Compared to its predecessor, Wall of Eyes can’t help but come across as transitional. While there are some undeniably great moments, the overall experience feels a little low-stakes and disappointing.

Unfortunately, after the initial rush of the opening tracks, the album slows down perhaps too much.

The album does lose focus somewhere around the halfway mark, unfortunately, the playful titles (“Cockblocker Blues,” “This is Mister Bigg. How you doing Mister Bigg”) not reflected in barely-formed tracks that disappear into the haze of their own making.

For the most part, Write About Love is a disappointment. That's even truer, I suspect, because Belle and Sebastian aren't the only ones getting older.

When they're on, Mates of State recall the better moments of fellow smilers Quasi or The Anniversary, and the rest of the time their friendly pop buzz is more harmless than irritating.

Just as Yeasayer appears to have planted its two feet firmly on the dance floor, it seems to have lost much of its capacity for eccentric pop magic.

The Witness is definitely a grower, an elusive listen whose understated charms define its mystique — and also its flaws.

Though Patterson is still largely peddling outdated sample-heavy narco-trance, the new disc is quite an improvement from 2001’s career-low Cydonia even if it may share that record’s flaws.

Surrounded as a minor spit-polish improvement on Our Blood is sure to please Buckner’s cultish devotees.

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.

The end result is an album that would be fine as a first effort--that is, if it did not naturally have to be compared to previous Tunng albums.

Adult. doesn't make their music easy to swallow, and some of the tracks here don't feel fully developed. But this is a band in transition, exchanging the spacious rhythms of their electro for a suffocating spin on rock revivalism.

Formerly Extinct is a little over-cooked, and the album would have benefitted from being left a little more raw at its core.

Spills Out isn't the best record of its ilk to come out this year, but it's not the worst, either.

The group [is] at it's best when it stays close to it's R & B foundation. Standing in the Way of Control expands the Gossip's pallette, but the keepers here hug tight to the rump.

It does contain some beautiful songs. Its deficiencies won’t miff his indulgent cult (at least not any more than they’ve been miffed previously). But it doesn’t quite hold together.

On Veckatimest, by contrast, the experimentation can go over the top: the additional arrangements may not add much aside from being one more thing to admire. And, paradoxically, doing that moves some songs out of the avant-garde and squarely into the middle of the road.

Ultimately the album adds another respectable line to The Mountain Goats' discography.

Often more conceptually interesting than practically solid.

There’s a solid, heartening release to be found in Countless Branches. It’s a shame that Fay and Dead Oceans didn’t take the opportunity to tease it out.

Beam doesn’t lack wit or inventiveness or honesty, or any of the other things that are good about "conscious rap," but it implicitly disowns them all as impotent or corrupt, as failures before the fact. Its self-loathing is too self-aware, too pervasive, to accomplish anything more productive than wallowing.

To the extent that it falls prey to unnecessary pseudo-sophistication, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers comes off weak; to the extent that it maintains its own musical niche within the shattered-lover trope, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers makes the shopworn surprisingly compelling.

Ultimately, the album is explicitly notable for its musicality, rather than its content.

While most of Here We Go Magic works well as a unit, the more noise-based, non-vocal tracks detract from momentum; they’re the least interesting things on the album.

It takes some bands several albums to appreciate the strength in subtlety. On their debut full-length, Midnight Movies may rely on it too much already.

Organ Music may not quite be what Krug hoped for--and it's by no means perfect--but it is intriguing and occasionally illuminating.

ISAM's clusters aren't as advanced as Tobin might have you think, and only represent a monumental leap forward if you compare them to his trio of classic albums, all of which were recorded more than 10 years ago.

Hold Time, Ward’s latest batch of songs, seems slighter, happier and louder than those on 2006’s "Post-War," but also distinctly complacent.