As strong as this set is, it still faces the originality conundrum. Rather than a group of songs individually composed and packaged under the banner of a soul album, Faithful Man can occasionally feel like one extended, vaguely monochromatic exercise in proving the vitality of a brilliant yet aging art form.

From its start, Audience of One diverges starkly from the expected; by its end, the sense of surprise is replaced by that of satisfaction.

What's emerged here is more unpredictable, a transitional record that still feels complete.

As an accidental, definitive document of time and place, Vee Vee is up there with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, No Pocky For Kitty and the Polvo records, strong enough even to offset the hideous cover art.

The latest full-length from the latest version of The Shins has some amazing songs.... But it also has some of the worst songs The Shins have ever produced.

He may not voice things like Ellington would have, but it doesn't matter. It could never stop, as far as I'm concerned.

The Horror makes for a largely relentless, immersive listening experience.

The result is an album that is as notable on its own as it is in the historical chillwave narrative.

At its best, though, We Are Nobody nails an uneasy mood that feels like a natural evolution of the Chap's acerbic wit: waiting for a punchline that never arrives.

This is the very best kind of post-reunion album, the one that allows you to rediscover things you'd forgotten about a band you always loved.

In this possibly one-off collaboration, Shuford and his pals have dug up an archaic artifact and filled it with powerful intoxicants.

At its best, it's both cathartic and transformative, harnessing the transformative power of empathy to politicize the personal and personalize the political.

He's not playing to his strengths; he's succumbing to preciousness.

Ultimately, what you see here is indeed what you get: amour, imagination and rêve from two men who fell to earth...from the dark side of Méliès' moon.

Sly winks at a complicit listener are replaced by a troubling disregard for the audience, and The Magnetic Fields sink to the bottom of the sea of self-satisfaction.

While the overall sound here isn't exactly unrecognizable from the band on Leave Home, there's definitely way more going on in terms of range and risk-taking.

More often, Disappears's new sound plods--especially by comparison with the frantic, loopy movement through spacy echo chambers that characterized much of the group's material on Lux and Guider

The result is not a great leap forward but a stationary jump--with one foot forward, another backward, and a hard landing on both feet.

These songs are smart and ingratiating, and slightly squeamish about the world of privileged, post-collegiate ennui they inhabit, and... that's what they are.

While Beaus$Eros retains his playfulness and wordplay, and while the songs are without doubt catchy, Farquhar is out of his depth.

The simple wallops that make up most of Personality suit him surprisingly well.

If you're bored with what they do, this won't change your mind, but if you're ready for another round, it's reliably strong stuff.

This is one record that gets better when you play it on shuffle.

For the uninvested outsider (neither lover nor hater), it's distinctively spooky background music with a few satisfyingly jarring surprises, nothing to get terribly worked up about. For Patton's large army of obsessive pupils, it's an essential document of the Master at his most conceptually obsessive.

Mark Sultan breathes fire into genres that, in most hands, only gather dust.

Sakamoto and Fennesz don't say how you should take their music, but its piano-forward sound aligns it with decades of delicate minor-key melodies that have accompanied countless images of rain on window pains and lonely pining lovers.

It's a pleasing set on its own terms, but it's just as interesting as a contrast to contemporary electronics, to hear what traits and effects have faded as its evolved so rapidly.

Porcelain Raft's airy concoctions work best when you're not thinking about them.