Ringer is another step forward in one man's ongoing aural self-actualization through refinement of his experiences and influences.

It’s a lot less singular than its predecessor, but that makes it a more directly exhilarating experience.

It’s a testament to the strength of Ashley’s reality, and more importantly his adaptability, that the album holds together at all. Although it draws on half a continent’s worth of source material, The Golden Hour still bears, at every turn, the dark, swaggering cynicism that has always defined Firewater.

Third is about the potential for being, not being itself. It’s the base chemistry of the Portishead sound, a compound awaiting reaction. Which is up to the listener to produce, like the lightning that brings the Monster to life.

The Midnight Organ Fight is sharper, more polished, and better in parts than "Sing the Greys." There’s only one unfortunate downside. This sharper, more polished effort displays fewer of the things that made the first album so enjoyable.

Kensington Heights isn’t drastically different from anything that’s come before, but it’s Constantines’ most consistent album so far, and a good starting point for anyone who hasn’t heard them and misses that old-time galvanizing, anthemic music.

Jim is pleasant, polite, listenable, smooth (it’s like Yacht Rock for the nu-soul set), undemanding…and a bit of a bore.

Though excellent in brief parts, much of the album is still worrisome, at times specifically seeming to document a band running out of steam.

Not quite the revelation of the seamless debut, and missing the duck-down mentality of the Beady Eye in his prime, The Formula is the hip-hop definition of maintaining.

For all the grunting and studio manipulation (the way the levels shift around, it's like there's a cat loose on the mixing board), this is as playful as the Fall has ever been, with long stretches of taking the piss.

There are many moments here when the good times roll effectively enough, but rarely as well as past Born efforts.

I feel like Flight of the Conchords could do something interesting if they embraced the absurdity of their act and didn’t stand aloof from it at an ironic distance.

When Life… is not all bad, however. It is merely middling.

From the Valley to the Stars doesn’t have that directness [of her first album]; it gives the persistent feeling that it is nothing but parts.

Cryland is, for the most part, a collection of psyched-up blues riffs that underpin lyrics full of anachronistic clichés about old-time religion and various other tried-and-true topics about which people sing The Blues.

With the exception of the engorged 'Couleurs,' 'Dark Moves of Love's' lift into the stratosphere, and the ambient feather-on-the-breath drones of 'Midnight Souls Still Remain,' Saturdays = Youth is strangely leaden, an album fenced off by its conceptual constraints.

He sacrifices none of his newfound momentum on the fantastic Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, his sharpest, wittiest, most resolute album in over a decade.

Mountain Battles gets less right than Pod or Last Splash did, but hits the target more often than Pacer or Title TK. Either way, it's probably a bit better than you expect.

It's hard not to admire the jerky, clean-toned guitar scribbles on 'Cassius,' but most of the rest of the song sounds like a Franz Ferdinand b-side.

It’s nothing new and it’s nothing scary, but its renewed vigor is encouraging.

Gods of the Earth is shaky in places, but once its longboats settle in the water, it's a force.

If April demonstrates Kozelek’s predilection for reaching backwards, in places it also finds him broadening his range.

This is great for obsessive fans and for the remnants of the Elephant Six community, for with Electronic Projects they can get a more complete picture of the band. But why make them pay for it?

The band still knows how to move gracefully over the duration of long pieces and flash occasional glimpses of that once unrivaled crescendo toward catharsis. But on 13 Blues, it seems like SMZ are more interested in making their own movie than just providing a backdrop.

There's plenty of kicks left over, but it tilts the impression of the band. The Teen Beat questionnaires that come in the disc jacket (What's your favorite color? What's your shoe size?) and the shortened tracklist end up emphasizing the nerdiness over the jerkiness.

These New Puritans play it smart, but in service of an earnest query rather than their own smartness.

If The Kills didn't try so hard to be sultry, they might have a similar breakthrough. They're more appealing when you've got no idea what's on their mind.

Each album isn’t simply a solitary entry into the Destroyer oeuvre, but rather some tile in the mosaic or thread in the pattern.