Ultimately, Terrestrials works as a likable listen, a liminal play concerning the push and pull between dusk and dawn. But it serves as a mere footnote or, at beast, an appealing redundancy for Sunn O))) and Ulver.

Whatever the songs on So Long are actually about is up for debate despite their plainspokenness, but suffice to say, they trigger the exact joy buzzers that leave you usually infatuated, perhaps a bit hopefully lovelorn.

After the Disco is a more cohesive record, and that turns out to be the problem: Mercer and Burton's eccentricities have been sanded down to a single, flattened plane.

Songs usually don't develop past their first five seconds, and the album slides back out of your attention field quickly.

Benji sounds more like Kozelek relating events instead of crafting them, which makes the continuity and reflexivity of the record feel both uncanny and the work of protracted genius.

Moon is plenty fine in its own right, and if this heralds a return to further music from Raymonde as well as getting Dosen a little more attention than previously, then nothing wrong with that in the slightest.

That’s the realm where CYMBALS work best, when they use understated sonic brushstrokes--a flutter of synths here and there--to deepen the mood.

Like the debut, this album is only eight songs, but floaty interludes like "In a Bubble on a Stream" or "Juju" allow attention to drift more freely, closer to TTA's super-limited 2006 ambient excursion Escaping Your Ambitions.

As a literary exercise, it’s convincing; as a listening one, it’s mixed.

Beach House the EP succeeds where the mixtape Beach House 2 didn’t, further commercializing Ty’s sound without sacrificing the meat and potatoes of it, the foul-mouthed, sex-positivity of Ty’s quixotic bedroom capers and the production’s precarious balance between slight, house-informed ratchet music, trap and densely arranged traditional R&B sounds.

This is an album whose every layer seems customized, whose every crease seems deliberate. That calculation doesn’t seem to have mitigated Indian’s power at all. Rather, this is the strongest they’ve ever sounded and the smartest they’ve ever sounded.

Held in Splendor is a good example of a record that successfully executes the tropes of psych--it sounds like it could’ve been recorded in 1967 without directly ripping off any artist in particular--without every truly transcending them.

It’s challenging, then, to appreciate the boldness of No Depression, the extent to which the members of Uncle Tupelo insisted on interdependency, on an American story. We don’t have to do that anymore--folks don’t self-identify in the same way, and hardly anyone loves just one genre monogamously--but there’s still something furious and prideful here, something worth hearing.

Come to Life shows Cities Aviv putting post-punk, Oneontrix Point Never-like samples (“Realms”), and even a little bit of rap into one holistically new blend.

Bibio brings a certain refinement and voice to anything he produces now, but that doesn't change the fact that much of the EP is indisputably ad hoc.

Even the songs here that show flashes of congealing eventually end up falling apart into a watery mess.

The new splashes of color are welcome, and they help to lend In Roses a degree of character that wasn’t always present in Gem Club’s earlier music.

With their third release, the five-song Small Sound EP, Tennis complicate the easy breezy beautiful schtick with some positive results.

These slower songs aren't just mellow, they're mundane, and their inclusion leaves Innocence feeling lopsided, a oft-killer rock record with nasty balladry habit.

Cunningham's perplexing persona has always been overshadowed by his ability to confound us with his records; Ghettoville, disappointingly, shifts that balance.

Lord Steppington is just the latest remarkably solid offering from Alchemist and co. and the artists involved clearly think of the endeavors as fun and games.

The whole album is so impressionistic and free-floating that you'll likely hear something else, as Delt intended.

Trouble covers a lot of ground musically, moving through decades and subgenres of pop and rock with each track. But those who listen closely will find a few consistent points of imagery that loosely connect the work: locks and keys, bodies of water, and the telephone.

There are clichés, and there are exalted clichés, and Dee Dee at her best reminds you of this distinction.

Drowners can’t inspire too much ill will or really any kind of strong reaction and that’s fair enough: it doesn’t deal in hot, dirty sex or catastrophic breakups, mostly drunken hookups and easy letdowns.

O'Neil's certainly made her share of enrapturing, enveloping music. But I'm not sure she's ever made one quite as transportive--or, for that matter, as alive--as Where Shine New Lights.

The band splits the difference between old and new into a compact sound that skews more Sex Pistols than Foo Fighters. It’s comparatively gaunt for Against Me! as of late, but it yields the stage to Grace’s voice, which has never sounded better.

The songs become repetitive, and though the harmonies are well-crafted and the melodies are lovely, there aren’t enough moments that demand attention. After a while, all the sounds on River of Souls run together, a little bland and verging on formless.

On Spaces there's a power that Frahm hasn't always been able to capture in his recorded work. But the overriding feel is one of joy at listening to a performer demonstrating the infinite elasticity of sound.

If the concept-album aspect of Maraqopa was a stretch, it’s undeniable this time around.

At its best, Have Fun With God works well as an experiment and as a listening puzzle to work through.

