It is a bit ephemeral, but not quite as music to relax to--more like music to be bewildered by.

Above all else, it's the best M83 record yet.

The Great Escape Artist's intricate, heavily lacquered production--courtesy of Muse-man Rich Costey--has the effect of making Jane's Addiction sound like an anonymous assemblage of oversaturated recording tracks.

h parties click together because they're willing to let genre be an afterthought, yet they still avoid succumbing to a rootless, stylistically overreaching identity crisis.

It's not quite hype enough to be pure party music and lacks the cohesive point of view that fosters a more personal connection with a record.

On his eponymous debut, Mikal Cronin proves he can hold his own.

Red finds the band operating in a much cleaner, dreamier mode and mostly pulling it off.

"Hey Ray" is a sore-thumb irritant on an EP that otherwise carefully mediates between Cale's populist and deviant tendencies.

For a group who traded so well in whimsy, who got off to such a kaleidoscopic start, Original Colors can feel unusually drab.

As an innovator, she's as vibrant as ever, but as a songwriter, she sounds tired.

Breakers effectively conjures a space unto itself, but it's one that lacks an easy entry point.

Here, with one exception, they sound as though they're in soundtrack mode.

While the songs are wildly improved, I still can't say there's much of a discernible identity.

Breaks' lyrical thumbnails of lost opportunities and forgotten friends can seem a touch too pathos-addled on paper, but drawn through Bachmann's lungs, they leave their mark.

That sense of connectedness lends these songs a reassuring familiarity, as though they were new corners of a strange world whose boundaries grow larger and whose scenery grows more inviting with every Oldham release.

Despite its reduced scope, Life Sux is actually pretty versatile depending on where you stand with Wavves--take it as further confirmation of his permanent immaturity, or a sign that rattling off rudimentary but undeniably hooky punk-pop comes fairly easy to him.

Blake is fighting the respectable fight on Enough Thunder, though the EP's totally bass-less tracks show that he needs dubstep as much as dubstep needs him.

Adams evokes the goodwill of his masterpiece as a singer, anyway, even if the songwriting doesn't come close.

Though treading familiar sonic and thematic waters at the start, On the Water really comes alive midway through.

A far greater number of these remixes flatten out the complexity of TKOL's grooves in favor of commonplace arrangements.

Ultimately, the album's song-oriented material is the most memorable.

Re: ECM stands out not just for its depth but for its variety, for the sheer number of musics it incorporates.

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

Its only commitment is to a subtle antagonism, and it ignores pretty much any worthwhile development in pop, rock, electronic, or hip-hop music since the turn of the century.

For all the sonic strides Svanangen takes on Hall Music, he sometimes seems stuck singing the same sad song.

He's brought all his skill to bear on Looping, as composer and arranger and texturologist, in order to build something this simultaneously sweeping and subtle, deep and immediate.

It's lively in its drowsiness, which may be the album's most compelling and distinguishing contrast.

As a full-length listening experience, Violent Hearts is a little much-- it runs just under a lean half-hour, but the relative lack of stylistic breadth covered makes a front-to-back spin feel longer.

You may not love all the moves Orcutt makes, but together they quicken your pulse and pressurize the atmosphere, much as a good horror film makes even calm moments seem one second away from shock.

Though some may miss the rough and raw approach of her last two EPs, it's refreshing and exciting to hear music that relies on bone-hard essence rather than gauzy trimmings to create an aura of mystery.

With the Freaking Out EP, Bundick moves from vaguely funky 1980s-tinged makeout jams to more explicitly funky 80s-tinged dancefloor jams-- think Chromeo. The change isn't as successful as his best work, but it still makes for a plenty rewarding between-albums EP.

As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that.

What's interesting about the sound they've hit on isn't so much what the two musicians bring to each other's styles, as it is what each sacrifices from his own.

Though Thompson's plaintive wails and the brawny playing of the rhythm section give the impression of relentless and differentiable activity, they're holding patterns all the same.

The album may be scattershot, but perhaps that doesn't matter so much when it's delivered out the barrel of a 12-gauge.

Metals is a vivid evocation of a place that touches on fittingly vast themes about nature, love, and life itself.

The edge that sparked Spank Rock's best moments back in the day either isn't there or flails around without direction.

I do miss the grit, heavy-lifting, and larger excavations of their earlier work--nothing merits tossing around the word "epic" here--but what they do, and what they've become, is fascinating.

It doesn't help that Cole brings the least-flavorful bars of his career to his debut, aiming, most likely, for something more universal than his diaristic mixtapes. The few glints we get of his personal life are intriguing.

While Black Rainbows may represent more of a flickering flame than a raging inferno, it at least yields some evidence that Anderson's once-fiery persona has not been completely extinguished.

