Rausch, though hardly topical, feels current, as jarring and revealing as last night’s nightmare.

The project still has the feel of an accompanying piece, with titles referencing the dramatization of the Chinese story and plenty of incidental music, but it also works on a satisfying level as an experimental work or as art-pop.

Bonny Light Horseman gently cut these songs free from aging roots, transplanting them to the present.

The pleasurably gnashing dissonance of Music for Shut-Ins' past/present collision suggests that the L.I.E.S. label's what's-next surprises are far from growing stale just yet.

It’s an ambitious, uncanny, joyously unpredictable album that invites you to get lost within its house-of-mirrors design.

The contrast between his sound and substance has never been more striking, either. Backed on these 11 tracks by versatile Toronto band Bahamas, Paisley is cool above the country funk of “Say What You Like” and “Make It a Double,” collected over the spartan “Holy Roller” and “Rewrite History.”

"But now I'm back." And he is, with his finest non-"Smile" album since the golden age of the Beach Boys. Lucky us.

Raw Solutions is more ambitious than the average dance album, both in terms of the span of sonic territory that it covers and its attempts to synthesize all of it into one cohesive work.

Anticipated for decades, apparently made in just a few months, the album is an instant party-starter and a statement of intent. It threads together the last 40 years of dance music into a solid hour of new standards.

By paying attention to detail, Yttling and Li's prove that doesn't have to be [an impossible task]. But even more impressive is the way their intimate, playful miniatures capture the daring and novelty of modern pop, as well as its hooks.

Anyone looking for [an] unpretentious, laidback and solid full-length is hereby invited to check out what's made Kilgour one our most consistent performers for 25 years.

Most of Hermits on Holiday is pretty spontaneous and free-form, but it rarely lapses into the stuff of jam-band nightmares.

Shadows of doubt give the album its quaint, mercurial feel, deepening Lenae’s quest for understanding. Bird’s Eye situates her as a consummate thrill-seeker with limitless curiosity, restricted only by the uncertainties in her own mind.

Dälek took hip-hop into new stylistic realms before. This time, although Brooks and company may not have specifically intended as much, on Asphalt for Eden, hip hop ascends into the noosphere.

What makes Hundreds of Days so special, though, is how often it hits ambient music’s sweetest spot--a place where the world slows down and the performer’s free-floating noise makes you appreciate everything around it.

The best songs here are all nearly seven minutes long, but their erratic structures make compelling stages to watch dueling tirades of emotion swarm around one another.

Ode to Joy’s beguiling folk songs are direct and generous, quiet sounds coming from a big room.

Proves a better retrospective than the equally matter-of-factly titled The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

While Ovlov are still as wonderfully wooly ever, they’re unleashing the noise in more purposeful, sculpted spurts and displaying a greater willingness to let their melodies sparkle through the clouds of distortion.

An epic, sweeping cycle of songs that's completely over the top-- usually in the best possible way.

Redd Kross is a hit parade that perpetually walks the tightrope between the McDonalds’ pristine melodic craft and their innate garage-band insolence.

More than a side project or a solo moniker now, Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? joyfully cements the Soft Pink Truth’s era as a band—and one that throws a hell of a party.

Pluto is Future's album and no one else's, and though it will sound instantly recognizable, his personality, voice, and skewed take on pop-rap make it instantly different. No Stargate beats necessary.

Even if Sea of Cowards sounds more bashed-out than labored-over, it works. It's a heavy, snarly, physical rock album, and it feels like the work of people so secure in their ass-kicking abilities that they don't have to sweat the details.

No One Was Driving the Car is an inspired departure from interpersonal drama in favor of incisive critique, a confident step forward into an uncertain world.

Röyksopp are, ultimately, too beautiful to hate and too harmless to really love.

The quality of the recording captures the glorious tumult in the band’s interplay, making it visceral and elemental.

It sounds less like a young producer enjoying the fruits of quick success than a restless experimenter figuring out what to do next. Lucky for us, the woodshed is destination enough.

