It remains delightfully messy and is all the more viscerally resonant.

This third Zomes album is far more static, yet the statis itself is arresting.

Six Cups is a busy, urgent and joyous trip that sidesteps categorization, a feat unto itself in field where new micro-genres are described every few months.

It's a fantastic body of work, as vital and fresh-sounding now as it was when first released.

he's made one of his strongest, and certainly his oddest, albums.

A gorgeous, fully realized expression of her potential.

By turns languidly bluesy and as stark as an oak branch against a February sky, her music is a treasure, and this record fills in a story-line with far too many gaps.

It's Bowles's reflections on the silence of the desert, the way its stillness rearranges your molecular structure, that resonates with Travels In The Dustland.

It's some of his best work, but it's done with the gimmick of relying solely on the ARP 2600 analog synthesizer.

At its best, then, Vanity is Forever seems to be an album where the nostalgic references are intentional: New Wave as touchstone rather than simply gazing backward fondly.

Their charisma lets them make a few risky moves (such as the African percussion on the extended closer "Church") and yield massive returns.

Its appropriation of G-funk hooks and production is really off-putting, and makes me wonder exactly who this record is for.

Even with bursts of ill-tuned twang, Prinz and Horn's harshness is centered and tame.

Imperial Teen crafts a super-clean, super-sharp, inordinately complex collection of songs that, nonetheless, go down like cherry cola.

It is a difficult piece to listen to on many levels.

Though I Love You can at times appeal on an intellectual level more than an aesthetic one, it still has a host of admirable (and listenable) qualities.

It all just flows, never exploding but never falling into a stupor, either.

Take off your thinking cap, and Replica reveals mostly pleasant, mellow ambient jams.

Ultimately, The Iron Soul of Nothing feels considerably more like a NWW album than a Sunn 0))) album. But somehow that doesn't come at the expense of the source authors. Rather, it's a satisfying document of Stapleton's ongoing creativity as well as confirmation of the potential always nascent in the doom duo's earliest work.

It's many different things at once, but all of them are confident and powerful.

Watson captures (or enhances) sounds in three dimensions, and the way he arranges them invites both immersion and reflection.

It is a very direct, very intimate half-hour of songs.

We have a groundbreaking album re-released, with some strong live material

Far from being liabilities, such disparate moments help define If… for the better: as a work that frolics in different directions without losing control or coherence.

But largely, Jacaszek's wedding of disparate styles pays off in Glimmer's evocation of certain moods and expert shifts from mode to mode.

This EP still feels like a small plate of leftovers from a meal that promised more than it delivered, as though Wolfgang Puck was on the can, not in the kitchen.

With so much in the blender, it's a testament to BSS's production skills that tracks like this don't fly apart. But they do get muddled.

Sure the whole Southern Rock Opera concept is a bit over-the-top, and a two-disc set will always contain its fair share of duds, but the Drive-By Truckers have succeeded in making an album that is as good a historical reference as it is for air-guitar.