Broken Water's second full-length, Tempest, is at once a deeply competent and unoriginal record.

Go figure, the most enjoyable parts of the album are hard to separate from the most annoying.

Last year, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio sounded like they were headed for space. This year, I'd say the mothership has come back home.

Welcoming and unique, this is one of the best debuts in recent memory.

Brian Borcherdt has made rough, beautiful songs out of broken bits of things, haunting atmospheres from the gritty transience of dust, and that's something worth doing.

Skullways settled into a sound that's unstuck in time, and works for both the brain and behind.

Subtle differences aside, Magic Trick delivers the same kind of trippy, guitar-jangling, tambourine-shaking pop as Fresh & Onlys.

The reality is that Valley Tangents just sort of floats by as background music even whilst actively listening.

This is not a diamond in the rough as much as it is a piece of carbon that might, with extreme pressure and effort, turn into something someday.

In Longtime Companion, he puts the drawl and shuffle of country into the service of a very peculiar vision, embracing and even seeking out the contradictions.

The layers of rhythm, voice and electronics here possess the ability to tell stories, just like the novel after which they're named, and out of their conjurings emerge atmospheres and melodies that will remain in your head.

[The production] intrudes on the songwriting, distracts the listener, and interferes with what are otherwise solid and sometimes deeply moving performances.

While providing an exciting document of this stage of the band, We Rose From Your Bed… offers a tantalizing hint at what's to come.

The Lost Tapes doesn't feel like a barrel bottom being scraped; it's a scoop into a pond still teaming with life.

The best moments on Appia Kwa Bridge stand up to anything he's ever done, and while it purposely breaks no new ground, there's something to be said for sticking to what you do best.

Natural History is at its best when it's at its most focused.

Shackleton, if there was any doubt, can do big picture and tight focus equally well; he can lead us into the future musically while digging in his heels against the one that's actually in store.

While Puny will likely draw few new fans into Neville's unique sound world, those who have long fallen under the spell of his corroded Kiwi fuckery will be rapt yet again.

They're not breaking significant new ground here, but neither are they standing still.

However it started, this joint project evolved into something unexpectedly powerful, and that it would be a shame if it stopped here.

By blurring the lines of his influences, Wymond Miles has been able to create an album that is very much a reflection of his own vision and personality.

Though their formula has changed scant little over the past three decades, it has lost little of its potency.

It's a welcome venture, for sure, and just like all those previous Hot Chip records, In Our Heads won't go unmoved to.

Wallpaper Music is a lot more complicated than it seems, and those complications give it a depth and resonance that most garage punk records can't muster.

Halo's voice, pronounced in the mix, artfully mangled, purposely unperfect, reaching at unreachable notes, and occasionally beautiful, is far from a relief. Whether this is riveting or off-putting is for each listener to decide.

Overall, Dub Egg isn't as strong as The Young's debut, Voyagers of Legend, but second-album jitters aren't the problem. If anything, The Young have a little too much confidence in their style. By the time the finale drifts into its dissipating breakdown, it feels a song too long.

It's scattered, without a singular vision, and successful nonetheless.

A little older and a little more experienced, the sound of Claro here is slower in BPM but more graceful as a result.