El Perro's brand of pop is certainly easy to love, and a cozy sort of organic warmth--characterized by thick, resonant drums and keys, and treated guitars that seem to lurch and lumber with the slightly irregular rhythms of real life--pervades the new record.

Dominated by shuffling drums, slow southern rock guitar licks, and pedal steel, the music on Mount Moriah is unobtrusive and reserved--at times almost too much so--but there are some fine flourishes in these songs, which feature members of Megafaun, St. Vincent, and Bowerbirds

Foxgloves fits the mold and goes down smooth. Even as he approaches 80, Hurley’s ability to synthesize different strains of American traditional music and twist them to fit his own idiosyncratic vision is as sharp as ever, and the effortlessness of it all testifies to many years of practice and refinement.

The music is infinitely interesting, possibly more so than the artist singing it. But then again, you shouldn’t count out anyone releasing an album like Nightride.

A Ways Away, O'Neil's fifth solo album and first on the K imprint, draws together her considerable experience as a producer, singer, and songwriter in a fleetingly beautiful 36 minutes that washes over the listener in an introspective haze.

He’s still what everyone says he is: an Appalachian man with a penchant for storytelling. Snipe Hunter is his first record to capture and celebrate the depth behind that.

Perfect Picture hits its sweet spot with the mid-album trio of “Flashback,” “No FX,” and “Lip Sync.” “Flashback” tenderly reflects on a bygone relationship, lowering the emotional temperature a notch, before the sugary love song “No FX” picks it back up again to become the album’s shimmering centerpiece

In Future Teenage Cave Artists’ hectic, crammed-to-the-brim structure, Johann Sebastian gives Deerhoof listeners something they have been methodically denied: space to process the music.

While it lacks the iconic significance of his debut, BLACKsummers'night is a record more than worthy of Maxwell's talents, because it trades the physical sensuality of his earlier work for a deep emotional resonance, the performance of an artist whose focus and attention to detail gives his expression a singular veracity.

CHORDS is a strong, occasionally astonishing next step.

Weaving in and out of concrete, direct, indie-rock songwriting and meditative, impressionistic dream pop, the record takes up more space than any of Girlpool’s previous music.

As an entry point into two of the distinct faces of Cabaret Voltaire, #7885 is an undeniably valuable document, and one that’s as much about the importance of growth and change as it is about the birth of a sound.

The tendency to descend into new age goo is still present, and Takk, like all of Sigur Rós' discography, is not for the viscerally-minded. Regardless, the record is more than just meaningless wisps.

Gauntlet Hair lasts only nine songs. But they're all potential singles in their own right, all different.

Synthesizers appear sparingly, but contribute to weaving tense and expansive atmospheres, further deepening the emotional breadth of their music.

The loose, intuitive instrumental interplay is crucial to the album’s charm. Often, songs feel as if they’re conjured from the air: Lyrics are rudimentary yet keenly felt; melodies drift into view only to evaporate shortly afterward.

The record runs 35 minutes and features almost nothing but the sound of his guitar: no overdubs or guests, no mid-album experiments, no singing. You will know within the opening notes of “Timoney’s” whether this music is for you--and if it is, you will feel instantly at home.

Know Better Learn Faster is a more mature record, slightly disillusioned with the world, but no less playful and with no less personality.

What separates the album from previous Luna product is not so much instrumental alterations as the newly unabashed sentimentality of Wareham's lyrics.

Brood X’s quiet closers are no less visceral than their high-voltage predecessors, providing a more intimate manifestation of the agitated feelings coursing throughout the record.

Kikagaku Moyo continue to make unpredictable choices, even on an album that didn’t need to be more than a celebratory victory lap. Kumoyo Island is the apex of their journey, introducing new musical territories while surveying just how far they’ve traveled.

Blonde Redhead's biggest detractors focus on the group's uncanny resemblance to Sonic Youth. But while Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons won't exactly silence such suggestions, it does seem to move conscientiously away from the influences that have marred the group's previous work.