This album features perfectly serviceable and perfectly competent, middle-of-the-road punk rock music that probably sounds much better live than it ever could in a recording studio.

The record mixes feelings of protection and safety with the tug of adventure and wraps it in compulsively listenable music that explodes at just the right moments.

Appealing and in tune with admirable influences but ultimately lacking the sort of unpredictability or drama that can make these the songs that saved your life rather than reminiscent of ones that can.

Despite how much better-left-forgotten material is being offered up here as essential, there's still more life in the real Nevermind than anything that's attempted to replicate its attack since.

There's nothing especially bad here, but once the smoke clears from their bland, bassed-out ambiance, HTRK are another band without a sound to call their own.

The result is something that sounds like three session players and lacks the presence of somebody to step up and take this beyond being merely a decent, functional collection of songs.

Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers.

Only in Dreams isn't a perfect record, but a little while down the line it might end up looking like the beginning of something--the first steps forward for the band, or perhaps a raising of the bar for this entire revival.

Zig Zaj feels like he's straining a little too hard to make every song different from the last, where he's actually become pinned down by the "eclectic" reputation he's accrued, forcing him to make unwise decisions just to keep a certain degree of diversity afloat in his work.

It's a pretty, well-thought out collection--but for all the ideas and layers, Heritage feels somewhat empty.

In the end, what's really impressive is that the mousey quality of their music doesn't work against these nimble, cosmopolitan arrangements. If anything, it makes the songs richer, gives them more of a backstory.

So the weird, winsome Whole Love is certainly Wilco's least consistent LP in a while, but inconsistency has its own rewards.

Celestial Lineage feels like the contemporary American scene's defining statement after San Francisco group Weakling's seminal 2000 offering Dead As Dreams.

There's a striking physicality to these songs, and Guy Fixsen and Ash Workman's production makes every tambourine beat hit with the clarity of a shattering window.

Lekman's new An Argument with Myself EP is a compact gem.

Considering how he and White have a past history of collaborating, you'd think that Guilty Simpson and White would be firing on all cylinders by now; instead, the Detroit hardhead unfurls cliché after cliché and drops vague, autobiographical teases that don't reveal much in particular.

In the end, the record is a disjointed listen--there are some really beautiful and even moving stretches but too many missed opportunities to truly bring together Ring's love of pop with his natural gift for beats.

It's an accomplished sound, one that may not immediately dispense with the comparisons that have dogged the band, but one that does suggest a group more than capable of outgrowing the associations.

Ultimately, the trip they're taking us on isn't into America, but into the past, and they show too much reverence for their forebears.

Haven is no parody, nor is it a carelessly made record--it's simply a late entry that tugs the same strings, only to lesser effect.

In both songs, and throughout Paradise, Slow Club display remarkable skill in tugging at heartstrings, but they do it without being particularly manipulative or overly saccharine.

In the place of anthems, though, are carefully constructed gems making up a sequencing run so solid it takes a few listens to pick out the exact drop-off point.

While they've made great use of deconstructive syntax, repetition, gibberish, and in-jokes in the past, too much of Relax simply feels like dead air.

Megafaun may be their most immediately ingratiating, rewarding LP yet, as well-suited for a night strapped into headphones as it is a lazy Sunday morning, dancing around the bedroom, munching casually on a pasta breakfast.

The Night is a record uncomfortable with all the trappings of the corporeal world--time, words, its own skin--and occasionally, improbably, it actually breaks free of them all.

The disappointment is in how it sounds like their years apart have needlessly chastened them into fast-forwarding through the idiosyncratic streak they showed on Some Loud Thunder instead of embracing it, coming out of the wilderness only to end up smack dab in the middle of the road.

This is a far more serious record than its predecessor, but Palomo isn't always as assured in rendering the darker material.

For all the ideological intent fuelling the Wild Flag mission, the band rarely sacrifices the rock'n'roll fun-- they no doubt deliver that elusive black-and-blue, but it's a hit that feels like a kiss.

Gravity the Seducer is a transitional album bearing the growing pains and separation anxiety that we usually associate with bands that are in between periods of true inspiration.

Marling may spend the majority of these songs and several others struggling to find wisdom and peace in the face of trials brought on by lust, money, and death, but she almost always sounds like she already has all the answers.

The result is disarmingly tender, adding a few heartfelt minutes of warmth and personal connection, something lacking in the rest of Dreams' gloss.

Here, Clark's role-playing is grounded in emotions that are as cryptic as they are genuine and affecting. And when her voice can't bear it, her guitar does the screaming.

This lyrical simplicity shouldn't obscure the fact that these are sharply constructed songs that take unusual turns. One of Girls' specialities is their willingness to go completely over the top but somehow keep us right there with them.

