a lullaby, but in this broken orchestra, they’re insomnia. Yet spending time with this record allows the burs to break off. If you give in to its strange terms, You is soothing.

In the relentless, rampant pursuit and procurement of new musical product, it’s easy to lose sight that a return to and expansion of what’s worked previously can prove just satisfying for both artists and listeners.

Your response to Be Up A Hello will depend on your tolerance for Squarepusher’s virtuosic onslaughts. It can be as exhausting as it’s exhilarating. If there’s a sameness to the BPM readings of the up-tempo tracks a deeper listen reveals the layers that are buried beneath the frenzy and show Squarepusher has lost none of his edge.

Refuge clocks in at over an hour, an hour in which, as stated earlier, not a whole lot of stuff happens. And yet maybe it takes that long to clear out the buzz and chatter, to slow down, to focus on one sound at a time and to find a stillness. It’s too long, it’s too slow, it’s too eventless until it’s not, and then you’re there.

As Cunningham pans across the channels, his sound design strikes the ears and creates synaptic leaps that draw pull the listener’s focus. Many of constituents will be familiar to fans of Boards of Canada, Two Lone Swordsmen and Aphex Twin and if the early tracks of Statik sound more challenging in their discordances, you will feel borne along by the idiosyncratic juxtapositions Cunningham creates.

There are still songs here with all the hallmarks of a classic Sandwell cut (“Self-Initiate” thumps mercilessly with its UFO synth pulses and “Restless” could slip right in the middle of a live set), but they are the exception rather than the rule.