Even at it’s best, TWFB is mostly just a well-crafted collection of genre exercises; a few too many tracks, like the motorik double whammy of “Das Selbstgespräch” and “Idee, Prozess, Ergebnis” and the ironically-titled “A New Direction”, are standard-issue deep cuts that offer little in the way of surprise.

There is not a single second of new or unreleased music waiting for you inside this handsomely designed object.... His three studio albums have settled into cultural totems, albums that anyone hoping to know something about rock history buys sooner or later. Even 40-odd years later, their thumbprint remains unique, a strange and compelling mix of timeless poetic melancholy on the one hand, and cloistered, pampered schoolboy modernity on the other.

Fabriclive 73 is complex and confrontational but resolutely unshowy, an honest indication of the kind of pummeling 3am set you would have heard McAuley bang out over the past 18 months; all told, a worthy completion of the Hessle triptych and an excellent standalone in its own right.

They try to create atmosphere in an airlock, lumbering instead of fostering groove, failing to generate any heat or friction as nearly every interesting turn on these songs happens within the first minute.

With its deliberate, languorous pleasures, this is an album to live with, settle with and be crisply rejuvenated by.

Musically, Strong Feelings reiterates Constant Companion, which is fine, because it’s a good formula and Paisley’s songs are stronger this time.

s an aural analgesic, it goes down smooth and numbs what it needs to. But instead of tearing open the passageway between this world and whatever lies beyond, it shrinks that portal to the size of a keyhole.

The album is less concerned with asserting a specific worldview than examining the difficulties of keeping one’s moral compass steady in a society that’s becoming ever-more indifferent to the things you value--and how one must remain all the more resolute once kids enter the picture.

Mogwai’s cautionary approach all but drowns out the faint echoes of the once brave band struggling to get out from within.

Alternate/Endings is tempting, smart, and raw enough to make me wish he'd set up camp somewhere more permanent.

These songs sound full and finished even in their austerity.

The intimate nature of Has God Seen My Shadow? thus illuminates those qualities that often get overlooked in Lanegan’s high-profile pairings: his grace, tenderness, and self-deprecating sense of humour.

Throughout Static, Big Ups come across as a band in complete command of their sound, fronted by a guy on the verge of losing it.

A record whose middling between arena aspirations and headphones listening feels less of a fusion and more of a compromise.

The four new songs here are less blank than the four on the first, if only marginally.

For a "studio experiment," it's exceptionally listenable.

Hidden World is the work of a band that sounds much older and more assured than it should.

Give the People What They Want is a pretty short 10 songs, though its breezy half-hour leaves plenty that sticks and plenty more worth revisiting when it doesn't.

Between the carefully plotted reference points and the not-exactly-gripping lyrics, Forever tends to run together over the course of its 39-minute runtime. Still, taken song-for-song, there's no shortage of takeaways.

As a proper third album, Marci Beaucoup doesn't stack up to its precursors, but as an advertisement for Marciano's services as a beatsmith, it's much more successful.

Blank Realm is still bent on mixing the diamonds with the rough, and on Grassed Inn that particular swirl is at its most intoxicating.

Until the Colours Run works just fine for an all-purpose wallow, but it’s simply too ponderous to be the galvanizing social commentary to which it aspires.

An unwelcome presence, Morello is simply the most obvious of many elements on High Hopes that just don’t work. It’s all the more unfortunate given that there are actually some redeemable songs here, along with some brief glimpses of Springsteen the rock'n'roll storyteller.

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.

Each of these tracks is indeed summery in its own way, as is most of There’s a Dream. But there’s one thing that neither this collection nor Hazlewood ever forgets: The brightest sun always casts the darkest shade.

At the heart of his music is still an inimitable bittersweetness—the light shrug that follows the realization that in time all things will die and pass. His best songs have always felt like ballads, regardless of tempo. There are some of those songs here.

Beyoncé seized the powers of a medium characterized by its short attention span to force the world to pay attention. Leave it to the posterchild of convention to brush convention aside and leave both sides feeling victorious.

The most innovative and intriguing aspect of Pulaski is not its music, but ultimately its not-quite-definable form.

It's thanks to these big highlights that II becomes a record you walk away from only remembering the best parts, as they largely overshadow all else.

It sounds like like a lot of learning and a lot of loving went into this album, and the result is FaltyDL at his most open.

It's far from perfect, but it's never less than driven, and that drive gets you past the garbled syllables and any pesky feelings of deja vu.

How could the scene that gave us 1999 and Control have such an underknown history where its pre-eighties R&B roots are concerned? Thanks to the deep knowledge base and research that went into Numero Group's Purple Snow compilation, it's made clear just why that is--and why, in a fairer world, it shouldn't have been the case.

This work feels more in tune with decay and exploitation in sexual portrayal, the numbness accrued from a constant barrage of imagery, than anything that’s notionally "sexy."

