Ultimately, as the disc draws to a close and one hushed sonic wisp after another drifts by, justice is done to neither Foster’s considerable talents nor Dickinson’s genius.

Wham! Bang! Pow!, with its extravagant punctuation, is as brilliantly self-absorbed, as needlessly clever, as tightly wound and tautly played as the mid-aughts debut.

Slowed down, the only thing revealed is how seamless his stitching his, how clever his adjunctions are and how much musicianship it takes to create a good sample-based record.

It’s beautiful and playful and spiritual and full of soul, like their earlier work was. If you miss the aughts-era AC’s handcrafted, bitter-sweet-sour jamborees at all, you’ll want to check Eucalyptus out.

McCombs has performed a bit of rodeo jiujitsu, stealing his band's name back by invoking the myth of the West.

Though a solid and promising outing, Wavves isn’t a revelatory record. It fits nicely into the "scene," however vague that semblance is these days.

The album’s elements--large scale pop and tightly controlled electro--don’t always work together, but they come together on the very last track, 'Radio Kaliningrad.'

When their sound tends towards the more coherent and homogeneous (even on the excellent title track) they risk falling victim to an imitativeness, or perhaps simply a lack of aesthetic ambitiousness, that threatens to overwhelm the originality that they bring to the table.

They’ve clearly been listening, and taking notes. But between the blatantly derivative style of basically every song and the inherently specious nature of their source material, it’s hard to really take anything they’re saying or playing seriously.

It’s stale, predictable, and pedestrian in its fussy perfection.

A Dream A While Back is entertaining enough. Hearing Higgins recorded so simply can be starkly beautiful. Yet, anyone contemplating picking up a copy should be reminded there's another, far better record that should be heard first.

The Block Brochure, ponderous though it may be, is curated carefully and put together in a way that will actually hold up over time.

Mostly these songs seem slight and shy, unable, really, to support the massive facades of synth and disco drums that Small Black layers onto them.

The proceedings would be a lot less palatable if they didn’t often achieve a forceful, unhinged immediacy; amid the heavy themes and brash posturing, there’s still room for the band to elbow in some loud, rousing real life.

While Work doesn't feel emotionally engaging or really deviate from an amiable pace, it's still engaging enough to hold one's attention for most of the 41 minutes.

Pollard’s imagistic lyrics and ragged musicality create a bridge between the mundane and the exceptional.

While nothing on TNT or Standards was as influential as Tortoise's earlier work, those records succeeded largely because they marked new stylistic departures for a group that sounded genuinely excited by that prospect. Too many moments on It's All Around You lack that excitement.

There’s not a lot behind the well-polished surfaces.

No Elephants is a gorgeous album, but maybe the most interesting thing about it is the way it bites through the beauty.

It still has a sonic attack and extreme enough structural sense that the genre tag on its own probably doesn’t do enough to sum up what’s going on here. Baker and Buckareff are the rare creators who absolutely locked into their particular sound pretty much immediately and through many (many) releases over the years have never really sounded like anything but Nadja, and yet within that distinct soundworld they continue to find new shades in what in lesser hands would be a pretty limited palette.

Later in the CD, Middleton makes room for his own voice, and there's something very powerful in the way his rough, organic morose-ness combines with the bright glow of electronic instruments.

Drums Between the Bells at its simplest is often Drums Between the Bells at its best.

Sushi sounds enthusiastic but slight, with generic synths and run-of-the-mill dubstep-inflected bass lines.

They show that they can write sloppy songs with real hooks and something to bop along to. Something that rarely happens thereafter, unfortunately.

[Animator is] the sound of a group taking a familiar sound, segmenting it, and discovering that the results can be infinitely compelling.

Now, we’re certainly all pro-happiness and exuberance, but the same doggedly optimistic message reiterated during several songs begins to sound more than a little shallow, even if such statements have a way of lending themselves more grandeur than they deserve.

The good news is that this is, in fact, a throwback to their earlier work. The bad news is that it’s not throwback enough.

It's hard to believe at first listen, but they've got nuance.