There's a sweetly consistent mood throughout; it’s something you can put on and treat as ambient sound, but there’s also a clever subtlety in their process.

The main weakness is the same one found on Crazy Clown Time: the songs. As songs, they don’t do much or say much.

Joey too often comes out looking like someone who’s already grown weary of the system, an 18-year-old curmudgeon, a sharp contrast with the energy that 1999 promised.

Time Off’s biggest asset is its ease. There’s a real sense, listening to these tracks, that everything could be a little simpler if we all stopped trying so hard.

Every song on this album could stand to be tightened. Most could lose a verse or two, and a lot of them would sound much better if they were played faster.

With its quaking rhythms, twisted riffage, and jet-black wit, Major Arcana is a redemptive ode to the broken bones that grew back together a little crooked--the ones that taught Dupuis how to walk in her own weird way.

Southeastern is easily Isbell’s best solo album--his most richly conceived and generously written. If it’s not quite the album that lives up to his considerable talents, it’s mostly the music that’s to blame.

Ciara feels slightly (though only slightly) weaker when she swims against the current of her own charm and tries for “raw.”

Though repetitive, the record is consistently engaging, with plenty of distinct highlights.

Style trumps niche every time here, and in its efficiently compact sub-hour runtime there's plenty of opportunity to let that style run through all kind of territory.

While All Hell felt imbued with danger and intrigue, on Me Moan, the people pulled off to highway shoulder are never in any real distress upon closer inspection. They just stepped out to check a map.

It would sound overproduced for 1998 yet seems curiously rinky-dink compared to the current pop maximalism of any continent; Scott & Rivers splits most of its time between ruthlessly utilitarian power pop and midtempo, jangly acoustic alt-rock that reimagines the break between Pinkerton and the Green Album as one where Cuomo ditched Harvard for higher education in the form of Stroke 9 or Eve 6 CDs.

Without Your Love ends up becoming a loose survey of Dexter's work instead the Nihjgt Feelings statement he intended it to be.

Rather than dour, however, the album sounds concerned, perhaps even worried, which illuminates even some of its weaker or seemingly extraneous tracks. It focuses Pollard, who sounds like a man who has said so much already but still has so much left to say.

On The Dusted Sessions they both deconstruct and reinforce the tenets of Americana and make something transcendent in the process.

The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.

Occasionally plodding, and too ruminative by half, Anarchic Breezes is a journey in need of a destination, stuck between staring at the sun and gazing thoughtfully at its own navel.

Yeah, it's a fun album, and it's probably the most affable thing they've done so far together. But don't take that for a weakness.

Unfortunately, on Planta, they only seem half-awake.

Despite its clever syntheses, there are times when it's not much more than pretty. But the good is not only good, it's promising.

Hanging Gardens is a decadent trifle to lose yourself in, a deceptively simple record that has the potential for great longevity.

The album is at its best when Jones delivers brisk, bright rock with endearing hooks... Things begin to lag when Jones drops the tempo and tries his hand at balladry.

There's potential in The Visitor's mix of electro, new wave, and pop, but it's obscuring or distorting Aguayo's personality, which is the engine that has driven his songs for so long.

The music on The Gifted sounds fantastic, with intricately arranged keys and strings, stacks of soul and gospel-inspired backup vocals, and deep, rubbery bass lines. The problem is that Wale and his team made a really decent soul rap album without a rapper soulful enough to carry it.

Stelmanis has said she listened to a lot of early Cat Power while recording Olympia, and while nothing here sounds anywhere near as stark, the lyrics often do, and lead appropriately tense, nervy sounding songs.

Their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars.

One True Vine tarries too long in doubt before finally breaking that dour spell and inviting the listener in on the celebration.

It updates the IDIB sound without losing its buzzy neon charm, which remains a hugely attractive mode.

Even if it’s stretched thin and unsatisfying in spots, Four is our most distinct glimpse of Harvey yet.

Kenny Dennis is definitely a type, but he's a type that feels real enough to want to hang out with, even during his downer moments.

Watching Movies with the Sound Off is a quantum leap in artistry, but it’s not without faults; the album’s about three songs too long, and a couple of the tracks in the back end just plain run together.

The music is a heady swirl of baggy beats and unabashed Beach Boys melodies, while the lyrics are wholly uninterested in anything intellectual.

