For all that the band straddles the worlds of dance and guitars, the arrangements on Battle Lines are incredibly tame, as if the duo mistakenly joined the blandest of electronics with the politest of indie rock.

Love in Shadow is a testament to perseverance in the face of uncertainty from a bandleader who has lived, worked, and loved by that ideal.

The “new” material on Piano & a Microphone has already circulated as bootlegs, but this album clarifies its details, rescues it from indistinct hiss.

Pondering life and death, happiness and despair, movement and stagnation, Thompson writes as someone who knows he has more years behind him than ahead, though he sings with an arched eyebrow and an appreciation for the irony in trading youth for wisdom.

Snow Bound is the Dunedin native’s most winning album since 1990’s Submarine Bells--brash, tensile, and enormously confident.

Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package.

The warmth of Infinite Moment radiates from its symbiotic growth of melancholy and hope. Willner doesn’t privilege one over the other, but allows them to knit together, watching from a distance to see the shapes they might take.

Their willingness to expand the subtleties of their sound makes Million Dollars to Kill Me an enthralling listen, even at its lowest points.

Nothing is left to chance here and both listener and artist are now free to imagine a 90 minute shot of perfection, where every transition is smooth and every dance step is executed with ease. We could all use those moments to dream of a unsullied world, if only for small stretches before getting back to the otherwise messy reality we’re in.

The purest pop song is “Switch,” the one track that can pass for uptempo and boasts a hook that sticks. A few more fun moments like this would have helped keep the record moving.

The resulting album is an electric blend of unforgettable imagery, emotional depth, and lurid, sizzling pop-funk.

In Another Life is visionary in both content and form: The first half is filled by the 24-minute title track, while the flipside offers three versions of the same basic song, but with different singers, lyrics, and moods. Both sides are slow and pleasingly repetitious, quiet rebukes of the mania of modern life.

It’s when he sticks to the highly personal that Curry’s music is devoid of all cliché--the power of his performance, the veracity of his pen, and the color of his wordplay make him an expert at voicing the tribulations of this doomed condition we call being young.

The most satisfying moments come when the orchestra stops playing, allowing the quartet to settle into its own groove, as it does often for those London sets.

Their reedy, one-note falsettos barely have the range for dance tracks that ask almost nothing of them, and For Ever’s mopier material is at odds with the very specific, frivolous itch that listeners come to this band to scratch. Jungle fare best when they stick to the grooves.

Room 25 is quarter-life crisis turned breakthrough, a balm through which Noname offers a taste of the simple sort of heaven that she's still searching for herself.

“Auster” remains, despite the pauses, a minimalist study of harmony and tone color, and the gorgeous “Third Hour” is languid and drifting. But there’s also more motion here than we’ve heard in her work before.

Bolstered by Jones’ increased visibility and a newly varied instrumental palette, We’re Not Talking stands as proof that speak-singing still has some life left in it for a new generation of indie rockers.

You will find no comfort here. But it’s the job of an artist to capture something of the tenor of the age they live in, and Pastoral fits the bill: a mad jig along a cliff edge.

On Twisted Crystal, Guerilla Toss journey to the edge of the universe and grapple with the mysteries of human existence. Such adventures can be panic inducing, but here they conquer anxiety through curiosity, finding excitement and even solace in abstruseness.

There’s nothing here that touches the band’s creative peak--and, honestly, even the best of these nine songs falter next to Wonky’s highs--but there’s just enough pleasure to be gained on Monsters Exist to justify the album as a worthwhile endeavor.

There have been times in James’ career when his knowing smirk threatened to eclipse the music. But here he’s obviously having a genuine blast, and his joy is infectious.

They have never shied from commixing independent sounds. In Moon 2, they have captured this utopian sort of jostling, where two people banging into each other make a great noise, and there’s a productive coincidence around each turn.

Regardless of Heart Head West’s stretch of sweet-and-sour ballads, its lack of textural and rhythmic variety leaves you hungry for something heartier.

ith “Sober Motel” especially, Dilly Dally subtly chip back at the ways music is exploited under capitalism. Its greatest element, as ever, is Monks’ rare voice--jagged, on fire, intoxicating itself.

The album is like a discovery of a new mutation of still-recognizable DNA. And finally this new strain of sound isn’t just bold for Low; it’s just plain bold.

Too often, it’s a simulacrum of passion: feel-good house music as daily affirmation. Unlike the broad scope of their videos, their songs feel squashed, like an inspirational message made for Instagram’s tiny window.

More than any previous Spiritualized album, however, And Nothing Hurt feels like a mere set of songs, an accessible group of tunes that may be painstakingly constructed but are only casually connected.