What’s remarkable here is how Fennesz dissolves into the bleak landscape, his signature sound rendered indistinct, a loss of identity that mirrors the album's main theme.

It’s essentially a recreation of past glories that never quite hits those heights. As a piece of the Tangerine Dream continuum, however, Raum satisfies: Its unashamed drift and scale pay a tribute to a world where music is huge, omnipresent, and never ending.

That was a problem on Psutka’s last couple of albums, too; his concepts are stronger than his editing skills. Still, taken in moderate doses, it’s a strangely moving portrait of ecological collapse translated into sound.

E S T A R A is almost hypnotic in its tendency to make each individual track blur itself into an indistinct piece of a loosely memorable whole, one with little impression actually retained even if it jumps from mood to mood.

But all the marquee names in the world wouldn't mean a thing if the Cribs didn't step up in the songwriting department, and the trio answer Kapranos' ready-for-prime-time production with chart-gazing tunes.

Rather than feeling stark and severe, there’s an elegant grace in the simplicity. It makes a listener lean in to find an unexpectedly warm embrace.

If their debut explored the space within, the Earlies' latest, The Enemy Chorus, peers into the void of the final frontier, with a similar kitchen-sink approach and more of the krautrock sprawl that characterized early singles like "Morning Wonder".

The band sounds something like 4AD's entire catalogue being chopped up and fed through a meat-grinder.

Ultimately, Avonmore is a fine addition to Bryan Ferry’s oeuvre, if not necessarily a terribly challenging one.

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.

Masseduction Rewired is by no means indispensable, but as a distraction it has the frustrating charm of a good crossword puzzle.

The Atlas Moth hope to be heavy and heavenly, aggressive and accessible, to exist in worlds of light and dark simultaneously. In this instance, they wind up in the shadows of their own intentions, hidden in flat gray instead of beautiful white or harrowing black.

While the band has always played around with a variety of sounds, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of songwriting, most of Mystics doesn't measure up.

Tears in the Club is a disappointingly genteel work, from an artist known for anything but.

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.

If nothing else, Siberia proves McCulloch and Sergeant still have their songwriting craft in good working order, but it's hard to recommend an album on strength of craft alone-- it has to have a little verve, and unfortunately it's lacking.

It's a no-frills record that recedes into the background without much fuss, which works for and against the album's overall impact.

At times, White’s knack for simplicity lapses into the slightly generic.

Life on Earth can be a joy to listen to— smooth, sexy, and bright—but it’s missing the searing songwriting Walker is capable of.

An occasional stab of synthesizer is the closest these songs come to pomp, and the production is still scruffy around the edges, hi-fi only by the standards of her early self-recordings. But the improved fidelity lets her words and voice come across clearer than they did from the bedroom, revealing how much more elegant Allison’s wordplay is than it can seem at first blush, and her gift for detailing conflict with the economy of a young adult novel.

There are brief glints of enlightenment to be heard here, but more often than not, Laraaji’s makeshift songs come across like daily affirmations as heard in a hotel lounge.

Opeth have gotten better at self-editing with Sorceress; still, their jammier tendencies fail them in the album’s lackadaisical middle, showing they may just be a little too cool.

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

Yes, it's all fairly predictable.

Take It, It’s Yours may be one of the comfiest cover-sets in recent memory, but beneath its chilled-out façade lurks an identity crisis.

The Circus is measured, soothing, and a suitable accompaniment to brandy and a cigar in a comfortable chair.

End of World is hellishly inconsistent, its mid section adrift in ’80s funk-rock sheen, like INXS being harassed by an angry wasp. But when it works, End of World, more than any other recent PiL album, offers the winning combination of instrumental oddity and vocal drama.

If his work with Washington contains all the weight and gravitas of Sunday church, Coleman’s Resistance has all the fun, breeziness--and yes, sunlight—of an afternoon church picnic.

Where R.Y.C. succeeds—and where Crossan reveals a real point of view—is in his ultimate rejection of these initial frameworks in favor of something more fluid, a hybrid space in which these sounds, stylings, and emotional responses work together.

Despite some of the growing pains here, Backwards strongly hints at the sadistic beauticians S-M would be introduced to us as in their debut, and bravely reveals the types of psych/shoegaze pitfalls they'd later learn to avoid.

At its best, i care so much that i dont care at all captures the ecstatic, uncomfortable intensity of the joy and turmoil of being young. And if it ever feels awkward or fumbling, well, that’s an essential part of being a teenager too.

Tyga isn't a gifted lyricist, but he has a few key things going in his favor: a workmanlike ability to ride a beat, a solid singing voice, and a great ear for melody.

Wayne has already done better versions of almost every song on I Am Not a Human Being, which was released on his 28th birthday last week. It's not exactly what we're looking for now.

The haziness of Free has its share of frustrations—as alluring as the pensive soundscapes are, it’s hard not to wish they were occasionally more sculpted—but there’s something curiously human and appealing about its ungainly nature.

