On Man With Potential Pete Swanson's ability to encompass many sounds and moods knows few bounds, if any.

People deserve a two-disc Sparrow comp to bury all other Sparrow comps, but this isn't it (Smithsonian's First Flight, from 2005, is much better, though it falls off before Sparrow hit his prime).

With The Something Rain, Tindersticks provide a wholly convincing reminder that they are, by definition, an incendiary device.

The most disappointing aspect of Go Fly a Kite is that it sounds so satisfied, almost smug, in its complacency.

None of the songs are simple, and they mostly all build to surprising and surprisingly weird heights.

It'd be much easier to love, as opposed to merely like, They!Live's glistening, long-form tech-house soundscapes if there were more bombs and curveballs hidden amongst its lovingly pruned forest glades.

While something like 2007's Cendre benefited greatly from an occasional splash of his cotton-wool electronics, there are very few moments like that here, and frankly, it needs more.

It's to Lambchop's credit that their music avoids comfortable resolutions. Instead, it hangs there, no moral, no judgment.

This album is more of a mood piece, its melodic rewards teased out over time and drenched in the type of steady rain that his home state is known for.

I Am Gemini is Cursive's weakest record by a disheartening margin.

As messy and thoughtful a take on house as we're likely to hear this year.

Sleigh Bells pull off this more sophisticated and nuanced approach without calling attention to their improved craft or maturity.

On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band.

The Russian Wilds strives for timelessness, but sounds temporally adrift.

Compulsively listenable.

The songs on Hadreas' full-length debut are eviscerating and naked, with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterizations delivered in a voice that ranges from an ethereal croon to a slightly cracked warble.

Somehow, Dando's nonchalance here--his stoned cadences, fleeting hooks, loose-limbed guitar playing, and generally rumpled demeanor--comes across as a weird but sincere gregariousness.

Animal Joy proves they are still a naturalistically minded band, but in dropping the more arcane conceptual gambits of their self-described "trilogy" ... and speaking in layman's terms both emotionally and sonically, they're taking their best shot at meeting new listeners halfway.

Hastily assembled, thoughtlessly sequenced minutes of vivid beats and incredible rapping.

Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this much command, this much power.

They've developed a larger musical vocabulary, but the results can be cumbersome.

Here, when everything's as clear as it is on Les Voyages de l'Âme, he feels almost too exposed, and the big climaxes he's reaching for don't arrive. There's no denying the beauty, but it feels weirdly muted-- or perhaps just unsurprising.

It's the most cohesive-- and, possibly, the out-and-out strongest-- Islands record yet.

Despite feeling like the work of a couple laying themselves bare, it's also music to get lost in, to block out the real world.

The struggle between salvation and damnation has rarely sounded so lively or so gloriously conflicted.

This music, so basic on one level, is both warm and cold, blackened by mortality and twinkling with life, somehow evoking the wonder and absurdity of existence itself.

A boilerplate, but immensely satisfying, noise-pop record.

Free All the Monsters simply consists of a set of plaintive songs that draw on all the stylistic cues this band has worked hard to establish in the past (a Byrds-ian jangle, a touch of Velvets-style dissonance) and tightens everything up a touch.

So maybe Mux Mool can't literally do everything--but for the bulk of Planet High School, he's got himself an engaging something.

This version of Earth has simply given Carlson more room and more assistance to explore, well, darkness and light--in his own time, of course.

It's a cushy listen, if not only always distinctive, particularly since the shorter tracks often amount to a cooled, deep-blue gelatin that holds the previously released singles together.

Musically, Tennis have broadened their horizons just the right amount, adding rock'n'roll muscle and a more purely pop clarity.

This is Field Music at their most baroque-- a record of sweetly melodic miniatures that coalesce into form only long enough to tumble into the next meticulously designed song suite.... [Yet] Plumb is a little too fussy. Great hooks rise up, but are quickly abandoned in the rush to the next good idea.

