The most enjoyable High Llamas record in over a decade.

These are longstanding punk tropes boiled down and Vig-ed up, removed of their typical dirt sheen and bolstered by a couple extra guitar tracks.

In their own way Moore and Paterra write catchy music. That their tastes position them as soundtrack-buff outsiders at the fringes makes the cohesion, listenability, and passion of Shape Shift that much more of a triumph.

The record itself brims with endlessly replayable details, some goofy and some poignant, both in frontman Alex Turner's always keenly observed lyrics and in the band's ever-proficient music, the latter of which ranges here from muscular glam-rock to chiming indie pop balladry.

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.

Unfortunately, the lengthy center of this record is a brick of brooding, mid-tempo dullness.

You get the sense that he can go pretty much anywhere sonically, and the brevity of each track combined with all the driving rhythms makes the record feel like a roller-coaster tour of his firing neurons.

If you’re looking for pop with a light outer frosting of edginess, Visuals hits the spot and then some. But if you’d like to hear Mew explore those edges and break free from the stultifying safety of their music, Visuals leaves you frustrated.

This isn’t a record you crank in traffic en route to an across-town meeting; it’s a record to unwind with later that night on your second glass of Syrah--a sturdy shrug to cap off the day

In aggregate, none of this feels like a departure--it’s somehow a step backward and forward at the same time, mining roots as a way to age gracefully.

These songs are obscured like frosted glass, as meticulously pretty and faintly unnerving as a porcelain doll. Though the album ends almost as quietly as it began, Obel’s whispery ambient fog lingers far longer.

With a sense of organizational purpose and of local music history, the first disc depicts Cash an artist hungry for success and willing to sell venetian blinds to get there....The portrait of Cash on this second disc is, unfortunately, fuzzy and poorly defined. It showcases everything we know about him and very little we don't know.

Nothing on the album sounds exactly like Oasis—it’s all too controlled and studio-sculpted—but not a song here would’ve been imaginable without the Gallaghers’ enthusiastic embrace of classic rock tropes.

Producer Gareth Parton (the Go! Team, Foals) wisely handles Little Death with a light touch, engineering some fantastic vocal interplay (like less dramaturgical versions of the Futureheads), and otherwise leaving things the hell alone.

A project conceived in noble intentions but hobbled by confused, muddled execution.

Taken for what it is--a fluffy, animated unicorn flying joyfully to college-rock Pleasure Town--Out of View is a nice 40-minute respite from reality.

Unfortunately, at least in the narrative that Top of the Pops spins, everything that followed Bang Bang Rock & Roll did so with increasingly unbecoming shades of bitterness. They'd have been better off reissuing Bang Bang for a second time than opting to tell this glum take on events.

What's Between provides some compelling glimpses at Kelly's cimmerian headspace, but knowing that he possesses the ability and the vision to flesh out his own ideas, it's hard not to be left wanting more.

Shaken-Up Versions doesn’t threaten replace anything in the Knife’s catalog, but it does highlight the levity that’s always been present in their music.

And yet, however thematically mired in misery, Cold Dark Place plays out as a triumphant march into the darkness: one man’s pain, collectively conjured and conquered.

The arrangements on PERSONA are busy and convoluted, and many lyrical highlights are buried in meta, self-referential schlock rock. ... PERSONA is not a failure, but it’s tough to call it a triumph.

Frontloading Power to the People with the One To One performances—the two sets are here, along with a hybrid highlights disc—illustrates how Lennon spent the early ’70s wallowing in the pleasures of old-time rock’n’roll. .... These "Studio Jam" passages are loose, maybe even to a fault, but they’re charming, capturing one of the greatest rock vocalists singing unencumbered by an audience. These two discs of informal jams are the ideal coda to Power to the People, which chronicles the era when Lennon was keenly aware that he was performing at all times.

Boarding House Reach is a long, bewildering slog studded with these moments, which seem to be directly antagonizing you.