Fec’s most disturbing songs were often his funniest, but Sweatbox Dynasty rarely allows Fec’s puckish side to rise from the muck.

The collision of genres fashions a delicate niche, but Planet X’s most striking moments are its most deconstructed.

The ceaseless lull of her voice accounts for the record’s ambient feel, but it also makes She Walks in Beauty seem like an actual poetry reading that drags on for a quarter hour too long.

These small acknowledgments of past triumphs reverberate throughout Kicker: The Get Up Kids have finally reopened a dialogue with their younger selves.

As he expands his sound beyond genre confines, he can sell a multi-part epic like “Jake’s Piano - Long Island” and a complexly orchestrated slow-burner like “Ticking.” But he doesn’t yet have the same range in his writing, lyrically or melodically.

Take the repeats out of the equation and you're left with a decidedly mixed bag; just a few of Dance Mother's newbies manage to rival their older siblings' success.

It's musical air-freshener at worst, and inspired homage at best. The dance's themes of infirmity and redemption are writ large in the song titles, but it's Broderick's technique, not the narrative, that captivates.

Throughout Fin Eaves, the kaleidoscopic growth of the tracks feels both natural and chaotic, and you get a good sense of the sounds and patterns evolving. Sometimes the album's lo-fi and static-ridden production can induce a dulling sensation.

There is nothing new in Malin’s depiction of New York, and that may be the whole point: He wants this milieu to be instantly familiar.

Everything is fast-moving, breezily entertaining, and patently ridiculous.

The record is experimental in the truest sense, each of its tracks signifying a possible point of departure.

Freak Puke represents a band that's always in motion doing what it's always done: trying a crazy idea, releasing and reveling in the results and, before long, likely moving along to the next instantaneous notion. That's the spirit that's always made the Melvins great, just as it does on Freak Puke, if only in bits and pieces.

The Universal Want troubleshoots wisely—keep the tempos at a brisk jog, dabble in Afrobeat, Motown, and cinematic soul rather than prog, and watch the clock. Whereas Kingdom of Rust felt like twice its hourlong runtime, Universal Want is Doves’ first filler-free album, floating by like a warm breeze.

If Young’s recent work has felt like a series of hard-headed dives into his pet obsessions--more interesting for simply existing than for actually listening to--then The Visitor is more all-encompassing, and as a result, more centered.

The original songs on Peck’s latest Show Pony EP are more vague [than Pony}.

While Liminal is a testament to the Acid’s breadth of vision and production prowess--seamlessly incorporating everything from subterranean techno and avant-R&B to proggy sci-fi soundscapes and sad-bastard bedroom folk--its uniformly predictable pacing, with every song painstakingly built up from a pause to a pulse, grows wearing over a 51-minute stretch.

Her delicate pipes may consign her to small sketches and close studies, but Merritt's at least proven with See You on the Moon that she has the lyrical goods to deliver intimately pleasurable, deeply felt folk-pop.

End of Love isn't Barzalay's best collection of songs, and the production tends to gloss over the instruments so songs like "Collapse" and "When We Become" sound subdued and blandly unobtrusive.

As it stands, Good Things feels like hopping into a time machine, dialing it to 40 years ago, then forgetting to bring a stack of recent 12" singles with you to completely blow 1970's mind.

Rather than lending International depth, it shrinks the album into an admittedly accurate recapture of top-heavy, single-centered records of Norrvide’s preferred influences.

1982 is their best album since 1986’s Force. ... Attractive in its distillation of received pleasures, 1982 functions as a history lesson about a fecund era, and, boy, they own the warts too.

From the Valley to the Stars has hills that rise close to "El Perro del Mar's" peaks, and its cohesive vision is a pleasure to behold. At the same time, though, it harps on its themes with an overzealous single-mindedness, occasionally letting flimsy stuff support an overarching conceit that requires foundations of marble.

The follow-up to 2009’s Declaration of Dependence, makes languid, pleasant pop seem deceptively effortless; the album is so smooth that its seams are barely visible. The record’s 11 tracks are a Quaalude dream, a set of gossamer songs so refined that they take on sedative properties.

Ten deserved better than Ten Redux and the paltry bonus tracks. Fortunately, the reissue also includes a DVD of Pearl Jam's 1992 performance on "MTV Unplugged".

This is still playful stuff, just more subtly so. But to see WhoMadeWho settle into this mode feels like a significant loss of joie de vivre from a group who were once some of dance music's most flagrant disco clowns.

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.

The shift in perspective necessary to "get" it, though, does work on that level: at the least, it's a fitting testimonial to British Sea Power's partially effective relocation of a classic film into a modern aesthetic scheme.

Whereas many modern film soundtracks are glorified compilation discs with a seemingly random track selection, the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World soundtrack is very thoughtful in its curation and stands as a very accurate interpretation of O'Malley's fictional world.

It's only when Apache Dropout indulge their pulpier interests too faithfully that they run into trouble.

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

It is his most personal record, but not because it's bare and raw, but because it's surreal and dreamlike.

Sounds a hell of a lot like Stereolab.

