'Seeplymouth' is a complex and beautiful song, and one that displays the talents of all the collaborators in Volcano Choir. A lot of people were enamored of "For Emma, Forever Ago" last year; they’ll be well rewarded if Justin Vernon’s involvement leads them to Unmap.

It’s a fitting near-farewell for this disarmingly tender and enjoyable album.

Does it work? Of course it works.

Where "Arm’s Way" was mostly excess without limit, Vapours is tightly-controlled, yet still roiling beneath the surface.

As emotionally impenetrable as the instruments are, Kinsella’s own inner song remains even more obscured by uncharacteristically opaque lyrics.

They show that they can write sloppy songs with real hooks and something to bop along to. Something that rarely happens thereafter, unfortunately.

The Twilight Sad’s second proper album is an encouraging step in the wrong direction. Perhaps the sensory overload of these recordings will encourage a more conservative route in the future.

Without hearing it in alongside the images that accompany it, it’s hard to pass judgment on Cave and Ellis’s music.

Rhino’s new Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky seems like it was put together as much to please Big Star fans as it was to introduce newcomers to the band.

The combination of synth, loop techniques and no-joke instrumentalists playing wild and unconventional rhythms is totally over-the-top, but that’s exactly what makes this album so dazzling.

However central Sylvian’s bleak commentary, the weight and suggestiveness of this record gives it a sense of unpredictability, possibility, almost an openness beyond itself. It’s absolutely superb.

“The Drunken Boat” one of the best tracks he’s done to date. The rest of the album isn’t as daring or unique. Joyner mostly follows the "Hotel Lives" template and reaps the same rewards.

As far as conclusions about Popular Songs go, it’s fair to address the reader not as a consumer of the music, but as someone breezing through its clean, familiar architecture. You should check this place out. It’s pretty sweet, and I think you’ll like the light.

It seems trivial for album length to be the crux of what makes Signal Morning work, but with one’s attention less spread out, less diluted, Hart’s musical strategy becomes that much more powerful. It’s the old showbiz adage: always leave ‘em wanting more.

There’s nothing particular catchy. No song stands out.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing to the band besides the concept. Far from ramshackle, exploratory fun, the songs are paint-by-numbers melodramatic nonsense with a few interesting genre gestures.

Mister Pop doesn’t quite measure up even to the first few Clean records from their third return (Modern Rock is an overlooked gem); it feels a bit haphazard at times, the instrumentals don’t need to be there, and Robert Scott’s song isn’t as potent as usual.

So while In Prism at least sounds like a Polvo record, it’s not until the second half, starting with the eight-minute opus “Lucia,” where it actually begins to feel like a Polvo record.

Working almost like a glorified mixtape, many of the tracks bleed together or start mid-scene with field recordings of corner action. It adds to the feeling that you’ve dropped in on something important.

Despite these small clunkers, there are many moments on A Strange Arrangement that show careful attention to soul’s craft and demonstrate a full immersion in the genre and its subtleties.

It is at once too ambitious (in the recording process and change of milieu) and not ambitious enough (in its failure to push Bergsman’s music to unexpected and truly experimental places).

The music on the album is rarely as urgent as the image that adorns it, and never as explosive as the heavy artillery that is found on its back, but the disc has a more subtle appeal than both.

I’ve not listened to any other album from 2009 quite so much, or quite so closely, a reflection not only of the exacting single-mindedness of O’Rourke’s vision, but also of The Visitor‘s loveliness.

What we do get is delay-drenched college rock, circa 1983.

The Snake displays many of its predecessor’s strengths--good songs, that emotion-laden voice, the amorphous blend of pop and jazz--without trying to be an action replay

Even if Speech Therapy, for all its dour resignation, seems a rather surprising Mercury Prize winner, the gentle, pretty sounds behind the quivering sadness of Debelle’s voice remain true throughout.

For better or worse, his mucho-affected glam vocals are as cartoonish as ever and significantly higher in the mix. But, for punks, edgy power-pop seems as though it’s one of the few long-term routes that isn’t a dead-end.