Psychedelic Pill is earnest and perverse, simplistic and complicated, epic and underachieving--guess the old cuss still has it in him after all.

At just 37 minutes, World Music is wisely edited--most of the songs hover around the 3-minute mark, so they speak their piece and move on before you get tempted to start peeling apart the layers to see what they're really made of.

The musicianship, melodies, and performances are sound, but hollow. Everything does what it's supposed to do, without ever fully engaging on any real emotional, human level.

Honor Found in Decay, the band's 11th or so studio album, is an organic, humanizing refinement of said retooling, one that is very subtle yet undoubtedly informed by guitarist Steve Von Till and bassist Scott Kelly's forays into the fandom and unadorned tribute exercises regarding the late Townes Van Zandt.

For post-apocalyptic strains of electronic music, there's no one better at the moment than Andy Stott. Luxury Problems makes for one hell of a calling card.

Scheidt is a capable acoustic guitarist with a flair for ornamentation, but well-wrought filigree does not an album make. Confronted with the choice between hearing this record again and taking a nap, I'd opt for the snooze.

Aside from the chopped vocal of the title-track, the mind-warp of "R in Zero G," and the woodpecker rhythms that liven up "Fraction" on the back end, the album feels dated.

The end result is as fascinating as Silent Servant has ever been.

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

While a somewhat trained ear could tease out what came from where, it's a lot easier in this case just to sit back and enjoy work that seems to value interesting textures and arrangements - but not at the expense of the songs themselves.

The balance of melody to unease is rarely this well maneuvered.

As a whole Book Burner may be as focused and relentless as anything they've yet released.

GEM isn't just a fresh take on an old sound; it's an audit of the constraint placed on female artists in the past and a table-turning journey into what might have been possible if musical freedom meant more than obedience to parents, husbands and record producers.

Provider isn't necessarily going to settle old scores. Its a notable release, though, both as a new work by a talented singer-songwriter and as one of what one can only hope will be several satisfying postscripts in the narrative of a great band.

Wolfe seems out in the open for the first time--overall, though, she's more interesting when she's deep in the woods.

Newman's third album is beautifully put together, well played, slyly and cleverly worded, but it works too much on the surface.

Jiaolong speaks in a more comprehensible language because it's not florid psych-pop, but as with Caribou, I do not see a way to become anything other than a spectator of this music.

Nothing wrong with clearly highlighting your influences, although you do run the risk of reminding listeners why said influences are better.

For most of its runtime, highlights included, the album is mired in the same self-drowning-out that afflicts the best of its ilk.

Formerly Extinct is a little over-cooked, and the album would have benefitted from being left a little more raw at its core.

Thirty minutes of METZ feels more like hard work than fun playtimes, and the sameness of the venture underscores the futility of whatever it is they're trying to accomplish, which falls somewhere between "artist defending bowel movement on a gallery floor" and "third demo tape by an up-and-coming new band."

It's got an energy that's usually associated with naiveté and learning instruments on the job. The trio knits their little hand-played loops together loosely, and in a certain light, there are places it unspools completely.

It's a nice album. One of the things that's really interesting about it, though, is its relationship with nostalgia.

Established fans will appreciate a few new gems in the catalogue (I've returned repeatedly to "(They Found Me On the Back Of) The Galaxy"), but those unfamiliar with The Intelligence would do well starting with Deuteronomy, Fake Surfers or Males before circling back to this one.

The temptation to move to these songs is unequalled in his catalog and, consequently, the willingness to engage the material (and artist) in a positive way also makes Sentielle Objectif Actualité a unique challenge of a very different kind.

Bubblegum Graveyard is sophisticated when it needs to be sophisticated, funny when it wants to be funny, and its plodding beat lends itself perfectly to that excellent Osmonds guitar move where they bob their head upwards and tap their foot on each count.

In short, Efterklang could've made this entire record, and certainly that trio of great musique concrète songs, in their bathroom. Easily.

The songs here are mostly ponderous, nine-minute long epics with very little in the way of song form, melody, or musical interest.