It’s head-nodding, melody-following joy, which maybe shouldn’t work for a bleak album. But it does.

It’s the sound of epic detail in exquisite registration, and Albini perfectly vivifies Mono’s Technicolor wall of sound.

The Knot turns the cliche about sophomore slumps on its head by being much stronger than If Children.

Does it work? Of course it works.

On Civilian, the band shows that it can be serious without being overbearing, evocative without being histrionic, and accessible without being derivative.

Mandel, of course, steals the show: it’s an eight-track statement for him to make, and he has plenty to say.

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.

The thing holds together remarkably well, thanks to Wale’s upstart charisma and remarkable versatility.

Though this is far from an easy listen, and can be frustratingly wordy and repetitive at times, it’s a rich, admirable and thorny work of art. Invest the necessary attention in this record and it’ll reward in spades.

Nightcap leans more towards the song-ish end of things in its first half, though bits of free-wheeling freakery are tucked in between verses and choruses. In the second half, it sprawls more open-endedly across cuts that lead one to another without pause for breath. ... The effect is more like a suite than a collection of tracks, a bravura show of musical prowess that winds through moods, time signatures and keys.

This album sounds vast and intimate at the same time, like keenly recorded sketches.

Even if it is hard at certain points to cut through the thick fog of psych drum riffs, Everything Ecstatic leaves ears ringing like a loud summer afternoon in the city – sun-drenched cacophony that doesn’t quite know where it’s going just yet.

Cheers to the second installment of this beautiful friendship.

Psychedelic Pill is earnest and perverse, simplistic and complicated, epic and underachieving--guess the old cuss still has it in him after all.

To make so many overt references to his musical heroes while never losing sight of himself speaks to Iyer's own command. His improvisations have such clarity and vision, and it's rare that he stretches things any longer than necessary.

A collection of past moments, which add up to a splendid memorial to a monumental moment in New York’s musical history.

Intricate and unpredictable, Deeper Woods isn’t primitive at all. It’s wild.

Trouble is a grand survey of deconstructed rock which achieves its greatest highs via the winding routes it travels. Not all those who wander are lost, indeed.

There's a number of visual pieces that lose their power, and while Notaro is good at describing what she's talking about, those visual bits interrupt the flow. In that sense, Good One feels like a straight showcase for her act, one that doesn't make concessions to the audio-only listener.

They’ve upped the speed quotient considerably on this outing, forgoing much of the Melvins-inspired slack of previous efforts in favor of ugly, rapid-fire riffing.

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.

It’s a record by a mature band, setting itself to a serious task. The fact that it’s so effective--that Our Raw Heart can move you from one mood to another, and leave you feeling larger--is testament to the earnestness of their art.

Positively stomps and bristles, with Smith and his band summoning up the type of chutzpah not normally found in middle age.

The Fiery Margin shames so many songs being written today, not with reproach, but with example after elegant example of how it’s done right.

On this album, she both reminds the listener of her strengths as a songwriter and subtly redefines the ground on which her music rests.

You hear none of that struggle here. She has labored and sweated and stressed to make a record that is completely devoid of these characteristics. It might have reared up out of a clam shell like Botticelli’s Venus.

That Vashti Bunyan had the courage to step out of seclusion and follow up her classic debut is admirable. That she was able to do so with an excellent batch of songs is a joy to behold, pure and simple.

The result is an intriguing set of tracks which sound, one hand, very much in line with Matmos’ percolating, abstract grooves, but also very different. ... With “Flight to Sodom / Lot do Salo,” the album moves into even more riveting abstractions, a sampled voice pulsing like a drum as rich textures of synth swirl around it. Here too, denatured vocals surge and fade in a not-quite-human choir sound. The second side turns more ominous and atmospheric.