The record’s complexity reveals itself over several listens, its slow-motion quietude opening up into a not-quite-happiness; what might be described as flow, or else, focus.

There are a handful of solid songs on Humor Risk, though, without an outright dud in the bunch-- and if that represents a disappointment, then in the end, the joke might be on us.

Drift Code doesn’t sound like Talk Talk (nor anything that could be described as “post-rock”), but what it shares with the band’s best work is both the sense of being adrift in time and a meticulous approach to production. These arrangements flicker with intricate melodic detail and nonconventional instrumentation.

The most diverse and ambitious recording to appear under the Efdemin name, incorporating not just standard electronic kit but also dulcimer, sing-drum, hurdy-gurdy, and guitars.

These elements [traces of her jazz and blues-rock past] add splashes of unexpected color to these songs, bringing the extroversion of those styles to the too often introverted genre of indie pop and making Hummingbird, Go! sound to big for any kitchen to contain.

You get a good sense of just what kind of man Drew is on Darlings, reconciling monogamy with promiscuity, Broken Social Scene’s cheap-seats bombast with love-seat confidentiality.

An album that’s disorienting at its catchiest, harrowing at its ugliest, and more than willing to run both of those modes at the same time.

Though it makes left turns and constantly tweaks its formulas, In Focus? is admirably coherent and cohesive, with each little pile-up of ideas finding its place in the big pile-up of ideas that comprises the album.

Without fail, whenever a song on Emperor of Sand feels like it’s about to go overboard on the polish, the band takes it in a more jagged direction. Conversely, whenever a song runs close to rehashing Mastodon’s familiar bag of tricks, the band steps up its tastefulness and songcraft. The timing is so uncanny that you might not even notice.

A Color of the Sky wears its derivative textures as a superhero might don a form-fitting costume, transforming tales of creative defeat into high-definition triumphs.

Even if Hate stands as their most visionary statement, Universal Audio has a subtler strength.

Rhinestones evokes the mystifying chaos of yearning to know the unknowable and the fool’s errand of trying to love the unlovable.

Yo La Tengo are still one of the most talented acts going, and whether they're maturing or simply cooling off these days, they're still evolving.

The relaxed warmth carried over from Lodestar to Heart’s Ease affirms that she’s glad to be here.

This sh*t is intended to be the soundtrack to fun, and listening to the individual tracks is indeed a lot of fun. Color bursts from the edges of every track, and most carry no interest in subtlety or dynamic range. The production pops like a seismic charge.

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.

It's experimental music, to be sure, but it doesn't conflate experimentation with alienation.

Rarely does an album this understated say so much.

The third album from this Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something worth revisiting.

AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is consummately smooth, but it rewards close reading and detective work. Brilliant things are happening underneath the gleaming surface.

As a whole, Fetty Wap adopts the same self-assured stance: Fetty's formula definitely ain't broke, and he doesn't seem in a hurry to fix it.

More ephemeral than Clor, more cerebral than the Rakes, Field Music has, like the Magic Numbers, fashioned a distinctive voice and near-perfect arrangements, but the songs hint at greatness nearly as often as they achieve it.

After that opening suite--“Pure Comedy,” “Total Entertainment Forever,” and “Revolution”--the music settles into a tonal plateau. Even the most gripping songs unspool with acoustic leisure, and they can be long and lofty trips.

Bitchin Bajas’ music is about keeping on, and Bajasicllators does that as well as anything in their discography.

Their most focused and captivating work to date.

The Hard Quartet lets us into their circle for just under an hour; it’s hard not to want to bask in its stoned brilliance even longer.

There's an energy and charisma in this dosage that I find lacking in some of the younger contemporaries.

The catchy country-pop rhythm of the title track, buoyed by a twangy electric guitar solo, wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place in between Clint Black and Dwight Yoakam on Country Music Television in the 1990s, but Childers frequently channels a vision of the genre that predates the video era.