Mountaintops is the first of their records to grapple with the everyday tribulations and banality of spending your entire adult life in a band-- with your Mate, nonetheless.

It's business as usual: spastic pounding, warp-speed scalar runs, and various math-rock feats of strength.

The songs on Hollow are modest--there's no closing epic, and the choruses are catchy but don't aim to be anthems--but the band seems to have found its true strength here in a sound that's pretty far removed from the implied violence of its name.

Often when an artist gets stronger, the music becomes more universal, and reference points become easier to hear. It may sound paradoxical, but these evocations help make Glacial Glow distinct.

Their experiments don't always yield useful results-- the downcast, acoustic-guitar-powered "Partners in Crime" comes awkwardly decorated with free-form piano rolls that trip up rather than propel the song's momentum. But there are moments when CSS find a way to successfully evolve without alienating their base.

While Why There Are Mountains reminded me of what those records [Perfect From Now On or The Moon and Antarctica] sounded like, Lenses Alien does something more difficult by reminding what it felt like once they were over and you were left to wonder if you just stumbled upon a cosmic, philosophical treatise disguised as an indie rock record.

The confidence in their new record is clear, if only because their vocals sound more boisterous than ever, but for the most part, the experimentation is the problem.

The band's personal choices--to abandon rock iconography for smaller, more fulfilling family units--will be Grace's fate as well: a record without broader narratives, meant for those who grew up with the Rapture, or want to.

Really, though, its the earlier track "Lost in Time" that best sums up the record's appeal--on one level, it's about the dancefloor as an escape, while on another, it winks at the group's time travels.

More than anything, Glazin's sneer'n'strut is just too much of a pretty good thing: One or two at a time, these songs work wonders, but over half an hour, the Boys' retrograde sneer and strut proves a bit too safe and samey.

Like his fusion heroes, Bruner wants it all: the future shock of electronics, the tightly edited pleasures of pop, the love-sick opulence of quiet-storm soul, and the show-stopper instrumental breaks of jazz. The fact that he's mostly pulled it off, with a record that's serious in intent while playful in execution, is pretty astounding.

Obscurities itself is over in less than 40 minutes: It's understated, personal, insular, oddball, and often gorgeous, an unexpectedly coherent collection from an important band.

I'm With You's hip thrusts and gyrations simply go through the motions, the work of a band with all kinds of capital to blow but no incentive to do anything differently.

This is functional music that highlights the simple pleasure of artfully arranged sound, the kind of gorgeous and evocative record that fills up the room and shifts your perception for 37 minutes and then brings you gently back to the surface.

Mostly there's a strong sense of discovery, of someone attempting to make sense of their surroundings, with Brooks cast as a voyager trampling through vast stretches of the British countryside, crisp leaves crinkling underfoot as he expertly funnels everything he sees and feels into song.

From the first beat drop, Fever Dream is obviously informed by the vaporized, off-kilter instrumentals of Flying Lotus and likeminded contemporaries: beats shuffle and scatter, bass hits low and leaves space in its wake, samples hiss and dissipate like the air is being sucked out of them, synth lines falter and wobble.

Ghost is nowhere near his best, most consistent, or most durable album, but that's ultimately not even the right way to measure its modest accomplishment. Instead, it's a surprisingly upbeat retirement album, one that never stoops to self-pity and very modestly reminds you of past triumphs.

If Romans is something of a lateral move where innovation's concerned, it's by no means a step down in quality. In the last couple years, Stallones continues to carve out what feels like uncharted territory; hard to blame him for wanting to survey the scenery a little while longer.

For Smith's first four albums, Outside Society is an abridgement that doesn't really do her justice.

It's still perfectly effective fuzz-metal, but it's coming from a group of guys who have done seriously indelible work with the same ingredients, so it comes off a bit too slight.

Although the outgoing sonics of Endless Now represent a considerable leap in sound, it's those same qualities that could very well repel those drawn in by the burnt-ends glory of Nothing Hurts-- not because that previous record is necessarily better, though.

While Tha Carter IV isn't the first indication that Wayne's finest verses are behind him, it is the most glaring.

Though there's less breathing space on Thursday, and fewer melodic hooks, it still feels of a piece with House of Balloons.

The Ornament's expansiveness owes a fair bit to Olsen's voice, which sounds like it's been given an emotional B12 shot. His lyrics are prettily--albeit somewhat emptily-- evocative, richly textured, and his tonal pronunciation (the "PO-lice cars" of "Hanging Window") adds temporal sentimentality to his words.

Tassili is a very different album from any Tinariwen have recorded before, and they're proving to be a band of considerable range as they build a catalog of varied and excellent albums.