It seems cliché to say that music works on a few different levels, but in the case of Relief, it's true.

There's plenty to like in this abbreviated outing, and hardly anything to raise the hackles.

The problem with Golden Void is that it sounds so much like the Black Sabbath, with its intricate, chopped up time signatures, its big-footed riffs, its surprising facility with tunefulness even during mayhem.

Bish Bosch really is his beautiful, dark and twisted fantasy made manifest.

The best songs on Ultraísta recall the murky pop made by the likes of Broadcast, where clarity and catchiness intermingled

Like a raging flood, JSBX has picked up all sorts of things on its way down, but unlike Irene, the band has turned a jumble into something tight and precise and essentially its own.

If this is fusion cooking, they've balanced the spices well enough to come up with a dish that tastes mighty good.

Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is neither an easy, nor comforting listening, and absorbing the entire album can occasionally leave the listener gasping for air. However, as a portrait of a dystopian 21st century musical landscape, there is little better than this brand of pure British blackness.

The ingredients that make up Dark Crawler are a tasty mix, and Danjah could do worse than keep cooking with this recipe.

Ultimately, Love Will Prevail probably isn't going to win over any newcomers, but it's a solid addition to Cult of Youth's catalog; it's pretty clear by now that nobody is doing this type of thing with the gusto and attention to detail that they are.

There is palpable excitement in both the songwriting and the performance. And this energy prevents what might have been some late-stage lulls, where the riffs seem retread but the songs still feel new.

Like any good ongoing collaboration, theirs is already moving beyond its initial definition, gone past the novelty of lutist and filmmaker into something more enduringly interesting.

Matricidal Sons of Bitches frequently dazzles, but there are more than few moments of frustration along the way.

Lux is immersive, intriguing, delicate and evasive, like many an ambient record. And, inescapably, it doesn't resonate as much as Eno's groundbreaking works in the genre.

The Bears for Lunch is a far more solid affair than Let's Go Eat the Factory, balancing Pollard's Who-like aggression and Kinks-like whimsy in punchy, melodically memorable songs.

With this encyclopedic set, Smith delivers yet another convincing musical document for his consideration as one of the most accomplished composers/bandleaders currently working in creative improvised music.

If you're in the mood, the repeating riffs may fit right in; if you're not, you'll grow weary midway through each song.

His taste in sounds and sense of what to do to them is unimpeachable, but the album's greatest strength is its resistance to categorization.

A genuinely engaging and fun album.

The title is Norwegian for "poverty," but its rewards are as rich as they've ever been.

It's always interesting to hear artists develop, but one can't help but question the conviction here.

Lamar has once more asserted a great and formidable talent, and good kid is triumphantly and unmistakably his, but the artists that stick around longest are the ones who let us make their art our own.

The results, which are generally not very good, fall into the same aesthetic gray area as the majority of mashups everywhere: laudable ambition, misbegotten audacity.

Cold Showers uses that cavalier attitude behind such a simple bedrock of references--Joy Division (a song called "New Dawn" all but writes a countermelody to "Insight"), The Church, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Strokes, Interpol--that creates a level of tension across Love and Regret that sustains them far better than any of their peers.

This Dreamless Sleep, is often beautiful, but short on such surprises, and it becomes a bit of a snooze as a result.

Burning Daylight's best songs emerge from an ominous fog of sounds.

For a collaboration that could've easily become a Cocoon of styles and persons past, The Orbserver in the Star House plays surprisingly spry.

The guitar is the wild card in these tightly reined-in, metronomically repetitive cuts. It rises in fits and starts, jabs at solid masses of beats, tests the outer limits of rigorously defined song structures.