Planet of Ice is better than its predecessor, "Menos el Oso," but only slightly so.

While Deacon’s instrumental command has demonstrably strengthened in the past few years, his lyrics have only gotten more pat, as evidenced by two songs near album’s end.

Home works as a sensual mood-setting exercise, but less so as a distinct creative statement.

Like an untethered spouse suddenly separated from a longtime love, Elliott seems a bit lost somewhere between her intimidating past and her newfound independence.

This is a band whose effortlessness can misguide you into thinking they’re not trying. Don’t be fooled.

It's Broder's careful balancing act between the traditional and the abnormal that makes his music so interesting.

Could easily have been the dullest, nicely produced thing in the world, if not for the fact that the songs are remarkably good.

Sleepwalking doesn't have a startling track like Northern Sulphuric's "Spellbound" to lift it out from the polite sludge of trip-hop mush.

In some ways, Ultravisitor is the only Squarepusher album you need to know about. It contains instances of every idea, texture or beat he's presented until now, and unlike recent releases Do You Know Squarepusher or Go Plastic, little of it sounds stale.

Spooked sounds closer to folk-inspired songs Hitchcock performed very early in his career, his recent forays into Dylaniana, and Welch's prefab Americana. For Hitchcock, it's both a departure and a return to his roots.

Make no mistake, Spend the Night defies any post-liberation role reversal debate: The album, both musically and lyrically, is so one-dimensional, it would be equally vapid at the hands of either sex.

The Beta Band's best moments often came when they worked in extremes-- minimal sampled beats followed by insane, multitracked chipmunk vocals and massive, reverb-soaked drum fills. Here, as with Hot Shots, the band attempts to split the difference, and in doing so, sacrifices the momentum that made their first two albums so thrilling.

Without sufficient songwriting versatility, things can get pretty mediocre and, well, boring by the end of a ten-song album.

This is an album packed with abrasive tones of unimaginable density and uncertain origin. Oval shares with Autechre the ability to craft sounds that defy explanation.

While Bodies of Water are always noted for their vocal prowess, those guitar parts, like the fuzzy garage-rock figure that drives 'Under the Pines' alongside a psychedelic organ vamp, showcase a newfound muscularity to David's playing and riff writing.

Kin is not an assertive album, nor is it surprising, but it's as solid an aesthetic as you can expect of two artists mostly new to this genre.

Upright Behavior is Schatz's attempt go pack as much of this essence into one space as possible, and it comes on like a combination Chinese finger trap and bear hug.

In its winning attempt to paralyze you, Sway may have paralyzed itself.

Revisit older Factory Floor tracks like “A Wooden Box” or “(R E A L L O V E)” and there remains something tantalizing there--the way they morph back and forth between live band and broiling techno, a trompe l’oeil for the ear. On 25 25, they’ve shed this dimension, and the results can feel depthless and a little flat.

With his wry charm absent, the album ultimately shows only a partial picture of Jeff Tweedy as a solo artist.

Deliverance might work best as something else entirely, perhaps as a beat tape filled with reference vocals for the sort of stadium-status UK indie stars that know how to squeeze the maximum amount of drama out of the minimum amount of wordplay.

These moments of misplaced weight make Antidotes hard to recommend, but there are good ideas and moments all over the record.

Peanut Butter is a chaotic listen, powerful in parts and fragile in others, and often both at the same time. No matter where it goes, it's always running away from itself.

It's an album you can spend time with and understand as a whole work, and one that grows on you with each listen, revealing yet more detail and nuance.

Leo's still exceptionally adept at saying a lot in a small space but there are more than a few lines that feel a little too forceful no matter how many times you run into them, sitting slightly askew next to the richer images and more pointed jabs here.

The fragmented texture of the songs doesn't allow it to slip into bland slickness, but it's clean, theatrical, and kookily conservatorial in a pretty satisfying fashion, if occasionally a little too keen to change tacks within a single song.

