An album that doesn't immediately astound, but gradually unfurls in dense atmospheric strands.

Funplex, the band's first album since 1992, is loads of fun and totally free of 'plex.

The Bronx III is muscular and solid and is, more often than not, good clean fun.

Things get really sketchy, in the sense that most of the tunes are just that, sketches, with an arrangement or melodic idea worth pursuing that doesn't reach high enough.

The Believer is a strong and enormous album about sex.

Hill’s disc captures everything that’s easy to hate about Hella.... Seim’s album, on the other hand, is easily the most fully-realized work to bear the Hella name.

In my experience, there have been few albums such as In A Space Outta Sound that I have heard within the realm of electronica, where a musical palette was spread so broadly while still managing to sound like part of the same project.

At once introspective and indisputably catchy, their complex dynamic and easy likeability should certainly satiate the radio gods.

If there is a problem with Some Loud Thunder it is the album’s lack of consistency.

Do the Bambi proves that art rock can be both obvious and alien at the same time.

14 songs focused intently on melody and chord progressions, not licks or repetitive riffs or tricky drumbeats.

There is nothing here that pushes past what we expect from New Order in their current incarnation, but it is facile, shiny, bright and well-behaved around strangers.

Where Cale flaps up is in not allowing himself enough space for nuance atop his overdriven guitars, forcing the deployment of gaudy keyboard settings to match the guitars’ "intensity" and even fumbling into a bona fide mall-punk chorus in "Perfect."

This is the kind of headphone or background music that won’t have you looking to change discs, but won’t distract you from whatever else you’re doing, either.

Blake Sennett’s second album with The Elected is more magical and limitless than his first and reminds us why we love his projects in the first place.

Familiarity can be a good thing, but The Stands get plain fresh, crossing the line between feeling safe and feeling violated.

The pair accomplished what they set out to do, but by no means are they causing any whiplash with the results.

Instead of infectious innovation, on Ripe the audience is served a mostly useless platter of fluff pieces, wittiness minus the wit, and hooks that flail aimlessly through the air around them.

The album is at many times more open and engaging than some of those earlier gems and has a lighthearted nature that retains the balance of sating old fans and sparking new ones.

Happiness Ltd. is a big mess.

Some of the tracks may be fun, but The Best Little Secrets Are Kept is little more than mindlessness parading as innovation.

Like The Replacements in the early days, The Beautiful New Born Children are a glorious mess, gleefully bashing out songs in 4/4 time without much regard for melody or variety.

A dark carnival for pale shoegazers who burn up when the sun hits their papery skin, Surgery is acid rock cloaked in leather jackets and chains.

A handful of these recordings show promise, and should prove enjoyable for diehards and newcomers alike.... These standouts sadly don’t compensate for the rest of the album’s general blandness.

It’s too bad more songs don’t skip the sophomoric lyrics. Tinker around with your equalizer - you may be able to drown out the vocals and save the otherwise interesting CD.

Help Wanted Nights may leave longtime fans of Kasher's tension-and-release cold at first, but after repeated listens it probably hangs together better than any other Good Life release.

Cash grab? Perhaps. Phoning it in? Maybe. Or maybe it’s their attempt to open up to a new crowd - but whatever it is it’s better left as an experiment.