Lacking both the demonstrative lo-fi sprawl of its predecessor and the hermetic perfectionism that often marks long-gestating albums, Jackleg really does sound like the Baptist Generals made it first and foremost for themselves.

Antenna to the Afterworld may have all the dressings of science fiction and fantasy, but like many great works in those genres, it's a strong, emotive character study.

Their stuff floats off, and the synths carry the whiff not of a beach breeze but of a department-store escalator.

At its best, Born Sinner, showcases J. Cole's overall musicality, pairing his ability as a lyricist with a more broadly developed production palette.

The extra thematic layer gives the music a depth that bodes well for this band’s future.

The lack of structure makes these songs feel experimental, but not sufficiently to commit to being out there in a remarkable way.

With Love is like a pocket book of poetry, a series of short thoughts only tangentially related. Zomby is the elegant menace, capable of beauty and great affect but too stoned or disinterested to fully commit.

While there's nothing revelatory production-wise if you've heard Lootpack's Soundpieces: Da Antidote, there's a little workshopper's insight in these protoypes for The Unseen-caliber bluntedness.

His is the ambient music of someone else's party, happening far away from where you are, and the distance is part of the allure.

Each fluorescent strike of noise, incongruous tempo flip, and warped vocal is bolted into its right place across the record's fast 40 minutes.

In Dva, Emika may be aspiring to a larger scale of pop, but for the most part this only serves to amplify her flaws.

Getting Closer is fashionable and curious, but there's an extreme lucidity to it that is off-putting, forgetting for a moment a handful of dud tracks.

Even if it doesn’t have the same cultivated mystery or incapacitating demands of Agaetis Byrjun or ( ), Kveikur is every bit a return to form, tapping into its predecessors’ bottomless emotional wellspring for a Sigur Rós album that can be listened to casually or intensely.

Much of Curiosity finds Wampire a bit too comfortable and self-satisfied within their washed-out aesthetic, and the premeditated haziness of the recordings--and obvious attempts to weird them up, through squeaky synth settings and effete vocal tics--ultimately undermines the duo’s songwriting ambitions.

While Field of Reeds is a mysterious album in many ways, what it makes clear is Barnett’s faith in the purity of sound, rather than words, to communicate.

Ultimately the success of Half of Where You Live lies not in Gold Panda repeating old tricks, but in how he's expanded his repertoire to include new sounds, and his aesthetic proves sturdy enough to accomdate them.

The darkness is where Lortz repeatedly returns, and when he does, the album swoons into a near-stasis.

Their singing is stripped of its former bite, and while they still ramp up the fuzz, it's a much cleaner-sounding album made at Dan Auerbach's Nashville studio. And as a whole, it's very inconsistent.

Truth be told, Pythons seem to feel pretty conflicted about itself: hooky, Weezer-ish guitar pop offset by desperate, discomfiting lyrics, fleeting hopes of reconciliation quickly dashed by heavy-hearted resignation.

It’s silly, it’s in no shape or form subtle, it’s fun, it works.

The problem with Chapter II is that even the album’s high points are only just good, when the dubstep world has reasonably come to expect great things from Benga.

This is the early-hours sound you nod off to, not the one that has you second guessing what you heard.

The third album from this Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something worth revisiting.

Few groups do wistfully melodic trad-rock any better right now. Smith Westerns haven’t only not burned out, they’re a budding institution.

Avalanche’s obsessive squeaky cleanness keeps its audience at a distance. Coco might insist that she’s still looking for trouble, but there’s none to be found on Avalanche.

Cashion and Willen’s sense of melody is as rich as their textural layering, resulting in pieces that are immediately engaging yet hypnotically serene, and, at times, devastating in their poignancy.

With Sunbather, Deafheaven have made one of the biggest albums of the year, one that impresses you with its scale, the way Swans' The Seer did last year.

The frequently overstuffed, occasionally scatterbrained album is far from perfect. But even when going for broke gets them into trouble, Portugal seem happy to get up there and overshoot the mark.

Hyetal has a firm grasp on his spin of sweeping, beat-infected sentimentality, and Modern Worship is strong enough to see him lead a crowd, or keep dancing on his own.

Saltwater is a pretty record and the songs are clearly heavy with personal significance, but it was almost better when they were a little rough around the edges.

What we’re left with is Boards of Canada’s moodiest record, a full-length tinted with atmosphere that unfolds slowly and is happy to allow you to come to it.

