With Neon Golden, the Notwist have created a daring album full of different sounds and textures. While this might sound like a textbook post-rock album, it is without a doubt a record firmly anchored by its pop sensibilities.

Easily 30 minutes too long and four symphony orchestras too many, Human Conditions feels like a soundtrack to Barnum and Bailey, with Ashcroft’s earnest vocals drowned out by a cast of thousands.

If you prefer the combination of styles in his other Thrill Jockey work, or the more ambient and experimental character of A Child’s View, this may not be your bag. There is a specific focus on 10th, a consistent if ultimately unspectacular attempt to see through a child’s eyes.

It’s elegantly expressive music where warm tones from cold machines cut to the quick of human emotion.

Three-Four is simply too filled with excesses and repetitions for its bright moments to add up to a solid album.

The big downer about “Vs.” tends to be its sporadic hinting at the greatness that could have been: small pockets of significance surrounded by many mediocre passages.

The interplay of Gibbard's shyly introspective vocals with Tamborello's dense and meticulous backdrops works surprisingly well, at times better than anything to date from Death Cab or DNTEL.

An intriguing and often lovely album.

The building of momentum from beautiful or ominous minimalism into cathartic, sweeping heaviness is remarkable.

You Are Free almost has two disparate styles, and that would be the criticism here. Yet that's the result of her particular mania: stand up, shout then quickly retreat to your seat and hide your face.

Its successes -- its pleasing idiosyncrasies, its moments of charm, and so on -- are there, but underneath a veneer of such blandness that finding them seems like more trouble than it's worth.

For most artists, this album would be a significant achievement--but we've come to expect more from Massive Attack.

Dispensable, and far from groundbreaking.

Without a doubt there are quite a few moments on Loose Fur to enthrall diehard fans of anyone involved. And yet, when all is said and done, I’m still wanting more, wondering what else they could have done.

It’s clear from the beginning that Bell can handle the vocal chores but what remains questionable is Clarke’s ability to rescue his beats from the predictable morass of synth pop’s stodgy past without, of course, overdoing it.

The spoken words mix wonderfully with excellent musical arrangements, but the original songs primarily suffer in comparison.

It is perhaps Oldham’s best work yet, and somewhat ironically, his most accessible as well.

Bottle of Humans was an amazing album, immediately hailed as a classic. Selling Live Water improves upon that album in every identifiable category.

Listening to Equilibrium is like attending a Matthew Shipp museum retrospective: one samples the various facets of Shipp’s recent career without delving too deeply into any one of them.

The band's grasp of dynamics, both musical and emotional, has deepened, resulting in Long Knives, their most nuanced album yet, with a much more understated approach than on past efforts.

The lyrics on Red Devil Dawn are some of his most poetic to date.

The token swell to storm that has come to characterize the post-rock set seems mailed in here; the build-ups are never ominous, the explosion of guitars never reach the near cacophonous bliss that their heroes so effortlessly visit.

Much of this record is quietly beautiful, and its laments gather weight with repeated listens.

Loud, large and unrelenting, Hate is stunning, orchestral pop.

One Bedroom is the LP on which The Sea And Cake jettisons most of its jazzbo pretensions long enough to finish the pure, catchy, consistent pop-funk record it's always been capable of.

It seems that every element previously employed by the Microphones is recycled here in masterpiece capacity.

It isn't as succint, and heart-wrenching, as Someday... and it may not have the slicing modernity of HNIA's earlier works, but the idea of the project propels it still.

An instant classic. Few records contemplate such grandeur and fewer still achieve it.