It's great that Natalizia and Willis are playing with the boundaries of genre, but the experiments feel overly cautious, leaving the album full of pleasantries and devoid of punch.

There is literally nothing on Gauntlet Hair that hasn't been done better by more respectable second-order bands like Tonstartssbandht or Ganglians.

This album is loud, obnoxious, personal, and a hell of a lot of fun.

III is something to be appreciated and savored, but not necessarily obsessed over.

Packaging quibbles aside, this is a great set.

The end result lumps the worst banalities of "indie" music into electronic sounds that, if properly fleshed out, might have been interesting.

None of these remixes fall flat. For Radiohead fans, TKOL RMX 1234567 is an opportunity to see their favorite fivesome in a new light by some of the world's most clever electronic musicians.

The songs themselves, even when they are not traditional folk songs, share some of the time-worn general-ness of the folk genre. You do not, very often, feel that you are glimpsing directly into Gubler's psyche.

If there's a flaw on Original Colors, it's that these 10 songs are so closely related--in tempo, vocals and instrumentation--that they're enjoyable enough on their own but become an undifferentiated blob when played back-to-front.

It is unremarkable to the point of being enraging.

On All Things Will Unwind, though, the bursts of inspiration in each corner and crevice remain too stiff to merge into anything more than the sum of their parts.

Looping State of Mind is a bold attempt at fusing The Field's emotive tendencies with something more aggressive, and for the most part, Willner strikes the perfect balance.

Creatures of an Hour is never less than pretty, and often a good deal more.

It's a rarity, though, when kids successfully switch from absorbing listlessness totransmitting it themselves. That's the case for Mikal Cronin, who takes these circumstances and makes something of it that is big and varied and hyperactive.

Breakers is a gorgeous oddity, one of the year's most arresting albums of any kind, and "252" hints at the potential for even better material ahead.

El Khatib's voice is good and scrawny, and yelps out Tennessee hiccups just right. But he works too hard at selling the whole show.

They simply begin, evolve, repeat, and end, very much as though they were designed to play out while we directed our attention elsewhere.

Life Sux, however, shows that laziness is still very much the enemy here. And it comes in many flavors, but none more egregious than the penchant for gimmicks.

While I'm not convinced Biophilia overcomes the slump as an album, every song has something going for it.

Future Islands clearly wanted to tug some heartstrings this time around, and in the respect, On the Water is an unqualified success.

Bold and exciting, the project demonstrates the infinite possibilities available to modern producers, if only they look in the unlikeliest of places.

The Mancy of Sound and its predecessor are straight-up essential listening, and gloriously exciting music. The pulse quickens each time I put this one on.

The result makes for a listening experience that's intense and potentially awkward, but one that also somehow rings true.

Tripper is the cleanest, leanest--and, arguably, most accessible--record Hella have made as a duo, showing off some fantastically tight playing and even a few hints of what their music desperately needs: clarity.

Violent Hearts occasionally plods, as on "No One," "Other Girls," and the opener "Believe," (at least before its delightfully messy climax). But more often it quietly impresses, revealing new melodic and harmonic strands with each subsequent listen.

Sometimes he continues with the same train of thought; sometimes he changes direction completely. This isn't technique on display. It's more like improvised self-analysis in musical form.

Modeselektor's willingness to collaborate and explore sounds while still sticking to their identifiable, fat, bass-heavy crunk techno style is worth applauding, and there's no reason to think that they won't continue to remain relevant.

In the end, Hall Music is an enjoyable but paradoxical album, both an expansion and contraction of Svanängen's palette.