Though a newcomer to The Clientele should not start here, it's strong throughout, with the exception of the aberrant (if mild) guitar freakout in "Jerry" and a creepy piano solo, "No. 33," which, if unobjectionable, seems unnecessary.

Porcelain Raft's airy concoctions work best when you're not thinking about them.

Every song comes from the same mold that they've been working with from the beginning. And as the critical mass of messy hits continues to pile up, there are new revelations that rise to the surface, as well.

Other Animals was a masterpiece, Nightlife is merely pretty good.

The album has a gleeful, headlong, nearly slapstick propulsion. .... There are some tranquil, romantic interludes, like the Julee Cruise-ish “Plastered” and the dream-pop, 4AD drift of “The Lady Vanishes,” and that’s all fine, but what this band does best is unpredictability, where you never know who will take the mic next, or where a song will take its latest sharp turn. This time, Bar Italia goes into some satisfyingly dark and noisy places, and cheers to that.

Darkness at Noon thrives on pushing and pulling the listener from emotional peak to valley.

The tracks that are built on longer samples and vocals are more involving.

Here in the Deep, like the last few Arbouretum albums, is good but not mind-blowing.

The truth of W doesn't look as good on paper, but give it time. It's more convincing than it has any right to be.

Despite its scant 35-minute duration, Meek Warrior distills the entire history of experimental pop. Just as impressively, it finally bottles the frantic eclecticism and The Gods Must Be Crazy absurdity of the Family’s live show.

It's a nice album. One of the things that's really interesting about it, though, is its relationship with nostalgia.

The band strikes a balance between symmetry and expansiveness, which gets at the core of why the krautrockers have endured—disciplined beats allow the free-form wanderings to reach places that more shaggy jamming misses.

The 11 songs here are not only 90-percent hit single material; they work together in concert as an album (as well as in pairs and trios).

On the mic end, MC Naledge has a comfortable flow reminiscent of a more polished Kanye, but his lyrics on The In Crowd are less than remarkable.

A magical collection of songs where the lyrics, instruments and voice somehow blend perfectly, matching each other moment to moment to tell the same story, set the same mood.

For what it is, it hits the mark impeccably--time after time after time.

Admittedly, this is a record with a specific style and set of concerns: if you don’t like your post-punk hyper-focused and with Van Morrison-levels of nods to mysticism, you may lose patience with it quickly. For those who appreciate the iconoclasm involved, however, there’s plenty to savor here.

The combination of synth, loop techniques and no-joke instrumentalists playing wild and unconventional rhythms is totally over-the-top, but that’s exactly what makes this album so dazzling.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the most basic, easily digestible, pre-chewed pop archetype. With zero nutritional value.

Despite the album’s disparate material, it has a lulling cohesiveness. All the songs, wherever they come from, feel like they have been reimagined at the same volume and tempo and in the same wistful ambience.

Pearls and Brass have your ultimate Friday afternoon "just got paid today" soundtrack right here. Turn it up loud and enjoy.

The album's moments of schticky nonsense ('How Do You Tell A Child Someone Has Died,' 'Transcendental Light') are tiresome, but they’re surrounded by such good rock songs that they wind up being equally rewarding.

While not really better or worse than their previous albums, Summer in Abaddon is at least pretty good -- more of exactly what fans wanted.

Innocence finds Pontiak as hefty as ever. Its opening salvo finds the band in particularly fine form, carving out melodic passages from a tempest of fuzz and feedback.

That’s Realistic IX in a nutshell: it brings both the burn and the balm.

When “Upper Ferntree Gully” takes off, it’s to the sort of easy midtempo riffs that once made Billy Corgan listenable, with a soupçon of Mascis noise thrown in for good measure as Smit builds an intergenerational metaphor from a kangaroo pouch. It sets the scene for an album of sharp twists that owes its success to the personality and wit of Smit’s omnivore genre jigsawing.

Cut Off Your Hands' anthemic-ness--its lack of austerity and rigor--will put some people off. Yet there's something rather good in the way these songs bring together luxury and despair.

What's new? High pitch frequencies; cell phone samples; the vocoded & pitched-down techno-poetry; a clean aesthetic from DE9 era running roughshod over a dark palette; and the fact that it sounds utterly different to his previous material, despite the references.