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.

Inner Fire's biggest problem is a sporadic lack of energy.

Blood // Sugar // Secs // Traffic smolders with emotion, and yet Kasan’s aloofness—even when he’s shouting—sounds like a protective mechanism against truly letting himself go. Framed by the derivative music, Kasan sounds as removed from his feelings as the rest of us do expressing them via memes from inside the stultifying safety of our digital cubicles.

46 minutes of music that plays like a mixtape, sliding from song to song, demo to demo, like scrolling through Frank’s hard drive of unreleased material. It’s an intriguing peek into his process, and it contains some of the rawest vocal takes he’s ever put out.

Even if Folila is less surprising than the two albums that came before it, it still makes me look forward to seeing where they'll take this fusion next.

Despite its scattered high points, though, it's hard not to think of Wasted Years as little more than the third most exciting OFF! record.

Listening to Complete Surrender, you get the sense that Taylor and Watson would be just as happy making music for, and with, each other in their spare time, revelling in their companionship.

It's impressive then, that even with this newfound attention to detail, the Rapture still maintain a flailing energy and enthusiasm that most of the other dancepunk bands could only fake.... However, what ultimately makes Pieces a step or three down from Echoes is a drop off in consistency, reflecting a higher percentage of songs that fail to ignite.

Because Vado has an energy and a confidence that so few of his elders display anymore, Slime Flu instantly stands out by recalling a very specific late-90s moment. Vado, a guy who probably shouldn't be asked to carry a full-length by himself at this point in his career, makes it work anyway by doing the little things right.

G-Eazy is at his best when he steps out of the shadows and raps assuredly, and there are signs of that on When It's Dark Out.

The most memorable revisions on Dawn of Chromatica create new links to other standout moments in the Gaga discography. ... A few other highlights tilt in the other direction, teleporting Gaga into established worlds of sound with satisfying results.

Despite showcasing some of Eminem’s stylistic growing pains, Curtain Call 2 isn’t completely lined with duds.

While Flying Wig does indeed ascend, it never quite lands on solid ground—which feels like the whole point.

Morrissey's singing appears to have taken a giant leap over the past seven years or so.

And yet all these reworks and revisions stay in the general vicinity of the original album's tone of massive yet starkly open spaces, adding a few new facets but always staying close to the fine line Waiting for You treaded between bleak and euphoric.

Another Day falters when it gets too ethereal and singy—as on the Haliechuk-led “Follow Fine Feeling,” which doesn’t have the melodic juice of his excellent song “Cicada” on One Day—or too straight-up and untextured, as on the plodding closer “House Lights.” But at its best, Another Day showcases Fucked Up as masters of transformation.

Ultimately, even when she veers into previously unexplored aesthetic territory, every track feels just like Peaches, which is rather remarkable given how rigid and predictable she had been in the recent past.

Where these songs once demanded a whole lot of Northwestern indie-boom attention with their coy appraisals (both inward and outward), in today's context they tend to melt backwards, into the songs we already know.

Even in its quietest moments, Thought Rock Fish Scale is an album brimming with passion and protest. It finds confidence in humility, power in relaxation.

Here, blocky synth structures feel mismatched to the themes, and heavy-handed arrangements sometimes threaten to overwhelm the lyrics.

Pick any song, and you’ll be rewarded with something painfully precise.

As an experimental electronic album, Reachy Prints comes off as milquetoast. As a pop album, though, it sparkles.

Most sad sack numbers here wallow in a shallow sense of self-pity.

North is definitely Hyperdub's most pop-friendly release, but it's also one of its most conservative-- not a bad thing, just an interesting one given the importance label integrity plays in the electronic dance music world.

The Future Bible Heroes' first outing since 2002's uneven Eternal Youth does offer up slightly more catchy melodies and deadpan quotables than Love at the Bottom of the Sea.

