It’s all rather good in a discombobulating way, where the monotonic tension of, say, the Pop Group, meets lavish, emotion-harboring flourishes reminiscent of Orange Juice and even, in a couple of places, the Joe Jackson Band. You can’t get too comfortable even being uncomfortable, because Omni likes to mix it up, the jitter and the sway.

Up on High will sound like nothing much the first time you listen, but stay with it, because the songs are soft and unassuming, but excellent, and they’ll catch you in the end.

The usual and worn out horrorcore lyrics resemble now parts in “found poetry,” left to their own devices. They are no longer pastiches made by humans but cosmic shards of meaning. The tracks recorded with Benny the Butcher and Elcamino (“La Mala Ordina”) and with La Chat (“Run For Your Life”) are hints at what’s possible when our-worldly lyrics paired down with otherworldy music.

Stir ends in relative quiet and serenity with “Path to the Peak,” little flares of guitar anarchy quickly sluiced over pensive bowing. The dialogue here, as elsewhere, is fluid and intuitive, as each player hears, contemplates and reacts to what the other proposes, not in synchrony but in understanding. They move gracefully over a landscape that is always shifting under them.

Overall, the album has an over technical, over clean vibe. All three musicians play very well, and they’ve obviously gotten more intuitive and engaged with one another. But it’s too much skill and too little viscera for my taste. Despite a continuous onslaught of face melting solos, Anthropocosmic Nest feels a little cold.

This is world weary pop, but it’s completely uncynical. Reserved and melodramatic at the same time, it doesn’t worry about the incongruities, satisfied to be both wilted and very alive.

You hear none of that struggle here. She has labored and sweated and stressed to make a record that is completely devoid of these characteristics. It might have reared up out of a clam shell like Botticelli’s Venus.

[One track] is expansive enough to be its own album, indeed, perhaps its own universe. The other is just fine, and you will enjoy it if you like Garcia Peoples’ other new jack jammers like Wet Tuna, Chris Forsyth, Matt Valentine and Steve Gunn. ... One Step Behind takes a giant step forward, right off the edge and into the unknown.

Little about the album feels predictable, neither the musical texture nor the oblique and sometimes imagistic lyrics. Gordon can be startling at times, and she does it all with a cool (a non-commercial, unreproducible cool, that is) that, as much as anything, makes No Home Record so particular to Gordon.

Odds Against Tomorrow simply sounds a lot like [the album] Bill Orcutt. The new album’s original tunes evoke the same sense of Americana wrung dry of phony sentiment as its predecessor’s covers. ... The stuttering is gone because Orcutt is ready to show us straight up what he thinks matters.

The record proves that Lightning Bolt are still very much a force to be reckoned with.

At little over the half hour it is a snapshot, but any recording of this Quartet contains multitudes to explore, marvel at and enjoy.

Maybe it takes a band of Hot Chip’s experience and sonic skill to have both pain and love that are as hard-won and effecting as it is on A Bath Full of Ecstasy; expanding their palette or not, big stars or not, it’s a joy to have them back.

What makes KAPUTT so exciting is its elasticized unpredictability, the sense that these taut, punched-out firestorms could head in any direction. Anarchy has rarely been so tightly coordinated, nor order so slapped bloody and sore as on this debut.

Spirit Counsel doesn’t make for an easy listen, but largely because of its length. Moore’s compositional work and tonal explorations remain intriguing on repeated listens.

It’s not what you’re expecting from Moon Duo, but it’s nonetheless quite appealing, this magic, glowing sound space that isn’t quite real, but better.

Picking out parts is really beside the point – the album works as a restless, searching, gorgeous whole. Morris and his band have never been better.

The Fiery Margin shames so many songs being written today, not with reproach, but with example after elegant example of how it’s done right.

The Hold Steady will probably never match the thrill of their first three releases, but Thrashing Thru the Passion is the most enjoyable record they’ve made in thirteen years.

The decision to work these songs out while camped out next to a mobile recording truck shifts the instrumental balance; the bass is less mobile, handclaps and choppy rhythm guitar set the cadence and overall things move a little slower. And Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who sings over half the songs, has never sounded more world-weary. ... But deep blue sentiments touch deeply, and Tinariwen’s music still has that reach.

“Equivalents 5,” a four-note sequence shifts pitches and timbres amidst constantly changing atmospheres. The tune itself never changes, but it doesn’t have to keep the listener engaged. It’s the qualities of the sounds, such as the swelling bass and swirling high end of its predecessor, “Equivalents 6,” that count. Just as Stieglitz’s images of clouds became things in themselves, the tones cease to be means and become ends in themselves.

Ethos is a different and a more complex matter. If you put out your own records and sing about leftist issues, does that make you punk? Maybe they’re trying to do something more essential, to find a version of rock that’s conscious of its History at that same time that it grounds us in the Now. Sheer Mag’s songs do that, again and again. And you’ll want to listen to them, again and again.

Thanks to Sherwood’s production, all nine songs on Rainford are engaging on the macro level; you won’t have to work hard to enjoy them, and you’ll remember how they go later, and the micro; they are, in the classic dub tradition, rich with bizarre surprises.

Some of the songs work atmospherically; other take shape as more conventional songs. Yet it all proceeds like a pastel colored daydream, faint sounds swirling into mirage-ish structures then melting away into mist. The words are so buried in the mix that you’ll need a lyric sheet to parse them; like the music, they teeter on the boundary between pastoral calm and 21st century angst. They cling to subtle melodies like a fresh coat of dew.

Tucker brings on an overload of tone, overtone and sonic sensation that swirls and eddies like a rough tide, at times nearly picking you up off your feet and tossing you over.

Full Upon Her Burning Lips isn’t Earth’s best record. ... However, it might be the definitive Earth record, the one that, in its mystery and directness, comes nearest to whatever it is Carlson has been seeking in the drone and riff for almost 30 years.

With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.

The Body and Uniform seem to have found kindred spirits in one another’s daring and ferocious dispositions. The result is an excellent record, innovative and exciting, antically entertaining and deadly serious. Play it often and very, very loud.