Just as Dedication surprised many listeners by aptly navigating theme, mood and flow, Nothing demonstrates Zomby knows his foundational sounds, the everything upon which he builds, better than anyone.

Established fans will appreciate a few new gems in the catalogue (I've returned repeatedly to "(They Found Me On the Back Of) The Galaxy"), but those unfamiliar with The Intelligence would do well starting with Deuteronomy, Fake Surfers or Males before circling back to this one.

At other times the songs--while still enjoyable in a nebulous “go to the light” kind-of-way--simply lose all pretense to distinction, bleeding together in a tonal wash of echoed vocals, tremolo guitar and gooey organ.

Walking With the Beggar Boys has so few bells and whistles that it might not make it through your earwax on the first listen, but these songs are the most rewarding the band has created.

On Glass, the Sea and Cake make music that’s as beguiling as ever, while displaying an odd sense of humor and implying that their best collection of sounds may still lie ahead.

Where on earlier albums, you could sense her thinking about what to do with the sounds she could make, now she seems more fully in control of her set of instruments. Process has slipped into the background, as she gains fluency in an invented language.

The presence of familiar things makes their music go down easier this time around, but it remains a challenge, even after many listens, to feel like you understand what you're supposed to feel.

Even with bursts of ill-tuned twang, Prinz and Horn's harshness is centered and tame.

In Longtime Companion, he puts the drawl and shuffle of country into the service of a very peculiar vision, embracing and even seeking out the contradictions.

For a band who made their name on straightforward, meat-and-potatoes indie pop, Strapped is all over the place.

Summer of Hate is fairly diverse, with bits of punk, pop, shoegaze and space-rock woven into nine distinct tracks. What unites all these elements is a fascination with tone, rather than song structure or lyrical content.

His Eleventh Hour streams seem to glorify a pre-evolved hip hop.

Father Divine ranks among the best of Ladd’s efforts, and is easily one of his most adventurous.

For now at least, the fragments are intriguing enough to keep me waiting for the next ones.

This is a record of a rare stripe--one that manages to pull a lot of disparate ideas and influences together to inhabit a unified world all its own.

Bachelorette is undoubtedly a step forward from her previous work, but until she fully throws herself into it with abandon, both sides she's working here will invariably suffer.

The charm of these songs won't last forever. They'll have their season in your heart or car stereo, their refrains will seep gently into your vocabulary, and at some point you'll stop needing them, but it's welcome company while it lasts.

If there's a flaw on Original Colors, it's that these 10 songs are so closely related--in tempo, vocals and instrumentation--that they're enjoyable enough on their own but become an undifferentiated blob when played back-to-front.

This one is an expression of respect to people whose work shaped his, as well as grateful a shout-out to a few pals who haven’t passed yet.

You can sense what Darkstar wants to create--music that’s genre-less, accessible yet mysterious--but they haven’t found a way to compensate for the rougher finishes they’ve stripped from their work.

In the end, Hall Music is an enjoyable but paradoxical album, both an expansion and contraction of Svanängen's palette.

Puzzles Like You... is not at all Halstead's best work, and what has sounded simple and subtle before begins to feel simplistic and blunt; the songs here move with an energy that seems either forced or mocking, and on the whole embrace the kind of triteness they used to offset.

He never quite sells us on the necessity of getting into Bobby D.’s head, and only rarely evinces that he’s done so himself. The good news is that the album is strong anyway, more so when unyoked from the underlying concept.

Occupied With the Unspoken can be challenging and obtuse. It can also unrepentently beautiful. And, at its best, it's both.

It's music like this, intelligently composed and played, delivered with clarity and purposefully varied, that, finally, makes sense of the Fucking Champs.

It’s bit of a risk for Chasny to polish his sound, but he’s succeeded in bottling the imaginative, audacious overflow of his past efforts into perhaps his most cohesive record yet.

Subtlety is clearly not a strong suit here.

The result is a pastiche of deja vu moments that distract from a significant level of musicianship that this growing Philadelphia sextet possesses.