It sounds nice, but for a lot of its runtime, it also sounds like DeMarco is exhausted, like he’s ready to move on and try something new but is trapped in a creative holding pattern.

Thanks to their gently intertwined voices, most name-drops or direct references, like the shout-out to stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen on “Olympus,” don’t feel forced.

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

Led by singer and songwriter Wesley Patrick Gonzalez, this band of early twentysomethings comprehensively captures the mindset of young men kicking and screaming against their inevitable transition into adulthood.

It unspools pleasantly and unhurriedly, possessing the sort of sparkly glow that often comes with rejuvenation.

Sometimes Wild One wears its influences a little too hard on its sleeve, or strives too hard to create something anthemic with across-the-board appeal.

Had Fol Chen made good on those early impulses to really boost The New December's kinky eccentricities, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise to find it making serious inroads with new listeners. Though it ultimately only warrants selective revisiting.

It is her most personal record to date, telling the story of her father’s incarceration and her own fear of parenthood. It is delivered entirely in costume. The best and truest moments on Daddy’s Home are when Clark refuses to play wife or mother.

Going Down in History may not mark a sea change for Langford and company, but between the humor, the honky-tonk, and the affable, full-bodied sound, it’s an awesome chance to catch up.

Sounds like a step backward.

Sometimes it really does seem like he’s rapping to instill love, sometimes he’s rapping for rap’s sake, and those lines get smudged at times, but more often than not he’s methodical. It is in the moments where his precision underscores his affection that Let Love truly conquers.

It’s weird that “better than nothing” became the bar for what was once one of the most celebrated bands of their era, but if it’s a choice between more records as solid, if unspectacular, as Beneath the Eyrie or nothing, the Pixies might as well keep them coming. It’s been a long time since this band had anything left to lose.

Black Pudding might not be High Plains Drifter, but it’s a suitably entertaining bad-ass diversion a la The Gauntlet.

My Dark Places doesn't just uncover shadowy corners in its subject matter-- it's also musically unkempt, stumbling along and veering off in directions most bands wouldn't even be comfortable using as B-sides or jokes.

Each song on Fast Food, her second LP, feels offered up and expertly framed, a series of rock songs given the lighting and treatment of museum objects.

Musically, Nephew in the Wild feels like a logical progression from Ashworth's past work; lyrically, however, it isn't always as clear of a step forward.

Kweli’s flow can feel rushed and sticky, as though he can’t articulate his thoughts as neatly as he can conjure them up. But his fans are loyal. Radio Silence will comfortably shore up the base.

Intentionally making musical wallpaper doesn’t sound like an exciting prospect, but Mount seems invigorated by abandoning the pursuit of the perfectly structured 10-track record.

One part Busta-lite, and the rest full-on skater bravado: Gold Chains isn't going to tear up the world of hip-hop, but he's not totally empty handed.

If the first half of the album has a lethargic sense that record never quite shakes, the last two tracks suggest there may be more for the group to explore in the future.

The Rite should elicit gasps, not cock eyebrows—the latter of which is the most extreme reaction the Bad Plus manage to provoke.

For all Not to Disappear’s forward strides, something remains of the debut’s pallor, and with it a niggling suspicion that, despite their commercial inferiority to the xx, Florence and the Machine, and even Foals, Daughter have no spicy condiments for those groups’ bread and butter.

Yes, the high points of the previous record are duplicated here-- but so too are the same problems that occasionally bogged down that record.

Megabear is a unique and innovative concept piece that suggests lofty questions about intentionality and artists’ agency. But a regular 12-song album with a beginning, middle, and end probably would have been more satisfying.

At its best moments, the debut sounds like an A.V. club president's wet dream, unabashedly nerdy and technically proficient. Sadly though, the record is peppered with aesthetically dubious nu-rave moments, making LOTP sound less like sympathetic revenging nerds and more like party-crazed dude-bros who just happen to own synths.

Rocky’s anything-goes tests come up short, but they feel like his alone.

It's pretty boring and one-note, but if Georgopoulos' indulgent, decadent tendencies produce the occasional dud, it seems a small price to pay for the intrigue of looking forward to what he’s going to do next.

With so little added to the originals, you have to ask: Why do this? 'Cause it's good fun.

The Shabazz Palaces cut is easily the most interesting song here, and seems to be the one you might still be pulling out once in a while in another six months. Considering that the EP, with three versions of the same song in a row, isn’t really meant to be heard as a whole, getting one truly intriguing track out of it isn’t such a bad deal.

Ward's real saving grace on Parodia Flare is the guitar, which he utilizes in unexpectedly welcome ways to propel his compositions, keeping them from dissolving into murky keyboard washes.

Respectable as it is for both men to avoid falling back into their bag of dub tricks, a few of Man Vs. Sofa’s attempts to expand their reach fall just a bit short.

The relatively sparse and chilly tone of Departing ultimately feels less like a slump than a conscious decision to present itself as the wintertime counterpart to Hometowns' prairie summer.