With his piano, classical flourishes and superbly layered production a la E.L.O., it’s out of sync but, when it works, wonderfully so. Whether Lytle’s vocals work for you or not will probably be the main deciding factor as to whether the band itself works for you. Oftentimes he smooths out the edges, but his singing can come across as whiny.

Goodnight Oslo is more like the seemingly “normal” yet slightly “off” one-night-stand, the one you don’t think about much the next week but wonder about 10 years later. Don’t expect it to enthrall on contact, but it might settle gently into the subconscious.

Agriculture comes closer earlier on the record, when “Micah (5:15 am)” commences its final run through the song’s compelling set of tremolo chords and then the massive riff of “The Weight” crashes down. It’s the best part of a good record, excepting perhaps the middle portion of “The Weight,” when the band’s playing reaches an acutely feverish pitch.

It doesn’t take long for the characters to come alive the way ...Is a Woman’s seemed too exhausted to. [combined review of both discs]

The pulsing, nodding, whisper-y grooves are a kind of accomplishment, too. Subdued, sure, enveloping and lucidly becalmed, you can float on them like warm salt water, no effort required at all.

The album is an enjoyable listen, but not enough is at stake for it to get under your skin.

Hair works because even when the pieces aren't well integrated, they are often enjoyable listening.

This is Devendra Banhart...eclectic and whimsical and poking genres with a stick to see if they'll bite. It's a little mad, a lot overstuffed, and probably a degree or two calculated.

They are super-tight and competent, but with an undercurrent of madness and chaos, a well-oiled machine that is infinitely more interesting because it might blow up at any time.

Though Kid Sister might lack some versatility, her club-friendly material is more than above average, and gleams colorfully if synthetically, like her outstretched hand of freshly painted nails.

There’s a lot to enjoy on Year of the Horse.

Many will understandably bore of it quickly, for there’s nothing to new to discover after repeat listenings. Yet, it contains enough rock solid tracks to make it recommendable to fans of the genre.

It's more cohesive than their debut, and just as catchy.

An uncompromising set of solid songs set on the internal and external eve of destruction.

Thankfully, the music that accompanies their lyrical flights of fancy and ever so stoned imagery soothes the chafing caused by such unabashed and often lurid flower power ranting.

Bergsman's new set pieces offer no more lasting sustenance than the harder to resist but hardly nutritious candies from The Concretes' confectionery.

Despite the band’s articulate playing, Song of the Rose has shortcomings--regularly, Arbouretum is content to indulge in an all too familiar canon--incognizant of any current trends, their musical DNA arrested in amber.

The music’s references doesn’t sound particularly new, but Batoh sounds newly energized and fully in command of his new band.

It’s not a bad album, not by a long stretch, but it feels like Miller & company are treading water, revisiting things that worked before.

When the energy is present, 23 is a strong, pleasant album that connects a number of dots in a way that belongs almost exclusively to Blonde Redhead.

Listening to the work heard here, it may be a bit premature to file Carey's work beside some of the musical touchstones suggested by his record label's press corps (Bill Evans, Talk Talk), but it does suggest a good start and a solid grasp of the spaces that can be created by music.

Almost overflows with a heretofore unheard urgency and shows exactly the kind of energy their songs could -- and theoretically still can -- possess.

Plague Park’s nine tracks seem to be over before they reach their potential. The record gets better as it progresses, and successive listens reveal more interesting facets to the songwriting.

Taken individually, the album’s 10 vignettes suffer slightly from a lack of individual cohesion, their structures incorporating mostly several short, seemingly miscellaneous scraps. Yet over the course of several listens, Toxic City Music does provide some sort of overall flow, its slippery patterns serving as auditory snapshots of dank irradiated zones and heat realm communities quarantined in an airless isolation.

In A Dream ain’t no slouch, but is better piece-by-piece than a continuous flow.

GEM isn't just a fresh take on an old sound; it's an audit of the constraint placed on female artists in the past and a table-turning journey into what might have been possible if musical freedom meant more than obedience to parents, husbands and record producers.

Rolling Golden Holy is more comfortable and assured than its predecessor, but not as eerily evocative. If the self-titled was a twilight vista full of mist and longing, the follow-up ambles through sunny backroads. It has a bit more Johnson, a bit less Mitchell in its mix, though the two artists find intriguing common ground on multiple occasions.

Lewis' strengths are primarily lyrical. The musical arrangements, though good enough not to distract, tend to disappear into the songs.