The End of Silence is Herbert effectively tussling with what "significance" means at this particular moment in time, in a record that's as much a part of the gathering noise of the 21st century as it is a comment on the constant numbing we've wreaked upon ourselves.

Rival Dealer has some of the most immediate music from the Burial project, but it's worth noting that this is also a noisy, dissonant work.

It’s a master-level maneuver that underlines the essential theme of the three-disc set, which is that after a quarter century of pushing music into the future, Carl Craig’s still not done.

Intellectually sophisticated but prone to using primitive musical effects to convey such messages, Warwick’s results vary wildly after that.

The Remainderer is an encouraging sign that stability has yet to ossify into stagnation with this ongoing iteration of the band, who formidably exercise their elasticity over the course of these six wildly divergent tracks.

Boot! is the Thing’s sixth full-length album and it’s among the group’s finest efforts at pairing bludgeoning physicality with heady free jazz chops.

Blue Rider is short--eight songs, 35 minutes--but it slows everything down around it while's playing, coaxing half-formed feelings out of their corners and giving them space to exist.

Because the Internet is a nobly expansive attempt at plumbing the catacombs of social media for meaning and exploring the gap between the performative avatars we present as our online selves and the offline realities of our lives, but like the Twitter hounds and comment section warriors it speaks to and about, it could ultimately do well with a little less multitasking.

Who is William Onyeabor? doesn't provide any answers its own posited question, but the mystery and wonder of the man’s music remains intact.

There's an interesting sound here, a shell of an idea. But there is ultimately very little melody or personality for the arrangements to support and the record winds up sounding weirdly conservative.

Even if it holds the most value for the Neil obsessives interested in the small differences, Live at Cellar Door provides another glimpse at a darkly formative time in his long career.

The album may be hard to connect to on anything other than a cerebral level, but sometimes that's the best way to connect.

It's a strong mode to be in, but 7 Days of Funk doesn't change or challenge things--it's a brief LP, even accounting for bonus tracks, and with everybody firmly in a comfortable lane there's not much surprise.

What we get is a pretty good modern R&B album, but it’s also one that feels just a bit fossilized.

Gentlemen's about as interesting as middling Pollard records get, but it's middling all the same, a fittingly abnormal end to a most unusual year.

Syndrome Syndrome offers some rewards, but it may have been a fraction too soon for them to make their first move.

Unlike so much of Voigt's past work, it's not an idea worth exploring at this length. Zukunft's only impressive feat is making Voigt's elegant, pristine work under guises like Studio 1 and Gas seem like the work of a raving, impassioned romantic.

This isn't the Latyrx that won over backpackers and Cali-funk fans back in '97--far from it. It's not much of a reunion, that's for sure, and sixteen years is a long time to wait for a sophomore slump.

MellowHigh is not disorienting but rather frighteningly familiar.

If you somehow like everything about early Bright Eyes’ music except for the lyrics, it’ll be your favorite record of theirs. If, more likely, you’re a hardcore fan that was somehow unaware of its existence or didn’t shell out for the 180g white vinyl in 2009, it equally balances Yuletide memories with nostalgia for a time when Saddle Creek’s roster was still operating as a vibrant, and prolific artistic community.

It's a well-crafted record that's lyrically dwarfed by the old emoting masters.

As a whole, though, Surgical Steel succeeds brilliantly in its return-to-form mission.

A few of the songs on this collection are recognizably "singles" in tone and form--"Ugly Man," "Wait Let's Go," "Always Flying," "Devil Again" all have at least three chords, run four minutes or less, and have "ba-ba-ba" choruses. But most of them head directly into that kinked-up corner of the song that repeatedly pulls at Dwyer's imagination, the spot where the song's narrative action swings shut and the groove hinges open.

It's an intermittently thoughtful album, but one that doesn't stray far from offering process-laid-bare insight into the beautiful pile-up that is Gang Gang Dance.

There is a sense of limbs and lungs stretching, followed by the triumphant punch through to a higher plane.

[A] collection of seven gorgeous, baroque-folk songs.

This uneven album is mostly a vehicle for “Legos (for Terry)”, an accomplishment that’s not only worth hearing but good enough to leave you hoping for more like it, too.

Morby largely succeeds at taking us on his journey.

Too many songs here feel like aggregations of quirky, tossed-off riffs.

Running a mere five songs and 15 minutes, AHJ is a wholly fat-free effort that favors tight, snappy, emotionally direct songcraft over the genre experiments and instrumental excursions of ¿Cómo Te Llama?

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.

The compositions are complex, and so fastidiously arranged that you might get sucked into trying to pick out some kind of flaw. Sometimes it’s a little harder to overlook.

Though it is easy to grasp the broad appeal of Aiko’s music, it’s harder to decipher whether the songs are more appealing than the mere atmosphere they create.

They remain a surprisingly divisive band, with detractors accusing them of imitating rather than innovating. Desert Skies does absolutely nothing to answer that criticism, but it does provide a useful point against which to measure their later efforts.