The personalities on this album are so blank the songs may as well be performed by apps, and sung by Siri.

You may not feel pleasure all the way through And They Turned Not When They Went, but if you're drawn to the bizarre, inconstant emotional terrain of late-night wakefulness, you'll find something honest.

On Ten$ions, they replace what made them sometimes intriguing and slightly subversive with tired tropes and lazy lyrics.

The noxious muck on evidence here obscures most of what made his past music so singular.

James Blake continues to move as an artist, and the thrill of witnessing those movements hasn't dulled.

Too often, Be the Void finds Dr. Dog unleashed, letting their wilder ideas get the better of them.

Goldfrapp have spent the past decade moving back and forth between icy electro-glam and atmospheric balladry... [The Singles] makes a virtue of their range.

In the context of Wire's catalog, this is just another document of incremental change, and not even the best live recording they've made lately (that would be their gorgeous Daytrotter session from 2008).

It feels like a pleasant yet unremarkable switch back to the past, the sound of Air staring into a half-empty well of ideas, on the verge of becoming their own tribute band.

A solid, listenable, blue-collar rap album.

Whether you treat it as background music, incidental listening, or a two-hour magnum opus, Themes for an Imaginary Film is a well-rounded portrait of a key figure in the American electronic music landscape.

Bursting with color, nostalgic but never retro, easy-going yet slightly unhinged.

Libraries nods more to Burt Bacharach, and the record can sag occasionally under the drowsy weight of his influence.

Despite retaining a relaxed, lightly psychedelic feel, Blondes' songs are properly functionalist grooves.

For the most part, though, from robotic-but-rambunctious opener "Runaway" to the late-album one-two closing swoon of "It's You" and "Overtaken", Feel the Sound leans on Imperial Teen's puppyish charm and love for soft-rock's smooth bliss.

Though a mixed bag, Blues Funeral does have its moments.

More color-by-numbers post punk that uses too many grays and not enough pure blacks.

The thoroughly unenjoyable Paralytic Stalks might be a sign that Barnes should take some time off and let the inspiration come to him.

It's The Horror's dirgey digressions that actually best showcase his cold-blooded character.

Clay Class feels disappointingly stagnant. But it does offer encouraging signs that a blade of grass or two can sprout up from cracks in Prinzhorn Dance School's cold, concrete world.

At this point it's hard not to feel like the Trailer Trash Tracys who sounded pretty vital in 2009 have been left behind by a whole slew of bands that followed their starting gun and reached the finishing line quicker, and better.

Unexpected Victory's sound is too lousy--and its stakes too low--to ever possibly live up to his past glories.

So while Pinch might not have moved on from dubstep completely, he's definitely moved somewhere, and it sounds like an exciting place to be.

It's a record that uses nastiness to cement the character "Rick Ross" as three-dimensional, and uses a barrage of bangers to cement the rapper Rick Ross as an undeniable force.

Frigid, militant, and rhythmic.

Matters of mistrust, isolation, and uncomfortable togetherness dominate Tramp, rolling through every track like a sick, creeping fog.

Even if the emotional intent often feels recycled from other records, Tamer Animals is a record that takes you places.

The songs are decent, the singing is stunning.

The clean lines and easy momentum of It's the Arps are really refreshing.

This music is as simultaneously functional and pleasurable as Luomo's more active house tracks, only it's for an opposite function--and a more sedate set of pleasure centers.

Black Cocaine comes across as not particularly different than, say, recent records from Saigon or Uncle Murda or M.O.P.

On his best effort yet, I Love You, Urick's dub obsessions have moved to the front of the room.

Rad Times Xpress IV illuminates how well that music lends itself to more experimental renderings while the songs seemingly engineered to hold onto RTX's denim'n'leather constituency yield surprises.

One wouldn't expect Gibson's latest to bowl over any audiophile chasing the wow!-factor, but for the patient, contemplative listener, La Grande-- much like the campfire depicted on its cover-- is a record worth warming to.

