It’s a fairly light album and doesn’t do anything new musically, but it’s solid; you don’t feel like it needs to be anything else.

The melodies' stoicism seems to reflect much of the empty, brutal beauty of modern life.

When the punk, doo-wop, early R&B and psych influences come together, the high points are strong enough that you can easily forgive the lack of focus.

The Richmond, Virginia, metal five-piece churn out their most extreme record in a long time.

The album's dominant sound is dreary even by Wu standards: grey, bass-heavy beats for the eight living members' equally drab rhymes.

A solid debut, but only a hint of what's to come.

Their bleakest set of songs ever.

The Catastrophist is another shining example of the band’s ability to forge multitudes of different sounds into something new--something singular, that can really only be described as, well, sounding like Tortoise.

Hopefully, the band will release new material soon, but No, Virginia is a good snack before the next meal.

Less immediately rewarding than their debut, but worth taking the time to get to know.

The record revels in the band’s enjoyable madness.

Cold Specks’s anticipated follow-up to her excellent gospel-indebted folk-soul debut, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion, is a much louder, much more rock ’n’ roll, much more experimental experience; fuzz and feedback and unexpected elements (like synths on Let Loose The Dogs) constantly make things more interesting.

If you can stomach the contrived slow jams and the sensitive soul-baring, there are a couple of decent joints produced by West.

It’s art school punk that you can dance to, which automatically makes Mi Ami more fun than most of their peers.

Rearrange Beds, the duo’s debut full-length, features the five EP tunes plus another five that aren’t as strong. While not bad in small doses, the disc has a cumulative grating effect if you listen from start to finish.

I'm Gay is a rebuke to the purists who complain he can't rap and that his out-there freestyles are basic and unintelligible.

The vocals, which in the past did a lot with a little and felt incantatory, androgynous and liminal, now sound uncannily like Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, a pseudo-teenaged smirk behind the frown.

It’s a formula to be sure, but Feast’s main delights are its textures and songwriting.

The result is a collection of upbeat indie rock songs that brings out the very best in both players.

Like many pop acts' full-lengths, this is an album of singles.

We keep hearing about the death of rock ’n’ roll supplanted by some fleeting, trendy sub-genre; but with more confidence than ever, these dudes remind us just how powerful the pure stuff can be.

Emphasizing rhythm more than melody, the songs throb along on funky bass lines, repetitive drumbeats, spacey sci-fi synths and hushed, whispered vocals.

A Different Kind Of Truth sounds familiar in the best way.

There's no grand resolution on Tired Of Tomorrow, but you can't help but hope Palermo finds some peace in all the noise. That's what making noise is for.

if her music, which sounds like it was created using a supercomputer analyzing months of market-research-driven algorithms determined by the texting and internet search habits of suburban females aged 12 to 18, sets out to be catchy, slick, radio junk food--mission accompli$hed.

Much of Keep Your Eyes Ahead, like the softly plucked 'Shed Your Love' or the Dylanesque 'Broken Afternoon,' could easily backdrop drippy TV dramas, but that isn’t necessarily a knock. Both are beautiful tunes.

Pala is a party record aiming directly at the pleasure centres – not at all a shallow pursuit.

Mixed so its songs blend together, Tao is such a cohesive record that when the second track, Pure Radio Cosplay, is reprised midway through, it seems like the end of an intense musical detour rather than a simple replaying of the song.