Throughout, Sylvian's songs retain their peculiar emotional coloration, of tension bubbling just under the surface.

It's good to hear a group continue to challenge themselves without kicking their strengths to the curb.

Even if The Diver is too lacking in originality for many, it does what it says on the tin, with verve, energy and a keen sense of what went before.

Hit Parade is such a pleasure, well made and artfully played, deeply felt but never mushy.

Overall, though, the mood on Fear Fun is consistent in its constant fluctuations; it's eerie when it needs to be and just familiar enough to lure in the listener.

Everything else seems comparatively flat and unsurprising; while the components of the individual songs are different, the results are of a kind, like a set of recipes using the same ingredients.

You can feel him, almost, willing the elements of words, drums and bass to come together in a music that is more than the sum of its parts.

To that end, the most interesting moments are the endings, and the most interesting song on a whole is the title-track that concludes the EP.

Perlas is a lovely, understated album, sure in its stride but happy to wander, and somehow peaceable and playful, even as the songs hymn broken hearts.

A few tracks wisp away into nothingness, but on work like "Your Heart is a Twisted Vine," Nadler approaches timelessness as well.

"Third Mouth" is arrestingly pretty, with its delicate guitars and looming, swelling synth notes, but also unfathomable.

Mostly, though, the record shows off Grass Widow's continued ability to hone their own style.

Sprawling but consistently clean and light, Among the Leaves is sprightlier than much of Kozelek's previous work.

Ufomammut has a compositional focus and restraint that frames the sonic elements well. An excellent continuation of their recent work.

True with its fey, reverb-soaked vocals, its synths and the jangle that recall the late 1980s/early 1990s when college rock started to segue into indie rock, is fun and catchy and worthy of an audience.

Later in the CD, Middleton makes room for his own voice, and there's something very powerful in the way his rough, organic morose-ness combines with the bright glow of electronic instruments.

The Narrow Garden is, at times, polite to a fault, its sensual romance lacking visceral urgency.

The ghosts in Monolake's latest creation are more subtle -- bubbling, evasive presences that unsettle the equilibrium of each track without derailing it.

[Space Homestead] is another in a long line of seductive drift-songs from this most wise, peripatetic and yet enigmatic duo.

The most disarming thing El-P's got going for him is his ability to sound like he's broadcasting from an impossible future even while he's standing right next to you in the present.

This is brink-of-apocalypse dubstep, wringing your guts with its internal tension rather than banging you over the head - without being didactic.

Macaroni is an album that deserves to be heard.

Despite the added breadth, Porras still sticks to the bare necessities to get his point across, making for guitar passages that meditate on every ringing note and hazy chord.

The tracks that are built on longer samples and vocals are more involving.

Sandwiched between two of the most towering works of its kind, Greenwood's massed strings can't help but transmit a tad cheeky.

These aren't songs simply notable for their attitude or irreverence--they're a fine collection of songs, period.

Thoroughly satisfying in sum, Hart and crew still succeed in leaving the listener desirous of more.

Urban Turban is consolidation for Cornershop, pulling together old and new tracks and showing as many hands as they can.