Gotye's exemplary pop sense may be the big revelation of Making Mirrors, yet it's his arty restlessness that will continue to keep him interesting.

There are plenty of impulses worthy of exploration, but too often they end up tarnished by a listless desire to meander without direction, making Wilson Semiconductors feel more like a stopgap than a valuable addition to Hagerty's canon.

The not-new songs here don't sound reworked so much as run through some kind of cartoony scrubbing contraption, Wonka Wash-style, emerging stunningly clean out the other end, the curvy surfaces all gleaming in the sun.

The guys' commitment to music-as-fun and big, croon-y hooks (Goddard's velvet vocals sound as good as ever here) keeps it enjoyable throughout.

Porcelain Raft borrows liberally from both the shoegaze and dream-pop playbooks, and so we get layers of sonic gauze shot through with delicately strummed acoustic guitar patterns and Remiddi's reedy, rather androgynous voice.

For all of its coos about love and devotion, it's the album equivalent of a faked orgasm-- a collection of torch songs with no fire.

He's probably not going to be a break-out star, but it's hard to imagine that there will be many more original or satisfying rap long-players this year.

Strangely, pairing with just Mt. Sims on U&I appears to have resulted in less-focused output, with the duo gradually circling a grimy musical plughole, only managing to pull themselves out via less cluttered material in the back half of the record.

America Give Up is inconsistent and derivative yet promising, and not nearly as impressive as some early adopters would have people believe.

That atmosphere helps hold up Vodka & Ayahuasca's sense of anarchic, altered-state unease when the lyrics don't quite cut it, though the tolerable-at-worst punchlines and metaphors are easier to stomach the less dead-serious you take them.

MU.ZZ.LE might be a transitional point on Gonjasufi's path and it shows just one face of an eclectic, multifaceted performer. But it's also that rare album that feels meditative and cathartic all at once.

It's a kitchen sink-like flood of sound, always on the verge of resembling a gigantic curveball being forced down your throat, but with Vibert pulling back from the humor brink at all the right moments.

Clear Heart is just good enough to keep us listening.

Lamb of God's general lack of adventurousness makes them mostly indistinguishable from their heroes and, budget excepted, the bulk of their contemporaries.

For the sisters' part, their voices are steadier now, and richer.

The songs are fine but largely feckless, and what could be an animating contrast between glum lyrics and upbeat music is too often hobbled by clunkers both generic ("I am lost in my mind when you go to sleep") and specific (something about tarot cards).

As an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo (as defined by Dischord, Deep Elm, and especially Jade Tree), Attack on Memory feels above all necessary, a corrective for indie rock making allowances for everything except music that actually rocks.

The disc ought to have the proud, few Loincloth faithful weeping with joy, but more importantly, it leaves room for a broader audience to hear what the fuss was all about.

Cleaner and more elegant [than previous album, Does You Inspire You], buffing their crisp electronic pop to an immaculate sheen.... Truly great.

"Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.

You get the sense they're shooting for something epic, something that would sound just as big as the pop bangers on radio, but the results are goofy.

Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.

The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.

While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.

Edwards often sounds lost in these new songs.

More than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places.

Where the Big Pink previously sounded invincible, nearly every attempt to intellectualize or streamline their sound makes Future This come off as timid and malnourished.

It's one of his best, a mostly single-minded return to the on-the-mic fierceness and computers-go-tribal rhythms that first made his name.

There are few standout tracks; instead, the most arresting moments emerge out of layers of increasingly damaged sounds that set an uncompromisingly bleak mood.... It doesn't quite work as a standalone experience.

For every bit of overcompensation--he actually cracks a bottle over a dude's head in "Raw"--there's something vividly rendered and honest.

Think of Glimmer as a little symphony, just with singles, and made by a musician who can't decide between the roles of producer or composer. Really, he shouldn't anytime soon.