As a live recording, it’s severely impressive, and sounds far more like an obsessively premeditated studio creation than anything on Kinski’s last official album.

Her most self-assured release yet, instantly inviting and comfortable, brimming with a confidence that breeds fast familiarity.

Molina succeeds in creating a sound refreshingly unfamiliar and exotic.

Granted, there will be some that cling to the lo-fi eccentricities of that debut, but while Oh Me Oh My... may have won him heaps of critical praise, Rejoicing in the Hands is the album that backs it all up.

What’s surprising about ONoffON is how different it sounds from those previous two records, and yet how well it follows their lead.

While Múm's music has always posed a mysterious, melodic invitation to the listener, their latest offering feels flat at times, with very few signposts marking the way and even fewer landmarks inviting one back again.

The end result is a sugar-high of electronic keyboard and guitars reaching glam-rock heights and booty shaking lows, all based around very simple, classical ideas of song-structure.

Inches functions in the best way a retrospective of its kind can: the more primitive songs don't seem like missteps so much as enlightening diagrams of how the band arrived at such convincing current ones.

In forgoing the lifeblood of dynamic and passion, the creative minds behind the project fall to maximize its potential, however agreeable their compositions may be.

Despite their courage for bending genres to the breaking point, this self-titled debut of live hip hop could use a little more reigning in and little less rocking out.

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.

One major problem is the Lone Pigeon’s tone of voice: earnest, slightly keening, with no core or crag, no edge or clamor. Combined with melodic and lyrical art that often borders on the perfunctory, Anderson is left flailing.

It’s plenty theatrical, and tries to be upsetting at some points and rustic at others. It’s hard to get too worked up either way, however, especially when the sound turns fuzzy at all the key moments.

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.

It's the kind of recording many people can enjoy and want to have in their collection. You can throw it on in most any circumstance. It has the sensuality to seduce, the edge to agitate and the style to inspire.

What this self-titled debut is, though, is two different albums (EPs, really): one of wavering delicacy, the other of focused riffage.

Despite a few quality tracks, the album feels wholly uninventive and listless.

This is a more varied album than The Moon and Antarctica (which did seem to have only one speed), and with the return of original member Dan Gallucci, Brock appears to have revived the heavy lead guitar playing of their early work.

Blonde Redhead haven't run out of ideas, but Misery strips them of their eccentricities so thoroughly that the few that remain sound out of place.

It's not as interesting as it could and probably should be.

On Our Endless Numbered Days Beam feels some pressure to subtly expand his repertoire, but the swampy blues of tracks like “Teeth In The Grass” and particularly “Free Until They Cut Me Down” interrupt the aforementioned mood like unwelcome hiccups.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

The most pressing problem is that Venice is rarely a challenging release.

It’s an arresting record that doesn’t pull strings or elide with gimmicks, nor does it preach or try to persuade. You needn’t believe in a higher order to realize that Seven Swans is an expression of something stirring, something beautiful.

For the most part, what hampers the recording is a reliance on a single type of musical form: the vamp. Over simple (and endlessly repetitive) chordal structures, the players just noodle.

Deerhoof have moved away from abstract rock noise and toward more familiar structure, without losing the spontaneity of their genre-clashing sound.

A difficult, flawed record that’s predictably too long, making the highs all the more rewarding.

While Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes could have become an exercise in studio-based formalistic noodling, Adebimpe and Malone’s vocals and lyrics give the songs structure and direction.