Small Medium Large might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter. At the very least, it represents the thrilling next phase of a vibrant L.A. community that, for a decade now, has only moved from strength to strength.

She expresses no hesitation here, and for that, her band has never sounded better. Sure, you can come for the twin guitars and the loaded rhythm section, but at last, Cottrell has made it clear you’re staying for her.

Yes, Heavy Light is destructive music, streaked with shrieked lyrics about prey and death, age and tears. But it’s also an inspiring, instructive record, too, where two brutal bands find solidarity and something to celebrate in the darkness. Even if every thought here isn’t complete, Heavy Light is as exciting as either band has ever been.

Plugs 2 maintains a smirking joie de vivre—just so long as you’re on the right side of it.

The ebb and flow of the disc feels like it's advancing some unknowable plot, always the sign of a well sequenced disc but also the bridge between songs like the lovely 'Mirrorball' and the bluesy (in the get-the-Led-out sense) 'Grounds for Divorce.'

It sounds different from the old version of the band, but not that different.

The album displays a pop prowess that Cameron’s debut only hinted at--these songs are as effortlessly catchy as they are eminently creepy. And Cameron’s songwriting has only turned more acerbic and outrageous.

All songs on Repave begin quietly and almost none stay that way for long, so when those crescendos hit, you’re supposed to envision waves crashing on cold, barren outcroppings, white mist spraying as seabirds take majestic flight.

Even if Here, the band’s 10th album, finds Teenage Fanclub comfortable with their identity and largely uninterested in testing its boundaries, they still find some room for experimentation.

Wonderland takes the sound of that last album and pumps it full of the energy that dripped from the band's previous releases, resulting in a record that can oddly be both fragile, danceable, and anthemic all at the same time.

The album’s language is intelligent but wholly straightforward, rarely witty and almost device-less; Simz always says exactly what she means.

Whether the album achieves its titular synesthesia is debatable, but Bell Orchestre tap into a wide, mesmerizing range of the spectrum.

While addressing the same themes he's been tweaking for more than a decade now, James adds a new trick to his ever-expanding repertoire: transforming the boundless possibilities of solo creativity into a cohesive one-man show.

No Burden is an uncommonly warm indie rock record.

These hooks are delivery mechanisms for often acerbic, often exhausted lyrics about the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl.

The Fiery Furnaces will always be arty and precious, but they definitely know their way around a good tune. Have a drink and sing along.

-io’s sonic mass is enveloping, making for an album that’s both difficult to approach piecemeal and hard to swallow in one sitting.

The most fully-realized thing-- if not the most exciting one-- the band has released since 1994's Tiger Bay.

Darnielle finds equal grains of humanity and empathy in people crouched in the darkest corners and blinded by the brightest spotlights. It's not spirituality, escapism, or even optimism, exactly, that he's espousing--all you know is it's some kind of light.

Retired from the road but still quite active as a musician, Sakamoto’s mission isn’t novelty, but an expressive palette he has carefully made for himself with a ship-in-a-bottle-like focus.

The Common Task doesn’t scan as a political message. But even apart from its real-world context, the album succeeds as an abstraction. Given even a little bit of time, space, and intention, these compositions are an uncommonly rewarding experience.

I could say that the twisty guitar and vibraphone lines that envelop “Ultramarine” are like vines growing unpredictably over the song’s rigid scaffolding, or try a more literal approach, examining the way their increasingly dense chromaticism inflects and complicates the otherwise simple underlying harmonic structure. The poetic license of the first risks obscuring the music’s hard reality; the clinical distance of the second risks reducing it to bare formula. The truth, as ever with this beguiling album, is somewhere in between.

It’s one of their most contented and effusive albums, and as a result one of their most immediately accessible.

Akron/Family have stepped into the light for the first time with Love Is Simple, and the results alternate between gawky and deeply enjoyable; the record is bursting at its seams with lovingly and vividly realized ideas culled from a broad selection of prior works.

