The record never hits a stride that allows it to pull together as a cohesive album, save its fantastical, paper-thin theme.

Lookout lacks the piercing insight of Berman’s best work––those Old Testament and American Gothic retellings laced with sarcasm and self-loathing. At the same time, there’s a casual quality to this set that trumps the belabored tangle of the last go-round.

While it’s a solid follow-up to "Neon Golden," The Devil, You + Me falls short of its predecessor in that, taken as a whole, it doesn’t amount to more than the sum of its parts.

His voice is a delightful constant through good writing and bad. The propeller-arms guitar rock supplied by Pollard's various flesh-and-blood bandmates tend to provide just-off-enough accompaniment, but Tobias mucks it all up.

There is a coherent sound throughout the album––psychedelic electro-hop perhaps––while each song develops fruitfully without ever being dragged out.

Despite all these potential distractions, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill remains, quite simply, a beautiful album, possibly because. Harris feels so comfortable in her own skin.

There is no ideal on-ramp for the Sparks canon, but Exotic Creatures of the Deep once again re-energizes this weird little alternate universe.

Takes is most worthwhile for Adem fans, but intriguing for anyone who enjoys a new perspective on old tunes.

Their sound is as big and manic as it’s always been, and the melodies as infectious, but the content slinks away from even the prickly personal politics that populated their first singles.

At times, it sounds as though the band was still working through exactly how they wanted all of the various elements to work together, such that there are some immediate, hook-filled songs ("White Winter Hymnal," "Your Protector," "He Doesn't Know Why") and other songs whose more complex structures require more from the listener.

If Rook is as ambitious as they feel they can be without adding excess, then that's a good tradeoff, but their sound right now fits them like a pair of shoes that are a size too small.

It’s a record that is fine in its own right but is all the better for what it portends in the future.

Life has a wholly predictable uniqueness.

The album may not set the world on fire like "Ladies and Gentlemen," but it stands as the best Spiritualized album since that milestone, and a worthy successor.

James Pants may well develop a style or voice of greater substance with future releases. But, as of now, his reliance on his synthesizer aptitude is too repetitive, too flat, and too conventional to convey much meaning or purpose.

It's rare that historically important recordings are also essential listening, but this is such a case.

Trying to meet somewhere between the dancefloor and the bedroom, between the realm of communal delight and solitary reflection, Booka Shade just wind up in the middle of the road.

Everything about this record, from its goopy over-production to its brooding, listless demeanor, suffers from a one-dimensionality that completely prevents connections to the listening audience.

Anywhere I Lay My Head falters on Johansson’s vocals, or lack of a distinctive voice.

The eleven tracks here are tight, raw, and marked by insistent thumping rhythms and taught chunky riffs, laying the groundwork for one of the band’s most straight-ahead rock albums in years.

Gardner and Hammel haven’t come close to exhausting their songwriting prowess, and Re-Arrange Us is probably their most appealing album to date.

While not without its pleasures, particularly in its first half, the album seems to find the Bonnie ‘Prince’ just a little too much at ease for his (and our) own good.

Ultimately, this album probably won’t be the critical sleeper hit that its predecessor was-–it’s hard to find fault with the band’s playing, the choice of songs, and the overall premise, but Thing of The Past only nudges their art forward a bit from "To Find Me Gone."

On the mic end, MC Naledge has a comfortable flow reminiscent of a more polished Kanye, but his lyrics on The In Crowd are less than remarkable.

Way is cleaner, clearer and more luminous--in all ways Ecstatic Sunshine’s best effort yet.

It's more cohesive than their debut, and just as catchy.

Though generally safe and un-"sexy," Nouns is the sort of album around which healthy musical communities could grow, and that seems to be the point.

The recondite spirit remains, but the sense of restlessness has disappeared, and with it much of the impertinent energy that propelled "Gone Ain’t Gone." What we gain in its place, though, is more rewarding: a closer look at the mechanics of Fite’s itchy-legs sophistry, the nature of his controlled eccentricity.