In the end, 13 isn't what every Sabbath die-hard dreamed it might be: a true pick-up-where-they-left-off comeback for the group's founding quartet. But the record does belong in the view of every metalhead--not just because such a seminal band still deserves obligatory props, but because, imperfections aside, the record embodies the kernel of the original Sabbath idea.

The structure is as expansive and freewheeling as any strange trip.

What comes up as a whole is this odd but endearing blend of plainspoken nonchalance and almost limitless musical eccentricity.

More deeply satisfying than extraordinary, it seems unlikely to displace anyone's favorite Camera Obscura record, but neither is it a negligible entry in one of the smartest and most loveable discographies in contemporary indie-pop.

It all adds up to a remarkably visceral, sensual, confident electronic record that stays absorbing from beginning to end, and should finally catapult Hopkins to stardom in his own story.

Williams has figured out his sounds, but he’s still working towards his voice.

Mixed and mastered without nuance or mercy, the relentless blare of Excuse My French becomes a paradoxically ambient experience.

How Far Away holds its juicy details a little too close to the chest to truly prove cathartic to anybody but Bleeker.

Despite Friedberger’s singular phrasing and voice, there’s something inviting and comfortingly familiar about Personal Record’s approach to pop melody.

A modest record of modest aims from a songwriter coming to terms with his current station.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, The Ways We Separate still leaves its mark.

Dinosaurs is a testament to how 90s alt-rock angst can translate meaningfully to middle age.

The Surrey duo have not only made 2013's best dance record so far--they've also concocted one of the most assured, confident debuts from any genre in recent memory.

It’s expansive and ambitious, and divorced of all the tweedy preening and aw-shucks raggediness the idea of “folk” has accumulated in recent years. It's dark, it’s angry, it’s even sexy, in a sly, subtle way.

Fittingly for a band that’s spent the past few years retooling itself, it takes some time for Queens to shake off the cobwebs and get back to full strength.

It takes a good deal of bravery to write and record songs that are so naked and unflinching, and it pays off: Savage's courage and palpable investment in the material makes it easy to connect and empathize with his subject matter.

Ultimately, the album’s heady diversity originates in Hval’s malleable voice, which alters style, approach, timber, and tone from one measure to the next.

Tricky might not have succeeded in bringing his old sound 100% back to life, but as an effort to hit the reset button and rediscover himself, this record's a better-than-expected surprise.

It's a long glorious exhalation of energies not actually dissipated, as it seemed for a while, but only multiplying in force under suppression.

Despite its highs, Ultraviolet is a patchwork of arduousness, with some seams still showing.

It's cacophonous and polyrhythmic, continuously falling apart and putting itself back together.

Strange Pleasures works on a much more modest scale, content to subliminally scoot its way in, to serve as connective tissue between the Cocteau Twins and Chromatics on a mixtape, but not as the main attraction.

Sticking with him through the machinations of the music industry has never been more difficult than it is now, but IV Play still has its rewards.

Cold Spring is miles from epic or strained, and it's comfortable with its imbalance.

It's all remarkably pleasant for a CocoRosie album--you leave it not with the feeling of having weathered an intriguing, baffling ordeal, but of having listened to something recognizable as an album.

Throughout, the songs on Obsidian are physical in a literal sense, mimicking the human motion of the characters described therein.

Like all Pastels albums, Slow Summits feels like the work of a tightly knit gang of outcasts.

There’s much to admire about When Saints Go Machine’s effort to move their synth-powered pop music away from the dancefloor into more cerebral realms. But like the band name itself, their attempts at cleverness can come off sounding clunky.

The Redeemer ends up somewhere between sarcasm and sensitivity, but can't dig deep enough in either direction to provide something that's worth returning to.

Throughout One Kiss, it's obvious how much Thomas missed writing these stirring, expansive, romantic pop songs for Saturday Looks Good to Me. Even as they sputter through certain emotions, that longing comes through loud and clear.

It may not be as instantly gratifying as Pleasure, but it's more sophisticated and self-aware.

It’s the clearest, most detailed record in their vast catalogue.

While it's admirable that Kisses turned their puppy dog-eyes outward, their attempt at social commentary ultimately feels half-hearted.

These records, steeped in reference and atmosphere, draw on memory but, being so textured and tactile, they bring the focus back to the present moment.

It's all done well enough to make for for Club 8's best album since 2007's The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Dreaming, and a sure bet to become someone's favorite.