This blunt narrative ought to sound contrived, but Hardy’s gift for delicate phrasing is defiantly alluring.

Hippo Lite can be thrillingly episodic, like the oddest edges of the Raincoats’ Odyshape or contemporaries such as Palberta.

But where their previous three albums translated that dynamic into emotionally-charged metal, Eat the Elephant assumes the form of a gloomy adult-alternative record flush with grand pianos, classical strings, and slackened tempos.

The layers of sound Taylor presents are sumptuous, full of tossed-off licks of piano and guitar that gather into motifs more deluxe than his recent solo work but far scruffier than Hot Chip. Tucked into them, Taylor’s lyrics make strange but welcome bedfellows.

The project’s overall cohesiveness and clarity of purpose make it almost movie score-like, yet there’s no part of the album that’s intended to underline anything but Jiha’s compelling musicianship. That is what makes Communion so easy to listen to. It’s creative and singular in a way that’s soothing, not alienating.

The artistry of her voice lies in those moments of versatility and charisma, but they’re too isolated across Joyride to land with the kind of impact they deserve.

The individual performances are gut-punching in their potency. ... But the discrete presentation of the songs sucks them dry, with the abrupt fade-outs robbing the album of any in-the-room ambience and natural momentum.

Nearly every highlight, however, feels hermetically sealed--produced in a vacuum and unable to feed into or connect with the others. It turns Song for Alpha into a catch-all for Avery’s disparate experiments, something that less resembles a fully realized album than a dynamic, robust playlist from a seasoned DJ taking a break from the road.

It arrives at this whole in a sneaky way, and it manages to avoid feeling like a concept album, or like anything else Mouse on Mars, or anyone, have done.

Throughout this album, the band generally keeps within its sweet spot of familiar, wistful progressions complemented by Kim’s interior detailing. But that’s not to say it’s without brave moments.

The album probably doesn’t need to be 100 minutes long. Its length might have worked better if he had more neatly divided its 18 tracks into a right-brain and left-brain side, rather than breaking up its flow by zigzagging between satin-finish soul and misted minimal house. But the few surprises scattered along the way that make its unpredictable course feel worthwhile.

What unfolds is a kind of Great American Songbook approach to Johnny Cash, traversing the country and western, mountain bluegrass, blues, and Scotch Irish balladeer range of his own work.

The Messthetics is a carefree, low-stakes endeavour for its participants; recorded live off the floor in Canty’s practice room, the album captures two old pals communing with a new one, exploring the potential of their developing dynamic and sculpting ideas into song-like shapes.

Breakbeats have become fashionable again, so a dusted-off track like “Undone” doesn’t sound quite as dated, with Paradinas playfully bouncing between tympani boom, percolator bip, and dramatic background strings. ... But “Bassbins” also shows that the more aggro and cartoonish take on it (which anticipated the rise of breakcore) remains out of fashion for good reason.

In one sense, The Other is a logical extension of its predecessor’s more lustrous moments, like the jangly acoustic outlier “Eyes of the Muse” and the stargazing ballad “Staircase of Diamonds.” But the execution here is more sophisticated—and the overall tone far more serious.

The Deconstruction produces no eccentricity, pop smarts, orchestral creativity, or emotional revelation.

The album’s just a little over half-an-hour long, and it’s all of a piece, conveying casual imagery that meanders from the hands-in-pockets wistfulness of drifting and kicking on trash cans (“Knockin’ on Your Screen Door”) to turning on the TV and looking out your window. Throughout, he has a virtuoso grasp of understatement.

Pinned reels in some of APTBS’s famous noise, but it doesn’t budge Ackermann from his station as a long-standing rock’n’roll archivist.

There’s Always More at the Store showcases a few new wrinkles to his sound while also reminding us that he can also easily bang out a cool beat, too.

Each note and phrase on the album is colored to depict this struggle. The instrumentation is bracing, almost as if played live for a crowd, but it has the intimate tenor and tone of Saba recording the entire thing alone in his basement.

Her lyrical tricks are unexpected and endlessly quotable .

Bellowing Sun feels delightfully out of time with the rest of the world. Its length and complex structure dare our shrinking attention spans to fight the pull of Twitter timelines and breaking news, to lean into the present.

It’s an overridingly pleasant listen, but that pleasantness is too often maintained by featureless production and other manifestations of Misch’s risk-averse instincts.

If adult critics really loved this stuff, the Xanarchy team would no doubt feel they’d made a wrong turn somewhere. It’s punk, or it’s the thing people who don’t really know what “punk” means call “punk,” or it’s a dog whistle meant to sail over the heads of the the elderly (i.e. anyone over 24).

Isolation is a star turn from an artist who has proven she’s ready for it.

For all the songwriting strides Molleson makes on Loud Patterns, the album’s carefully sculpted beatscapes ultimately result in a reactionary act of noise.

The production on the album is sumptuous and varying. A record daring enough to produce the buzzing “Bartier Cardi,” the R&B-infused “Ring,” and the quiet prowler “Thru Your Phone,” Invasion of Privacy never shrinks away from a potential risk, delivering hugely satisfying payoffs.

Sex & Food is best in this spaced-out zone, where alienation sounds genuinely alien. The record’s disembodiment is precisely what makes it intriguing and, occasionally, unlistenable.