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.

Fellow Travelers can be seen as Shearwater showing their scratch work, and while great cover albums can be a revelation or an embarrassment, most end up right around here: which is to say, admirable and flawed.

It’s a fluidly cohesive album that develops its music themes--that nautical lurch, that calming lull--over eleven carefully yet imaginatively arranged songs.

Shine Your Light never gets oppressive, though during its final third, it does suggest what living in a record store might be like after the novelty wears out--kinda lonely, a little bit stuffy, and leaving you subject to others trying to tiptoe around.

Nun finds Teengirl brightening familiar color pallettes in more noticeably energetic ways and heading in an even more dance-oriented direction with a look not dissimilar to the aesthetic developed by the UK label Night Slugs.

Milosh’s crisp electronic soundscapes work mainly as contrast, immaculate bedding designed to melt away as his warm voice slithers in. At his best on Jetlag, Milosh builds up his tracks in the simple interest of pulling them back to let the vocal take over.

Yours to Discover never feels like a dishonest record, just one where it’s incredibly hard to grasp the intentions or ambitions of its creator.

Vile has mostly left his interest in extreme tape manipulation and soggy lo-fi charm behind him, but the Jamaica Plain EP offers a brief and fitfully pretty glance backwards.

Five Spanish Songs never feels like an vanity-project indulgence, but rather a clear, concerted effort on Bejar’s part to communicate why Luque’s songs are so special to him.

If there's a criticism here it's in the way these songs don't stray far from the original pieces, instead working as tasteful updates that add a dab of cohesion that was never needed in the first place. It's a treat for fans, which is really all a project like this is ever going to be. But it also highlights a continuity in their work.

These songs are also song-focused—the artists assembled here may all have deep experimental streaks, but they never ignore pop’s pleasure principle, and there are hooks all over the place on this near-flawlessly sequenced compilation.

You don't get anything that great [as "1777"] on the rest of the album; that said, it's an emotional peak you only need to reach once on a collection like this, and the restraint on the following tracks helps with the overall thematic.

Direct Hits proves the Killers have fewer actual hits, let alone great ones, than you thought and makes you wonder if they made their Greatest Hits album too early or whether they can ever legitimately put one together at all.

Earthless are incredibly indulgent, sometimes to a fault, but they’re much too excitable to be called selfish or masturbatory. The dudes are once again just riffing here. It’s a trip worth taking, at least a few times.

The tracks, and the arid stare their grooves perpetuate, are like crop circles drawn into the UK hardcore continuum: functionally new, eerily primeval.

They manage to cut down some of the weight of the sung pieces, casting them in a more unique light, while giving San Fermin much needed tension and even a bit of violence.

Otherwise, all these nested layers of samples and beats and propaganda wrap infinitely around a hollow core, making for excitable music that eventually collapses into boredom.

Calvi’s synthesized enough musical styles for at least three artists, and she’s clearly got ample chops to pull any of them off. She’s born to make a grand concept album one day. What she needs now is that grand concept.

More than any Markers record before it, the trio seem to be communicating deep within the subconscious, tapping into soul that's been hiding behind the noise for years.

Sister is shorter than its predecessor The World. The Flesh. The Devil, but suffers from the same fate: the disappointing, overlong ending.

Kirby's fondness for disorder is a perfect fit for this type of material. Dream states rarely make sense until you plunge deep into them, and Dead Empires throws up thousands of different routes to get tangled up in on the way down there.

Their preferred form of power does occasionally blur into its own monolith. But it does add force and pacing, tweaks that help these 11 songs stand independently of the need to see them played live.

An unhurried, casual nature is part of what makes Get There’s softer material pretty, but it could also be the thing holding Minor Alps back from writing truly great, uptempo rock songs.

It's nasty and explosive and full of bile, a hard rockin' bare-knuckle blow to the temple that'll lay you flat out. In other words, How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident is just the thing for the modern man, those confused and angrily impotent brutes.

There is less to dig into on it's a big world. To be fair, there are two bona-fide new Kurt Vile songs on it's a big world out there.

John Talabot's DJ-Kicks entry isn't the flashiest mix you'll encounter this year, and there's plenty of room for debate as to whether it ranks in the upper echelon of the series' many installments.

Shulamith, in this way, demonstrates again Poliça’s greatest strength: making music that’s both an easy and a torturous listen.

They worked on about 20 demos there, but none made the record. Shields: Expanded collects the best of these previously unheard Marfa tracks, which amount to captivating sketches, rather than scraps.

Purgatory/Paradise really is unlike anything I’ve heard this year.

Most of Mug Museum is bare and direct, quaint and unassuming, but Le Bon makes a rather grand occasion out of it--she's a master curator and consummate immortalizer.

Whether this breakthrough portends a change in course remains to be seen, but, at this point in their consistent-to-a-fault career, it's encouraging to hear Wooden Shjips draw the emotion out of their motion.

If there’s a way in which UZU falls short of the band’s debut, it’s in the recording itself, which is a bit hazier this time out and consequently robs the music of some of the direct, visceral power it had on Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. That said, the songs and performances are good enough that it nearly doesn’t matter.

Pre-Human Ideas is a step toward breaking the barrier between disparate environments--mountains and websites--all by creating something using a simple computer program. Meditate on that during the organ prologue and epilogue here, and better know Phil Elverum.

Julia's impressive discipline rarely gets in the way of its ability to affect; it's all so deeply felt, it's impossible not to feel it, too.

In the absence of a rare-cuts windfall, Vol. 2’s most novel attraction is a series of one-on-one interviews conducted with each individual band member over the course of 1965-66, a good year removed from their most breakneck period.

Across the album, Hynes sings, writes, produces, and plays guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, synths. But this is hardly a solo act. In fact, one of the record's greatest strengths lies in its pitch-perfect deployment of guests.

A few awkward moments aside, Fool is at its best when Temple sounds the least like the Here We Go Magic guy; its buoyant, unfussy front half, out of character though it is, is up there with Temple's best work.

The word "caramel" is most readily embodied by this music's sensual, flirtatious leanings. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems to just mean "slow", i.e. the pace of swimming through caramel.

It feels like a very French-pop-star gesture, extravagant and essentially useless, and perversely enjoyable for exactly those reasons.

It's just a return to very familiar territory without the urgency and mystery of Luscious Jackson's 90s-era music--the Lollapalooza Nation equivalent of, say, a new Winger or Y&T album. For the most part, it even sounds like it was fun to make; if only it were as much fun to hear.