Richard Youngs has given us an album that just about anyone can pick up a guitar to play along to, but that doesn’t mean the experience of listening to The Rest is Scenery is an easy one. Fans of his, of course, wouldn’t have it any other way.

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.

The Tree of Forgiveness, ten breezy songs and thirty-three minutes long, is slight, but its brevity fits. The Tree of Forgiveness doesn’t rage against the dying of the light. Instead, it’s funny and it’s sad. It’s complicated. It’s over before you know it.

Most of White Bread Black Beer is almost unbearably lovely.

There’s not a bad song in the bunch, but the songs from Death’s only official release are the clear highlights on ...For the Whole World to See.

Hopelessness has occasional flaws. Not all the songs conclude satisfyingly, and some of the lyrics are vaguely trite. But despite them, it is a missive from an artist who has never ceased to evolve and now asserts herself with gusto and unflinching purpose.

Estara is not as musically challenging, hooky or advanced as some albums by similar artists.

Holly Herndon is far too conceptual to ever really merit banal classification as a techno or electronic producer, and with a bigger platform (intentional), she shows that her vision opens a multitude of possibilities that go beyond genre. Platform isn’t the album to realize that potential, so obvious since Movement, but it’s a tantalizing taste of the future.

The Power Out may surprise and confuse listeners expecting Rock It redux, and the new album has a few rough patches and a general inconsistency due to Electrelane's willingness to experiment.

None of Molina’s songs gets an extreme makeover here, and, indeed, one or two wild cards might make the whole collection more interesting. However, it’s telling that so many young, vibrant acts honor the material enough to deliver it straight.

There’s a good deal of spoken word on this album, the sort of poetry that’s meant to inspire but seems a little overblown. It’s part of the genre, obviously, and it gets swallowed, soon enough, by groove. But you have to stick with it through the flute-scented rites of “First Peoples,” the downtempo intro to “Re-Memory” to get to the music. I could do without it, personally. The music, though, is pretty great.

This is mom-and-dad rock, no more ready to pack up the fuzzboxes than it is to become a grandparent.

His most personal recording yet.

“Why is this happening,” a listener might wonder as the music jumps from one notion to the next? “Why not? Now hold on,” would be the response, if anyone were of a mind to put such matters into words. ... Sometimes the music coheres into a tight, catchy chant or a propulsive passage, but these moments end before you’re ready. Perhaps the freedom not to keep doing what you’re doing, and not to have to make sense while you’re doing it, is the point?

The songs hover around the four-minute mark, and are economical in their implementation, with an overall sheen that does occasionally come close to overdoing it.

If Dents and Shells stands apart from Buckner's oeuvre in any way, it's in the prominence and evenhandedness of its instrumental arrangements.

This is Quintron's best summation yet of his iconoclastic melding of raw rock & roll, R&B and funk, experimental electronics and art.

The Danish four-piece tapped Spaceman 3’s Sonic Boom for production on this uncharacteristically uplifting endeavor, and you can see the uneasy alliance of the bright colors of Peter Kember’s recent work mixing into the half melted, slushy desolation of Iceage’s aesthetic.

Egyptrixx avoids the brittle tastelessness of modern electro and Fool's Gold party-starting by allowing a touch of that cold, spacious futurism to creep in.

The cadre of eclectic guest appearances... make it seem like this record would play more like a mix tape, but Shadow pulls it off, and for the most part, each of the guest artists deliver the goods.

Like most things that result from improvisation, it doesn't always sound as new as it thinks it does, but the reggae stalwarts' freshness is timeless.

The nuanced defeatism on Nothing Fits separates these brash, loud punk anti-anthems from the standard hardcore fare. The most ephemeral evidence of this is also the most effective: instead of battering you into submission with unadulterated force, songs are separated with just enough silence to make you uncomfortable, impatient. The subtle natures of hell are often the worst.

Subtle differences aside, Magic Trick delivers the same kind of trippy, guitar-jangling, tambourine-shaking pop as Fresh & Onlys.

Hayashi’s eclecticism gives the album the feel of an anthology and although his beat making is terrific and provides a thematic backbone, the real interest here is what’s going on around, beneath and between. If his wish were to destabilize and upend expectations, then full marks, but too often he seems to retire behind his tools and allow his technical skill to overshadow his considerable artistry.

Earth Junk doesn’t sound like anything else in his discography. However, it does betray Hagerty’s encyclopedic knowledge of rock history, which yields some respectful iconic nods and a few bizarre what-ifs.

For those, like me, who previously dismissed Aloe Blacc, Good Things warrants our reconsideration. Blacc's changed his tune. We probably should, too

Mostly, though, the record shows off Grass Widow's continued ability to hone their own style.

As a statement of intent from that band, Pyramid is promising in a shaky kind of way: it's clear that there's still creative magic to go around, but also that the old chemistry is going to be a tough one to reorient.