Sometimes the best music happens when experimentalists indulge their inner pop music fan.

Energy flows smoothly from frantic sugar-rush highs to subtly beautiful, ambient polyrhythm experiments, and this gradual winding down effectively showcases the full spectrum of his vision. It shouldn't work, but it does.

Only brief, melancholy melodies give relief from the oppressive darkness.

The concept's fine, but the results are more self-indulgent and boring than challenging. For Sonic Youth obsessives only.

When Chenaux alights on something more typically songlike, he sparks both anticipation and memory: an interesting marriage of nostalgia and novelty.

Drake is increasingly astute at reframing hip-hop braggadocio about wealth and competition as a kind of existential crisis through telling--but now familiar--details about his life (“I got two mortgages $30 million in total”) and subtle uses of melody and atmosphere.

With everybody involved sharp and on point, Sour Soul is a contemporary classic.

While acoustically generated and devoid of any heavy electronic processing, the results are much darker and stranger than anything on Syro, with ominous detuned metallic percussion and mangled piano noises taking the place of bright, bubbling, acid synth lines.

There is an unexciting emphasis on precision and minimalism that saps the emotional heat from an otherwise interesting fusion of styles and sounds.

With Retox they deliver an intensity and focus few bands could maintain for a 12-song album, let alone a three-album career.

[The] fourth LP is lazy through and through despite throwing up waves of explosive sex-and-death rock and roll.

Terraplane's saving grace is that it's fun to listen to and full of swagger.

Blackheart is refreshingly unbeholden to the convention that requires R&B singers to balladeer non-stop at top volume.

Many moments are reminiscent of big-room progressive tunes of the early 00s, which sound dated at times. Nevertheless, there are also plenty of undeniably pretty melodies, thick tones and pleasingly warm textures, not to mention impressive flashes of innovation and creativity.

The lyrics are brilliant and subtle.

Whether you take to Pratt's reedy, quavering vocals (think Vashti Bunyan or Joanna Newsom) is purely subjective, but the way she changes up her register to suit a song's vibe helps bring colour to a fairly flat palette (which only includes the odd dab of organ and clavinet).

The music means the world to him, and it's wonderful.

Sometimes the vocals are uncomfortable (that goes away after a couple of listens), and sometimes, like on Caribou or Rabbit, they're crystal clear and beautiful. The instrumentation is just as amorphous.

Unlike Manson's previous records, there's no real guiding concept here, which is probably for the best.

Some trendy lite disco and uplifting, singalong hooks give her voice more to compete with and play up the universality of experience, but Sullivan sounds better the more specific she gets.

These nine ballads are stripped to essentials--beats, strings, stirring vocals --full of beautiful and eerie contrasts that highlight Björk's loneliness, anger and fleeting moments of optimism.

Occasionally their influences come through too heavily, and the album would've benefited from one or two fewer songs. Still, a hugely pleasant listen.

The slower, sentimental ballads can veer into maudlin territory, and the spoken-word Reprise seems utterly unnecessary, but such minor missteps are easily overlooked when the rest is such a satisfying listen.

All of the more modern accents are refreshingly unobtrusive. The minimalist arrangements give each instrument room to breath so the richness of the tones and the relaxed confidence of the playing stand out in sharp relief.

The production is shinier, which some might hear as poppier, but the overall feel is too quirky for the mainstream--and sometimes too twee for her own good.

Although the album's frenetic energy doesn't quite match that of their breakthrough (whether they like it or not, 2008's Visiter will always be their benchmark), it's a solid new direction.

What's on the surface is arresting, but there's far more to discover deep inside.

Throwback factor aside, there is a lot of shameless fun on offer, though little imagination. But what they lack in originality they make up for in hooks and enthusiasm.