Afraid of Heights is the first Wavves album longer than 40-minutes and sometimes it drags.... Still, Afraid of Heights provides plenty of bummed-out pleasures and Williams' obvious talent is easy to take for granted.

Taken as a whole, Life doesn't really depart from "Hands Across the Void" (itself not exactly a cheery record), but rather refines and builds upon it, besting the previous album's runtime by a factor of 1.5 and boasting, as a bonus, a number of melodies that stick like tar in spite of their spareness.

Where experimental music often favors gnarly harmonies and knotty melodies, Moran’s approach is more subtle. Moves in the Field shows us that technique doesn’t need to be showy or daring—without sacrificing rigor or heft, it can also be tender.

These are angry, sad, hopeful songs that offer catharsis and solidarity. This mixture—of pulsating brains and jangling nerves, beating hearts and open minds—may be the closest we get to the essence of Stereolab; and in this, Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a laudable comeback.

The relative warmth and light here gives the music a nostalgic cast, which was at the heart of what made Endless Summer so memorable, but Bécs also possesses an added layer that doesn’t necessarily work in its favor. Fennesz once illuminated the beauty of a digitally scrambled memory, but Bécs is a memory of a digitally scrambled memory.

This is no garden-variety chill. It’s lush and heady, and shot through with an undercurrent of wistful contemplation, but none of it sounds like an exercise in presets, whether musical or emotional.

For all the guitar pyrotechnics, Western production, and reggae infusions, Azel never sounds like anything other than a sublime iteration of desert blues.

Her voice has matured to a fine saw-toothed rasp, and carries with it the echoes of every hard minute through which she's lived.

Lianne La Havas streamlines her impulse to blend styles, while still taking the time to nod toward pioneers.

On 2020, the arrangements are proudly inorganic as they lurch and blast, sputter and break. The long-form structure of the record feels more like a short story collection, and taking it in front-to-back can have an overwhelming, exhausting effect. But unlike the sometimes hopeless characters in his songs, Dawson can wield this glut of information in his favor.

Salvant has found a fine match in Fortner, a New Orleans native who has played with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, and Paul Simon. He doesn’t accompany her so much as join in the conversation she’s having with these songs, occasionally even arguing with her about them.

A brief and blistering collection that finds their dark arts at full power.

Liars and Prayers' success is owed as much to the band as its leader, but in the end, there's still no doubt about who's working on whose watch.

This is DeMarco’s most direct and confident expression ever—OK with being a little sad, happy to have the chance to get over it.

The band acquits itself amazingly well, mixing in a few originals with a well-chosen selection of Golden Age songs, folk tunes, and Azmari troubadour songs.

Neither the melody nor the ambience overwhelms the other. It's easy to hear the silky, billowy tones through the dying-battery distortion, but hard to picture what they'd sound like without it.

The Naked Truth may be better than 80% of the other rap albums to be released in 2005, but that don't make it another Ready to Die.

Though this EP plows a narrower row than Judges, Stetson still manages to show us two very different aspects of his visceral minimalism.

Goes West feels less conceptually united than any of his work—more inspired by the contemplation of history than history itself--but this searching quality adds to its honest, meditative power. Many of the songs feel like visions left intentionally ambiguous, and the record is bound by a pensive, permeating calmness.

(a)spera is the sound of a musician accomplishing the challenges she has set herself, both musically and communicatively.

It's a soft but sinister set of songs-- the Bay Area's answer to the Velvet Underground's self-titled record. Where Sic Alps were once wasted and wobbly, they are now stoned and serene.

At its best, the music of Romantic Piano approaches the promise of that sentiment, speaking the feelings that words cannot.

Live From KCRW is distinguished not just by its loose, casual vibe--with Cave good-naturedly honoring audience requests, provided they’re “on this very short list”--but by its welcome variations from the standard Bad Seeds script with a healthy selection of deep cuts that don't get aired out that often.

A gorgeous, unassuming little record, it is Silver's most sophisticated virtual environment yet; disappear into it for a while, and you may come back with a newfound appreciation for sounds you once thought irredeemable--yes, even slap bass.