While the vocal credits might have promised a more straightforward pop route this time around, It’s Alright Between Us… ends up being one of Lindstrøm’s most disjointed and ambiguous projects.

The only real rub lies in the lyrics, which-- unusually for the sharp-minded Coomes-- veer between cringing and faintly ridiculous.

This album provides Dredd fans with a chance to fix this music to their own favorite stories, giving the unrelenting decay and despair of Mega-City One the ferociously solemn musical backdrop it's always deserved.

Two Thousand and Ten Injuries buzzes with joy.

So yeah, this record is a downer. But there's rare beauty in such darkness, too-- just look at forebears like Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith, and Nick Drake. Or even Edgar Allan Poe. Because, along with its mopiness, WIT'S END is creepy as hell.

In the end, enjoying the Weeknd requires a certain suspension of disbelief, and that remains true on Beauty Behind the Madness. You really have to buy into his bad-guy persona.... For newcomers, there's a whole world to explore, and on Beauty Behind the Madness it's richer and smarter than ever.

What makes Rahim unique isn't their overall style; it's the tiny yet indispensable songwriting flourishes that lodge obdurately in the memory.

Sun Gangs is less a break-up record, and more a "relationship" record, in that it has the ups and downs of a love affair, with moments of joy, boredom, and viciousness sandwiched in closely next to each other. And while that makes for a challenging and complex listen--Andrews has certainly proved to be adept at wringing bitterness or misanthropy from bruised melodies--one can't help but hope that his next relationship is a happy one.

Listening to Grace & Lies can be taxing; it feels at moments like succumbing slowly to emotional frostbite. But Krans and Ollsin stir in a few furtive warm pockets to keep their record from freezing over.

They don't sound like a mélange of other bands anymore; they sound like Early Graves, and that's a damn good band to sound like in 2012.

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

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

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."

Lady Wood is short, but Lo finds ample darkness to plumb.

Sixteen Oceans is 16 tracks long, yet five of them are basically interludes—minute-or-two-long sketches made of watery synth pads, tape hiss, or rudimentary beats. Strangely, most of them fall toward the end of the album. ... The view’s lovely, but for the moment, it feels like Hebden is sailing in circles.

Transmutation is the enduring lesson of Kenney’s small catalogue so far: Turn life’s impasses into empathetic rock songs, little anthems for overcoming self-renewing heartache and exhaustion and anxiety. On Sucker’s Lunch, Kenney gets closer to the core of that idea than ever before thanks to sharper writing, stronger hooks, a versatile voice, and a continued partnership with friends who allow her to try new approaches.

On The Great Satan, Zombie sounds torn between wanting to revisit the boo-metal sound that made him famous and wanting to continue coasting on the gibberish trucker-rock of his later years. What this record suffers most from is a lack of direction.

It’s two lifelong friends tossing ideas back and forth, spiking gorgeous guitar patterns with unexpected effects and samples.

It's a record just as baffling as it is beguiling.

As is the case on most of the album, Hill's distorted vocals can sometimes seem like an afterthought, but perhaps they are intended to be just one of the many ingredients squashed into the album's vibrant mixture, to be heard as one final act of creation-through-destruction.

For the most part, Fortuna projects a confidence and self-belief that wasn’t all that perceptible on the rough-hewn Antipodes.

Now he's breaking out with a full-length record that's more restrained, more skeletal, and often more mournful than anything he's done before, a metamorphosis from somebody who's had fans growing to expect them on the regular.

He's made tremendous strides as a producer, to the point where his touch exceeds Rodaidh McDonald's work on his debut. His sound is more three-dimensional, a series of shrouded corners and murmured conversations. This is wandering, grey-skies music, finding pleasure and even sensuality in solitude.

Forever requires sieving through plates of glinting sediment before discovering treasure. The album is best when luxuriating in its own divine intensity, when an earnest Popcaan reconciles the hunger of his past with the feasting of his present, hands clasped in grace.