She follows her curiosity with abandon, deconstructing pop modalities with space and patience—from the strings-drenched chamber jazz (For the Old World) and the warped avant-garde of the title track to campfire folk (Spirit in the Eye of the Fire King,") her wildly eclectic, though sometimes distancing, choices sound familiar, yet completely their own.

Though not as conceptually absorbing as Bestial Burden, Contact is a no less challenging effort that seeks to find some kind of understanding from its listeners.

Once Wilco blazon forth their centerpiece, the remainder of The Whole Love takes a more familiar form that embraces self-assurance, even if those lopsided moments sum the overall experience.

Grace/Confusion is an aptly confounding record, its six tracks very much dissimilar to each other yet held together with a sense of grand gesturing and tireless virtuosity.

It's new, fresh, and energetic, all of which are not entirely surprising from an obviously skilled group, but it's in the execution that everything comes into clarity.

There probably aren’t enough moments that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, but after the initial struggle to get into, it’s a rewarding record to return to.

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion maintains a grounded, brooding focus that is designed more as a calling card to exhibit the next proper artist to warm the top of dusty stereo players of plenty middle-aged households.

Wonky is a very structured album, and although quality control may lapse slightly toward the end, it deserves to be considered a triumphant return.

If you’re reading this, stick with it. It has some real rewards in the back end--my only hope is that the songs were recorded in chronological order, to suggest that this is the direction Swift will take future albums.

The collaborations are interesting, and at times fascinating, but there is little doubt that the destiny of most tracks here will be, once again, as sonic accompaniments to visual productions.

While William Doyle’s career is undoubtedly on an upward trajectory and I am looking forward to his evolution as an artist, Total Strife Forever is hardly a landmark in electronic music.

Call it voyeur. Call it artificial. Call it exploitative. Just don’t call it boring. It’s the first 50 Cent album in some time that can boast that.

Rather than the nostalgic, distant wistfulness of last year’s work, Bem-vinda is much more open, and while there are complex rhythms and arrangements in abundance, none of this gets in the way of some eminently hummable tunes.

Cooder’s playing is sometime perfectly suited for the project, but other times seems horribly out of step with Mavis’ intention.

Screws Get Loose, is wonderfully tight and Those Darlins' latest succeeds with catchy, country tinged rock-and-roll with a healthy dose of humor.

Most of the songs on In A Warzone are full of energy, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the slimmed down punk rock that the album delivers with gusto. However, there is definitely a point where they start to sound very similar.

Most of Beyond the Fleeting Gales hits with a uncompromising positivity that often contradicts the sorrowful gentleness in her words.

While it can feel like juvenilia, it's in a very endearing way, a catalogue of the catharsis of a high-school misfit.

Lush marks the arrival of an immensely talented singer-songwriter who also still has much room to grow. It may not live up to those more exuberant expectations of an instant classic, but it’s still an admirable, skillful piece of music that leaves me excited for what comes next. In this case, Jordan hasn’t finished the race. She’s just arrived at the starting line.

Celebration Rock's high-tempo riff rock concerns itself with energy and embraces our serendipitous run-ins with those good times worth remembering.

There's something about how these tracks activate complicated astrophysical sequences dense with mathematical run-off that makes them have hi-speed, cyber-virtual effervescence.

It’s still hard to truly get Leonard Cohen right, and Thanks for the Dance sadly sounds like an easy approximation of his sound.

Overall, it’s an improvement over the yawnfest of "Takk," but not nearly as consistent as one would like.

While one could say the majority of Hippo Lite’s material is experimental, Presley and Le Bon placed their most avant and uptempo vocal tracks toward the album’s latter half, a block of songs that sort of run together before its closer, the violin-driven You Could Be Better. Consequently, the sequencing feels rushed and impatient. By Contrast, Presley and Le Bon initially want to show you around, the light and airy Blue from the Dark opening the door, slowly introducing you to their muse. By the end, it’s difficult not to feel as though you’ve overstayed your welcome.

The songwriting here isn’t just adding superficial layers to Matsson’s previous sound, it’s a step forward in style. So while that may make the album his most pleasing first listen, the dulling of the edges of his previous work keep it from being one of the more memorable.

It's hard to underestimate how big and strange some of this massive album is.

The EP highlight comes with 'My Mirror Speaks' recalling the band’s dynamic work from "Plans."

Deeper plunges headlong into its nightmarish source material with feverish petulance, insisting on the authenticity of its own sorrow.